“Don’t,” she whispered. “Don’t say things like that.”
“I can’t help myself,” he confessed, meaning it. One of his hands slid to her stomach, and Bobby’s gut clenched with the memories of intimacy, of holding her, of burying himself inside her and hearing her call his name. He wanted to hear her call his name again. Over and over.
Her hand pressed down on his. “We agreed no talking,” she reminded him, but her voice lacked conviction.
“Just sex,” he said flatly, but there was a crackle beneath the surface.
“Yes,” she confirmed softly, “just sex.”
He used both hands, a double assault, caressing a path over her slender waist, brushing the curve of her breasts, and then molding them to his palms. “Is this what you want?” he asked.
She made a strangled sound and her head fell back to his shoulder. “Yes,” she whispered.
He inhaled her scent, teasing her nipples through the sheer fabric. “I remember your scent—jasmine,” he said. “Delicious and sweet.” He shoved aside the thin material and tweaked one of her nipples. She shivered in his arms. The nipple knotted to his touch. He remembered well. “You know what else I remember?”
“I don’t want to know,” she said. “No memories.”
“I remember how wet you get when I touch your breasts and lick them. If I tease them just right, you’ll come right here in the kitchen.”
“I will not,” she gasped.
He shoved both sides of her shirt down, bra along with it. Tugged on both stiff peaks. She moaned. “Want to bet on that?” he asked.
“Yes,” she hissed on a soft sound of pleasure that defied her words. “I bet on that.”
A low, desire-laden laugh rumbled in his throat. “Did you forget how much I enjoy a good challenge?” He picked her up, turned her and set her on the counter, spreading her legs in the process. He feasted on the sight of her high, full breasts and then pressed them together to lave on a nipple. “You still think I can’t make you come?”
Jennifer was panting, her hands pressed to the counter behind her, holding her up. She bit her bottom lip. “It’s, no…if I come, it’s because—”
He lapped at her nipple. “Because it’s me?” He framed her face with his hands. “Because it’s us?”
She blinked up at him. “Stop using sex as a weapon,” she whispered.
“Isn’t that what you planned to do?” he demanded. “Use sex to keep me at a distance?” And he couldn’t let her do that, not with only two weeks until the biggest decision of his life, since leaving Jennifer seven years ago. Reenlist or stay? “You should have known that wouldn’t work. We were too good together. We still are.”
“You of all people should know,” she hissed, “that sometimes sex is a way to an orgasm. It’s just sex.”
There it was—the gauntlet thrown down, the accusation that she’d meant nothing to him, which cut like a finely sharpened blade. “Is that all you think we were?” he demanded. “Sex?”
Her chin lifted. “Wasn’t it?”
Frustration mixed with urgency inside Bobby as the music shifted to a country song, voices suddenly carrying inside the house. An indicator the show was over and their alone time was ending.
“No matter how we ended, Jennifer,” he told her, his tone guttural, “we were real.” Bobby kissed her, long and hard. “And I’m not going to let you forget that.” He pulled Jennifer’s shirt back into place. And not a moment too soon.
Marcie’s voice bellowed from the near distance. “Jennifer!”
“This isn’t over,” Bobby told her, setting her on the ground. “Not even close.”
“Don’t bet on that one, Bobby,” Jennifer said. “You’ll lose.”
“It’s time to play truth-or-dare,” Marcie said from the doorway, with an intoxicated giggle.
Bobby leaned close to Jennifer. “I dare you to finish what we started,” Bobby said, and he wasn’t talking sex, though sex was fine by him. He was talking everything—the past, the present, the future. Bobby turned to Marcie. “Let the games begin.”
***
MARCIE SHOUTED ACROSS the backyard to have the music stopped, ready to start the games. She giggled and turned back to Jennifer. “Let’s get ready to rumble!”
Jennifer held her hand over her face. There was no rumbling in the game of truth-or-dare, but there was plenty of rumble to Jennifer’s nerves. Like it wasn’t enough that she’d already delved into the “sex as a weapon” game with Bobby and lost round one. Now she had a tipsy Marcie to contend with.
Marcie grabbed Jennifer’s hand and tugged her onward. “Let’s go,” she said. “This is going to be so fun.”
Fifteen minutes later, Jennifer hadn’t seen hide nor hair of Bobby. The game was about to begin, and this other game, the one between Bobby and herself, was clearly well under way. A huge circle of twenty guests sat on a carpet runner circling the dance floor, ready to play truth-or-dare.