Like his fist in my hair and his lips on my throat, whispering that I’m beautiful as he kisses me until my head spins. Or how he made me certain losing Bill was the best thing that had ever happened to me. Sure it hurt like hell at the moment, but if I’d stayed with my first love, I never would have known that a man’s hands could make me feel a hundred thousand incredible things at once.
Bill was a kind and generous lover, but he was a boy when we met and stayed a boy in a lot of ways. Lawrence is a man and confident in bed in a way I’d never experienced before. A little kinky, too. I never thought I’d enjoy hair pulling or bottom swatting, but in the past year, I’ve replayed those moments with Lawrence over and over again in my head, wearing the mental film thin.
I need a refresher, a reminder of how good sex can be to tide me over until I find a man capable of banishing this stupid Brit from my memory.
And if you can’t make a dumb mistake in a deer blind while waiting to nab a rogue Santa, then when can you?
On impulse, I lunge forward, pressing my mouth to Lawrence’s as I sprawl across his lap.
For a second, he’s stiff and still, making me fear I misread him, but then his arms go around me with a groan, and he kisses me exactly the way I remember—rough and sexy and desperate as though he can’t get enough of my lips.
My stomach bounces into my chest, and blood rushes between my thighs until it feels like my heart is beating there, in that lonely place that hasn’t had a single gentleman caller since Lawrence loved me and left me with a shitty case of fake amnesia.
A vision of his face as he insisted he had no idea what I was talking about fills my memory, so massive and irritating that not even the blissful feel of his fingers rolling my nipple through my sweater can banish it to the corners of my mind.
“Wait.” I pull back, shooing his eager hands out of my coat and pulling the flaps tight across my chest. But I don’t slide off his lap or slap his hands away when they settle on my hips.
A weak part of me hopes there’s some reasonable explanation, some way I can justify giving him another chance.
“Why did you do that?” I ask. “Last year? Why pretend you didn’t remember? I know we’d both had a few, but you weren’t drunk. I know you weren’t. And you know you weren’t. And you’re a bad liar, by the way. Really bad.”
He hesitates, but when I try to slide off his lap, he holds me in place and wraps one arm more tightly around me, sending a zing of awareness through my nerve endings. “You…said his name.”
I frown. “Whose name?”
“Your boyfriend’s. Bill’s. Twice. While we were…” He trails off, clearing his throat in a self-conscious way that’s pretty adorable. How can he be so dirty in bed and so British when talking about it?
More importantly, why didn’t he tell me this before?
“I didn’t mean to,” I say. “Believe me, I was very aware of who you were, and that you weren’t Bill. I just…” I shake my head. “I’d never felt those kind of feelings with anyone but him. I guess my lips were on automatic pilot.”
“Your lips were lovely,” he says in a husky voice.
“Thank you, so were yours,” I murmur, searching his gaze in the lantern light. “I’m sorry if I hurt your feelings.”
“I’m sorry I let my stupid, slimy English ego get in the way of getting to know you better.”
I wince. “Fourth of July? I thought you might have been close enough to hear that, but I didn’t see you by the hedge until it was too late. Sorry about that, too. I was just…hurt.”
“It’s all right. I was hurt, too. That’s why I convinced myself it was best to pretend I couldn’t remember that night together. Just in case you were planning to get back together with Bill.”
“He’d already moved to Boston by then,” I say. “And I was over him. Truly.”
“Both of which I sorted out eventually. But by then, you were treating me like I had the plague, and I couldn’t figure out how to undo the stupid thing I’d done.”
My tongue slips out, dampening my suddenly dry lips. “Want some hot cocoa? I brought some for later, but I’ll share it with you. If you like cocoa.”
“I do like cocoa, thank you.” His head cants to one side. “So does this mean I’m forgiven? And that we can have a fresh start?”
I’m about to assure him that I’m open to a fresh start—and suggest we save the cocoa until after we’ve kissed some more, just to see if it’s still as much fun as it was two minutes ago—when the sound of harsh panting fills the air, followed by a high-pitched giggle that’s become all too familiar in the past few weeks.