“I’m not really a corn bread fan.” She bit her tongue, wishing she’d just stayed silent. They wouldn’t get through this weekend if she didn’t at least attempt to be polite. It wasn’t normally a problem—she liked people and tended to be nice as a general rule, even when they weren’t. For some reason that didn’t hold true with Ryan.
He shrugged and dumped the pan into the sink. “Then we’ll call it fate and I won’t try to throw together something else.” He stirred the chili. “This, at least, seems to have survived our being distracted.”
Distracted. That was a good way to put what had just happened between them. Which shouldn’t happen again. Right? She didn’t know anymore. There was something about this man that made her feel off-center and defensive, how even being in the same room with him set her on edge. She’d never reacted like that to anyone.
And that was even before they slept together.
She ate the bowl of chili he set before her mechanically, not really tasting it as she mentally picked at their situation. They had no future. She knew that, and she suspected he knew it as well. They didn’t like each other. Couldn’t carry on a conversation without sniping at each other, and couldn’t snipe at each other without ending up in compromising positions. But when his hands were on her body and his tongue stroking hers, they fit together. No complications. No arguments. Nothing but two people coming together with pleasure as the only goal.
Bri set down her spoon. “I’d like to have sex again.”
…
Ryan took a cautious sip of his beer, fighting for some kind of calm. He’d been in plenty of hairy situations before, but the sheer idiocy of breaking into a cold sweat as a reaction to Bri’s proclamation embarrassed him on a level he wasn’t prepared to deal with. He was twenty-eight years old. He shouldn’t be acting like a bumbling teenager because a woman he’d already slept with wanted to have sex again.
Hell, considering the direction they’d been headed before the smoke detector went off, he shouldn’t be surprised.
Even knowing that, he couldn’t jump into this without figuring out where she was coming from. He sipped his beer again, feeling a little closer to normal. This was nothing different from approaching an enemy encounter—he had to figure out what direction she was coming from and head her off or confront her as necessary.
Comparing Bri to an enemy didn’t settle him nearly as well as it should have. He swallowed. “Why do you want to have sex again?”
Her face flamed red and he had half a second to wonder if she were going to back out on him before she took his beer out of his hand and drank. She made a face. “How do you drink that stuff? It’s terrible.”
“Which is probably why my brother and Avery stocked plenty of wine for you.” He leaned against the counter and propped his chin on his fist. “Stop avoiding the subject you brought up in the first place.”
“I’m not avoiding. I’m simply trying to figure out a way to approach it.”
He took back his beer and finished it off. “How about from head-on?”
“You would think that, wouldn’t you?” Bri closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and opened them. “We have three days here and not much in the way of entertainment. So we can stare out the window and watch the snowfall, or we can try to find something to talk about.” Her expression conveyed just how pleasant either of those alternatives sounded.
Ryan couldn’t say he disagreed. Hadn’t he just been thinking about how they could barely hold down a conversation without fighting? “I’m not arguing so far.”
“For once.” She pursed her lips. “You see what I mean. We’ve been talking for all of two minutes and I already want to smack you.”
“Maybe you should go get that chair from earlier and try again.”
“Ha ha.” She twisted on her barstool to face him fully. “My point is that we already know we’re compatible in one way, so why not take advantage of it?”
Though part of his body perked up in agreement, Ryan couldn’t help digging in his heels a little. “Normally I restrict myself to sleeping with women who actuallylikeme.”
“Do you see any of them here?” She motioned around the living room and kitchen. “I don’t think some perky redhead is going to materialize from the woodwork to relieve you.”
Thiswas what she thought of him—that he neededrelief. “While it’s flattering to find out that you think my standards are so low, I think I’ll pass.”
If anything, her blush got deeper. “That’s not what I meant.”
“Are you sure? Because it sounds like what you meant.” Ryan hissed out a breath and tried to get his annoyance under control. “That night we were together was the first time in a long time for me.”
“I never said it wasn’t.”
Not in so many words, but if she thought he needed the kind of so-called relief sex brought, it wasn’t a far jump to the conclusion that he was screwing everything in sight. “Because you’ve described me in such glowing terms up to this point.”
“I wasn’t trying to insult you.”
He shook his head. “Then you’ve been doing a hell of a job of it.”
Bri wrapped her arms around herself, looking so lost and confused again that he wanted to hug her. That hint of vulnerability killed him, so he gave in to the urge to put his arms around her. She shivered and leaned into him, and they sat like that for a few minutes. Finally, she raised her head. “I really didn’t mean it like that.”