"I wasn't expecting company."
"Weren't you?"
"No. I thought you might wait until we knew for sure on the pregnancy thing before launching the seduction offensive."
"There is nothing offensive about my seduction techniques," he assured her.
No, there really wasn't.
"You haven't been with anyone else while we were having ourfriends with benefitsthing?" she asked, wondering what it meant if he said no.
"Not since before the wedding," he offered.
"What about the no strings, it was just a one-night stand, yadda yadda yadda?"
"I have never said yadda in my life and I have no answer for you. I did not believe myself committed to you and yet I had no desire to have sex with other women."
Why did he say bone melting things right along with the cold hard truth? "You said you wanted to get closure. To be able to move on. Are you saying that having sex with other women hasn't worked for you since our breakup?"
Because that would put them in the same boat, and she wasn't sure how she felt about that. She'd been the one to walk away (or more accurately run away) five years before. If she hadn't, what would their life be like now?
"Have there been other men?" he asked, rather than give a straight answer.
Typical Carlo.
"None successfully."
Something flared in his eyes. Was it satisfaction or relief? Or both?
"Why should it matter?" she asked. But she knew.
For the same reason she liked knowing his sex life hadn't been great since they broke up.
A very primal part of Annette still saw Carlo as hers. She wanted to be the only woman who spurred him to all night long intimacy.
"You know," he said, moving into her personal space. "You feel it too."
Annette's breath caught, her body suffusing with heat that had nothing to do with embarrassment. She wanted him.
She always wanted him. And he always wanted her.
Wasn't that something worth pursuing? She'd downplayed the power and importance of the chemistry between them earlier, but after five years of unsuccessful and mostly nonexistent (because of the unsuccessful part) dating, she now knew just how rare that kind of sexual compatibility was.
Annette tipped her head back, so their gazes met. His simmered with desire.
She knew he could see a matching need in her own.
"I do feel it."
He smiled, white teeth flashing in that sexy way that got her every time. "This." He cupped her waist beneath her cardigan, his big hand warm through the thin cotton of her sleep tank. "But you feel the other too. You like being the woman I can't get out of my head."
"More like your pants, but yes."
"I'm going to kiss you."
"I'm going to let you."
She didn't see the smile that time because she'd closed her eyes as his lips met hers. She felt it though at the beginning of the kiss.