One Week of Summer Page 5

  Maybe it’s a guest room.

  Maybe I could go there, at least until the morning.

  I took two steps forward, but before my hand could close on the doorknob, Teekay’s voice stopped me.

  “Can I trust you, Maggie?”

  It was an odd question to ask a stranger. An intense one.

  I turned in Teekay’s direction. He’d sunk down into the chair I’d vacated.

  “I get this feeling that I can,” he added, eyes closed. “I don’t know why. It’s been so long since I even wanted to trust someone…But I want to now, Maggie.”

  For the first time, he looked vulnerable. Even when Donnie had him pinned to the ground, he’d been far from acquiescent. His body had been rigid with restraint at his forced stillness.

  Now, he sat completely still again. But it was different. His powerful frame sagged in on itself. The fist he’d used to punch Donnie hung at his side, already swollen, and the marks I’d left on his chest seemed even redder.

  In spite of my worry, a sympathetic lump formed in my throat.

  “Those girls back there,” I said softly. “They’re my life.”

  His eyes opened. “What does that mean?”

  “It means that day in and day out for the last four years, someone treated me like that. Until today when you stopped them. So, yes, I think you can trust me.”

  “Come here, Maggie.”

  I walked to him and stood dutifully in front of his chair.

  “What did Donnie tell you about me?” he asked.

  “He said you were dangerous,” I replied honestly.

  “Did you believe him?”

  “Yes,” I admitted in a whisper.

  “Even though I just saved you?”

  “Yes,” I said again.

  I readied myself for an angry response. But he just nodded, his face dark and hopeless.

  “Good.”

  I took a breath and I took a chance, remembering how so many times a kind word – any kind word – would’ve lifted me from the emotional downward spiral that always threatened to overwhelm me.

  “Thank you.”

  He frowned. “For?”

  “For helping me today.”

  His face relaxed into a smile. “You’re welcome.”

  A gust of wind cut through the open window, making me shiver. Teekay sprung to his feet and grabbed a chocolate-colored blanket from the end of his bed. He wrapped it around my shoulders.

  “I don’t even know why the hell you’re still here, putting up with me,” he said.

  For the second time in one day, I made a joke. “Because it beat going home with Kirby.”

  Teekay laughed. “Are you sure about that?”

  I nodded as seriously as I could manage. “Completely.”

  “I do think I’m doing the hero thing kinda wrong, though,” he stated thoughtfully. “I mean, I know there’s no Hero 101 course, but I’m pretty sure if there was the first day would include instructions on not scaring the shit out of the damsel in distress, not getting into a fistfight, and not letting the girl freeze to death, either.”

  On cue, the blanket slipped down, and I shivered again.

  “You need to get out of that dress,” Teekay said. “It’s soaked.”

  “It’ll dry.”

  Teekay grinned at my embarrassment. “If I wanted to keep you wet, Maggie, it wouldn’t be like this. The dress has to go.”

  I flushed. “I don’t have any other clothes.”

  As soon as they were out of my mouth, I realized the words sounded like a play. Like a coy move in an attempt to get naked.

  Teekay’s smile widened. “I’m aware. Does your dress have a zipper?”

  “Yes.”

  Before he spoke again, I knew what he intended.

  “Let me help you, Maggie.”

  I hesitated. Teekay had that look in his eyes again. The one that made me sure he was going to get his way no matter what. And again, I felt compelled to comply with his wishes. Without dwelling on the why, I slipped the blanket down and turned my back to him, my teeth chattering a bit as the cold air hit my bare skin.

  Teekay touched the top of the zipper lightly.

  “Does it stick?” he asked, his voice husky.

  “Sometimes,” I whispered.

  “Hmm.”

  I felt a slight pressure on my back, and then the zipper began its descent, accompanied by Teekay’s hands.

  What is it about the sound of a zipper coming undone that makes me tingle? I wondered.

  Teekay paused, just about halfway down. He drew in a breath and I knew he was noticing that I wasn’t wearing a bra. If I had any doubt, it washed away when his palm slid across my back.

  I hadn’t gone braless for show, or to be sexy. The dress simply didn’t require one. But an unexpected rush of wantonness swept through me.

  Because it was sexy – at least a little bit – to walk around like that with no one the wiser except me.

  Me. And now Teekay.

  Unconsciously, I leaned into his caress. His hand wasn’t terribly rough, but it still contrasted sharply with how smooth my back was. And the tiny path he made from one shoulder blade to the other left a raw feeling on my skin. And it was amazing.

  Teekay moved on.

  He pulled the zipper to the small of my back and I had little choice but to drop the blanket to the floor so he could continue undoing it.

  His hands maneuvered down, down, down, until they rested on my hips.

  I couldn’t say it was comfortable. But I could say it was uncomfortably enjoyable.

  In seconds, the dress followed the blanket to the ground.

  The scant fabric of my panties was sheer and left little to the imagination. For all they covered, I might as well have been naked.

  Now Teekay’s hands slid up instead of down. They stroked my waist, then shifted forward. They paused just above my stomach and I didn’t dare look down. If I did, I would see just how pale my skin was. I’d be reminded that my belly button was plain and jewel-free. And most importantly, I’d catch sight of Teekay’s perfect, manly hands pushed against my very imperfect body.

  I wanted – selfishly – to enjoy this fleeting moment. To pretend it was real and not just the some hazy, morning-after-regret in the making.

  My skin was warm everywhere Teekay had touched it and I was trembling with the anticipation of where his hands would move next.

  “I’d like to kiss you, Maggie.” Teekay’s voice was full of need. “Are you going to ask me?”

  Oh, god.

  I wanted to do it. I wanted to beg him.

  My eyes were half-closed and my heart thumped. I had no problem imagining how his lips would feel on my body. Soft but firm. Tender but demanding.

  If it was just a kiss…

  But it wouldn’t be.

  I was naïve.

  I was mousey, just as Donnie said.

  But I was not stupid.

  Very deliberately, so there would be no mistaking my reply for something else – I shook my head no.

  Teekay wasn’t willing to drop it so easily.

  Instead of pulling away, he moved closer. His bare chest skimmed my back and his palms cupped the bottom of my breasts.

  “You’re still sure about that?” he asked, his words rolling over me like thunder.

  I nodded and made a noise that almost sounded like a yes. Almost.

  Swiftly, lightly, his thumbs lifted and drew a circle over each of my nipples.

  In spite of my attempt to hold it in, a little moan escaped from my throat.

  He was quick to relocate his hands again, this time to my hips. He gripped them firmly before issuing a rough command.

  “Bend down and get the blanket.”

  “How am—”

  He cut me off. “Do it, Maggie.”

  Submissively, I bent over the only way I could – straight forward. And my lower body went the only way it could – straight back. Into Teekay.

  Standing that way, nea
r to spread eagle, utterly exposed and so clearly the object of his desire, sent a shockwave of hunger through me. Unfamiliar. Unwanted. Uncontrollable.

  I tried to draw in a breath and it became a gasp.

  His erection pressed against his flannel pants.

  Ignore it, I told myself.

  But it was impossible. He was hard and huge and hot. So very hot.

  I shifted, just slightly, and as my panties shifted too, I had no choice but to acknowledge the increasing dampness between my legs.

  “Blanket,” Teekay reminded me, his voice as hard as his body.

  My hands closed over the fabric and as I lifted it, it met the skin on my calves. I was so primed – so on edge – that just the softness of the blanket made me groan.

  Good god.

  “Fuck,” Teekay growled.

  And then his fingers were between us. They moved my underwear aside easily and cupped me hungrily. I wriggled against him, no longer able to pretend I didn’t want the same thing he wanted. He parted the eager, willing folds of my sex and slipped one finger inside, then two.

  “You’re wet for me, Maggie,” Teekay declared, sounding pleased.

  I couldn’t deny it. I couldn’t even form a coherent thought.

  “If you ask me to, I’ll kiss you here,” he told me.

  He ground his hips against my rear end slowly, and circled his thumb over my slickness.

  “Just one little please is all it’ll take,” he added.

  He drew his fingers out and stroked my clit in a frustratingly gentle way. My body was ablaze with unmet need. Never in my life had I wanted something the way I wanted Teekay’s hands on me.

  “Stubborn girl,” he murmured into my hair.

  He thrust a finger deep inside me, then pulled it out and trailed it up my stomach.

  I felt alive. Disturbed. Embarrassed. And unfulfilled. The range of emotions made me dizzy.

  What did I let him do? What more would I let him do? And what was he going to expect in return?

  But Teekay just bent down and grabbed the blanket – which I now held in a death grip – from my hand forcibly. He pulled it up, took a step back, and draped it over my shoulders. I could feel every fiber in the fabric rub against every pore of my skin.

  He spun me around, careful to hold the blanket in place. I kept my humiliated gaze down, and after a second, Teekay sighed and grabbed my chin with two of his fingers.

  Very briefly, I wondered if they were the fingers. He tried to tip my face up, but in a rare moment of rebellion, I refused to give in. Somehow, I knew that one look into his eyes would be enough to make me give in to anything – and everything – he wanted.

  “I guess that takes care of the wet dress problem,” Teekay teased. “And I guess you’ll be needing something else to wear.”

  I knew my skin was probably fluorescent. The feverish blush ran down my throat to my chest and up my face to the roots of my hair. I fought to get it under control as Teekay fished through his dresser and drew out a white t-shirt. He held it out.

  “Thanks,” I mumbled.

  “Are you going to take it?”

  I struggled to hold the blanket shut as I grabbed the shirt. I hazarded a glance at him. He was watching me with an amused expression on his face.

  He suppressed a laugh. “All right. I’ll look away.”

  He pulled back the sheets on his bed and climbed in. Still grinning, he put his hands behind his head and closed his eyes.

  I dropped the blanket and slipped his t-shirt over my head.

  “Done,” I announced in a whisper.

  He cracked one eye. “So get in.”

  “In the bed?”

  Was he serious?

  “Yes.”

  Apparently, he was.

  My heart started to hammer all over again. The bed was a king-sized one, but somehow the space beside Teekay seemed miniscule.

  “I can use the chair,” I told him.

  His other eye flew open. “You’re not sleeping in the chair.”

  “Sleeping?” I repeated.

  “Yes, sleeping,” he replied with a wink. “What did you have in mind?”

  I yanked on the borrowed t-shirt nervously. “Nothing. Not…I don’t know.”

  “I’m tired. It was a rough evening.” He paused, then added, “Besides which, do you really think if I wanted something other than sleep, you’d be able to say no?”

  I made no move to get closer, and Teekay rolled his eyes.

  “There’s only one reason I don’t have you bent over the bed, and why I’m not eleven inches deep in that sweet little pussy of yours right this second, and it’s not because you won’t let me do it.”

  I gasped, and I wasn’t sure if it was because of his dirty mouth, or because of the way my body immediately heated up at his words.

  He shot me a cocky grin. “That’s right. I’m a hundred percent sure that I could make you do it and make you like it, Maggie. But I think that’s what you want. If you don’t initiate it, you’re not responsible for it. You’re just a victim of how dead-sexy I am. Which is how you want it to be. But I’ve made a decision. I’m not giving in. Because you’re not a fucking victim and I want you to know it.”

  At the end of his speech, I was burning again, and this time it was in anger. It was an odd feeling, to be mad. It felt unnatural and as much as I wanted to shake it, I couldn’t.

  How dare he be so presumptuous? I asked myself furiously. He’s barely known me five minutes and he thinks he can read me.

  “You know what else, Maggie? I’m not even going to bother to finish off on my own,” he added as he slid his hand under the blanket to his crotch, leaving no doubt as to what he meant. “And I’m not going to take a cold shower, either. I’m just going to spend my whole night thinking about how it would feel to have you on my cock.”

  I didn’t know where to direct my indignation, or even how to. I sputtered a few incomprehensible words, then just stood there glaring at Teekay, who was looking more entertained by the second.

  “I don’t know why you’re making me do it this way. But since you refuse to get in on your own…” he trailed of menacingly.

  I didn’t have a chance to realize what was happening before it actually happened.

  Suddenly, Teekay was on his feet. His arms closed over me and he dragged me backwards. I made a futile attempt to elbow him, but he just laughed and pulled me into the bed, where he held me tightly.

  “If any other girl said no to me as many times as you have tonight, I’d have already told her to take a literal walk,” he informed me. “But you know what? I like it when you say no to me. I don’t think you say it to anyone else. Ever. And that turns me on as much as it fascinates me, Maggie.”

  “Let me go,” I muttered.

  “No.”

  “Yes!”

  He laughed. “Hell, no.”

  “Please.”

  “I’ll tell you what. You beg me for that kiss. Give me the control, and I’ll let you go.”

  “If I beg you for a kiss, are you going to give me a kiss?”

  “A kiss? No. Am I going to taste you, head-to-toe? Definitely.”

  Oh, sweet lord.

  This was going from bad to worse. My breasts were pressed into his forearm and there was no way he could be unaware of how taut my nipples had become. And my panties, still damp from his earlier ministrations, were getting wet all over again.

  I forced my body to go limp. After a second, his grip relaxed just enough that I could breathe properly. Well, as properly as I could when I was wrapped in his arms.

  “I’m in the bed,” I pointed out.

  “I see that.”

  “You can let me go.”

  “Are you going to jump out of it as soon I do?” he wanted to know.

  “I promise I won’t.”

  “I don’t know if that makes me happy or sad,” he joked, but his arms loosened even more.

  I pulled the blanket up to my chin.

  Te
ekay exhaled, sounding exasperated. “If I was going to try anything, I wouldn’t have bothered with giving you the t-shirt.”

  I ignored him, and a silence, far too heavy to be hanging between two virtual strangers, dangled between us.

  He broke it first. “Maggie?”

  “What?”

  “Come over here and cuddle up beside me. Let me hold you while we sleep. Just in case I do try anything and then you never let me near you again.”

  I shuffled closer shyly, and Teekay enveloped me in a warm, horizontal embrace. After a second, he rolled me over again and pulled my back to his chest. It was as loving as it was sexy, and I couldn’t help but relax into him.

  After just a few minutes, Teekay’s breathing evened out and I knew he was asleep. So I closed my own eyes, and let the rise and fall of his chest lull me to sleep too.

  Day Two

  4)

  A cool breeze dragged me into consciousness, and in an unexpectedly automatic move, I reached for a warm body – Teekay’s warm body – to stave off the cold.

  The second I realized what I’d done, my eyes flew open, and an awkward apology formed in my mind.

  But his side of the bed – or rather, the side of the bed that he’d been using, since the whole bed was technically his – was empty. The blankets were rumpled and the feather pillow was creased with the impression left behind by his head. I reached up and placed my palm on his pillow.

  The spot was cool, but suddenly I was not.

  The previous evening’s events came rushing back to me, and with them came the same ardent feelings.

  Teekay’s hand, on me.

  Teekay’s chest, pressed into me.

  I drew away my hand like it was on fire.

  In the dark, after the storm, with fear and adrenaline pumping…A not-quite-tryst seemed natural. Almost.

  Now, with the daylight peeking through the dark, wooden blinds, it seemed unreal. If it wasn’t for that glaring imprint left behind by Teekay’s body, and the fact that I was in his bed, I might’ve thought I’d imagined the whole thing.

  I sat up slowly, half-expecting to see him positioned in the armchair across the room or to find him standing at the window. But the room was empty, and silent.

  “Hello?” I called softly.

  There was no answer.

  I swung my legs out of the bed and placed them delicately on the floor. My toes squished into the area rug beneath the bed, and for a second they scrunched away in protest. It reminded me too much of the sand at the beach and the other, not-so-pleasant memory that went along with the feeling. And I was going to have to go back there.