At Any Price(75)

I wore the red dress. It was modest at the top with a sweetheart neckline, short-sleeved but formfitting and rather short to showcase my legs, which were, in all, not bad legs. And I’d taken extra special care shaving so I wouldn’t have any cuts or scrapes to hide. I wore the glittery black shoes I’d worn in Amsterdam with the black dress. I didn’t even try with my jewelry. Anything I wore would look fake compared to all the shiny real jewels I was bound to see at the party. I chose the only real gems I owned—cultured pearl earrings. And that’s it—no ring, necklace or bracelet.

We kept up our affectionate routine. Adam held my hand the entire time and was very attentive. He stood close and when he spoke for me alone, he whispered in my ear, hooking an arm around my waist. I could tell we were the talk of the party because we got a lot of speculative looks. Adam was not seen in public acting affectionate with women, it seemed. Was this act solely to discourage Lindsay and her designs or to set others on alert as well—an elaborate plan to keep people at a distance? If anyone was capable of elaborate plans, it was Adam.

Afterward, he took me back to his place, which was only a few miles from where Lindsay lived in Laguna Beach. I wondered what he had in mind for the rest of the evening. Another trip out on the yacht?

To my utter surprise, his plan was to sit in his movie viewing room, watch The Lord of the Rings and eat popcorn. I loved popcorn and Tolkien, so I was perfectly happy with that. However, at one point he disappeared and came back wearing pajama pants and a T-shirt.

I muttered something about it not being fair that I had to stay in my dress and he vanished again, returning with a T-shirt. I went into the bathroom and put it on. As it was one of his, it went down past my panties and left my legs bare. When I came back into the room, his eyes followed me to where I sat in my recliner just next to him. We had our own little theater to ourselves with a high-definition widescreen and top notch sound system—like I said, hardware got me giddy. And we could attend this nice little private theater in our pajamas.

When the first movie was over, he was about to key in the command for the second. By then it was after ten and I mentioned that I should probably be getting home. “Why don’t you stay? I have half a dozen guest rooms you can choose from. And two more movies.” So here it was, his next request for more.

I hesitated. “Wouldn’t that count as one more night?” I said.

His eyes shot a challenge into mine but his smile didn’t fade. “Nope.”

“What makes you think I’m inclined to give you a freebie?”

He held up his remote. “Come on…you know you want to…”

I sighed. “If I can get another batch of popcorn and a toothbrush—and you turn off your phone until the movies are over—then I might consider it.”

“Done, done and…” he gave an exaggerated sigh, pulling his phone out of the drink caddy where he had rested it. “Oh, what the hell. Done.”

He turned the phone on twice to check it during the slow parts—Arwen’s dream and that silly scene where Aragorn gets knocked over the cliff by a warg.

After the second time, I hopped into his recliner, grabbed the phone and stuck it down my shirt. We watched the remainder of the movie pressed against each other, our legs intertwined, his strong arms wrapped around my waist.

During the prologue to the third movie, we started kissing. And from there we pretty much ignored The Return of the King. His hands were all over me—though I suspect that partly might have been an effort to locate his phone. My hands feasted on him as well.

We spent the entire two and a half hours making out like teenagers in the back of their parents’ borrowed minivan. And I don’t think I’d ever been so turned on in my life. Which, of course, wasn’t saying much, since my three weeks in this man’s company comprised about 98.5 percent of my sexual arousal experience. It was stunning, the feelings that were stirring in me—like parts of my body I hadn’t known existed previously were coming alive.

After Aragorn was crowned king and the credits rolled, we were in the dark and still going. He’d had his hands on my breasts for the previous hour, driving me insane with the continuous stimulation, teasing them to points, putting his hot mouth on them. Because, yeah, my T-shirt (or, rather, his T-shirt) had hit the floor long before—along with the phone—and was quickly joined by the one he was wearing.

Then I reached down and started stroking him through his pajama pants and he uttered a harsh groan. Oh, he liked that very much. We wouldn’t be having sex tonight, but it was about time he had some fun. After all, he’d been so attentive to me before. And I had to admit that Heath’s accusation of Adam having a weird little self-denial fetish was at the back of my mind, too. Maybe he gets off from denying himself.