Fighting off her growing awareness, she concentrated hard on slipping back into the oblivion of sleep. The scent of coffee wasn’t helping one bit. Opening one eye, she made out the black carafe on the nightstand and the yellow daffodil in a vase. Then the phone next to it rang.
Shoving the hair out of her eyes, Zoë sat up and grabbed the receiver. “Hello?”
“You’re awake?”
Zoë drew up her knees and clasped her free arm around them. A British accent shouldn’t sound so sexy, and a man’s voice shouldn’t be able to make her insides melt.
“Where are you?” she asked.
“I don’t have much time. There are two men waiting for you in the lobby. Bodyguards. They’ll be with you 24/7 until I can clear this matter up and make sure that you are safe.”
Zoë didn’t say anything. She wasn’t sure she could get any sound past the lump in her throat.
“Take care, Zoë.”
For a while she just sat there listening to the dial tone. Was every single man she spent the night with going to walk away from her?
How many more men did she intend to have a one-night stand with? Making love with two men in three days might not go into the Guinness World Records, but for her it was definitely on the wild side. And what had it gotten her?
Absolutely mind-blowing sex for one thing. And she didn’t regret a moment of it.
Slowly she smiled. She’d thought that nothing could surpass what Jed Calhoun had done to her in that hammock. But last night with Ethan…Resting her head on her knees, she let the images, the feelings, wash over her. They’d made love twice more after that first time. It was the last time that played itself over in her mind. He’d been so gentle, so thorough. Just thinking about it had heat building in her again.
Shaking her head to clear it, she reached for the carafe and poured herself a cup. Instead of reliving the fantasy, she should be considering the consequences. There would be a price to pay.
Taking a sip of her coffee, Zoë made herself look around the room. Her camisole was on a nearby chair, her panties were a bright splash of red against the cream-colored carpet. The bed looked as if a battle had been fought on it.
Well, the battle was over, and now it was time to assess the damage. She’d desired and acted on those desires with two men. It wasn’t as though she’d stopped wanting one of them before she’d moved on to the next one. Because she hadn’t. Jed had moved on; he’d obviously stopped wanting her.
She thought of Jed Calhoun, the gray-green eyes that always seemed to be laughing, the tousled hair bleached by the sun, and those hard, demanding hands. As the thrill moved through her, an image filled her mind. Jed, wearing nothing but cutoff shorts, was leaning against a tree, willing her to come to him. If he were standing in the bedroom doorway right now, she would go to him. Better still, she would beckon him to join her in bed. Her blood was already heating and racing at the thought.
And if Ethan were standing there? In her mind, the image of Jed receded a bit, and she pictured a man with straighter posture, darker hair, and bright blue, serious eyes behind black-rimmed glasses. A hunger filled her and with it came an ache that had her gripping her knees even more tightly.
She would beckon to Ethan, too, and beg him to make love to her again—just as she’d begged him more than once during the night. Zoë shut her eyes. But she couldn’t quite erase the images of the two men.
In fact, they were both walking toward the bed. She felt a lick of fire along her nerve endings. And she felt another hotter flame spring to life deep inside of her. Ethan reached her first. He knelt on the bed and taking her by the hand, drew her to her knees. She knelt facing him, her body nearly brushing against his. His eyes were so dark but she could see herself in them. Though she couldn’t take her gaze away from his, she knew the moment that Jed climbed onto the bed behind her.
Ethan’s hands rested at her throat, and then his mouth lowered to hers at the same moment that Jed’s hands settled at her waist.
This was a fantasy, she thought. It was happening entirely in her mind. But the heat coursing through her was very real. And so were the other sensations—the gentle movement of Ethan’s tongue as it danced with hers, the tremor that moved through her when Jed’s hand covered her breast.
Then Jed drew her close so that she felt every hard plane and angle of his body against her back. The slap of heat nearly rocked her.
Ethan moved closer, too—until her body was pressed tightly between the two men.
She really should put a stop to this.
As if in answer to the thought, Ethan moved one hand to the nape of her neck and abruptly changed the angle of the kiss. His mouth became hard, demanding. His tongue was no longer gentle. She lifted her hands and gripped his shoulders to pull him closer. His tongue explored her mouth as if there were some flavor there that she was hiding from him and that he was bent on discovering. The sudden scrape of his teeth had her moaning.