His Private Pleasure(21)
10
LIZA FELL ACROSS the surprisingly soft hotel bed and simply lay there, trying to gather her thoughts. She rolled on her back and stared at the ceiling. That didn’t help, either. Maybe a shower. A steamy cocoon, relaxing…
Images of her and Dylan, entwined in that steamy shower, assailed her. Images of them playing, toying, teasing… She sat up and grabbed the phone, and did what she always did when she couldn’t stand to be alone with her own thoughts. She called Natalie.
She was planning her apology for calling so late when Nat’s answering machine clicked on. “Great. Lovely.” Liza clapped the phone back down on the base. “Desert a friend in need, why don’t you.” She rolled to her back again. “And do I ever have needs.”
The sudden jangle of the phone made her jump. She snatched it up before the second ring. “Dylan?”
There was a pause, then a female laugh. “Nooo.”
“Natalie! Oh, thank God. You saved me.”
“Who’s Dylan?”
“Wait a minute. How did you know where I was?”
“I was…occupied when the phone rang. But recognized that disgusted ‘Great, lovely’ and pressed star-sixty-nine to trace this number. What are you doing and where in the hell is the Canyon Springs Inn? Are you at a spa? You swore you weren’t going to do anything normal. Normal for you, anyway. No hiding out, getting pampered while you ponder your destiny. And your destiny is not a masseur named Dylan, no matter how great his hands are.”
“He’s not a masseur, he’s a sheriff.”
There was a pause. “A sheriff? Oh my God, Liza, what have you done now? Are you calling for bail money? Wait, you have plenty of money. Oh!” Nat gasped, barely taking a breath. “You need a lawyer. Okay, okay, well, I’m here now. Start from the beginning. Tell me everything. Wait. I need a pencil. And paper. And—”
“Natalie!” But it was too late. And yet Liza was smiling, glad her friend had called back, even if she had interrupted her and Jake doing the wild—
“Okay, I’m back. Now, what did you do?”
Liza sighed, still smiling. “First of all, I love you. And second, what happened to my oh-so-organized best friend? Since when don’t you have a pad, pencil, mini-recorder, calendar and fax machine on your nightstand?”
“Since I left the fast track to become a small-town lawyer. But we’re not talking about me. Wait a minute. Why are you calling the sheriff by his first name?” There was a little huffed out breath, then she said, “Liza…” She’d dragged that last syllable into a warning note. “Tell me you didn’t break the no-sex-until-I-know-what-I-want-from-life rule. You only had one rule, for God’s sake.”
For the first time in hours Liza felt like herself. No one did that better than the only person on the planet who understood her better than she did herself. “Well…”
“Tell me you didn’t call me in the middle of, well, the night, to crow about your latest sexual conquest, because you know I’m not going to congratulate you on—”
“There was no sexual conquest.” At least not how Natalie meant it, Liza thought. Besides, if there’d been any conquest, it had been Dylan doing the conquering.
“No? So you didn’t?”
“I can’t tell if you’re more shocked or relieved.”
“So what happened? You had a sudden attack of guilt? No, that can’t be it.”
“Hey!” Liza retorted, but she was chuckling.
“No? So what, then—he was gay?”
“Well, his mother thought he might be.”
There was another pause. “Okay, I was kidding. So you’re going to have to start at the beginning at some point and explain that one to me. But assuming his mother is wrong—and how in the hell his mother got in the middle of this I am dying to hear—then I’m assuming some rule breaking of some sort was going on. Or will be going on.”
“Well…”
“So I’m what? Your sex intervention squad? You want me to talk you out of doing it? Or, worse, you want me to tell you it’s okay to do it? Where exactly are we on the sexual map here? I can’t plan a strategy if I don’t know where the battle lines are drawn.”
“I’m still on the straight and narrow. Well, more narrow than straight, if you want to get technical. I just took, well, I prefer to think of it as a tiny detour. Finding my way around a sudden roadblock, if you will, on my journey to destiny.” Liza pulled a pillow onto her lap and settled back against the headboard. “Which I still don’t have a single clue about, by the way. And, for the record, technically speaking, I didn’t break the no-sex rule.”
“Yet. I heard the ‘yet’ plain and clear. And why, might I ask—technically speaking, of course—did things stop shy of a complete pit stop?”
“Fire.”
Natalie burst out laughing. “Well, now that’s a new one, even for you. What, did you get him so hot he forgot dinner was cooking? Or no, let me guess, you had him in the squad room and managed to catch the whole damn police department on fire.”
“Hey, even I’m not that good. Or bad, depending on how you want to look at it.”
“Don’t sell yourself short.”
“I’m going to take that as a compliment.”
“You would.”
“And you love me for it.”
“Somebody has to. So, all joking aside, why are you calling me?”
For the first time in probably her whole life, Liza wasn’t quite sure what to say.
“Wow. That bad, huh?”
“I’m not sure it’s bad. Actually, it was damn good.”
“You said you didn’t—”
“I had an orgasm, okay? But that’s not the same thing as sex.”
“Depends on your definition, but okay, I’ll grant you a stay on this one. Go ahead.”
“It’s just that— I knew I shouldn’t have, but he’s, well— And it was just going to be dinner, only we both knew— And he had handcuffs and I—”
“Please tell me you didn’t leave him shackled up somewhere.”
“The handcuffs weren’t for him.”
There was a moment of silence. “Oh.”
Liza blew out a deep sigh, waves of remembered pleasure and confusion rolling through her at the same time. “Yeah. Big oh.”
“But that’s not like you.”
“Tell me about it.”
“So, tell me about him.”
“I’m not sure how to describe him. He was a vice cop in Vegas, returned home to New Mexico to become a hometown sheriff when the big city slime started to eat down under his skin. His mom rescues big exotic birds and spends more time with them than him, but he seems to have come to terms with that. The town loves him and his high school rival is the town fire marshal. He’s dedicated and straightforward, but he’s got these dark edges to him. Probably all that time in Vegas. He’s confident without being cocky. Assertive without being pushy. And sexy as all hell.”
“Phew. You know, I think that’s more than you generally know about a guy by the time you’re already breaking up with him.”
Liza shifted, suddenly uncomfortable. “Yeah, well, we talked over dinner. We said things.”
“Does he know this much about you?”
“He knows some. We got, um, sidetracked.”
“Orgasms can do that to a conversation.”
Liza smiled, but it faded. “I don’t know what to do here. He’s…he’s not like anyone I’ve ever met.”
“Well, it’s a little telling that you described the personality before the physical attributes. He sounds…promising.”
Liza thought about that. “He also irritates me, frustrates me, pushes me.”
“And it was the best orgasm you’ve ever had.”
“What, you were watching?”
Natalie laughed softly, then said, “No, this just sounds kind of…familiar. That’s all.”
Liza ignored that for the moment. “Dazed and confused, that’s the state he keeps me in. I think I have the upper hand one minute, and the next, pow. He’s in control. I’m not used to this, Nat.”
She was chuckling again. “No. No, I guess not.”
“Yeah, easy for you to laugh. You weren’t the one handcuffed half-naked on the man’s kitchen counter.”
“Kitchen counter? No, I’m not even going there. Question is, are you going back there?”
“That’s just it, I don’t know where this is going, or even if it should. Nothing like this was supposed to happen yet. It was just supposed to be a little detour, that’s all.”
“Uh-oh. We’re not just talking about finding sexual nirvana among the kitchen utensils, are we?”
“It should be just about sex. We’ve both basically agreed it’s supposed to be about sex.”
“Only?”
“Only I don’t know. And I don’t think he does, either. He looks at me sometimes, Nat, and I…I feel things I don’t completely understand.”
“Whoa.”
“Yeah. Big so-potentially-not-a-detour whoa.” Liza sighed. “I think I understand now why it was so hard for you to tell me about Jake, in the beginning. It’s so impossible to describe why it’s different, but it is. Maybe it’s the way he…pushes me.”