Nope. He’d played as goddamn stoic as always, even if the ridge of his erection had been obvious in his warm-up pants.
Paul stood and yanked on his jeans while she did her best to fix hair, makeup, underwear. Cooled so quickly, she half-expected him to leave without a word. Instead he shoved on his cowboy hat and caught her around the waist.
Damn, he smelled good. Clean but sweaty, musky. Satisfied male. She let him rub a hand up her torso. That idle petting eased some of her regrets, her confusion.
“Hey.” His devilish good-boy smile was too powerful to resist. “I get a feeling this was a one-time thing. On a number of levels. So I’ll just say thanks.” A tiny frown creased between his brows. “And thank him too, okay? What was his name?”
“Dmitri.”
“That’s not what you called him.”
“His Russian diminutive is Dima. It’s like Lizzie is short for Elizabeth.”
“Dima. Huh.” He nodded rather earnestly, as if storing that information. Fascinating that he was still capable of thought. Her brain was as wiggly as her thighs.
She stroked a finger over his left nipple, where it hid beneath plain white cotton. Those earlier regrets transformed yet again. She hadn’t seen him naked. No, she’d been too busy gaping at Dima. Even as she wanted to think of that as a wasted opportunity, she couldn’t. Watching Dima strip had been wholly erotic in ways that rattled everything she’d believed about their relationship.
She swallowed. “If it wasn’t a one-time thing?”
“You have to ask?” Paul stepped back and bowed slightly as he kissed her knuckles. The move was gallant, but the wicked twist of his lips was just plain dirty. “Beck and call, sugar.”
Lizzie fished a business card out of her tiny red clutch. “Here. To make the calling part easier.”
He took it and frowned. “You danced together?”
“Me and Dima? Oh, sorry. I thought you realized.”
“Hell if I knew what that was,” he said with a shrug. “So those three championships of his Fabian mentioned? You too?”
A sharp kick of uncertainty made her clam up. What if she wouldn’t ever be that woman again? What if she and Dima never rediscovered the forged-strong steel that had made them champions?
“You should get back. I don’t want Declan upset with us.”
He mock saluted with the card. “Loud and clear, sugar.”
She knew he wasn’t talking about Declan’s potential ire. She simply didn’t feel up to strolling down memory lane with the bartender who’d just wet his dick between her thighs. Paul still smiled. He must find some of this amusing or he would’ve hightailed it already.
Checking her appearance one last time, she watched him in the mirror as he left Dima’s dressing room. What a swagger. All long legs and jeans and an ass she wanted to nibble. Nah, she wanted to bite.
If only it could be that simple.
She glanced over to the wardrobe where Dima had changed clothes. There’d been a moment when she believed he would actually join them. She inhaled sharply at that astonishing thought. By the absolutely fantastic hard-on he’d mustered while staring at Dima, Paul might not be averse. Watching a naked guy didn’t seem to be his regular thing—not that she knew much about him—but that only added an extra layer of incredible novelty.
Although…who would she be sharing? Her new fuck with her long-time partner, or the other way around?
Either way, it didn’t feel at all like she’d ever pictured a threesome. Maybe that’s because porn always turned it into a match where two guys wrestled over a woman. That wasn’t anything close to the pictures her depraved brain insisted on creating.
A way to have them both, have it all…
With a frustrated noise, she grabbed her clutch and headed back out to the club.
She didn’t want to kill more time at Devant, not having to dodge Paul’s eyes and Declan’s questions all night. Neither did she feel like heading back to the apartment. Dima would take that girl Jeanne back there, especially if he was pissed at Lizzie.
As if she could tell when he was pissed. Or happy. Or worried. That he had a dick and the capacity for an erection were about the only signs she had of his reaction to that encounter.
She didn’t have anywhere else to go. All of her friends were, well, her competition. They’d continued on without her, with the best of them polite enough to assume she’d be back on the circuit in no time.
Her head pounding, Lizzie waved goodbye to Mr. George. When she stood at the club’s threshold, she glanced back. Paul caught her eye from across the packed floor. He touched fingers as if to the brim of a cowboy hat before ducking back to work.