Sex for Beginners Box Set(45)

While Colin recovered, kissing her ankles and gently separating their bodies, he felt the first stirrings of trouble. He’d thought it would be fun to teach the curious American a thing or two about light bondage. Instead the experience had rocked his world.

He unbound her wrists, then rolled to lie next to her. Zoe turned her head and looked at him through a tangle of hair, her blue eyes passion-glazed and a smile playing on her mouth. In that moment he thought he’d never seen anything so damned beautiful. Panic flashed through his chest. He’d signed up for a week of this?

He got up from the bed on the pretext of finishing his drink. Pulling on his chin, he studied the impossibly sexy half-nude woman sprawled on his bed. Incredibly, his balls were already aching for her again. She pushed herself up, massaging her slender wrists where they’d been bound.

“Is everything okay?” she asked. “You haven’t changed your mind, have you?”

Colin pursed his mouth. The lady wanted a week of wild sex to tide her over after she married some suburban mama’s boy…and he intended to give her something to remember. He strode across his room and removed two tieback cords from the curtains, then turned back to Zoe and held them up. “Ready to take it up a notch?”

She angled her head, then smiled wide. “Green.”





8




ZOE GLANCED AT COLIN ACROSS the store where they were shopping and, feeling impish, lifted a pair of handcuffs, her eyebrows raised in question.

He grinned, then nodded. She added the handcuffs to her basket that contained four Velcro straps, a blindfold and two lengths of lightweight chain, suitable for making necklaces or belts, or for something more…adventurous.

Colin made his way over to her and Zoe’s stomach fluttered. He wore battered jeans, a thick navy turtleneck and scuffed brown boots. He hadn’t shaved this morning, so his square jaw was dark with stubble, his blond hair wind-ruffled. He was quite possibly the most handsome man she’d ever seen. And the fact that he’d spent last night doing such erotic things to her was still hard to grasp. But her sore muscles and tender erogenous zones didn’t lie. She had, in fact, spent the better part of the night tied to this man’s bed.

Inside her purse, her cell phone rang. Her conscience twinged because it couldn’t be anything other than America calling. She pulled it out and glanced at the screen. It was Kevin.

“Do you need to get that?” Colin asked.

“Yes,” she murmured. By unspoken agreement, neither one of them had mentioned the people in their lives they were cheating on.

He took the basket from her. “I’ll pay for these things. Come find me when you’re ready.”

Zoe nodded, feeling flushed. She walked toward the exit and connected the call. “Hello?”

But it was too late—her phone had already rolled over to voice mail. She could call him back, but avoiding him was preferable to talking to him and pretending that she was whiling away the days making final plans for the wedding. She paced the sidewalk, castigating herself for her behavior. How could she love Kevin and do what she was doing?

Because love and sex were two different things, she reasoned. Erica had said it best—it was too much to expect to have great sex and great love with one person. Maybe Dr. Alexander had been wrong. Maybe the two things were mutually exclusive. Maybe sex was good with someone you don’t love because you don’t have to worry about emotional fallout, because there’s no future to the relationship. Take her and Colin, for example. If either one of them was looking for a relationship, the sex would immediately change because it would be in the context of everything else going on—their jobs, their extended family, their finances. Love trumped sex…love endured long after sex burned out.

The new-voice-mail indicator appeared on the screen. She listened to the message, worrying her lower lip.

“Hey, Zoe, it’s me, Kev. Listen, I got a great opportunity to ride with some world-class cyclists who are in town training for the Tour de Georgia, so I’m going to Tybee Island for a week or so. I’ll be back in Atlanta a couple of days after you get home. I probably won’t have a lot of time to check e-mail or answer the phone, but I’ll touch base when I can. Bye.”

Zoe deleted the message, exhaling. Was it wrong to be glad that Kevin wasn’t lonely and bored in Atlanta while she was having her sexual fantasies fulfilled in Sydney? As if that made the situation more justifiable.

She closed her eyes, waiting for the remorse to overwhelm her, to change her mind about the week ahead.

It didn’t.

* * *

COLIN WATCHED ZOE FROM WHERE he stood paying for their provocative props. The call was from her fiancé, no doubt. She was struggling with her decision to submit to her desires with another man before she got married. It reinforced Colin’s first impression of her—that at her core, Zoe Smythe was a loyal, good-hearted person. She had stepped out of herself when she’d joined him in the plane lavatory, and last night when she’d knocked on his door.

An irrational stab of jealousy barbed through him. Who was this man who’d captured the beauty’s heart? And did he really deserve her if he couldn’t satisfy her physically?

“Colin?”

He turned at the sound of his name, chagrined to see Benjamin Rook heading his way, dressed in a suit, holding a cardboard cone of fish-and-chips for lunch. “Hi, Ben.”

Ben looked puzzled. “I got your message last night. I thought you were going to Canberra.”

“I was, mate,” Colin said. “Change of plans.”

Ben glanced at the items the clerk was ringing up. Colin winced inwardly at the motley collection—blindfold, handcuffs, straps and chains.

His friend’s eyebrows climbed, then he punched Colin’s arm. “I see Lauren is back in town.”

“Uh, Ben—”

“Sorry about that,” Zoe said, walking up to him, stashing her phone. When she looked up, she stopped and glanced back and forth between Colin and Ben, while Ben glanced between Colin and Zoe.

She must have felt the tension in the air because she blanched. “I’m sorry—I interrupted.”

“It’s okay,” Colin said quickly, feeling his mate bristle. “Zoe Smythe, this is Benjamin Rook. Ben, this is Zoe.”

“Hello,” she ventured.

“Nice to meet you,” Ben said crisply. “Are you visiting from America?”

Zoe nodded. “I’m from Atlanta.”

Ben cut his gaze to Colin, then shifted. “Atlanta, huh?”

Colin pressed his lips together and paid the cashier, knowing his friend was thinking the worst of him—and rightly so.

“Ben is a colleague,” Colin cut in.

“More like a minion,” Ben corrected with a smile that belied the underlying sarcasm of his voice. “It’s my job to keep Colin diverted. He has a short attention span.”

Zoe returned a shaky smile. Colin set his jaw and glared at his friend.

“Well, I’ll let you get back to your shopping,” Ben said, nodding to the bag Colin took from the clerk, which clanked loudly.

“And you to your lunch,” Colin returned evenly. “I’ll get back to you about the meeting.”

Ben gave him a curt nod, and Colin could only watch his friend walk away. The man stopped at the first trash can he came to and tossed his uneaten food into it with more vehemence than necessary. Colin acknowledged a pang of remorse. He hadn’t meant for anyone to get hurt over this.

“Is everything okay?” Zoe asked. “I have a feeling that I intruded on a private conversation.”

“No worries,” he assured her. “Just a few…complications. How are things on the home front?”

“Fine. Just a few…complications.”

He nodded. They both needed to tread lightly to keep from injuring innocent parties.

“Speaking of which,” she said, gesturing to her purse, “I need to check my e-mail and take care of some things.”

“Last-minute wedding details?” he asked mildly.

She hesitated, then nodded.

“And I should check in with my office,” he said, raking his hand over his jaw. “Do you want me to drop you back at the resort?”

“Actually, I was wondering if you could point me in the direction of a jewelry store.”

Was she having her engagement ring sized? Appraised? Buying something for her groom? “The area next to the Circular Quay is called The Rocks—you’ll find lots of jewelry stores there.”

“Okay, thanks.” She smiled and pointed. “That’s this way, right?”

“Yeah, a couple hundred meters. Shall I walk with you?”

“No, I’m fine,” she said, backing up. She seemed eager to get away from him. The phone call and Benjamin’s reaction must have spooked her. It spooked him, too, because considering the lines they were crossing, why wasn’t he calling off their arrangement? And why wasn’t she?

Because, he realized as their hungry gazes locked, despite the risks, both of them were impatiently looking forward to trying out the props in the bag he had tucked underneath his arm. Unbidden, his cock jumped.

“Room service, my place, seven o’clock?” he ventured.

A wicked smile curved her mouth and she nodded. Colin’s heart thudded in his chest and his vision tunneled until only the two of them were standing on the sidewalk, regardless of the noisy traffic and pedestrians rushing past. It was bizarre how in tune their bodies were to one another…as if they had been acquainted for years. Colin had never given much thought to the supernatural, but the instantaneous and powerful attraction he felt for this American seemed almost otherworldly. Maybe they’d known each other in another time….