She moved faster, harder, kissed more deeply, her desire climbing higher.
But then he placed his hands on her shoulders, and gently, but firmly, pushed her away. Forcing her to look at him.
"Shan, why don't we get a room?" he asked, his eyes hazy with lust. "You know I want you so much. You're driving me wild, and we're practically fucking with our clothes on in a photo booth. C'mon," he said, tipping his forehead to the curtain as if to say Let's go.
And then, like the motherfucker it was, the past grabbed her throat. Like a slingshot, it snapped her back to everything that had broken between them.
She clenched her jaw, grabbed his collar. "I can't just go have sex with you, Brent."
"Why not? Isn't that pretty close to what we're doing now?"
She swallowed hard, and let it out in a harsh, broken whisper. "Because it was never just sex with you."
But she didn't stop moving on him. She only slowed the pace, because she couldn't break the connection. This electric thread was part of them, part of who they were, part of who they were becoming again. She downshifted from the madness to a slow grind. He followed her lead, adjusting his rhythm too, shifting his touch to a softer one, as he ran his hands along the bare skin of her arms. Gently, he kissed her shoulder, making her shiver. "What was it with me?"
She cupped his cheeks, and looked him in the eyes. Spoke the truth. "It was everything," she said, as she moved against him, the friction sending another powerful wave of desire through her. "All of it. This. You. Us. You were everything to me."
He laced a hand through her hair. "Do you have any idea how much I want to be everything to you again?"
///
She shook her head. She was still stuck in time. The freshness of the hurt felt so new again. "Do you have any idea how devastating it was when you broke up with me?"
He groaned, sounding annoyed. Defeated. "I thought we weren't going to talk about the past," he whispered as he kissed her neck. His lips were barely there, just the flutter of a hummingbird's wings. Even so, the kiss turned her liquid. How the hell could they kiss and argue? But then, that was what they'd always done. Even while they fought, they could never stop touching.
"I can't hide from the past. I can't move on unless we talk about it."
"Then tell me," he said roughly. "Tell me what you want to talk about so we can start over."
"How do I know it will be different?" she asked, as she leaned her head back and succumbed to the strange combination of kissing and confessing. Or touching and talking. "Because of the shoes, because of the bracelet, because of scarves and lunches and the dinner and the tickets this weekend to Alvin Ailey?"
"No. Those are just things. It's what's behind those things that matters, and that's how I feel for you. Because I would do anything to have you back," he said, holding her face and forcing her to look him in the eyes.
And as she did, something inside her cracked open. The ice that she'd packed around her heart that he'd been chipping away at day by day, thawed completely.
"It's harder for me to just start over than it is for you," she blurted out, even though it was selfish, what she was saying. She knew that. But she couldn't escape the painful truth of who she was. She stared fiercely at him, keenly aware of both the intensity of this conversation and the pressure from his erection between her legs pressing hard against her damp panties.
"Why? Why is it harder for you?"
"Because you broke my heart-don't you get it? Mine had already splintered into a million pieces one night in a driveway, and I can only sustain so many breaks before it's shattered."
She stopped moving on him, and let the tears slide down her cheeks, as they'd done so many times with him. He gathered her close in his arms, and stroked her hair.
"Let me be the one for you. I won't break your heart again. I promise."
She wanted to believe him. She wanted to believe herself, too. But there were things she had to tell him. Things that might tear him apart. "I don't want to break your heart either."
He smiled that crazy, gorgeous, cocky lopsided grin. He rapped his knuckles against his chest. "I'm tough. I can handle anything you throw at me."
She wasn't so sure, but even so, she loved this side of him.
Heels clicked against the floor. Someone was walking past them. The sound of the footsteps sped up. She covered her mouth and widened her eyes, and he laughed silently.
Then, maybe because of his admission, or maybe even more so because of hers, she brushed her lips against his, and kissed him softly, picking up the pace once more. She felt a freedom from the weight of memories. Maybe simply voicing them was what she had truly needed to move on. Oh, how she wanted to move on.
In every way with him.
Every. Single. Way.
"Soon," she whispered in his ear. "Soon. I want to be with you again. I want you in every way. I swear."
The talking of the past stopped, as it needed to. She'd said all she truly needed to say, and now all she wanted was to feel. Because she felt so much for him. More than she'd wanted to when she'd first agreed to dinner. More than she'd ever expected when he'd walked back into her life. Damn him, damn the heart, damn the body.
"Babe," he said in a soft but firm voice. "Rock your body against me."
"How is it we can talk like this and I'm still hot for you?" she murmured in his ear.
"Because I turn you on and because you're crazy about me, too," he said, low and sexy, and just for her. She shivered against him, saying nothing, refusing to give voice to the yes that formed on her tongue as she began moving again, her small body riding his big, strong frame.
"Just like that. Keep it up," he told her, urging her on. "I can feel you getting close."
"I'm so close," she said on a quiet gasp.
"Let go. Let go for me," he said as he thrust his hips up against her, and yanked her down harder on him.
She let the past fall behind her once more as she returned to what they'd been doing before. Coming together. She moved on him, harder, faster. There were no more words, no confessions, and no questions. Just movement. Their need for each other had never been quenched. She didn't know if it ever would be, even as her belly tightened and she felt the start of that intense rush of pleasure. She pushed onto him, hitting that point where she lost control, and came apart for him, grabbing his back, biting down on his shoulder, falling apart in his arms.
///
In a broken photo booth in the back of a casino.
Of all the damn places in the world. Yet it felt so right.
But even through the haze of her orgasm, she knew she couldn't escape the past. She couldn't hide from it in all this contact with him.
Soon, very soon, she was going to have to tell him that he'd been the father of her child.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The ace of diamonds winked at him, a mate to the ace of clubs that the dealer revealed next on the green felt of the blackjack table at the Luxe.
"I'll split," he said to the goateed dealer.
Together, Brent's two aces were a bust. Torn apart, they gave him a second chance in the game.
"I've got a very important question for you," Mindy said, as the dealer laid a three on top of her eight and Matchbox Twenty played overhead. The band was in concert at the Luxe in two weeks, after the Alvin Ailey troupe departed from its brief stay at the hotel's new theater.
"Hit me," Brent said to his friend, and she rolled her eyes at his pun. "What's the question?"
Mindy adopted a girly, love-struck tone. "Have you thought about what you're going to wear tonight to Alvin Ailey?" She batted her eyes and squeezed his arm. "It's such a big decision."
"Bow tie. Seersucker suit," Brent said with a straight face, as the dealer slapped two new cards face up for Brent. Only the two of them and a lone bald guy nursing a tropical drink played at that table on a Saturday afternoon. The goateed man dealt Mindy another card, too. A six, giving her seventeen.
"And a panama hat. That'd be a nice touch," Mindy added, nudging Brent with her elbow as he stared happily at his new cards. Eight and a nine. Didn't get much better than that.
"Absolutely," he said. "Or, call me crazy, I could just go with jeans and a nice button-down shirt."
"I'll stay," Mindy said to the dealer, then to Brent, "Fine. Be that way."
The bald man busted on his turn, then the dealer drew until he reached 17 and had to stand. It was house rules, and Brent beat him with his 18 and 19.
"You lucky bastard," Mindy said in a low whistle.
Brent simply shrugged, an admission that he'd always had some kind of Midas touch at the tables. But he also had another more important skill, and while it was one he'd told Shannon he was not applying in relationships, it was a rule to live by if he wanted to survive in the casinos with a wallet intact.