“Damn it,” Amanda said beside me. “I knew you’d see that.”
I grinned at her. She’d proclaimed loudly and proudly while in Australia that she thought anyone who liked Vegemite needed their head read.
“It’s small,” she said, as she moved past me, deeper into the apartment, “but it’s home.” Trailing her fingertips along the back of the largest sofa, she ran her gaze over everything around her. “It’s not like in the movies, I promise. There’s no train right next door to rattle our teeth every hour, and we’re not under any flight path. The walls are soundproof and the plumbing works.” She looked back at me, a smile I could only describe as hopeful on her face. “It’s home.” Her voice cracked on the word.
“It looks good,” I said honestly. And it did. It spoke of the Amanda I knew. Even with the slight chaos of books, magazines and a few jackets, shoes and hats strewn about the place, it was Amanda. On the walls were framed posters of famous art works (my high school art teacher would be very impressed with the fact I remembered what a Mondrian and a Klimt looked like), and framed posters for the movies Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, The King’s Speech and The 40 Year-Old Virgin.
The whole interior was a mishmash of eclectic taste, and looking at it, taking it all in, filled me with a warmth in my chest I should have found unnerving. Dangerously close to my heart, that warmth was. Dangerously close.
“The shower is through that door,” Amanda said, pointing to a closed door on the far side of the apartment. “The water hardly ever runs cold, so you can take all the time you need in there to decompress.”
Hitching my gym bag farther up my shoulder, I gave her a wide smile. “Be out in five.”
“Ah, that’s right,” she rolled her eyes. “The austerity of the Aussie shower. Get in, get clean, get out. I still remember that backpacker’s hostel we stayed in Queensland with the timed showers. The one that cut off my water when I still had shampoo in my hair.”
I chuckled. “And I remember you demanding you join me in my . . .” I stopped talking. Just like that. Snapped my mouth shut and kind of froze. Crap. The last thing I needed was to be thinking about Amanda in the shower with me. That kind of thinking would lead to certain things coming up that really needed to, well, not.
“That door,” Amanda said, pointing again to the other side of the apartment, her expression unreadable.
“That door,” I echoed. “Thanks.”
“You’re welcome. There are clean towels on the rack. You can use them.”
I nodded.
Before I could say anything else, she turned and made for the kitchen. “I’ll make you a cup of tea. Green still your tea of choice?”
“Yep.”
She didn’t look back at me. I didn’t let myself watch her move about in the kitchen. The air was charged with a tension I couldn’t describe, like sandpaper scraping exposed nerve endings. I hurried to the bathroom and closed the door behind me, my pulse pounding in my throat. Were we both suddenly aware of the fact I was going to be naked in her home? Or was Amanda unsettled by my blundering reminder of one of the many times we shared a shower? Or was it all in my head? Was I reading too much into it? Maybe it was me, hyped up on zero sleep and the scent of her in every breath I took?
I ran the cold water. It was either have a cold shower, or take care of the, umm . . . situation with my hand, and if the thought of being naked in Amanda’s home was messing with my head and body, the thought of masturbating in it . . .
Fifteen seconds later, I stood naked under water nowhere near as cold as I wanted it to be, with my head bowed, my eyes closed and my hands rammed flat to the tiled wall.
Crap. This was harder than I thought, and I wasn’t just referring to my—
The shower curtain slid open. Amanda stood on the other side, still completely dressed, her eyes wide and enigmatic as she looked up at me. “Bren . . .” she whispered.
Without a word or hesitation, I reached out, cupped my wet hand at the back of her head and drew her into the shower with me. She came without resistance, pressed her body to my eager one, tangled her fingers in my wet hair and met my hungry mouth with her own.
We kissed for a lifetime. Reacquainted ourselves to each other’s mouths and tongues. The water streamed over us, drenching Amanda’s shorts and shirt.
I needed to fix that problem. And yet, I couldn’t drag my mouth from hers. So I resorted to undressing her without breaking the kiss. That meant tearing her shirt open – for some reason I couldn’t find the patience to undo its tiny buttons. Amanda didn’t seem to mind. She moaned as I did, and again as I pulled the clinging wet shirt over her shoulders.
Another moan vibrated deep in her chest as my hand found her breast, contained by the lace of her bra. Her nipple rubbed at the center of my palm through the lace, a scraping friction both wonderful and frustrating. I wanted to feel her flesh, all her flesh, without anything – even something as flimsy as lace – getting in the road. I wasn’t exactly gentle as I yanked the edge of her bra aside and took her nipple in my mouth.
Once again, Amanda didn’t seem to mind. She never had before. When it came to sex, neither of us had been shy or self-conscious. She’d often laughed when we were together that I approached sex like I approached a workout session: go hard, or go home. Of course, she would also point out that the very fact I was hard kind of negated the “go home” bit. That and the fact we were going at it like rabbits in my home.
When it came to sex with Amanda, none of the rules I lived my life by mattered though.
The second I sucked her flesh into my mouth, she clawed at my scalp and begged me to do it again. “Oh God, Bren,” she panted, knotting her fingers in my wet hair and holding my head closer to her breast. “I’ve missed you doing this so much.”
For a cruel moment the thought of someone else doing what I was doing now smashed through me. Jealousy – hot and furious – flooded me and I growled around her nipple. She wasn’t someone else’s, she was mine.
At that thought, an emotion I couldn’t identify – far hotter and angrier than my jealousy – swept through me. Although swept is not really the correct word. Pummeled me, is better. Consumed me, also more accurate.
This half-dressed, soaking wet woman in the shower with me was responsible for the most incredible and destructive moments of my life, and the very notion of someone else, anyone else, being in her heart, her thoughts . . .
It undid me. Crap. So much for not letting her get to me. So much for okay, good, gravy and chillaxed.
Lifting my head, I stared down into her face, ready to tell her we had to stop.
“Please don’t,” she whispered, cupping my jaw in a shaking hand. Beads of water clung to her eyelashes, turning them spiky. Her glorious hair hung around her face in dark, shining strands. Her lips glistened. “Let’s just give ourselves this, okay?”
I didn’t have the strength to deny her. When had I ever?
Without a word – for none formed in my head – I took her lips with mine once more and lost myself to the pleasure of being with her.
At some point, I stopped kissing her. I was on my knees, peeling her wet shorts from her hips and rolling them down her legs. The water trickled over her belly, little rivulets that ran over the soft flesh in multiple paths down past her pubic hair. The last time I’d seen Amanda she’d been waxed free of hair and her stomach had been firm and flat with the subtle lines of a strong core and abs. I’d reveled in the smooth, satiny-slick mound of her hairless pubic curve. I’d worshipped that stomach, admiring the physical strength and healthy lifestyle it spoke of. And yet, there was something utterly female about the belly, and the dark curls I now devoured with my eyes. Something beyond me.