Unleashed

“I only have to watch you do the job to know you feel that way. And I have no one to blame but myself for letting Todd hold me back.”

“I’m sure you made what you thought was the best decision at the time. You should really keep thinking about a way to do it, though, Kels. Yes, it’s three years of sacrifice, and you’ll start to think you must be a masochist for putting yourself through it. But it’ll go by before you know it. I know my dear friend Jack probably isn’t paying you near what you’re worth.”

“I can make it on what I earn,” she protested. “He’s good to me. He did my divorce pro bono. Todd and I didn’t have much to fight over, really. We sold the house, but we didn’t have much equity. I took my stuff and he took his.”

“At least Jack helped you out on that. He’d deserve a beat-down otherwise. Anyway, what you’re doing, it’s good experience. You could still do so much more, though.”

She was touched he seemed so passionate about her future, but his green eyes were burning too intently at her. “Okay, enough of that,” she declared. “Evan Ross, truth or dare?”

The wicked grin that spread across his face was maddening. “Dare.”

Oh, he would. She had him go up to a hot blonde who’d been eyeing him ever since their arrival and act like he could only speak Italian. It probably wasn’t a good idea to put him in proximity with a woman dripping diamonds and sex appeal, but it was all she could think of. What made it doubly hilarious was the slinky blonde’s obvious desperation to communicate with him.

“I think you could’ve nailed her despite the language barrier,” Kelsey laughed after he returned to their table.

“I kept waiting for you to come to my rescue, but you didn’t, so now you must pay.” He pointed at her. “Truth or dare? And stop being a weenie, because you never take dares.”

“You never take truths. And I guess I just like revealing things to you.” She shifted in her seat as his expression slackened into one she’d have called desire if it had been on anyone else. It sent a surge of boldness through her blood. “All right, then. Both,” she declared, and he grinned.

“Well, well. Okay. First you have to tell me something about you there’s no way I could know. Shock me.”

“Like…shocking how?”

“That’s up to you.” But his low, sexy tone of voice told her just exactly the kind of shocking he meant. It sent warm currents to all the right places even as she felt the blood rising in her face.

Lifting her gaze to his, she took a breath and inhaled half the margarita the waitress had just set in front of her. Evan laughed at her, one corner of his mouth turned up.

She winced as the icy slush burned down her throat, vanishing into the warmth that flowed through her veins. It was enough to loosen her inhibitions, her tongue. She ran her gaze hungrily over Evan, gorgeous specimen that he was. Good God. She’d love to loosen her tongue over him. The heat was pooling in places that had her squirming. It was like a magnet tugging her between her legs and in her br**sts, pulling her straight toward him, toward the inevitable. Leaning over the table, she propped her chin in her hand.

“I’ve never had a vag**al orgasm.” And that’s something I would love very much for you to help me out with, she added silently. At least she hoped it was silent.

Evan’s head snapped back as if her words had physically smacked him in the face. His eyebrows were practically in his hairline, his green eyes enormous. But his surprise was gone as quickly as it had manifested, and he leaned toward her, so that their noses were only a few inches apart. “Really.”

“Did I do good? Is that the kind of shocking you had in mind?”

“That’s it, pretty much, but a damn shame, is what that is.” He gaped at her for a moment. “Are you drunk?”

“No. I’m fine, really. Why?”

“I just never… I mean, I expected you to turn me down cold on that one. You hardly talk like that unless… Look, you have me stuttering now.”

She laughed, reveling in the sense of accomplishment. She’d made Evan Ross stutter.

But he was going on. She’d dug her hole, now she had to wallow in it. “Never?”

“I just don’t think I can do it,” she told him with exaggerated eyelash-fluttering coquettishness. “Lots of women can’t, though.” She knew she was going to want to kick herself in the morning when she remembered this conversation.

“Oh, I bet you can,” he said with a knowingness that curled her toes in shoes that didn’t allow for much toe curling. Lisa would definitely call them medieval torture devices. “And now for your dare.”

Her breath stilled. His gaze flickered down to her lips, and she parted them involuntarily. God, if he ever kissed her…she didn’t know if she would be able to handle it. Once at a frat party he and some long-forgotten girlfriend had found a dark corner and made out just across the room from her. Seeing it had been as fun as a kick in the gut, but she hadn’t been able to tear her gaze away from the slow, tender insistence of his mouth and the restless wandering of his hands on the girl’s body. They’d finally gone up to his room. Kelsey had gone back to her dorm and cried herself to sleep. She bet those lips were just on the soft side of firm. She bet those hands would know just where to go to have her as limp and panting as that girl had been.

“Get in the pool with me.”

Her brows drew together. “Okaaay. Well, that’s not too…” She trailed off when she thought of the time. “Ah. It’s closed by now.”

“Closed and dark. But I think we need to cool off after that revelation, don’t you?”

“We do have the Pacific Ocean in its entirety for that, right in our backyard. I thought you were a law-and-order guy.”

“I’m on vacation. And I have an irrational fear of getting eaten alive by sharks in the inky blackness. Didn’t you see Open Water? It’s the bane of my existence.”

“I didn’t mean we were going miles offshore.”

“It doesn’t matter! They come inshore at night to feed.”

“That would have been a most excellent dare for you. ‘Hey, Ev, swim out a hundred yards or so and give that great white a nibble of your crunchy Italian goodness.’” She laughed as he rubbed the corner of his eye with his middle finger. “Just kidding.” Despite her feigned lightheartedness, her blood was pounding feverishly through her veins. “Okay. Let’s go do it.”

Chapter Five

When they left the bar, she turned toward the elevator, thinking they would go up and change into their swimsuits. But Evan grabbed her hand and pulled her in the direction of the door that led to the pool area.

It was dark out there. No fence. Apparently security at such a reputable establishment didn’t expect to have their patrons engage in acts of mischief. When Kelsey, in a moment of terrible uncertainty, noticed that the adjacent octagonal-shaped building that housed the hot tub was wide open, she tapped Evan on the shoulder and pointed at it. At least they would be somewhat hidden there, and someone had left the hot tub on. She could hear it. Evan grabbed her again and tugged her toward it.

“This is crazy,” she whispered, her heart in her throat.

“It’s okay. Trust me.”

“I said I’d get in, but I didn’t say how long. Just in and out, okay? Long enough to complete my dare.”

He snickered. “And Brian says I’m too cautious.”

This wasn’t like him at all. He’d probably bribed someone. It was the only thought she could take any comfort in, and probably the only way she could go through with this.

Her heart nearly pushed the rest of its way into her throat when he started unbuttoning his shirt. She cast a glance around, noticing a couple strolling toward the beach off to their right. They were at least far enough away from the main walkway that no one should even glance in their direction. And it was dark here in the little glass-walled building, where the ceiling shadowed them from the soft yellow glow of the security lights.

“Ugh, we’re gonna get caught,” she whispered, flinging off her blouse in a burst of wildness. She was too worried about someone else seeing her in her bra to be worried about Evan seeing her. Besides, she’d been strutting around in front of him in that floss Lisa had insisted she buy. Her underwear covered more than that thing. “We’re gonna get caught and we’re gonna get kicked out. We’ll be homeless. Homeless in Hawaii.”

“Not if you hurry and get in the damn water.” There was laughter in his hissed words. He was stripping off his pants. Hmm, she’d always wondered whether it was boxers or briefs for him, and…ah, he wore boxer briefs. She chewed her bottom lip. The man had hands down the best ass she’d ever seen, and the sight of it accentuated by the snug material had her hands quivering as she fought with the button on her own pants. His bulge in the front did little to restore her composure; it sent her senses into a tailspin.

His movements all but silent, he eased down into the roiling water and she followed close behind, keeping a safe distance between them as the heat saturated her bones. If he touched her, she was going to embarrass herself. Moments passed while she lost herself to the bliss of the jet blowing against her lower back.

“I wish I’d never introduced you to him.”

The statement was jarring in its suddenness, and weighty, as if it had been a burden bearing down on him for some time now. He avoided her gaze as he went on. “I don’t know why he wanted to come visit me at school in the first place. He never had before, not in four years. I wish I’d tried to talk him out of going to that party where you met him.”

“Evan, for God’s sake, don’t blame yourself. I cast enough blame around, on myself, on Courtney, on him…and we’re all three guilty of something. But not you. If there’s one truly innocent party in all this, I imagine it’s you.”

He shook his head, and she didn’t think she’d ever seen him look so distant and forlorn. “You don’t even know.”

What could he have done? Something told her—and that something was ten years of knowing him—that he would confide in her in his own time, and now wasn’t it. But something was eating away at him. “Well,” she sighed, “we can’t change it now, can we?”

“Would you?” he asked.

It was a question she’d pondered herself, but had never come up with a definite answer. In the end, it didn’t matter. “Some days, yes. Some days, no. On one hand, it showed me what I want and don’t want in a relationship, but on the other…I wish I could have avoided the whole ugly mess by whatever means necessary.”

“I deal with people every day who tell me they never thought anything bad would ever happen to them. But it’s not their fault that it did. You gave it your best shot.”

“Sometimes I think I could have done more.”

“I don’t know what. When I would go over to your house and watch how you were, I was always—I always wished I could find someone like you.”