Chapter Five
Eleanor almost threw up while she waited for the knock on her door. Considering she was eight weeks pregnant and hadn’t thrown up once, that was saying a lot about the internal ruckus currently tying everything in knots.
Breathe, Eleanor.
She dragged air deep into her lungs, held it for three seconds, then let it out again.
She knew what she had to do. Open the door. Invite him in. Tell him she was pregnant. Assure him she didn’t want anything from him, that he could be as involved or uninvolved as he liked. Answer any questions. Make another date to talk it over more fully. Then send him out the door before Miriam arrived to help her dress for the function.
Absolutely do not, under any circumstances, flirt with him, touch him, kiss him.
This wasn’t about hooking up again even if she was so damn desperate for it she’d probably hump his leg the second she opened the door. She thanked God she’d suppressed the urge to make an appointment at the hotel beauty salon for a spot of vagazzling. She needed all the barriers in place to stop herself from dragging him into her room and having her way with him.
Not that a wild and woolly…frontier had stopped her—or him—last time.
She had to remember why she’d called this meeting in the first place. She’d contemplated not saying anything to Bodie until after the first trimester. When the risk of miscarriage lessened. But this Studies in Victoriana symposium she was attending for the next five days had gifted her time in Sydney, and therefore the perfect opportunity to broach the subject with Bodie.
She didn’t know how he’d feel or what he’d do or say, but she’d kept the pregnancy to herself for a over a month now and it didn’t seem right to keep it from him any longer. Deception didn’t sit well with Eleanor.
Lying by omission to Bodie that night in Bungindally had been hard enough, she had no wish to do it again.
And he was going to need some time to get used to the news. She’d had a month to adjust to the situation. It was only fair that he have some time to come to grips with what would, no doubt, be a bit of a bombshell.
They had, after all, used condoms.
A knock startled her, and Eleanor’s hands found her stomach, trying to draw strength from the fledging life growing inside her. She was suddenly unsure about everything. About the way she felt about him. About the wiseness of this course of action. About the trackie daks and T-shirt she’d pulled on after her shower to try and appear as sexless as possible.
A second knock and a flash of déjà vu from that night in Bungindally hit her, and Eleanor quickly crossed the room to open the door before the third knock, and she slipped them both back into that night of utter debauchery.
Right. As if…
She was wearing the daggiest clothes in her wardrobe, her hair was caught up in a huge plastic claw at the back of her head, and her pubes were going to need a machete to hack through them.
He was a sexy, elite rugby god and she was a…bloody country bumpkin.
Eleanor squared her shoulders. Just get it over with.
She opened the door abruptly, her heart careening crazily in her chest as their gazes locked. He was even more beautiful than she remembered and she almost whimpered out loud as an avalanche of lust-soaked pregnancy hormones almost buried her self-control.
Do not touch. Do not touch. Do not touch.
He towered over her, his hair wet as if he’d just come from the shower but not feathery and flyaway like hers. No, his was damp and gorgeously rumpled. His shoulders stretched out a T-shirt better than any shoulders had a right to and his jeans stretched across quads better than any man had a right to possess. His tanned, muscled arms, his throat and his face with its perfectly symmetrical three-day growth were achingly familiar and he was wearing the same aftershave he’d worn that night, drenching her in headily sexual memories.
Do not touch. Do not touch. Do not touch.
A lazy half smile followed by that funny little half bow he’d performed that night in the beer garden, and she was a goner. “Nice to see you again, Miss Davis.”
Eleanor’s resistance snapped so loudly, she’d bet her last cent it registered on a Richter scale in California somewhere.
She touched. Hell, she grabbed.
Her breath rushed out in a whoosh as her hands clutched at his waist, then his chest, then his shoulders as she pushed up onto her tippy toes and climbed him like a tree. His big hands on the back of her thighs urged her up, and they parted to accommodate his hips.
She wasn’t sure if she kissed him or he kissed her, just that their lips met and she was moaning and he was groaning and all the worry and doubts and denial these past couple of months fell away as she fed on his mouth.
“Fuck.”
Her lips vibrated with his guttural profanity as he stepped into the room, kicked the door shut, and pressed her against it, his body flush with hers, his big hands hot on the juncture where her ass met her thighs.
“Jesus, Eleanor.” He was panting as he wrenched his mouth from hers. “I can’t be doing this.” But then his mouth slid to her neck, his teeth scraping along the mad flutter of her pulse.
“I know.” She angled her neck to give him more access, her heartbeat roaring in her head like a waterfall, her breath squalling like a hurricane in her lungs.
And she did know. Neither of them should be doing this. She at least needed to tell him about the baby first. But her body, starved of him—of his touch—for so long, was powerless to resist. It was like he’d opened a whole new world to her a couple of months ago, given her the briefest glimpse of paradise, then taken it away again.
But he was back and he’d kissed her and he’d opened the door again and she wanted—no, she needed—to rip the bloody thing off the hinges. Although some of that could probably be attributed to those pregnancy hormones.
The sudden grinding of her hips into his certainly was.
“I’ve just…” She broke off, rubbing herself against him again. She moaned as liquid heat pooled behind her belly button and between her legs. He felt so good. So hard. “I’ve missed you so much.”
He let out a strangled kind of oath and then he was kissing her again, knocking her head back against the door with a thunk she barely registered, thrusting his tongue in and out of her mouth, doing with it what she wanted him to be doing with his cock.
She’d been practicing that word, trying it on for a while now, and she liked it.
He groaned again and pulled away, shaking his head as if to shake off the intoxicating pull of her. “We really should stop.”
It might have sounded more convincing had his mouth not been all wet and red from their kisses and his cock hard as stone between them.
“Yes.” Her head was spinning, her breathing tatty and wild, and she wanted to mewl in disappointment. “Right.” But she didn’t make a move to get down.
“Ryder.”
She nodded again. “Yes.” He didn’t have to say any more. To explain. She understood that being here like this put Bodie in a very awkward position. That he wasn’t comfortable having relations with his best friend’s sister behind his back.
But he didn’t let her go. He didn’t put her down. Just stood there between her legs, her ankles locked around his ass.
And God almighty…he was in a perfect position as far as she was concerned, all his hardness jammed against the juncture of her legs, where everything was swollen and achy. All she needed was a little friction.
A little movement to make things better.
Her hips—or maybe it was her hormones—decided to take control, flexing along the length of him, his hardness meeting her softness. Her eyes fluttered shut and her whole lower half shuddered in ecstasy.
He was staring at her when she opened them, his hands gripping and ungripping the backs of her thighs, a battle of devils and angels going on behind his suddenly hooded eyes. The rough serration of his breathing was like a physical caress.
“Christ,” he muttered, the surge of lust heating the inky blue of his gaze to indigo, shaking his head like he couldn’t wrap his head around what was happening. “I want you too much.”
He slammed his lips down on hers. And he didn’t let up. He kissed her like he was starving and she knew exactly how he felt, returning his hunger—sating it. Her senses were full of him, the sound of his breath, the taste of his mouth, the intoxicating essence of him invading her sinuses until he was inside her head.
Her hips bucked wildly, uncontrollably against him. She could no more have stopped them seeking pleasure than she could have flown to the moon. Her body was so primed for gratification—for him—it was seeking it of its own volition and she was too much in thrall to leash it.
She’d have never thought it possible that a person could orgasm through two sets of clothes from a bit of bump and grind but she was so damn close. And she needed him to be inside her when she came.
She craved it.
“Bodie.” She broke off, gasping for breath as she reached between them. “I need you in me.”
“No.”
His denial was swift and his mouth was back on hers, but he clearly had no intention of leaving her hanging as a hand left the back of her thigh and pushed inside her underwear. Eleanor gasped, her head falling back as Bodie’s fingers quickly slid into the slickness there, one sliding deep inside her, the other finding the erect little pearl between her legs.
Eleanor flung her arms around his shoulders, pulling him close as a wave of pleasure like a contraction rolled from her belly button to her knees. “Yes,” she cried out, riding the glide of his fingers shamelessly.
He didn’t speak, just buried his face in her neck, grinding his hips against her from the outside as his fingers worked her from the inside, setting up a relentless pace, destroying any sense of reality, any thought of consequence.
It was just him and the loud suck of his breath and his fingers. Rubbing and working. His breathing getting lower and rougher and deeper. Pushing her closer and closer until she came.
Quick. And hard. And loud.
Too much anticipation, too much abstinence, too many nights of fantasising about Bodie. It rose up and out like a volcano, exploding from the point where his fingers were jammed inside her. She went rigid for a moment before turning molten, waves of pleasure undulating, drowning her in bliss and bathing her in light, incandescent and sweet as she chased the fading tail, leaving her heavy and languid and boneless.
At some stage, he removed his hand from her underpants and Eleanor moaned as excruciatingly sensitized tissues shuddered at the stimulus. She blinked, coming back to herself, desperately gathering all the far-flung pieces of her sanity and trying to cobble them together.
Slowly, he eased her down and her hands slid from around his shoulders. He waited for a beat or two after her bare feet hit the floor before he took a step back, but Eleanor still clutched the door, sagging against it for support as her legs wobbled.
God alone knew what she looked like.
She felt like she’d been thrown into the eye of a storm and tossed out the other side. And Bodie looked like it. He certainly wasn’t the sleek pro-rugby player who’d been standing at her door. He’d definitely suffered a little storm damage despite the tension in his body.
He was still strung pretty taut.
And why wouldn’t he be? She’d gotten off, not him, and he looked like he needed it in the worst kind of way. A twinge of feminine possession sizzled in the slick folds of her sex and, legs stronger, she took a step toward him.
“No.” He held his arms out to ward her off. “Just you.” His voice was husky but there was no mistaking the authority as he took another step back.
Eleanor’s fingers curled into her palms, a trickle of disappointment hitting her system. “You don’t want to…?” She dropped her gaze to the thick bulge testing the confines of his fly.
Because she really, really did and it must really, really hurt.
“No.” He shook his head, but the sizzle lighting those indigo eyes matched the sizzle between her legs.
“Ryder?” It was a rhetorical statement, but he gave a grim nod as he shoved his hands on his hips. “I’m seeing him tomorrow, but you have to know I won’t say anything to him, Bodie.”
He gave a harsh half laugh. “Yeah, well, I’m seeing him in half an hour. I’ve got to look at your brother across a poker table tonight and pretend that I didn’t just finger fuck his sister against a hotel door.”
It had been two and a half months since she’d heard Bodie swear, and it hadn’t lost any of its impact. Her nostrils flared at the deliberate profanity.
Why was his filthy mouth such a turn on?
She was sophisticated, for crying out loud. She read Austen. Jane, who was exceptionally clever with words, had never stooped to using such common vulgarities in her life. She didn’t need F words. Eleanor should be scandalized. Instead, she was wondering how much more sexy Mr Darcy might have been had he not been quite so much a gentleman.
“Christ.” He raked a hand through his hair. “There’s a special hell for guys like me, you know? Guys who have sex with their best friend’s sister.”
“Well technically…we didn’t actually have sex this time, so…”
“You think Ryder’s going to think that fingering you to orgasm is a lesser sin?”
Eleanor’s belly twinged again at his language. Man, he was good with those F words.
The bedside phone jangled into the silence. Ack! That’d probably be Miriam, checking she was still on target.
“Look…I’m sorry, but I have a friend arriving in—” She checked her watch. “Fifteen minutes.”
Warmth stole across her cheeks. Gracious! From the time she’d opened the door until now—which included a pretty spectacular orgasm—had been fifteen minutes.
He’d made her come in a paltry few minutes.
“So.” He shoved his hands on his hips. “You just wanted to hook up then? Or was there some other reason you lured me here?”
Hmmm. He was pissed at her. His tone was light but his jaw was tight and she hadn’t missed his emphasis. Well, he could get in line, she was pissed at herself as well. But, as someone who’d only ever hooked up once, she refused to be embarrassed by it.
She was wearing that sucker like a banner of honour.
Except she didn’t have time for his snit now. In retrospect, it had been naive—although she preferred to look at it as hopeful—to think she could even raise such an issue on such a strict timeline. Particularly in a hotel room. With a bed.
Not that they’d used the bed.
But she’d wanted their conversation to be private. She thought she at least owed him that. A moot point when they hadn’t actually gotten around to discussing it, though. If she’d chosen a bar or a coffee shop she’d have told him at least. Instead of ending up debauched against her hotel door.
Lesson learned. Only be around Bodie in a crowd.
“I do want to…catch up,” she confirmed, because she was too chicken to say tell you you’re going to be a baby daddy. It was hardly fair to drop that then send him on his way, was it? And she sure as hell wasn’t going to tell him about the baby while he was self-flagellating over their little indiscretion just now. Especially not with her friend’s imminent arrival.
“This thing tonight runs to nine and you’re out, too, so why don’t I ring you tomorrow and we can organize a time to meet?”
He regarded her for long moments. How he managed to dominate the room so effortlessly she had no idea. But he did. Standing there all tall and brooding, six foot to her five, his hands on his hips. For a crazy beat that seemed to slow time and thicken the air, she thought he was going to close the distance and kiss her again.
But it passed.
“I’ll be at training all morning. Try me after one.”
Then he stalked past her, the door clicking shut as he left the room.
…
Bodie was playing terrible poker. Which had everything to do with sitting here in Ryder’s apartment, the memory of his sister’s keening cry as she came trapped inside his head, the aroma of her clinging to his skin.
Juliet, Ryder’s fiancée, was with the other WAGs and Val, the coach’s daughter, at Dex and Harper’s tonight—ostensibly for a girl’s night but mostly to coo over baby Gemma who had been born a month ago. Not that her absence had been noted particularly by Bodie. Recriminations were rattling so loudly around his head he could barely even hear the pound of the surf on nearby Coogee beach.
Linc looked up from his cards and said, “You know what this poker game needs?”
“More pizza,” Donovan said as he scavenged through the empty boxes looking for another slice and finding none. The half-Maori man-mountain was always hungry.
The usual answer to Linc’s question was chicks. Although with four out of the six of them—including Linc—now spoken for, he said it more out of nostalgia than anything else.
Which was just as well—Em would kick his ass.
“Seriously though.” Linc looked at each of his happily-involved team mates, appealing to them all individually. “We need to spread the love. Get Spidey and Dono hooked up.”
Donovan shook his head in disgust and glanced at Bodie in solidarity. “Only one thing worse than a reformed smoker, and that’s a reformed man-whore.”
Bodie couldn’t agree more. “He’s like frickin Cupid.”
“Yeah.” Donovan nodded. “A big, blond, naked baby.”
Everyone laughed, including Linc, who ploughed on regardless of the insults, obviously warming to the topic. “Dude.” Linc took a swig of his beer as he lanced Dono with a look. “I’ve seen what you’re packing downstairs. The ladies have got to want them some of that.”
“I have a kid.” Donovan had been married once a long time ago and his teenage daughter lived with her mother in Auckland. Considering the distance and the gruelling demands of his rugby schedule, he was incredibly involved in her life. “She’s my focus.”
For a man of few words, people took notice when he spoke. Nothing to see here, move along. Four sets of eyes shifted to Bodie and Dono grinned.
Five, actually, if he counted the rheumy gaze of Ryder’s pathetic looking, long-haired Chihuahua, Mona. The pink ribbon tied around her neck in no way counteracted the ugliness of that one fraggle tooth. She’d been sitting there watching him all night, her head turning from side to side as if she knew what Bodie had been up to with her master’s sister.
The damn dog was judging him.
He glared at Mona and she promptly peed on the floor. “Your dog wizzed.”
“Jeez, man.” Ryder rose from the table. “She’s sensitive. Don’t frighten her like that.”
He grabbed the kitchen towel they’d been using as napkins, picked Mona up, murmuring low assurances as he kissed her head and wiped at the small puddle before resuming his seat with Mona firmly ensconced on his lap.
Tanner laughed first, followed by Dex, then the rest of them. Big bad country boy Ryder Davis and his girly-ass dog.
“Fuck you all,” he said, calmly picking up his cards and asking Dex, who was dealing, for three.
“Em’s got some cute teacher friends,” Linc suggested and any hope that Bodie had that the subject had been dropped died a quick death. “Although I will deny I ever said that if any you bastards pass that on.”
More laughter. “She has a friend called Karen, she’s a little on the prim side but…”
“Nah man,” Dex interrupted, “Spidey likes his women with claws, remember?” It was the first poker night Dex has attended since the baby had been born, and he was clearly enjoying getting back into the swing of things.
Bodie tensed, raising his gaze over the top of his cards to meet Mona’s stare. The dog was giving him the evil eye.
“I bet some of those drag queens at The Cock and Bull could scratch your back up good,” Tanner suggested. “And enjoy doing it.”
The club, in Sydney’s infamous King’s Cross, was part owned by Ryder, and the drag show there was second to none, but Bodie couldn’t even look at his best friend right now. Christ, if he didn’t think it would cause more questions he’d get up and leave.
“Jesus, for a bunch of dudes who are all loved up, you seem to be a little too interested in my sex life. Aren’t you all getting enough without living vicariously?”
Linc laughed. “Vicariously. Listen to Spidey and all his big private school words.”
Bodie threw his hand into the discard pile. They were crap. They’d been crap all night. He was in a crappy mood, and Linc’s shitty juvenile prattle, which usually made him laugh, was getting on his last nerve. Not even a royal flush at this moment could have improved his mood.
“I’ll have five more,” he said, his jaw ground tight.
The guys exchanged looks around the table. Tanner tisked. “I think your problem is you haven’t been using the five you got.” He partially curled the fingers on his left hand and made a wanking motion.
Ryder laughed. “Nah. He just needs another country girl, is all.”
Bodie could feel his cheeks growing warm and was grateful for his three-day growth. He didn’t need another country girl.
Just one. Just Eleanor.
Who’d come all over his hand in a breathtakingly short amount of time a few hours ago.
“I’ll ask Lisa next time I’m talking to her, she’ll know someone up for a good time.”
Fuck-a-doodle-do. Bodie’s temper was fraying at a rate of knots. Would this never end? “Why not just pump Eleanor for some names when you see her tomorrow?” he snapped.
Jesus. That would be the ultimate irony.
Ryder blinked. “Nell’s coming to town?”
Bodie froze—shit…he was pissed off, and he had her on the brain and it had just slipped out.
“Wait…” He frowned. “How do you know my sister’s going to be in town?”
Yeah, dufus… How do you know jack shit about Ryder’s sister and her movements? Crap. But surely the bigger question was why didn’t Ryder know? Eleanor had told him she was seeing her brother tomorrow, and Bodie had assumed Ryder knew not only that she was coming to town but she was, in fact, in town right now.
Driving him crazy.
Bodie hoped he didn’t appear as startled as he felt while his brain quickly flipped through suitable answers, because he didn’t think telling Ryder he’d just made Nell come her brains out against her hotel door would be well received.
“I…bumped into her in the city…this afternoon.” Christ… Could that have been any more lame?
“Wait.” An even bigger frown cracked Ryder’s face. “How do you know my sister?” Mona stared at him through rheumy eyes and bared her fraggle tooth. Yeah, dude, explain that one.
Deny, deny, deny.
“We met at your engagement party.” Part of the bluff, according to his old man, was to ground it in as much truth as possible.
“Oh. Right…” Ryder, clearly satisfied with that, grabbed for his phone. “She must have come down for some costume expedition or something. She usually lets me know, though.” He scrolled with his thumb for a moment or two. “She hasn’t texted me.”
Bodie couldn’t confirm or deny why Eleanor was in town, except perhaps to fuck with him. They hadn’t got around to chit chat. “Maybe she was surprising you?” She’d sure as shit surprised him.
The urge to explain and apologise for jumping the gun about his sister’s presence in the city rode Bodie hard but he ignored it. The less he said, the less that could be used against him in court.
Yeah… He’d been raised by the antichrist.
“Well anyway.” Linc clapped him on the back. “Problem solved mate, there’s your country girl.”
His deliberate needling of Ryder worked a treat and Linc laughed at Ryder’s death stare. “Even if she wasn’t my sister and completely off limits to you filthy bastards”—he gave Bodie and Dono the evil eye in turn—“she’s one country girl who wouldn’t be giving it up for your pretty three-day growth. Amongst her many…quirky attributes, Nell announced at Christmas dinner at the age of eleven that she, like the Virgin Mary, was saving herself for the one.”
Bodie blinked. What. The. Fuck.
“Yeah but, how old is she now?” Dex asked. “I wanted to be Luke Skywalker when I was eleven.”
“She’s twenty-six. And last time I teased her about it a few months ago, she proudly told me she still had her V card.”
“Sure, man,” Dono quipped, “so’s my mumma.”
Everyone laughed. Everyone except Bodie. Because things were falling into place. Holy fuck. Eleanor was a virgin?
Had been a virgin?
With a sinking feeling worse than losing a grand final, Bodie knew it was true. It made sense now. Her tightness, the heady mix of her eagerness and shyness, that moment she made him wait after he’d pushed inside her.
Christ. He should have guessed. Why hadn’t he guessed?
“So what, she’s saving herself for…God?” Tanner asked.
Ryder shook his head. “Mr Darcy, I think.”
More laughter. Bodie swallowed. Great. She’d been waiting for Mr fucking Darcy and he’d given her some sleazy hotel hook up. She’d been waiting for the gentleman, and he’d given her the cad.
He was going to hell. And that was too good for him.