Lucy Monroe - Satisfaction Guaranteed

“I’m not a damn gigolo.”

“I never said you were.”

“Casual sexual encounters?” he asked with a bite to his tone that would have made a rattler turn tail and run.

She just shrugged. “Call it whatever you want, but we just aren’t in the same league. I knew that going in, but I didn’t realize it would be so hard to hold back my emotions, or that you might have a problem with how good the sex was between us. I’m not like you, Ethan. I’m not like my parents. When I feel, I want the freedom to express those feelings and I’m not comfortable sharing my body or my bed with a man who has issues with intensity. I want you. You know that, but I’m asking you not to capitalize on it.”

She didn’t raise her voice, or get choked up, or any of the other feminine emotional weapons at her disposal. She spoke with quiet dignity, every word laced with conviction. She wasn’t budging. Not for her own sex drive. Not for him. Not for anybody.

She picked up her purse. “I’ve come to realize I’m an intense person. And that’s okay with me. You don’t have to like it. My parents don’t have to like it. Alan didn’t have to accept it. But I do accept it and I’m through trying to fit in with people who don’t. You said we were friends and I’ve always believed we are, but we’re going to have to make this assignment work without the sex thing.” She stepped toward the door. “I want to go to dinner. I’ll wait for you to get ready if you want, but if you’d rather stay in and get room service, I’m fine going on my own.”

“Just like that, no discussion?” He wasn’t only talking about dinner and he knew she was smart enough to see that.

She nodded, a small but decisive jerk of her head. “It’s the way it has to be. I need you to accept that.”

“You think we can live together in the same hotel room and keep our hands off each other?”

“If we both try, yes.”

“And you expect me to try?”

“I wouldn’t respect you if you didn’t.”

“Only a woman would come back with an answer like that.”

“If I were a man, we wouldn’t be having this discussion.”

“Damn right.”

She laughed when all he wanted to do was howl at the moon in frustration.

He glared at her. “Let me get my boots on and we’ll go.”

Dinner was quiet. Ethan refused to discuss the case, or anything else for that matter. He didn’t pout-exactly-but she’d never seen him like this. He’d always been either teasing or professional, but right now, he reminded Beth of a wounded bear and she wasn’t about to push him into lashing out.

She didn’t know where the words she’d spoken before leaving the hotel room had come from. She hadn’t made a conscious decision to pull away from intimacy with him. In fact, she’d realized on the drive back from the coast that as painful as his rejection of her intense nature was, their relationship was giving her an opportunity to get to know the woman who lived inside her skin in a way she’d shied away from doing before.

But his comment about trying to control the intensity in their sex had sparked something inside her. Not an explosion so much as a weary acceptance. She was not what he needed and he would never be what she needed. And she couldn’t handle making love with him under those conditions. She was half in love with him already, wasn’t even sure it wasn’t a full-blown loss of insanity. Continued intimacy would tear her apart when she had to walk away, or watch him do so.

And if he wanted her, he had to want all of her…not just the parts he was comfortable with. He’d made it obvious he didn’t and that left her no choice. No sex.

They were in the car, headed back to the hotel when she said, “Can we stop at a store that sells camping equipment?”

“Why?”

“I’d like to get a sleeping bag. I think it would be easier if we didn’t share a bed, but I assume you’d have an issue with asking for another room or a rollaway.”

“You’d assume right.”

“That leaves a sleeping bag.”

He nodded, but didn’t say anything. When they reached the store, he left her in the car to go inside and buy it. He was so cold and uncommunicative, she didn’t ask him to get her a pad for under it. She didn’t want another one of those emotionless looks slicing her way.

When they got to the hotel, he made the pallet on the floor in silence. She noticed he’d gotten one of those extra long sleeping bags and a pad.

“Thank you.”

He turned to face her, his green gaze flat. “For what?”

“The pad. It will make the floor a lot more comfortable.”

“Will it?”

“I think so. I’ll just go get ready for bed.”

He nodded.

When she came out, he was in the sleeping bag, his back to the bed.

“I didn’t mean for you to be the one to sleep on the floor.”

Silence.

“Ethan?”

“Go to bed, Beth.” He even sounded like a wounded bear.

“I really don’t mind taking the floor.”

“If you want me to ignore the way my body is aching for yours right now, I suggest you be quiet, get in bed, and go straight to sleep.”

Even she wasn’t going to argue with that tone and she did exactly as he suggested. Except going to sleep. She lay in the dark, thinking about Ethan, about her decision, and trying not to move so he wouldn’t know she was still awake, long into the night.

Ethan got up a little after dawn. Beth was sleeping. Finally. She’d been awake most of the night. Like him.

She hadn’t wanted him to know she was awake and he hadn’t been sure of his self-control if he acknowledged it. It was that lack of self-control that had dumped him in his current predicament. The way he responded to Beth-the way she responded to him, the amount of pleasure they found in one another’s bodies-had spooked him.

He’d thought he could control it, put some kind of barrier around it, but that hadn’t worked. He’d hurt her in his attempt to regain a measure of his self-control. She’d lumped him in with her parents and Hyatt and that was not a place he wanted to be in Beth’s brain. He knew she didn’t consider any of them people she could truly rely on and he wanted her to rely on him.

Right now, she needed to rely on him for her safety and as much as he didn’t like her “no sex” boundary, he had to wonder if it wasn’t for the best. He didn’t think straight around her and he couldn’t afford to have his thinking and reactions clouded right now. Which he’d known all along, but Beth had been the one professional enough to take the stand that really needed taking.

And he was going to start acting like the professional he was. Starting today. The next two days would be best spent making themselves familiar with the area and getting a feel for the small towns closest to the north and south of Prescott’s estate. It would also keep them out of the hotel room and away from the temptation of the bed that looked too big with Beth’s small form curled in the middle of it.

They moved into a small cabin a few miles from the Prescott estate on Monday as Ethan had promised. The second bedroom had been rigged up as a home office for the pseudoau-thor. The state-of-the-art computer and peripherals would serve two purposes. Ethan would use it to oversee their security and continue his research on Prescott. It would also perpetuate the cover of a writer seeking his muse in the coastal forests.

Beth noticed that a daybed graced the wall opposite the computer desk. She would insist on sleeping on it and this time Ethan would listen. He was much too tall for the twin bed, but she wasn’t. And she didn’t want to sleep in the middle of another king-size bed that only succeeded in making her wish she’d never made the no sex decree.