Kathleen O'Reilly - Hot Under Pressure

“Are you okay?” he asked, rolling over, and they were so close, so naked, actually not completely naked, there were clothes still attached to both of them…barely.

“I’m good,” she answered, a total understatement if there ever was one, and Ashley didn’t usually understate. Honestly, she had to say that David McLean had the best bed head ever. Brown strands falling into his eyes, a cowlick in the back, and she wanted to reach over, smooth it back into place. She kept her hands still. They were strangers. You couldn’t go around fixing a stranger’s hair. Sex? Yes. Hair-fixing? No. Again with the rigid standards.

“How good?” he asked, not seeming to be needy, but still curious.

“Really good.”

“Oh, good,” he sighed, and fell back on his back. “That was freaking nuts. You were right.”

“I was?”

And what did “nuts” mean? He sounded happy, beyond happy even, but nuts? What sort of word was that? No, she was getting all paranoid again. She would not get paranoid. This had been awesome, and she had been an active part of that awesomeness.

He cleared his throat. “I’ve never done something like this before, and it’s…I don’t know, it’s just…great.”

Now, see, “great” is so much better than “nuts.”

“It was, wasn’t it?” she said, sounding like she did this all the time.

He nodded, and she grinned, completely ruining the confident, sophisticated image.

“Why isn’t it always like that?” she asked, studying her past sexual behavior pattern to figure out why this was different. Why here, why him, why now? She hadn’t had sex in a year…two? Maybe it was the long dry spell that made things so…stimulating?

“It isn’t always like that because not every man is me,” he answered, sounding exactly like every man. He started to laugh. “Whatever it is, it’s not ambience, that’s for sure.” He cast a long look around the all-American airport hotel decor.

She followed his gaze. He was right. A single torchère light stood in the corner, the bedcovers were orange— orange! —but the drapes were a nice touch. A garden green with large tropical flowers. Cheery.

Ashley pulled up the sheet and blanket to cover her chest discreetly. David McLean, on the other hand, was certainly not shy. His legs, half in half out of bed, exposed lean thighs. The legs were tan, with an indentation where his ass joined the thighs. It was a fine ass, smooth, firm…exactly like his… No, Ashley focus on the conversation.

What were they talking about? Oh, yeah. “That…bam,” she began, searching for a better word, failing, and no, it wasn’t because of his fine ass. “I mean, what’s that about? If I knew you better, would it disappear?” Her eyes kept stealing lower. Conversation with a naked hot man was harder than it looked.

“The zing? That never lasts. I’ve had some great first dates before, and then, you get to the third date, and you’re thinking, who is this person?”

“Exactly,” she said, curling up next to hot man with the fine ass, because miracles did not happen often. “Familiarity. And then it all goes down the drain.”

“Too bad they can’t market that. That bam, that zing. Advertisers would go crazy.”

“I know absolutely nothing about advertising, but you’re right.”

“Thank you,” he told her.

“For what?” she asked, because honestly it was no big deal to agree with him. He was right. She knew he was right.

He cocked his head toward the bed. “For doing this. For staying with me tonight. I feel good. Normal. Better than normal. Like I could run a marathon. Alive. Not so dead.”

Don’t look, Ash.

Not looking, not looking, not…looking. Nope, she looked. Not dead yet. Getting livelier by the second.

He turned, studying her. “I didn’t know I could have sex with a stranger in a hotel without guilt. Without trying to analyze everything.”

“You’re analyzing everything.”

“Occupational hazard.” He leaned back into the pillows and sighed. Not a restful man, David McLean. “It shouldn’t be so hard to start over. Just a date. That’s the Holy Grail for me. I want to find a woman to go out with, and have a nice evening. A good conversation, a little fun.”

“There would be tons of women wanting to go out with you,” Ashley told him.

Good God, what was wrong with the women in New York?

Nothing wrong with him. He’s a serial killer.

Right, Val.

“It seems like all the women I meet are weird, neurotic, or needy. Or eighteen. I have standards.”

Speaking as a weird, neurotic woman, neither needy, nor eighteen, Ashley knew he was doomed and felt it her duty to speak the truth. “Sorry, you’re out of luck. All that comes with the estrogen…except the eighteen part.” His eyes looked nervous and she laughed. “Have you tried online services? A friend of mine met her husband online.”

“Normal people don’t do that, do they? It doesn’t seem like, I don’t know, there’s something wrong with me?”

Ashley waved a hand. “Not anymore. Everybody’s too busy to go and hang out somewhere on the off chance they’ll meet—” she held up quote fingers “—the One.”

David still didn’t look convinced. “A dating service. It sounds painful.” For women, yes, for men, ha. “Go for it. Women would jump all over you.”

Like you did, Ash.

“You really think it’d be okay?”

Ashley nodded.

“And you swear that normal people sign up?”

“On my honor as a fashion professional.”

“I don’t know.”

“Try it,” she urged, because he needed to find that perfect petite blond, black-dressed New Yorker who would appreciate a man who was simply…nice. That, and a pile driver in bed, which made for a nifty combination.

After a moment of consideration, he sighed, but then nodded. “I’ll do it. Just a test. You’ve given me courage.”

That out of the way, his eyes skimmed over her, and she felt the tingles again. That wasn’t courage. No siree, that was lust. She gave him courage. He gave her lust. There was something wrong with that equation. “You should do it, too,” he added.

“Oh, no. It’s not for me.”

Ashley didn’t want to date. She didn’t need the hassles, the aggravation, or the neurosis. Nope. Everything she longed for was right there. Long, lean, stranger man, naked in her bed. She hadn’t known she could do this. “I don’t want a date. I want an affair. An exotic, femme-fatalish affair. Doesn’t that sound perfect?”

“You should live in New York,” he said, possibly reading her mind. “If you lived in New York, I’d give you an affair.”

“No, thank you, Yankee man. I’m staying right here in the Windy City. Well, actually, I’m leaving in the morning for L.A., but I’m coming home here. To Chicago.”

There was a momentary silence as she contemplated that statement. They were complete strangers, didn’t even share the same state. One more plane ride to L.A., and then she’d never see him again. It made the night seem…alluring, adventurous. The lady and the tiger, and tonight she wasn’t the lady.

Become the tiger, Ash.

David propped up on one elbow. “You want to get dinner in L.A.?”

“Aren’t you tempting fate?” she asked, tempted to tempt fate herself.

“By eating?”

“By having a date. What if that destroys the bam, the zing? What if the only way we can have this is by meeting in hotel rooms and losing our exterior selves in a moment of wild abandonment?”

David looked at her, slightly awed. “You came up with all this from one shot of tequila and sex?”

“No. I’ve been thinking.”