“Yeah. Uh…good luck with your auditions.” At his own lame words, he winced.
But she’d already turned away.
Just as he’d wanted.
EM PICKED UP her ringing cell phone. When she heard her hotel room door close behind Jacob, she closed her eyes. He was gone…
She was such a fool, such a damn fool, she thought angrily as she flipped open her phone. “Hello?”
“Em.”
“Eric.” She let out a breath and concentrated on the here and now. “I take it you’re not still…tied up.”
“Uh, no.” He lowered his voice. “Look, it was great. But…”
“But what?”
“Afterward…” He sighed. “She cried, Em. It broke my heart.”
“Why are you whispering?”
“Because she’s asleep right next to me. Why did she cry?”
Em sank to the bed. “Did you ask her?”
“She denied doing it, but I saw the tears.”
“What happened after that?”
“We, uh, did it again. It was…well, words fail,” he said in an awed voice. “Not the sex, the connection, you know?”
Yeah. She knew.
“I fell in love with her all over again.”
Em let out a long breath. She was falling, too.
“God,” Eric whispered. “I think she’s just screwing with my head. What do I do?”
She laughed a little harshly. “Eric, what in our history together makes you think that I have any clue when it comes to love?”
“Because your heart’s always in the right place. You’re all about heart and soul, Em, making memories, shit like that.”
“Yeah, well, I’m really a pretty big screwup in that area. Right now all that matters is that we’re going to be unemployed and eating canned soup for the rest of our lives if I don’t get downstairs and get going on the auditions-”
“She cried, Em.”
Em rubbed her aching temples. Other things ached, too. Between her thighs.
But the biggest ache of all came from her heart, which she reached up and rubbed now, though it didn’t help. “If I had to guess, she cried because she loves you, too.”
Utter silence greeted this.
“Eric? You there?”
“She told me she doesn’t.”
“Even you are not that clueless as to believe her.”
“Look, I’m just a guy,” he pleaded. “We were
“Okay, listen, I haven’t had caffeine, and my night was…well.” She drew a deep breath. “But I think she just doesn’t know how to deal with the love she feels for you, or even how to show it. Tying you up was symbolic. You get it? You’re hers. You’re tied to her. You see?”
He was quiet for a moment. “I guess.”
“You know what happened before. The two of you were too hot, too heavy. You didn’t share the stuff that scared you. You didn’t do the things you need to do to make it last.”
“Yeah.”
“You burned it out.”
“I know.” He sounded terrified. “I don’t want that to happen again.”
“Then do more than the wild sex. Talk. Communicate. Listen to each other. Be there for each other.”
“I can do that. But pinning Liza down is hard. She’s not exactly the communicative type.”
“Well, turnaround is fair play,” she said, quoting Jacob.
He paused. “You mean…tie her up?”
“Give the boy an A.”
He laughed softly. “Gotcha. Now tell me about your night. You have a bad one?”
Bad? No. Good? No. Try the best night of her entire life. “Hard to explain.” Especially since, for Jacob, it had all been…“normal.” Heat filled her face at that.
From its perch still on her floor, the alarm clock went off again, and she sighed. “We’ve got to get a move on. Get up. Get Liza up. Meet me in the conference room for round two.”
“Oh, boy,” Eric said. “Here we go again.”
Yeah. Here we go.
THOUGH HE COULD HAVE showered and changed at Hush, Jacob went back to his apartment. Right now he wanted to be in his own space. But as he climbed the three flights of stairs, he knew the problem wasn’t the outside world, but the thoughts racing inside his own head.
He wished he was still in bed with Em. He wished she was tucked beneath him, while he was buried deep inside her, taking them both to that nameless place of abandon they’d been to several times in the night.
How many women had he been with? Many, and not once when a woman had called out his name while lost in passion had he stopped just to watch her.
With Em, he hadn’t been able to tear his eyes away. He loved the way she arched up, her throat open and vulnerable, the way she panted his name in that serrated, husky voice that always sounded so…surprised.
Yeah, that was it. Every time she’d come, she’d been honestly surprised.
Watching her unravel had the been the sexiest, most erotically charged experience of his entire life.
Then morning had come and she had wanted to obsess and tear it all apart and look for the meaning.
And he’d hurt her.
Damn it, he knew he had, but at the time he hadn’t cared. He’d been choking, panicking, as he’d stared at her, wanting nothing more than to haul her close, bury his face in her hair, and not let go.
Never let go.
He scrubbed his hands over his face but the longing remained. And he didn’t know what to do with it. Why wasn’t it gone? Why hadn’t one night been enough? One night
He came to the landing outside his front door and stared in surprise at Pru, who was sitting there waiting for him. “I’m going crazy,” she said, and rose to her feet.
Jacob unlocked his door, shaking his head when Pru pushed ahead of him and entered.
“Come on in,” he said dryly.
“Did you hear me?” She whirled to face him, her neat, long braid nearly blinding him. “I’m losing it here.”
“Join the club.” He stood in the middle of his living room, glancing toward his shower with longing.
“Jacob.”
He sighed. “What’s happened?”
“Everything. Nothing.”
Jacob squinted at her. “Is that in English?”
“We went out last night, Caya and I. And at the end I kissed her. Caya kissed me back, and I’m telling you, it was real. It was love-”
“Pru-”
“It was,” she insisted.
“How do you even know the difference between lust and love?”
She looked startled at the question. “I just do.”
“You’re going to have to do better than that.”
“Okay, well…lust can be sated. Lust is gone when you wake up the next morning. Lust doesn’t have those bone-deep terrifying feelings, like you
