Her Best Mistake (Novella) Page 4

  “I don’t know what your brother told you, but one dinner and a chaste kiss goodnight last weekend doesn’t make me Eric’s girlfriend,” Lisa declared, sounding more defensive than she’d meant to be.

  She sighed in irritation at herself for her rationalization of her mistake, realizing the same could be said about what she’d done with Finn. Crawling all over him in bed didn’t necessarily mean anything either.

  But then what did sleeping with any man have to mean anyway? Nothing, Lisa told herself fiercely. It could mean nothing but the need to scratch an old itch. It could be just one of those casual, temporary things. People did that all the time.

  Yet no matter how casual she told herself it had been, Lisa still couldn’t tear her eyes away as Finn Roberts sat up and looked at her, all his muscles fluidly moving at once. He was certainly graceful for a tall man. And incredibly strong, she remembered, sighing for a different reason as she watched him move around. She shook her head just to make herself stop looking at him.

  “I admit that I did think you were Eric at first. You look so much alike, or at least you did to me yesterday. Not so much right now,” she corrected.

  She ran a hand through her hair, and then looked at Finn to see his reaction to what she had said. He was staring at her with an intense gaze that made her feel like she was being doubted. Out poured her thoughts without her permission.

  “Okay fine. You want honest. Well honestly, after you put your hands on me, I didn’t care who you were because I hadn’t felt that way, been able to feel that way, in a really, really long time. Shit—maybe I should be the one apologizing to you,” Lisa said unhappily, crossing her arms. “Are you happy now?”

  Finn thought the woman facing him now might just be the most honest woman he’d ever met. He could like her, he decided swiftly. And since she had told him a hard truth, he told her one in return.

  “I’ve been divorced for two years, and you’re the first woman I’ve been with since my ex-wife,” he said flatly, enjoying the shock that came into her face. Her reaction almost made the last two years of abstaining worth it.

  Lisa stared. Words dried up in her throat. She shook her head because she truly had trouble believing that this incredibly sexy guy had gone two years without female companionship.

  How could she believe such a thing when Finn made her wet and aroused just by looking at her with that gaze that seemed to strip her naked?

  She cleared her throat to speak, chagrined when no words came out. She tried again, finally managing a squeaky, nervous explanation of her own situation. “I’ve been divorced for several years myself, a little longer than you. I haven’t really felt any interest in sex for a while.”

  Then appalled at herself for telling him all her secrets, Lisa leaned back and closed her eyes. “What I mean is that I have dated, but I haven’t. . .been with anyone. . .either. I’m sure that was really clear to you last night.”

  She blushed at her confession. Why was she admitting more to Finn Roberts than she had even told her freaking OB/GYN doctor? The voice inside her jumped to her aid. Shut up, Lisa. Just stop talking.

  Finn rubbed his nose and tried to smother his grin. “I tried to go as slow as I could. Did I hurt you?” he asked quietly.

  He didn’t think he had or Lisa wouldn’t be here, but he wanted to see if she would answer him. He wanted to see if she would answer intimate questions just as honestly as she did simple ones.

  “Hurt me?” Lisa said. She heard her voice squeaking again as she confronted the serious concern that was reflected in his face. “You’re serious, aren’t you? Okay—no. No, you didn’t hurt me. You were . . .”

  She stopped a moment to consider her words. What could she say? How could she describe the experience of being with Finn without gushing about how amazing it had been?

  “You were just the right amount of careful,” Lisa finally said at last, her need to reassure him winning out over her urge to protect her pride.

  “Well, you certainly didn’t make being careful easy for me,” Finn said with a grin, his voice low and rough from the desire she stirred in him. “You kept moving under me, urging me on. I almost unleashed the beast several times.”

  “Unleashed the beast?” she repeated, laughing at the strange term. “That’s a new one. What do you mean?”

  Finn looked at her pointedly. Could this incredibly hot female truly not know how it could be between a man and woman?

  “It’s not something you can explain. It’s one of those experiential things. Maybe I could show you sometime,” he challenged.

  She crossed her arms and looked at him, wondering at his sudden change of tone. Was he coming on to her for real? Yes, the voice inside her yelled. She could all but see the first in the air.

  “You know, you could be saying the ugliest things to me right now and I’d never know the difference, would I? I bet that sexy voice of yours works well for you in the classroom, Dr. Roberts.”

  Finn smiled at her snarky, defensive response. He shrugged as if it didn’t matter, but it did. He liked that Lisa challenged him back. He liked that she was demanding in bed. He liked that she had come to him to admit her part in what happened. So far there wasn’t a single thing about the woman he didn’t like.

  Lisa sighed. Finn looked like every woman’s fantasy as he stared at her. He looked like a man who any minute might just drag her off to bed. She got a sudden image of her riding him until they both screamed, groaning in shock at the direction of her thoughts.

  Coming out of her musing, she blinked rapidly, hoping she hadn’t said anything in her stupor.

  When Finn saw her pink face glowing and the light in her eyes as she looked at him, it tightened every muscle he knew about and some he’d forgotten he even owned.

  “I have to just tell you something that’s probably rude as hell, but you certainly blush a lot for a woman your age. How long were you married?” he asked.

  “A woman my age? Gee, thanks—son,” Lisa said on a harsh laugh, deflated that Finn had been thinking about how old she was, while she’d been having hot sex thoughts about him. “I guess that sums up what you think of me, doesn’t it? I was married ten years, not that it’s any of your business.”

  “It was meant as a compliment,” Finn insisted on a hard laugh. “You can’t be much over forty—if that. And forty is not old, just past the age where women blush about sex—usually. It makes me want to show you what you’ve been missing all the time you were holding out these last few years. I think I would really like to do that.”

  Lisa swallowed at his words and couldn’t think of a reply that wouldn’t get her into more trouble with him.

  To give them both a little time to absorb the conversation, Finn got up, went to a small refrigerator, and pulled out two bottles of water. He brought one over to her.

  Lisa frowned at having to look all the way up to see his eyes, which took her gaze past intriguing parts of Finn she really didn’t need to see that up close and personal right then.

  She took the bottle of water simply because it gave her something normal to do while Finn stood there staring down at her.

  “I still want you,” he said flatly. “If you give me the slightest indication that you’re interested back, I’d be more than happy to show you my beast.”

  Lisa had no idea what he meant, but his tone alone had moisture gathering again. It was accompanied by an almost overwhelming desire to say yes to anything he was offering.

  “Look, I did date your brother—once,” she said primly. She stared at the floor, at the ceiling, anywhere that she could look besides at him. “It somehow doesn’t seem right to date you too—even if I find you—interesting.”

  “Why didn’t you sleep with Eric? I mean, before you thought you were last night?” Finn asked.

  He already knew the answer, but he wanted to hear her say it. He needed to hear Lisa confirm out loud what his body already knew and what Eric had said. His heart hammered in his chest until he was sure
she could hear it too.

  “I don’t sleep around—normally,” Lisa answered, staring at the floor. “I didn’t want to sleep with Eric—still don’t want to.”

  He paced a little ways away hoping she might look at him. He wanted to see her face, feel her gaze holding his while he pried the answer out of her.

  “Okay. Then why did you make a different decision last night?” Finn asked. He was trying to ignore the temptation of making her blush harder. He tried not to read into it what he wanted to believe before it was confirmed.

  Lisa shrugged and shifted in her chair. “I seriously don’t know.”

  “No, I think you do. Something overrode your instinct to stay away from my brother and made you climb into bed with me when the chance was there. Help me understand how in my jet-lagged sleep I could have so totally taken advantage of your mistake. I am not that kind of guy, or at least not usually,” Finn said, tossing his empty bottle into the trash.

  Lisa looked at him. He was dead serious about that alright. It was in his face, the set of his jaw, and the tenseness of his posture.

  “Finn, I don’t know you well enough to think you are any particular kind of guy. And I never said you took advantage of any situation. I have already admitted that I was the one that crawled into bed with you, not the other way around. Shit, this is awkward to explain.”

  Lisa swore and leaned forward to put her head down on her knees.

  Finn watched with great interest but little sympathy. For some reason, Lisa’s continued discomfort made him insanely happy. It had to mean she still wanted him.

  “So on a whim you just decided to climb into bed with a naked man that you had only dated once and didn’t really want to have sex with anyway?” he asked.

  Lisa raised her head, glaring at him. “Wow, it’s amazing how awful you make that sound. The front desk clerk gave me a note from Eric and a key, both she insisted were meant for me. One minute I‘m staring out the window looking at the Boston skyline, and the next minute I’m crawling up your naked body and biting your ass. I honest to god don’t know why. Sue me. I guess the smell of you made me horny enough to do what I did. Don’t you think if I had a logical explanation, I’d share it with you?”

  A grinning Finn looked down at the floor, trying hard not to laugh at her admission. He was going to make sure he took the hotel’s shower gel when he left. In fact, he was ordering a case of it.

  “Stop gloating,” Lisa demanded. “If I have to believe you’re not that kind of guy, then you damn well have to believe I don’t do things like that either. When I saw you and Eric today, I still didn’t have the urge to do anything with him. Yet when I look at you, I can’t explain my interest in you either.”

  Finn watched her take a giant gulp of water, continuing to glare at him, which only ratcheted up his arousal another fifty notches or so.

  Frustrated with the conversation and the situation, Lisa found herself just blurting it all out. “Look—after the first few minutes, it wasn’t just the way you smelled. It was the way you acted with me. It was how careful you were, how sweet you were, how you rolled us over in bed looking for condoms. You were every fantasy come true for a short while, and I just wanted to keep on feeling that way for as long as I could. That’s not a damn crime.”

  She dropped her gaze, unable to look at him a single moment more.

  Finn walked to the chair where Lisa sat, decision made long before he got there. He didn’t ask permission, just pulled her all the way up into his arms which had been aching to hold her again. He lifted her hips and guided her legs around him before she could really protest. Then he spun them both, dropping back into the chair with her straddling his lap.

  Lisa started to complain, but his eyes were soft, regretful, and full of heat for her. The finger across her lips to keep her from speaking wasn’t even necessary, but desire chose to arc across even that small touch.

  “Ssssh . . . don’t say anything for a minute,” Finn begged softly, running his thumb along her bottom lip because he just had to stroke her somewhere. “I have to hold you to confess the rest.”

  “The rest?” Lisa squeaked.

  Finn nodded gravely and took a deep breath. “Eric’s my brother and I love him, but he can be a damn pain in the ass. He acts and doesn’t bother with the details. I don’t know how he is so successful when he spreads confusion wherever he goes.”

  Lisa heard love in Finn’s voice, but also an understanding of who Eric really was. She laughed without humor. “I wouldn’t know much about Eric’s strengths or weaknesses. I never got to know him that well.”

  Finn leaned his head back and met her gaze, frowning. “The key at the front desk wasn’t for you. The hotel clerk made a mistake too. Eric was setting me up with a booty call friend. I was supposed to pretend to be him when she got here. He frequently tries that sort of thing when I visit, especially since my divorce. But I swear I have never taken advantage of it. Never . . . but. . . well, shit . . . that’s who I thought you were last night.”

  Lisa blinked, her brain slow to take it in. Booty call? She’d thought Finn was his brother, and Finn thought she’d been a booty call friend of Eric’s?

  Finn sighed. “Look, I begged Eric to call it off. Now I think he probably did because no one came but you. Eric didn’t say anything to me about it today and I didn’t ask. The truth is you crawled into bed with me, put your hands on me, and I came back to life. It had been a damn long for time me too, and after a certain point I didn’t really care who you were either. I just wanted it not to end. You can’t imagine how wonderful it was to know you wanted me.”

  The brutal truth from a brutally honest man, Lisa thought, not completely sure how she felt about Eric having booty call women in the first place. Why the hell had he been dating her then? She turned her face away, unable to look directly at Finn anymore.

  “I’m sorry,” Finn said. As Lisa’s silence stretched on, he squirmed a little under her in the chair. At least she wasn’t bolting for the door. Not that he’d let her leave, but he took her silence as a good sign. It meant she was still thinking about what he had said.

  “Look,” Finn said finally, “I’m telling you the truth because I want you to believe that I didn’t intend anything to happen. When you touched me, I acted because in that moment I wanted you badly. Even today, after knowing what I know, I still want you. Being sorry would mean having to forget it happened, and I don’t want to go back to being dead.”

  “So, let me get this straight . . . you only slept with me because you thought I was a booty call?” Lisa asked, licking her dry lips.

  Finn looked like he wanted to die rather than answer her question, but he held her gaze and nodded his head yes. Tomorrow she might be outraged at the idea that he had just this once—even if unknowingly—given in to the temptation to take advantage of a booty call. At the moment, she was just disgusted that Eric would arrange such a deceitful liaison, and the action only validated the instinct that had made her so careful with him.

  It was just hard to be sincerely outraged about Eric’s behavior or Finn’s confession when the heat of her was pressing down on evidence of Finn’s continued interest in her. God, the man beneath her was real, Lisa thought, suddenly thinking he might just be the best mistake she had ever made.

  “Now do you want me to apologize?” Finn asked again.

  Instead of answering right away, Lisa turned her face back to his and just looked at him.

  She looked in his eyes. She tried to see Eric there, but couldn’t. There was just Finn.

  And she was interested.

  “Do you mean apologize for the booty call thing? Or sleeping with your brother’s girlfriend?” she demanded, suddenly willing to risk teasing him again.

  “We’ve already decided I’m not sorry for sleeping with the girlfriend who’s not really a girlfriend. I applied cold logic to make that decision. You don’t like him. Ergo, it’s not my fault Eric didn’t score with you,” Finn informed her, keepin
g his tone as firm as the rest of him.

  Lisa couldn’t help laughing at Finn’s so-called logic. It had her shifting closer and bearing down on him more. He pushed himself up a little to better fit himself between her thighs. To her, Finn looked completely unrepentant, totally male, and totally irresistible. He tightened his hold on her hips as she stared at him, and it seemed like he was waiting for something to show him the next step. She was right there with him, searching for it too. It was impossible not to like the man.

  “You don’t strike me as being the kind of guy who’s as calm about all this as you’re pretending to be,” she said dryly.

  “Oh, I’m not. Having been married, I have the good sense to realize the booty call thing may be more offensive under the circumstances,” Finn explained.

  Wanting to comfort her, maybe even reassure her, Finn ran his hands up Lisa’s arms and back down her sides before letting them rest at her waist. She sighed and relaxed under his strokes, making him want to hug her.

  “I swear on a stack of bibles that you weren’t just a convenient warm body. I’ve had plenty of opportunities for those and said no. I said yes to you because you made me want you so badly that saying no wasn’t a possibility,” Finn said.

  “So now I guess you want me to thank you for telling me the truth?” Lisa demanded, her laughing eyes softening her sarcastic tone.

  Finn smiled, his lids lowering as he pushed himself against her weight. He lifted her from his lap with each upwards thrust until she moaned and pushed down on his shoulders to hold him still.

  “Okay. I admit that not many men would have said anything. Personally, I don’t think I would have said anything myself if our positions were reversed. So I guess I don’t think you’re a bad guy, maybe just a pent-up desperate one . . . which makes me feel better in some sick, twisted way,” Lisa told him.

  Finn laughed, letting his body relax under hers, or as much as it was able to in his current condition. “Okay. I’m not bad and you’re not bad. So what do you want me to do now? I could let you go and swear never to say a word to Eric, but I’ll be damned if I come to the wedding.”