Melting the Ice Queen ✔️

~14~

During their dinner in the conference room,

they'd talked for hours about every topic under the sun—except for details about Alicia's unhappy childhood, which she'd parsed out like Scrooge parting with his money. That had lead to two more dates, including a movie.

Now here they were, on the porch outside her house, where he devoutly hoped he'd be spending the night because, God, he needed to be deep inside this woman as soon as possible. The kicker was, it wasn't really about the sex. Although, okay, he wanted to get naked and nasty and then sweet and slow with her every night forever. It was about uniting with this beautifully wrapped and unspeakably sexy package that contained the other half of himself.

Romantic nonsense like he'd never spouted before, yeah, but it was God's honest truth.

They were both lawyers, both clever, ambitious and hardworking. They both loved sushi, Winston Churchill biographies, and the electronics section at Wal-Mart. Their mutual favorite movie? The Godfather. Favorite book? To Kill a Mockingbird, although they'd both awarded honorable mention to The Bonfire of the Vanities.

Was the growing connection between them scary? Hell, yeah. He hadn't been looking for a relationship and hadn't thought he'd wanted one. And an introductory, getting-to-know you period was always prudent, except when the inevitability of taking things as far as they could go was as plain as the full moon overhead.

Telling himself to go slower, he leaned a shoulder against her front door and faced her. "What are we doing, Alicia?" he asked softly.

She looked up from rummaging for her keys in her purse, her eyes reflecting the moonlight and a heartbreaking combination of toughness and vulnerability. "Well, I thought we were saying goodnight, but if you'd like some, ah, coffee or—"

"I'd love some coffee when we wake up in the morning, yeah."

So much for taking it slower.

"I don't—" she began.

Yeah. He knew about all her various don'ts. "Give me the key."

To his astonishment, she handed it over after only a slight hesitation, whereupon his hands acquired a bad case of the trembles. On the third try, he got the door open, pulled her in behind him, and kicked the door shut again.

They stared at each other in the darkness of her foyer, with only their ragged breath to break the silence. The gleam in her eyes was unreadable, even if he'd had enough wits about him to try. She'd done this to him. Alicia had reduced him to burning blood, humming skin and frozen indecision. Now that he was here, he was afraid to touch her because he couldn't handle her rejection now. Not now.

This might have gone on through the next presidential administration, except that Alicia surprised him by revealing the woman he'd always known she kept locked inside that distant façade.

"Touch me," she whispered.

That was all the permission he needed. Lunging for her—yeah, he just couldn't manage gentle right now—he anchored his hands on her ass and kissed his way into her mouth. She was right there with him, matching him need for need, sucking his tongue into her slick warmth and crooning with a fantastic mix of relief, enthusiasm and encouragement.

He lifted her skirt up her bare thighs, his urgency making him crazed. Her panties were skimpy little things, which was great because they didn't give him any trouble when he jerked them down her legs and threw them to the floor.

She laughed. Was that funny, what she did to him? What about if he stroked her there, right there in that slick cleft between her legs—would that make her laugh, too?

"Oh, God." Clamping her hands on his shoulders, she held herself up when her knees buckled. "God, Scott, what are you doing to me?"

"I hope I'm driving you out of your freaking mind."

With no further ado, he collapsed onto a little bench against the wall and pulled her around so she knelt over him, straddling his legs. He reached for his zipper, but apparently moved too slowly because she knocked his hands away and unzipped it herself, kissing him the whole time.

And when he was free she took him into her hands, stroking and squeezing him to the point of heart failure. "Now," he said after a minute of this torture.

"Yes," she agreed. "Now. No wait."

Christ. No waiting. No waiting. "What? Tell me."

"This is casual, right, Scott? I don't handle relationships well."

"You're handling this one just fine."

"I just...I just think we need to agree about what we're doing."

The first spark of dread pierced his sensual haze. "And what's that?" he asked, thinking that acceptable answers included anything from forming a committed relationship to moving in together.

"Having fun while it lasts," she said, slicing his heart in two. "Enjoying each other and agreeing that we'll still be friends when it's over."

Friends?

The no was right there on the tip of his tongue; he wanted to shout it through the streets. Hell, she didn't even believe this nonsense herself. From what she'd told him about her parents' ugly divorce and her own sporadic dating history, she and casual sex went together like lit torches and haystacks or polar bears and walrus pups.

He hesitated wanting clarity on this point.

But this was her defense mechanism, his gut told him. Fear was in her eyes, buried deep but still visible when he looked closer. This was how she kept from being hurt again: she built walls and guarded them with automatic weapons and pit bulls.

He could tell her he loved her, but she couldn't handle that information now, and he'd lose her. And he couldn't lose her. Not when she was so hot and passionate in his arms, and her body was poised one inch from his, honey-slick and ready.

A better man would have told her the truth. He looked her in the face and lied.

"Casual's fine with me."

Disappointment flashed over her features, telling him he'd been right. She felt something more for him and was too scared to admit it, but it was gone in a heartbeat and he couldn't wait another second. Gripping her bare hips, he positioned her—

"Scott? You ready to get this party started?"

He blinked, looking around to see Cindi standing there, dressed and ready for tonight's charade. Smiling, he planted a kiss on Bruce's head and handed him to Colleen.

"Let's do it," he said.

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