Bet Me Read online

  “All I want is to make love so we can put this dumb bet behind us and start a real relationship, although maybe not after this.” She yanked on the belt again. “This could set us back some.”

  “Nope,” Cal said, insufferably calm. “We agreed that nothing could hurt this relationship now. It’s a little bent, but I like that about us.”

  “You’re a little bent,” Min said. “I am completely normal. Now untie me and fuck my brains out.”

  Cal caught his breath for a minute, and Min thought, Take me, and then he bit into the doughnut again, and she exhaled through her teeth in frustration.

  “Maybe I’m filling the wrong mouth,” he said, and tore off a piece of the doughnut. “Open up.”

  “Look, I don’t—” Min said, and Cal slipped the pastry into her mouth, and the sugar flooded everywhere. “Oh,” she said and let the chocolate melt into her senses.

  “My goal in life is to put that look on your face without chocolate,” Cal said.

  Min swallowed. “You do. You’re just never looking at me when it’s on there.”

  “Really.” Cal cupped her breast and began to stroke her with his thumb, and Min felt herself tighten under him again, but this time, when she opened her eyes, he was staring at her, watching her, and she blushed, from embarrassment and from heat and from wanting him. “Damn, you’re right,” he said and bent to kiss her, and Min forgot to be embarrassed and rose to taste him as he caressed her, sighing against his mouth.

  “Untie me,” she whispered, and he looked over her head.

  “Nope, we still have half an hour to kill.” He slid his hand down her calf. “I think I’ll start with the toes this time. It’s never been toes for me before, so this will be new.”

  “You’re going to suck my toes for half an hour?” Min said in disbelief.

  “I’m going to start at your toes,” Cal said. “And work up.”

  “Up?” Min said.

  “And in about fifteen minutes, you’re going lose the rest of this nightgown.”

  “With the lights on?” Min said, outraged, and he laughed and bent to her toes.

  David dialed Diana’s cell phone on the theory that after what had happened to her on Sunday, Diana would be ripe to maim any man in her path, especially one hurting her sister. When the ringing stopped, he said, “You should know this,” only to be overridden by Diana’s voice mail. “Don’t any of you people stay home on Wednesdays?” he snapped, but when the beep sounded, he said, “You should know this. Calvin Morrisey is seducing your sister right now to win a bet.” Then he hung up and thought about the last call he had to make. The scary one.

  It’s anonymous, he told himself. She’ll never know.

  He went back up to his apartment to have a drink first anyway.

  At quarter after nine, having been touched everywhere she could imagine and a couple of places she hadn’t thought of, Min felt Cal untie her.

  She sat up and slugged him on the arm. “Don’t ever do that again.”

  “Ouch?” Cal said, and she pushed him back and climbed onto his lap and kissed him hard, wrapping herself around him as tightly as she could.

  When she came up for air, she slapped him on the shoulder again. “I mean it, never again,” she said, and then went for his mouth again, hungry for it. A minute later she broke the kiss, breathing heavily, slugged him again, and said, “Never ever again.”

  “Really?” he said, as breathless as she was, and she looked back at the arm of the couch, the belt still tangled around it, and shivered.

  “Well, not in the living room,” she said. “And not for so long, and not with all these lights—”

  He dumped her back on the couch, pressing her against the pillows. “When we do it again,” he told her, his hands hot on her, “it’ll be where I want, when I want, with spotlights if I want.”

  “I don’t think so,” she said and he kissed her again and she thought, Oh, hell, whatever you want, and kissed him back.

  “Whatever I want,” he whispered in her ear.

  “Okay,” she whispered back. “But can I have you now?”

  “Almost,” Cal said into her neck. “Fifteen—”

  “You know what my favorite fantasy is?” she whispered in his ear, and he groaned. “It’s you, sliding hard inside me.” His hand tightened on her, and she said, “I love that part of sex, the first part, the way it feels, and it’s going to be the best with you because everything else with you has been the best I’ve ever had, the way I feel when you touch me, the way you kiss me, that’s why I know the way you—”

  He kissed her hard, pushing her back on the pillows, taking her voice and her breath away, and when he stopped, he said, “Shut up, we’ve got fifteen minutes yet,” and began to lick his way down her body.

  “Uh,” Min said, as he set every nerve she had alight again. “What are you going to do for fifteen minutes?” and he bit into her thigh as he moved her legs apart with his hand.

  “Oh, God” Min said, as he licked inside her. “I’m going to lose ten dollars.”

  Liza’s cell phone rang in the kitchen at Emilio’s, and Tony got it out of her purse and handed it to her, never dropping the fork he had buried in his spaghetti.

  “You sure we’re not seeing each other?” Liza said as she took the phone. “Because you sure show up here a lot.”

  “I eat here,” Tony said, twirling more spaghetti on his fork. “I predate you.”

  “Right,” Liza said, clicked her phone on. “Hello?”

  “Liza?” a man’s voice said. “You should know this. Cal Morrisey is tricking Min into winning that bet.”

  “What?” Liza said. “Who is this?”

  “The bet’s over at midnight,” the voice said, sounding smugly familiar. “And he wants to win.”

  “David?” Liza said.

  The phone clicked off and Liza was left with a dial tone.

  “David?” Tony said, looking up from his spaghetti.

  “Hey, Emilio?” Liza yelled over the kitchen noise. “I’m taking a break.”

  “Oh, no,” Tony said.

  “Eat your pasta,” Liza said, moving toward the door.

  “Oh, hell,” Tony said and dropped his fork to follow her.

  Chapter Sixteen

  When Min was wound so tight, she was shaking, Cal laced his fingers in her hair and turned her head to show her the mantel clock. “It’s nine-thirty-five,” he said, his voice husky. “I lost the bet to David. It’s over.”

  “We wasted five minutes?” Min said wildly.

  “You weren’t complaining,” Cal said, resting his head on her stomach.

  “Take me to bed or do me on this couch,” Min said, breathing hard. “I want you now.”

  “I’m definitely marrying you,” Cal said, and pulled her up off the couch and toward the bedroom.

  She tripped behind him and then gasped as he toppled her onto her satin comforter, her body sizzling against the cool fabric as he stripped and found a condom, and then he was beside her, pressed hotly against her, and she closed her eyes to savor him, bone and muscle hard against her. “Don’t wait,” she said, and felt his hands on her again, sliding over her, making every nerve she had scream, and when his fingers slipped inside her again, she opened to him, shaking under him, and when she felt his body between her thighs, she arched to meet him, desperate to feel him hard inside her. His eyes were hot on her and she stared back, caught, crazy for him, and then he kissed her and slipped his tongue in her mouth as he slid into her, slick and hot, and she gasped and clutched at him as the shock of him went everywhere.

  He pulled back and then slid deeper, and she bit her lip, weak with pleasure as heat thickened in her, and then she began to move with him, catching his rhythm, dizzy with the rightness of him, of them together. He whispered in her ear as he moved against her, telling her that he loved her, that she was beautiful, that she was his, over and over and over, until she could feel him everywhere, his voice and his breath and his hands and