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It hurt a little as he opened her with his fingers, but only for a moment, and then it didn’t hurt at all . . . and she was moving against his hand, mind shut down, crazed, only a body—swimming, surging, no breath—falling apart.
He gave her a moment. Reached for her again. Tortured her. She still hadn’t touched him. Not the way she wanted to.
She hated the dark. Needed to see. He twisted. Reached for something. The condom.
She had to touch him. Muscle and skin. She closed her hand around him.
He gave a hoarse cry. And it was over.
Before it had even begun.
11
Coop sprang from the bed. He couldn’t believe what had happened. It was a nightmare. Worse than a nightmare. Total humiliation. A sexual apocalypse.
He stalked out of the bedroom and across the hallway. The last time he’d gone off like that, he’d been sixteen. And of all the women he had to relapse with . . . Piper Dove!
He closed himself in the bathroom. The shared bathroom. Thank God it wasn’t shared now, because he had to be alone.
The foghorn sounded its mournful wail. He flipped on the light, but he couldn’t look at himself. Staying at this place had been a terrible idea.
The bathroom was as old-fashioned as everything else, with a radiator under the window and a claw-foot tub surrounded by a white shower curtain. He turned on the water in the tub and somehow maneuvered himself inside. The shower nozzle barely came to his chest, and the curtain kept sticking to him until he felt like he was being attacked by a monster squid.
“You’re getting water everywhere,” said a grouchy voice from the other side of the curtain.
“Get out of here!”
“I have to pee. Don’t look.”
“Like I’d want to.”
The toilet flushed, and scalding water cascaded down his chest. He jumped back and bumped into the end of the tub. The wet curtain wrapped its tentacles tighter around him. He heard a snort from the other side.
This was what happened when you abandoned your game plan. You got beat. And that’s what she’d done. She’d beat him at his own game.
The shower had just returned to its normal temperature when she turned on the sink, and another blast of scalding water assaulted him. Once again, he jumped back.
Premature ejaculation. Just thinking the words made him wince. He was an endurance athlete. The marathon man. The distance swimmer. Stamina was a point of pride with him. She’d messed up his whole life, disrupted everything. But he’d never expected her to disrupt this.
He flipped the shower water to cold. Let the icy blast force his brain to work again. If he started thinking like a loser, he’d turn into one, and nobody bested Cooper Graham. He had to come up with a logical reason for what had happened, something to save face. Maybe he’d tell her he had a medical problem. An encroaching case of the flu. An old injury acting up. Or he could be a dickwad and blame her. Say she’d been—what?—too damn sexy? This was no time for honesty.
He grabbed a towel. One thing was certain. He had to face her. Maybe he could use grief as an excuse. That might work. He’d tell her he’d just gotten the news that his grandfather had died. She had no way of knowing that mean son of a bitch had died twenty years ago. The perfect excuse.
She wasn’t in his bedroom, and her own door was shut. He pulled on his jeans and knocked. When she didn’t respond, he tried the knob, but it was locked.
He was overcome with grief. Definitely the way to go. The loss of his beloved grandfather. “Open up!”
“Don’t worry about it,” she said from the other side. “It can happen to anybody.”
She was gracious in victory. Oh, so fucking gracious. If women like her were let loose to rule the world, men would become obsolete. “I’m not worried,” he heard himself say. “It happens all the time.”
Where the hell had that come from?
“Seriously?” she said. “To you?”
He plunged on. “Hell, yes.” So much for his dead grandfather.
She threw open the door, eyes blazing. “And you’re proud of it?”
