Chapter Twenty

Ryan stood in his brother Gabe's living room surrounded by his family, a big group of strangers, and a dozen rambunctious eight-year-olds. And yet, all he could see was Vicki.

Summer had just barreled into Vicki's waist to give her a huge hug. Clearly, the eight-year-old girl loved the poodle sculpture Vicki had made her. She'd surprised Sophie and his mother with fun little sculptures, as well, and he knew they wouldn't stop gushing over the unexpected gifts for a very long time.

As she chatted animatedly with Summer, there was nothing fake, nothing affected about Vicki, not from her soft hair to her unpainted fingernails to the sweet curves that had transfixed him since he was a teenager. To make matters worse for the hard-on he was working like hell to hold at bay, she was wearing another pretty dress that simultaneously hid and showcased her incredible figure as the breeze played through the fabric.

Ryan's chest squeezed tight at her beauty.

Smith handed him a beer. "Some pretty big bets were going down today in the production offices for the playoff games. You ready to make us all some money?"

Ryan took a slug from the bottle, his eyes never leaving Vicki. "I'll do my best."

But instead of taking the hint that he wasn't up for shooting the breeze tonight, Smith kept right on talking. "I enjoyed the shaking down we did today for your school sports fund. Kind of nice to be on the other side of the demanding, for once. Ever feel like everyone just wants something from you?"

Depending on his mood, Smith could be disturbingly blunt...or as opaque as it got. Clearly, he was in one of his deep - and talkative - moods.

"Well," Ryan drawled, "considering my brother just told me to pitch a no-hitter so he wins his money back on a bet, yeah, I guess I do know how that feels."

"You're lucky to have her, you know."

Ryan finally shot Smith a look to see what he was playing at. "Vicki?"

"You've been friends since you were kids, so you know she's not hanging around because of what you could do for her, or for the fame that comes with being your fiancee."

"She's not my - "

"Right." The one word was loaded. "Funny how the way the two of you look at and touch each other makes it hard for any of us to remember that it's all just a lie."

Ryan's teeth clenched at the way his brother had just pointed out the obvious. He couldn't keep from wanting Vicki. Loving her. Not even when she'd all but asked him to do just that this morning when she'd called their night together "weird" and then said her silent no to ever being intimate like that again.

Frustration had him lashing out at a brother who didn't deserve it. "Not everyone is as good an actor as you are."

Smith gave him a hard look. "Then maybe you should quit trying so hard to pretend."

Finally, his brother left him alone again and Ryan's gaze immediately went back to Vicki.

All day he'd been turning their situation over and over in his head. Yes, he knew she thought making love had been a mistake. A weird mistake. But he hadn't forgotten the way she'd responded to his touch...and that there hadn't been one single weird thing about the way she'd arched and cried out against him and begged for more.

The thing was, even before he'd known just how amazing it was to make love to her, Ryan had wanted more.

Everything.

He wanted everything.

Not just to give Vicki his heart, but to know that she wanted to give hers to him, too.

Ryan hadn't had to fight for much in his life. School, sports, friends, women - they'd all come easily. Even his friendship with Vicki had always been natural, comfortable - easy - right from the start.

But he wasn't satisfied with friendship anymore.

Not when he wanted what his parents had shared.

Not when he wanted what his brothers and sisters were finding for themselves, one after the other.

And not when he held Chase's baby daughter, Emma, in his arms and wondered what his and Vicki's children would look like.

All her life, Vicki had kept reaching, kept believing, kept trying to turn her most passionate dreams into reality.

Now, it was finally his turn to reach. To believe. And to try.

Ryan Sullivan had finally found something that mattered enough to fight for.

Love.

* * *

"I'm so glad you could come to Summer's party," Mary Sullivan said when Vicki joined her on the patio.

"You know how much I love spending time with your family. And Emma is positively gorgeous." Zach and Heather's dogs had clearly adopted the baby as they flanked her pink and purple vibrating baby seat. A moment later, Jake helped Sophie up from the nearby couch, her belly looking even bigger than it had just a day ago. "And I'm so glad things worked out so well for Sophie and Jake."

Summer's grandmother, who had flown out from Minneapolis for Summer's birthday party, smiled and said, "Congratulations on your engagement."

Vicki worked to smile back and say, "Thank you," without faltering. Thank God Mary already knew the truth, or she would have felt even worse about the situation than she already did.

The other woman turned to Mary. "You must be so thrilled to know that another one of your children has found the one."

Mary put her arm around Vicki and didn't miss a beat in the game of pretend they were playing. "I couldn't be happier for Vicki and Ryan. He had such a crush on her when they were in school together. It was amazing for me to see him be so serious about a girl when he'd always been so relaxed about it all before."

Wow, Vicki thought, now I know where Smith gets his acting chops.

Mary turned to her and added, "The night he went over to ask you to the prom and found out you had already agreed to go with someone else...well, it just about broke my heart to see him like that."

Forgetting they were supposed to be pretending, Vicki blurted, "He was going to ask me to the Sophomore Prom?"

Summer's grandmother cut in to ask, "He never told you?"

Vicki shook her head, wondering if Mary could have made that up. "No. He never told me."

At her unspoken question, Ryan's mother patted her arm and nodded. "It's true, Vicki. He really did go to ask you to the prom. I know how worried he was about doing something that might ruin your friendship. Asking you to that dance was going to be his big risk. Unfortunately, he never got to take it." Mary's eyes held hers. "Until now."

Summer's grandmother was saying something about romantic love stories and long-lost high school sweethearts, but Vicki could barely keep track of it. Fortunately, Mary seemed to understand that she needed to be left alone with her thoughts.

Vicki had been so careful to keep herself from getting hurt every step of the way with Ryan this past week. But as she watched Ryan pick up Emma and give her kisses all over her face that had the baby nuzzling even closer to him, Vicki suddenly wondered if what she'd thought was so smart had actually been blindingly stupid, instead.

* * *

As they drove through the city back to Ryan's house, Vicki was as nervous as she'd ever been. Ryan was strangely silent, which was okay, since she couldn't have made small talk for the life of her.

Oh God, she couldn't believe what she was thinking of doing - that she was actually toying with the idea of confessing her feelings to him after all these years. Because even after her body had given away far more than she'd ever planned while in his arms the previous evening, it was still possible to write that off as "just sex."

Whereas, once she crossed the "I like you as more than a friend" line with actual words, there was no taking them back...or trying to attribute them to one crazy night.

At the outset of this week, she'd made a vow to be calm and rational rather than too passionate for her own good. Okay, so she'd blown it last night, and clearly if she wanted it, there was tons more ridiculously good blowing it on her horizon.

But was the greatest sex in the world worth risking her heart - and her friendship with Ryan - over?

When they arrived home, they walked inside and she put their things down on his kitchen counter, the same way she had so many nights before that week. Only, tonight, everything felt different.

Different enough that she suddenly blurted, "You were going to ask me to the prom?"

"I had it bad for you even then."

Slowly, she turned to face him. He stared at her and she stared back. Time stood still as she tried to read what was in his eyes.

"Ryan?" His name on her lips made them tingle. Made her want. Desperately.

"It won't be weird this time."

Vicki's heart was pounding so hard she could barely hear her own voice over it.

"Promise?"

"I promise."

Just that quickly, the fire that had been sparking and kindling between them all night long finally burst into flames as he cupped her h*ps and pulled her tightly against him, her palms grazing his jaw as she moved to thread her fingers into his hair.

Their mouths licked, sucked, even bit at each other as they made it over to the couch. Vicki clenched Ryan's shirt in her fist and pulled him down, her core clenching with heat as he moved his heavy weight over her.

They'd gone so slow their first time, needing that pace to feed their discovery of each other. But she wouldn't survive that tonight, not when she was already this desperate for him to take her, to make her his again.

The buttons of his dress shirt flew in every direction as she ripped open his shirt and pressed hungry kisses to his chest. She flicked her tongue over him and he groaned her name into her hair even as he yanked her dress off her shoulders.

She loved how rough his hands were as he shoved the fabric off her chest, her hips, then down her legs.

He pulled back to take in her na**dness. "I don't think I'll ever get over how good you look na**d on my couch." A moment later, his arms were lifting her and he was saying, "I can't wait to see how you look in my shower."

He kissed her all the way up the stairs and down the hall past the guest bedroom to his own bedroom. Her heart pounded as much from the arousal he so effortlessly built in her as it did from knowing she was going to be in the shower with him soon.

Quick and dirty sex on his couch would have been so much easier to write off as another crazy impulse.

Then again, when he didn't even bother to do more than kick off his shoes and then slide hers off too before walking into the huge, glass-enclosed shower with her still in his arms and turning the water on over them, she knew he was doing exactly that - following his impulses.

Thank God.

He moved them so that he could watch the warm water pulse and flow over her chest, and then lowered his head to her breasts. As his mouth covered one taut tip, she held onto his neck even as the sweet pleasure coursed through every cell in her body.

His skin was getting wet and so were her hands, but before she could slip, he put her back down on her feet and pressed her up against the one tiled wall. He pressed her legs wide open with his, and took her hands in his to hold them up against the tiles on either side of her head.

She felt owned.

Possessed.

Utterly, completely claimed by the heat in his eyes as his gaze ran down her body, then back up to her face.

"Every fantasy, Vicki. " His words were raw. And so low she could barely hear them over the spray from the multiple showerheads. "You're every single fantasy I've ever had."

Her breath came fast as she let herself look at him, too. His chest was tanned and beautifully muscled. His wet button-down shirt clung to his shoulder and arm muscles in a shockingly sexy way. Not to mention the way his jeans cupped his enormous erection and his taut thigh muscles.

"You are, too," she whispered, barely getting the words out before he captured her mouth in a kiss so searing the water could have been cold and she would still have been warm.

"You have no idea how many dirty things I want to do with you right now."

The warmth coiled down low in her belly let go at his heated words. She was already risking so much with Ryan tonight.

Why not one more thing?

"Good thing we're already in a shower, then."

His eyes lit at the realization that she'd just given him permission to do whatever he wanted with her, and then his mouth covered hers again for a brief, intense kiss before he dropped to his knees in front of her.

He let go of her hands to cup her br**sts and she threaded her hands into his wet hair to hold him there against her as he laved and sucked and nipped at her sensitive flesh.

"God, I love your breasts," he murmured against her chest as he moved to taste the other one.

They'd always been big, ever since puberty, and more than once she'd wished she didn't have to deal with them. But right in that moment, she'd never been so happy for her abundant flesh, if only because it meant more kisses from Ryan across every inch of them.

"You have no idea how many nights I dreamed of doing this when we were in high school."

She could barely catch her breath enough to ask, "How many?"

"All of them."

His thumbs and forefingers moved to replace his mouth as he kissed his way down her stomach. Vicki's legs trembled as he moved lower and lower to where she was so wet, so ready for him, that the barest touch was going to send her over.

But instead of pressing his mouth to her, he pulled back and just stared at the wet curls between her legs. His hands moved from her br**sts to grip her inner thighs and open her more to him.

He'd gone down on her the night before, but being in the shower like this as he stared at her really did feel dirty...in the best possible sense of the word.

She could still hardly believe that it was Ryan between her na**d legs, the best looking man in the world kneeling in front of her, ready to worship her with his mouth and hands.

"Gorgeous." He pressed a soft kiss to her curls. "Absolutely gorgeous." He slid two fingers into her and groaned the words, "So wet. And hot."

As Vicki's inner muscles automatically clenched around him, he dragged his fingers from her, then pushed them back in.

"You're going to come for me, aren't you?"

Oh yes, that was exactly what she was going to do.

She bucked into his hand and then his mouth as his tongue found her. Her cries of pleasure bounced around the shower walls as he pushed her harder, higher, until she was a trembling, post-climactic mess.

Ryan grasped her hands in his again and before she could get her synapses to fire, he had her turned around and shifted so that her hands were flat on a tiled lip that held his soap and shampoo.

He held his hands over hers and braced her h*ps with his. "Are you steady enough to stay like that on your own while I get my clothes off?"

Oh God.

"Yes." Barely.

He ran his hands all the way up her arms and then down her back to the flare of her h*ps before he stopped. "Your ass is a goddamned miracle."

She wished she had the kind of experience with men and sex to answer him in a flirtatious way, but her earlier quip about being in the shower seemed to be the full extent of her flirty answers. Especially when he palmed her cheeks and squeezed them.

A gasp of pleasure fell from her lips as he sparked her desire anew with shocking ease, the fingers of one hand slipping into her again as he undid his pants with the other.

And then his hand was gone and he was pressing up and into her on a groan, his hands coming around to cup and squeeze her br**sts as she gripped the tiled lip.

"Hold on tight."

His gritted-out command barely pierced the fog of lust and pleasure in her head before he was pounding into her hard, fast, and so deep, his hands moving from her br**sts to her h*ps to grip her so possessively, so perfectly, that she had no choice but to feel him everywhere...and love every single second of being taken over.

Somewhere way down deep it felt like she'd been made with these curves just so Ryan could hold onto them when he was taking her, sending her to the edge again with his fierce lovemaking.

"Again, Vicki. I need to feel you come around me."

His deliciously dirty words were the final push she needed to catapult up, up, up and then as her forehead dropped onto the tile between her hands, she was pushing back into him at least as hard as he was into her to give him exactly what he'd just demanded.

With every clench of her inner muscles around him, he grew harder, thicker, until he suddenly pulled out, one hand moving between her legs to squeeze out the final tremors of her cl**ax even as he worked himself in his other hand.

Utterly lost in their dirty-sex shower world, Vicki didn't think before turning and moving to her knees in front of him to take him into her hands and mouth.

She barely heard his groan through the pounding of blood in her ears. For the first time in her life she understood the thrill of tasting a man like this, the arousal that pumped onto her tongue with every stroke of her hand around him, the sweet rapture of knowing she was giving him as much pleasure as he'd just given her. Twice, already.

She wanted to see his face when he came, but when she looked up through her lashes at him, she was surprised to see him staring back down at her in wonder.

And then, he was down on his knees with her on the shower floor and his mouth was on hers, the taste of both of them merging until she couldn't tell one from the other. She was just about to climb over him when he abruptly pulled back and cursed.

"I need a condom."

He gripped both of her hands and pulled her dripping wet from the shower, and across the bathroom floor to his bed. He was so strong - and so worked up - that he all but threw her down on the covers to wait for him as he yanked open his bedside drawer, found a condom, and ripped it open.

She couldn't wait for him to get it on and their hands tangled on his hard heat as they slid the latex down. And then his hands were on her br**sts again and his mouth was on hers as he was pushing her back onto the bed and shoving her legs open to push inside of her.

The sweet force of his desire for her - and hers for him - had her losing her breath again and she had to arch away from his mouth to throw her head back and gasp for it as she circled his h*ps with her legs and gripped his neck and shoulders. And, oh, was she glad for her strong sculptor's hands as they rode each other, Ryan finally cresting the edge he'd been coming to again and again, while Vicki erupted one more beautiful time beneath her best friend.