Page 66 of Play for Keeps

He shook his head. “I have no issue with playing dirty.”

“Ty, please.”

Appetite completely gone, Ty tossed the uneaten pizza into the box. “I don’t get this. What is your issue with seeing where things go?”

“Seeing where things go?” She repeated his words back to him as if he’d asked the most ridiculous question in the world. “Myissueis it’s messy.” She tore a section of towel from the roll and wiped the tips of her fingers with meticulous care. “I deal with messes all day long. The last thing I want is a mess when I go home. That’s why I pay for a cleaning service, a guy who mows my lawn, and have a standing appointment to get my color done every four weeks.” She waved a hand toward her hair. “I like order inmyworld. I like to know what’s going to happen when.”

He shoved his chair back with enough force to make the legs squeal against the tile. Millie flinched a little but recovered quickly, of course. By the time he came to his feet, her face was a mask of polite interest.

“So basically, you want to schedule a fuck with me every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday, but you don’t want any kind of real intimacy.” He crumpled the towel he’d been using as a napkin and threw the wad into the open pizza box. “You gonna pay me?”

Her eyes widened, and he caught her soft intake of breath. Good. He’d shocked her. Pissed and tired of being jerked around, he crossed his arms over his chest.

“I assume you pay to get your toilets scrubbed and your roots dyed.” He paused and pursed his lips as if giving the matter real thought. “I think a hundred a night seems fair enough, since I’m gonna get my kicks too. For that, you get oral, textbook sex, and, of course, as much finger-banging as you want—”

“Ty.” Millie rose from her chair and placed a conciliatory hand on his arm, but he wasn’t buying.

His phone began to vibrate in his pocket. He ignored the call but didn’t bother to silence the alert. Instead, he shook her hand from his arm and flashed an insincere smile. “Unlimited orgasms. Tell you what, I’ll even throw in an option for anal for free.” He shrugged. “You can kick me out whenever you want, but I want cash, no checks accepted. I’d have to ask for two forms of ID, and we don’t want to get too personal.”

“Stop,” she snapped.

He couldn’t. He clenched his fists at his sides and tried to take a calming breath. It was no good. He had no capacity for holding back on anything else. “I’ve licked you, Millie. I’ve licked and kissed and sucked every inch of you. I’ve been inside you. My dick, my tongue, my fingers… I’ve felt you come and come inside you. There aren’t enough condoms in the world to keep this from getting messy.”

“Then we need to end this now,” she said in a rush.

“Too late. I’m in love with you.”

The admission surprised him as much as it did her. Not because he hadn’t known, but because he figured it was way too early in the game to let her see his clutch play. But he had told her, and now the truth was out there, and he didn’t want to take the declaration back.

“No.”

The gleam in her eyes was the only thing that helped him believe her denial was an automatic response rather than a rejection. Millie Jensen wore the lean and hungry look of a woman who’d given up trusting in love but hadn’t quite let go of believing in it.

He let one shoulder rise and drop as if the bomb he’d dropped wasn’t atomic. Nothing to do but own his feelings for her now. “I love you, Mil. Started falling the day we met and have been ever since.”

When she didn’t take off for the door, he reached for her. His hands closed around the lean muscle of her upper arms, and he drew her closer. But not too close. He wanted her to have all the space she needed to absorb what he was telling her.

“The night you showed up at my door…” He looked up at the ceiling, trying to find exactly the right words to say. “God, I was happy to see you. So happy I should be ashamed, but I’m not. I felt like…” He hesitated to put his true feelings on the line, lest she misconstrue his meaning, but he was in this far already. No point in pulling up short of the goal. “Like I deserved you. I’d done my time. I tried, honestly tried, to make my marriage work, even though I knew there was no hope. It would have imploded one way or another. I didn’t want to be the bad guy.” He pressed his hand to his chest. “I was the one who asked her to marry me. I made the mistake. I was the one who was old enough to know better.”

Something in his speech seemed to plod her out of her shock. “But you married her anyway.”

“Mari was pregnant when we got married.”

“Oh.”

The word came out of her so soft and small he almost didn’t hear her. “She miscarried the week after we got back from Las Vegas.”

“Oh.”

“By that time…” He shrugged. “But I wanted a baby. I figured we’d try again, but Mari…”

“Right.”

Millie took a breath so deep it rattled through her. Then her whole body convulsed, and she wrenched herself from his grip. He thought she was bolting and started after her, but the second she hit the hall, she took a sharp right and headed toward the bedrooms rather than the door.

“Millie?”

She didn’t answer. Instead, she clamped one hand to her mouth and the other to her stomach, curling into herself as she race-walked toward the guest bath. Seconds later, he heard the lid hit the back of the tank, and the unmistakable sound of retching carried down the hall. Concerned, Ty rushed to the doorway. He arrived in time to see her groping for the toilet paper holder, tears streaming from her eyes as she wiped her mouth with the back of her hand.

---