distracted her.
“Are you okay?” Gage stilled, sensing her hesitation. He looked at her, not allowing her to escape.
“I’m just…I’m on the pill. Are you healthy?” The birth control discussion would buy her time.
“I’m good,” he said.
“Oh, I’m sure you are,” she said, going for his belt, fighting to get back in the groove.
He gently eased his fingers away from her spot and stopped her hand. “What just happened, Sugar?”
“Nothing,” she said, embarrassed that he’d noticed. “I guess I expect Oliver to interrupt us with a call.”
He smiled at the joke, but he was watching her. “Do we need to be interrupted?”
“Of course not. Friends with benefits is definitely the way to go. We—”
Amazingly enough, the phone did ring. They stared at it, then at each other and burst out laughing.
She fell to the side beside Gage, who picked up the phone. “Yes?…Oh, hello, Chef Winslow.” He grinned at her, then focused on the caller. “The meal was wonderful. We enjoyed it very much…Yes. Very moist…Definitely…Yes, a terrific choice for the menu. Absolutely. No problem…thanks again.”
He hung up and looked down at her lying beside him.
“The chef?” she asked.
“Yep. He’s working up a low-carb menu. I didn’t have the heart to tell him we hadn’t tried the cheesecake. Wait.” He slid his finger across a spot on her suit, then licked it. “Excellent.”
He ran his gaze down her body, making her feel naked, even though her jacket had fallen closed and she still wore her skirt, then he seemed to gather himself, get control. “Probably good we got interrupted, huh? We’re not thinking clearly.”
“Forget thinking,” she said. “Let’s finish what we started.” She moved to kiss him, but the expression on his face stopped her cold. He wanted more than just sex.
Sex was all Sugar could offer him.
Which meant he would go. Cold fear clawed at her. “I don’t want you to leave Spice It Up,” she said softly.
“How can I stay?” He took her hand, linked their fingers.
Things change. People change. Even Gage could change. She understood that clearly. “But I’ll need your help.”
“The franchise is a bad idea, Sugar.”
Thinking fast, she came up with a solution. “We need time. You said it yourself. We have to let things sink in before we make any decisions.”
“How much time?” Gage said, his eyes searching hers.
“A month. Until the travel convention. Give me a month to convince you franchising is the way to go.” A month to convince him to stay.
“Franchising won’t work, Sugar.”
“You have a month to prove it to me.”
“Are you serious?”
“You can’t just walk away, Gage. Not yet.”
They were great partners, dammit. Great partners hips didn’t grow on trees. She refused to think beyond that, not while Gage still looked at her, his eyes clear and hot, and held her hand so tightly she never wanted him to let go.
That’s what had happened. She’d been trying to hold on to him, and that need had turned sexual. It was just human nature. As simple and conquerable as that.
SUGAR WANTED MORE TIME.
So did Gage. He’d been foolish, pushing for too much too fast. Had he thought he was in some romantic movie with violins and pink sunsets? Lord. This was Sugar, who treated men like library books—check ’em out and turn ’em in before they’re due.
On the other hand, they’d had twelve years. If they were meant to be together, wouldn’t it have happened by now? Maybe he was grasping at straws.
No. Something wonderful had brimmed in Sugar’s green eyes when he’d touched her—surprised hope. Arousal, too, which he’d loved. Then she seemed to scare herself. What exactly frightened her? How she felt? Or what she’d seen in his face?
“One month, huh?” One month to decide. One month to get her to fall in love with him.
A month of making love? God, how he wanted that.
But Sugar hid behind sex—rushed into it, used it, ironically enough, to keep people away. Except she hadn’t kept him away. He’d seen that, too, in her face. Connection, closeness. Was that what scared her?
Maybe she hid her fear behind detachment. What did she say about her parents’ divorce? Nothing stays the same. Love and let go. He didn’t buy that. It had to be fear that made Sugar crave motion.
If he could only show her another way, make her see that if she would just hold still for a second, happiness could settle around her.
Since everything between them was negotiated, it was his turn to propose terms. Think, man. Get it together.
But he could still taste her sweet breasts on his tongue, feel her lush wetness under that slip of underwear, where she was soft and needy and eager.
Say something rational.
She was waiting, her cheeks pink, her breasts peeking from the unzipped jacket. What about that friends with benefits option?
Nope. Not even close to what he wanted with Sugar. He zipped the jacket all the way to the top, shutting away temptation, before he could get a word out. “Okay. One month. But you have to do something for me.”
“What?” She tilted her head, lips pursed, ready to haggle.
“Let me show you the magic of Spice It Up.”
“I know the magic. I helped create it.” They both shared the conviction that couples’ therapy required deep examination of intimacy in a relaxed environment, which was what they strove to create at Spice It Up. Gage came to that knowledge through research—he’d done extensive studies of the literature. Sugar had formed her opinions after three years as a couples’ therapist. A weekend retreat was often just the start of transformation, so she’d wanted an environment to comfortably pursue more success, more intimacy.
“You’ve forgotten a lot. We both have. I want us to sample the guest experience.”
“You want us to stay together? In a suite?”
“Not stay. Just get a feel for it. We can register, go through the orientation with Erika, plan a schedule, choose workshops, even participate, all to gather impressions of how it is to stay at Spice It Up.”
“And what about…this?” She motioned between them, her eyes hot. She was excited, but also nervous.
“Sex would be too easy.”
“Too easy, huh?” She sighed, but he felt her relief. What had just happened between them had upset her.
“We’re doing this as partners.”
“But the whole point of Spice It Up is to improve a couple’s sex life. Intimacy through sex. Healing through sex. Exercises for sex. Sex, sex, sex.”
“We can work around that, can’t we? We’re more than our urges.” Yeah, right. There was just a bit of glove leather between him and her naked body and if she said sex one more time with those lips, he couldn’t be held accountable for his actions. He shifted his body to hide the proof of his distress.
“You would say that.” She sighed. “Mr. Self-Control.”
She had no idea. Just two zippers and he’d have heaven. Forget soothing