Page 4 of Play to Win
Where was this Ethan twelve years ago? When she’d desperately wanted him to ask her to the prom? She would have gladly given him a drink and sex that night. After watching so many of her mother’s classic old movies about teenagers in love and their high school romances, she’d longed for hers to become a reality. But Ethan had never turned into the Danny Zuko to her Sandy fromGreaseor the Jake Ryan to her Samantha fromSixteen Candles. He’d remained the star of the football team who hung out with other jocks and cheerleaders and barely gave her the time of day.
Sure, he was interested in having sex with her now, but Portia wasn’t. She’d left that girl behind a long time ago and no amount of great smelling man with smoldering seductive eyes and a hard-on that made her mouth water, was going to change that.
“I’m not interested.” A statement she’d made many times over the past years, but one that validated the self-assured, self-reliant woman she was today.
To further state her claim, she pulled her arms away from his grasp and continued to pack her belongings. She didn’t look back at him, just kept moving and packing. The faster she got this done, the sooner she could get away from him.
“How long have you been doing this?” He decided to speak again after standing there for a few moments of silence.
“Five years,” she replied and clapped the lid down on the bin. She reached across the table to grab all her note cards. Some were further away than others, so Ethan picked them up and handed them to her.
Portia looked up at him and then down at the cards in his hand wondering what he was thinking about what she’d done with her life. Not that it mattered to her, she just wondered. Taking the cards from him, she included them with the stack she already had. “Why are you here, Ethan?”
Why now?she wanted to ask.
“Work,” he replied. “I mean, a friend needed an emergency delivery, so I brought it to him.”
“But you still live in Providence?”
He nodded. “I left for a while. Went to D.C. to work. But I’ve been back in Providence for a little over a year now.”
Back where he belonged, she surmised. Because every time Portia had thought of Providence, she’d thought of Ethan. There was no one without the other, which was a big part of the reason she’d never come back.
“Oh,” she said and slipped the cards into her bag.
Pulling the strap of the bag onto her shoulder, she bent down to lift the bin, but the top slid off and one of the “King Cock” dildos she’d used for her last demonstration fell to the floor. Cursing, she set the bin down and knelt to pick it up.
“I’m glad you’ve come back,” he said the moment she wrapped her hands around it.
Her fingers trembled as she attempted to look up at him. But what Portia saw instead was the thick bulge pressing against Ethan’s thigh. Her fingers clenched the dildo as thoughts of rubbing the bulge in Ethan’s pants filtered into her mind. She swallowed again, but it didn’t help. Damn her traitorous body.
Ethan knelt down in front of her. He didn’t touch the dildo, but he grabbed her wrist and guided it back to the bin until she released it.
“Let’s go back to your hotel.” It was a sincerely spoken invitation, whispered as he brought her wrist up to his lips to place a soft kiss on the spot where her pulse thumped.
It was the sexiest thing Portia had ever experienced. And in her line of work, that was saying a lot. It was saying so much that her chest heaved with indecision.
* * *
Ethan wanted her to say yes.
He hadn’t seen her in twelve years and admittedly hadn’t thought much about her in that time. It didn’t make since why suddenly he felt it was so important that she agree and let him follow her back to her hotel. She was a part of his past. Part of the years when he lived at the Grace House for Boys because his mother walked out on him and his father when Ethan was six years old, and his mean, bitter father had eventually drank himself to death on Ethan’s fifteenth birthday.
But he’d remembered her instantly. Well, after he’d gotten over the fact that this woman was standing in front of a room full of people giving a dildo the type of blow job Ethan had only ever dreamed of receiving. The memory of her mouth had come back first. He’d always used to stare at Portia’s mouth. She had full lips that weren’t too big for her pixie-like face. No, they always seemed to be just the right size by Ethan’s estimation. Today they were glossed and her eyes—hazel eyes, he noted as he stood close to her—were brighter than he recalled. Her hair was the same, yet different. Wild and frizzy curls was what Ethan recalled of Portia Merin. Today those curls seemed soft and sexy as they hung past her shoulders and down her back. So many curls in a dark brown and golden hue that accented her caramel complexion.
Her body was also different, in an intoxicatingly delicious type of way. Portia was still a petite woman, but her curves had definitely filled out over the years. She wore what should’ve been a simple black dress, but the way the material molded over every line and curve of her body was mouthwatering. Her shoes were high heels and even the orange painted toenails were sexy.
Yeah, he wanted to follow her home, like a dog following a bone. A part of him also wanted to know what or who had put that look of trepidation in her eyes.
“That’s not a good idea,” she was saying as she stood up.
Ethan stood too but didn’t back away from her. Sure, he was in her personal space and normally he knew the socially correct distance he should stand from a woman whom he was not sleeping with. He knew what to say and what not to say to women to assure them that he was not some random asshole trying to push up on them, or to make them uncomfortable in any way. His years in the Secret Service had taught him a lot of things like restraint and confidence. Other things, like common sense, he’d learned from living the type of life he had. Yet, he couldn’t seem to stay away from Portia.
And she didn’t seem to mind. That was also a key point in what was happening between them. She wasn’t trying to move away from him, nor was she threatening to kick his ass if he didn’t back up. Ethan was encouraged by both facts.
“Why?” he answered when he finally realized that she was responding to his comment about him following her back to her hotel room.
“I don’t know—” she started to say and then stopped.
