Craving His Best Friend's Ex

* * *

Her hair was soft. Way softer than anything he’d touched recently. Her eyes were half-closed, lips wet and swollen from their kiss. Her hands were on his waist, holding him lightly. She tipped her head to the side, their eyes met, and he thought of all the arguments he could make. All the reasons that he could list to make himself drop his hands and walk away from her. But he wanted her.

And he’d been denying it for too long. It had been easy when she lived with Mason, but now that she was here in his house, sitting on his balcony, putting her hands just inches above his groin, he knew he wasn’t interested in anything other than following his gut instinct, which was clamoring for him to pick her up and carry her into his bedroom.

“Are you sure?” he asked. He had to. This was Crissanne. She meant more to him than a hookup.

And it didn’t matter to him if it wasn’t the same for her. She might be looking for sex from him just to forget or to make Mason jealous or for a million other reasons. But for him this was the one woman he’d wanted for over a decade. The one woman he’d thought he’d never touch like this. And he needed to be sure she wanted him, too.

“Yes,” she said, her fingers moving up the center of his body until she wrapped them around his neck and kissed his chin and then his jaw.

He stopped thinking. His mind shut down and he turned his head to capture her lips with his. His grip on the back of her head tightened a little bit as he tried to control the passion that was roiling through his veins.

She was unleashing something that he’d forgotten was a part of him. He groaned and then wrapped his arm around her hips, standing up and carrying her into his bedroom without breaking the kiss. He stepped over the threshold, and she pulled her head back.

He let her slide down his body, biting back a moan at how good she felt against him. And then he realized she might change her mind now.

Hell.

He would have to let her go if she did.

But please, God, don’t let her change her mind.

He watched as she trailed her fingers down his chest again, and then glanced over her shoulder at the king-size bed that dominated his room. The studded-leather headboard was mounted on the wall and there was a huge pile of pillows that his housekeeper arranged each morning when she made the bed. Above the bed were the horns of the first longhorn bull he’d raised when he was a kid.

“I always forget you’re a cowboy,” she said, turning to look at the horns.

He shrugged, taking her hand in his and drawing her closer to his bed. “Not really, but I can put on my boots and cowboy hat if you want me to.”

“Only if you lose these jeans first.”

“Uh, I don’t think any self-respecting cowboy would be seen like that,” Ethan said.

“Too bad,” she said, raising both eyebrows as she stepped back and let her eyes move slowly over his body. “You’d look damn good in just a hat and boots.”

He felt his chest swell and he couldn’t keep his pecs from flexing. “You think so?”

She nodded. “Maybe one day...”

“Maybe,” he said. He wasn’t sure he’d do that. He was a lawyer. He was the serious Caruthers brother. The arguer who was always thinking of the consequences. Which couldn’t be said of him tonight, as he stood there in his bedroom next to Crissanne with a raging hard-on.

She turned back to him, her hair swinging around her shoulders as she held her hand out to him. He took it, lacing their fingers together, and she stood on her tiptoes and put her hand in the center of his chest again, spreading her fingers out and rubbing her palm over his skin. A shiver went through him and he drew her closer. He lowered his head, but this time it was just so that their foreheads would meet.

He felt the brush of her exhalation against his neck and closed his eyes.

Crissanne Moss was in his bedroom.

All the feelings he’d been ignoring flooded him, and he realized he wanted this to be more than it could be. He wanted sex, of course; he couldn’t deny it. But he wanted her to somehow be his.

And that wasn’t what was happening.

This was a hookup. He knew it.

For her, this had to be rebound sex. Something to prove to herself she was still attractive.

He knew because he’d had a dozen hookups like this. Where he was sleeping with someone else to prove that he was over her. Over Crissanne.

And now she was here, and he knew that he was willing to be whatever she needed him to be tonight. He was done with pretending that he didn’t want her.

He cursed under his breath, and she shifted her head to the side, putting her finger over his lips.

“Don’t think,” she said.

“Is that the only way you can be here with me?” he asked.

She cursed, and he realized that he wasn’t going to do this.

* * *

She didn’t know how to answer Ethan’s question. Of course, the whole situation felt like trouble no matter how she sliced it up. She wanted him. She wanted to be with him. She had narrowed down the list of people she could stay with to him. And now she was in his bedroom trying to convince herself that she could get with him and then be cool the next day.

But even with her skill at ignoring her emotions, that sounded like an impossible situation.

“No. Not like you mean,” she said. “It’s just if we start to think, then we’re going to be back to pretending that we don’t want each other. And that’s a lie. I’m tired of pretending with you, Ethan.”

“You say that but you were with my best friend,” Ethan said.

“That’s over.”

“Is it? Or is this about making him jealous?” Ethan asked.

Was it? She hadn’t even thought about Mason when she’d gotten on the plane. She’d been thinking of the one person who’d always made her feel better.

“No. Honestly, there are men a lot closer to LA who would have fit the bill if that was my goal. I’m here with you...even though this is what I wanted to avoid. And once we start talking it’s going to get complicated.”

He sighed and then stepped back from her, walking over to the bar in the corner of his bedroom and then pouring himself something that looked like whiskey from where she stood.

“It was complicated before we started talking,” he said quietly. “We were both just letting our hormones direct us.”

“Was that so bad?” she asked.

“I don’t know. The thing is, Crissy, I don’t want either of us to wake up in the morning with regrets. And as good as tonight would feel I know that we would.”

“Why is nothing easy?” she asked out loud. But really she wanted the answer from herself. “I’ll leave in the morning. I saw an ad for a B and B in the ladies’ room at the restaurant tonight. I should have gone to a hotel or something.”

He just watched her, the whiskey glass in his hand. As he stared at her she felt the emotions coming off of him, but she was too turned on to think about how it was impacting him. She was embarrassed that they hadn’t just fallen into bed, and dealing with everything else was just beyond her tonight.

What was it that caused these men in her life to pull back? What was it she lacked? She couldn’t even get the man who’d looked at her with lust in his eyes when he thought she wasn’t paying attention to sleep with her.

She was broken in some way that the world picked up on. She hadn’t realized it until this moment, and if she were a different person, one who actually allowed herself to connect to her emotions, she knew she’d be crying.

But instead she just turned and walked out of his bedroom, past the fire pit and the discarded shot glasses and limes, and tried not to think about how the fun they’d had earlier had turned into this mess.

She entered her bedroom and walked over to the bed, sitting down on the edge, rubbing the back of her neck. She couldn’t stay here.

Not for another second.

She wondered at the pattern of her life that every time she ended up in a place she wanted to be, she ruined it and had to leave. This was a new record for her. Not even twenty-four hours.

Stop.

She forced herself to move.

No thinking.

The words that had changed everything in Ethan’s bedroom now motivated her to get up and get dressed. She pulled on a pair of jeans and the first T-shirt she touched. Then she got her suitcase from the closet and put it on the foot of her bed.

Her phone vibrated and lit up on the nightstand, but she ignored it. She wasn’t in the mood to read her news updates. She had enough on her plate right now.

She went back to the closet but her phone was blowing up with messages, vibrating like crazy. She walked over and glanced down at the screen, seeing they were from a number that wasn’t programmed into her phone. But based on the area code, she thought it might be the production company that Mason worked for.

Unlocking her phone, she opened the text messages and began reading them with a mounting sense of disbelief. Then she let the phone fall from her fingers as she sank to the floor, drawing her knees up to her chest.

Mason’s plane had crashed.

Oh my God.

She hadn’t thought she had anything left to feel, but she hadn’t been ready to say goodbye to him. She immediately tried to call Mason. His phone rang, and then a message came on saying that he was out of range and to try her call again later.

She texted the production company back, asking for more information. But there was no immediate response.

She hadn’t realized that until this moment a part of her had been holding out hope that he’d come back to her. It made her feel small and stupid, because she’d thought she was over him. That she’d buried those emotions so deep, pretending she didn’t feel them. But they were there.

“Crissanne.”

She glanced up to see Ethan standing at the foot of her bed. His phone was in his hand and his face was pale. She stood up and ran over to him.

“Did you get the message?”

“Yeah. I can’t get through to Mase or the guy who sent the text,” Ethan said.

“Me, either,” she admitted. “Do you think he’s okay?”

“I don’t know. We both know he can survive a lot. He’s got skills.”

“Yeah. Skills.”

Ethan opened his arms and she closed the gap between them, putting her head against his shoulder and just crying. She didn’t know what to say. Suddenly she was very glad she hadn’t slept with Ethan. Not tonight. Not now when Mason was...

“Do you think he’s dead?” she asked.

“I hope not.”

Four

The next morning, after a mostly sleepless night when Crissanne had dozed off and on and Ethan had just watched her, they were both in his home office trying to get answers. Sitting in the guest chair, Crissanne looked smaller than he’d ever seen her. All that bravado she usually presented to the world was gone. She had one of the cashmere throws that his housekeeper placed on the back of the chairs over her shoulders.

Ethan was at his desk on his laptop, messaging with the production company and trying to use his contacts in South America to see if they had any local information. So far, all they knew was that Mason’s plane had gone down near the summit of the Andes where he had been heading to film his latest series for the production company. There was no information on whether anyone had survived.

Ethan heard voices in the hallway, and a moment later all three of his brothers were in the room. They all glanced over at Crissanne, and Hunter, who had lived in Malibu until recently and had met Crissanne a number of times, went to her and squeezed her shoulder.

“Don’t worry. If anyone can find Mason it’s Ethan,” Hunter said.

“What can we do?” Nate asked.

“I don’t know,” Ethan said honestly, looking at his oldest brother. “I’m on hold with some officials in Peru. We are communicating but not as well as I’d like since my Spanish is more suited to ordering food or talking about legal matters.”

“I’ve gotten pretty good lately,” Derek said. Derek was a surgeon who had just married his best friend, Bianca Velasquez. She and her small son had been living in Spain until last year when she’d moved back to Cole’s Hill.

“Do you mind?”

Derek gave him a hard look. “That’s why we’re here.”

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