After Her Flower Petals: A Second Chance Romantic Comedy (The Svensson Brothers Book 7)

by Alina Jacobs

  Garrett was incredulous. “You all have lost your fucking minds.”

  Crawford opened his mouth, but Garrett cut him off. “I already told you I’ll have the blackmail lined up, but for the record, this is not going to end well.”

  “It might,” I said, still reeling from the fact that I had to choose between my happiness with Meg and my sisters. But it had to be my sisters. I couldn’t have it any other way.

  Remy clapped a hand on my shoulder then left to go pack. Wordlessly, I turned to leave.

  “Where are you going?” Greg asked.

  I sighed. “I have a date.”

  57

  Meghan

  I was stupidly giddy to be going on a date with Hunter.

  The dress looked great on me. “It’s not even too over-the-top for Harrogate,” I gushed to Kate. “I don’t think Walter would have been this sensitive to the fact that Harrogate is a small town and somewhat conservative… sometimes at least.”

  The dress was tea length and ivory-colored, with a big bold pattern of peonies on it and capped sleeves. I had been on dates since Hunter broke my heart five years ago but none in which I had felt this good.

  Until I looked in the mirror. “My hair is a mess.” I groaned.

  “Wide-tooth comb and put it in a bun,” Kate directed.

  “I could flat iron it.”

  “No!” Kate yelled.

  I didn’t listen to her. I shimmied the dress back off and set it carefully on my bed.

  “Bad idea, bad idea!” Kate insisted as I plugged the flat iron in.

  “What, no!” I said as I clamped down on a piece of my hair. It came out smooth and shiny.

  “This looks great,” I said happily, grabbing another chunk close to my face. “I can’t go out with Hunter with frizzy hair. This is my chance to make a good impression.”

  “You guys had sex on the floor of your office!” Kate shrieked through the video call. “You’re way past first impressions!”

  Sex in my office. Damn, it had been good. Hunter sure knew what he was doing.

  The smoke alarm went off.

  “Shit, shit!” I unclamped the smoking flat iron and set it on the bathroom counter… along with a chunk of my hair.

  “Oh my god!” I shrieked.

  “Lord have mercy,” Kate declared. “I can smell the burning hair from here.”

  “What am I going to do?”

  “Let me see…”

  I huddled in front of my phone camera. A good patch of hair on my head had been burned off. It was right at my left temple. There was no way to hide it, especially because the burnt ends looked like one of those cartoons after they had stuck a fork into an electric socket.

  “I look insane,” I cried.

  “It will be fine.” Kate tried to talk me off the ledge.

  “No, it’s not! I’ll have to cancel my date. I’ll have to drop out of the race. I can’t go out looking like this!”

  “Use some hair gel and shellac it in place. Make it seem like part of your bun.”

  I moaned and slid to the floor.

  “Hunter’s going to be so infatuated with you, he won’t even notice,” Kate assured me.

  “You look amazing in that dress,” Hunter told me an hour later. I had been watching the street, anxiously waiting for him to arrive. My apartment was a disaster, and I also didn’t want him to come in, have hot, heavy, and rough sex, then have my missing chunk of hair fly up and ruin the moment.

  I was waiting downstairs for him when he drove up in his fancy sports car. I anxiously felt the side of my head as he stepped out. I grabbed the passenger door and hopped in before he could help me. I didn’t want him too close to my head.

  Hunter leaned over to kiss me once he got back behind the wheel. I tried to keep my head straight and direct his hands away from my hair. I started to sweat. I was sure I could feel the burnt tuft slowly start to peel up.

  Hunter peered at me in the dark.

  “I’m hungry,” I blurted out before he could ask me what was wrong. I didn’t need him to give me grief about my hair.

  “Oh, okay.” He gave me an assessing look.

  “Didn’t eat all day. Too busy baking.” I felt more pieces of my hair peel up. I was going to look like an Oompa Loompa once Hunter saw me in the light.

  “I did have one more thing for you,” Hunter said, pulling a small box out of his jacket pocket. He opened it up. Inside was a delicate gold chain, and hanging from it was a small five-leaf flower studded with pink and white diamonds. They sparkled in the streetlamp light.

  “That’s really pretty,” I said, breathing in. “I love it.”

  “I thought it might go with your dress.” He plucked the necklace out of the case and leaned over to hang it around my neck.

  “No!”

  He jerked back.

  “I’ll… er… I’ll do it,” I told him. Way to go, Meg. You finally go on a nice date after years of being taken to creeks or the pet fish store or the guy with the feral cats in his car. And you can’t even act like a normal person.

  The anxiety was making the sweat worse. I longed to scratch my scalp with my fingernails, especially the part where the hair was missing.

  I quickly fastened the necklace on. “It’s beautiful,” I said sincerely. “I love it.” I tried to fan myself secretively as Hunter drove me to the Girl Meets Fig restaurant.

  I was hot and itchy, and I needed a drink, and I hoped Zoe was still serving the fried squid and spicy dipping sauce.

  “So, who was that brother in all the leather?” I asked to break up the awkward silence.

  “No one.”

  “Seriously?” I peered at him, using the excuse to press my hand to my head.

  “Crawford was just in town.” Hunter’s mouth was pressed into a thin line.

  “Oh? For what?”

  “Nothing.”

  “I mean…”

  “It’s not important.” Hunter’s hands were gripped on the steering wheel. He found a parking space a few doors down from the restaurant. It was crowded when we walked in—it seemed a lot of townspeople had wanted to go out for dinner Friday night.

  Zoe was harried, racing around to seat people. Minnie, who was waitressing, was toting a large tray of fried squid.

  “Yes. I’m getting all of that.”

  “Be with you in a second, Meg,” Zoe called. Then she stopped and almost dropped the waters she was carrying. “And… Hunter?”

  His hand was on my waist.

  “Can we sit on the roof?” he asked.

  Zoe’s mouth dropped open. All conversation in the restaurant stopped as everyone stared at us.

  “You’re here together?” Zoe asked slowly. “Like together, together?”

  The crowd peered at us. Several people took out phones.

  Shoot.

  “Guess we should seal the deal,” Hunter said, a smile playing around his mouth. He cupped my face and kissed me. I melted against him.

  “Now that sounds like I won a bet!” one woman announced.

  “No!” Art said as Hunter released me. “You can’t say they’re back together. I told everyone here that we have to wait until they’ve moved in together or are married.”

  “That was a marriage kiss!” Bettina insisted. “I want my money! I bet that they would get back together, and here they are.”

  “We can’t confirm it!” Art hollered back. “No one’s getting any money until I get a marriage certificate or a utility bill with both their names on it.”

  “I’m calling the police!” Dottie shouted.

  “Oh my god!” Minnie shrieked over the din. “Meg, what happened to your hair?”

  I grabbed at my head in horror. The heavy kiss had been too much for the hair gel. The burned patch of hair was sticking straight up from my head. “Crap!”

  Hunter peered at me.

  “Don’t look at me.” I held up my bag to cover my hair.

  Hunter’s nostrils flared. “Did Walter do that?”
>
  “Are you kidding me? What the—no, he didn’t do that!” I shrieked. “I was trying to straighten my hair, and I burnt it off. That’s the last time I try and impress you on a date, Hunter Svensson.”

  “See!” Bettina hollered, picking up her empty breadbasket and hurling it at Art. “It’s a date. You owe me money!”

  Zoe held two fingers up to her lips and let out a piercing whistle. “No betting in my restaurant! And stop throwing things.” She stomped over to us. “We have a table free upstairs.”

  The rooftop was a bit less rowdy than the main-floor restaurant. But people still gawked as we walked to a table near the back that looked out over the historic train station.

  “Guess all three of us are going to be all over the Facebook group,” Hunter joked.

  “Three?”

  “You, me, and what’s left of your hair.”

  “Screw you,” I mumbled as Hunter leaned over to kiss me.

  Zoe set down a small pitcher of the raspberry gin rosemary muddle. I ignored the glass.

  “I’m not sharing this,” I said to Hunter as he watched me drink out of the pitcher, bemused.

  58

  Hunter

  I grinned and leaned back in my chair and let out a relieved laugh.

  All through the tense car ride with Meg, I had been worried that she was on to me, that she knew I was turning up the charm to convince her to go along with my brothers’ ill-conceived plan.

  It was heartbreaking. Meg looked amazing in that dress. And the way she laughed and joked as we talked about the campaign and dealing with the various committee meetings—this was what I wanted for the rest of my life, for us to be together. I wanted a thousand evenings like this with her.

  If the election didn’t blow my last chance with her, then whenever she found out about my sisters, that would be it. It would be the final nail in the coffin of our romance. I needed to savor every moment of being with her like this.

  Meg held out a hand and placed it on mine. “Where did you go?”

  “Hm? Oh, just thinking about what I’m giving you for dessert tonight.”

  “I ate all the tiramisu,” she confessed. “If that was where you were headed.”

  Her hand was still on mine. I placed my palm on it.

  “They have banana pudding here,” she suggested. “We could take it to go.”

  Fuck, I loved her. “I think I can give you a better banana pudding than anything you’d find here.”

  “We serve a very fine banana pudding,” Zoe said, coming up to our table. “Big thick bananas in a very creamy pudding with a dollop of white whipped cream as the finishing touch.”

  Meg caught her lip in her teeth, trying not to laugh.

  “Of course, we do mash our bananas.”

  “I don’t know if Hunter wants his banana mashed.” Her bare foot was stroking my calf. “But we’ll take two anyway, to go,” Meg said as I tried to keep it together.

  “Do you like whipped cream?” Meg opened the banana pudding container.

  I smirked. “I could always eat some cream.”

  My joke hit the mark. With a leer of her own, she swiped a finger along the top of the dessert. She drew a heart around one nipple. Then, with her gaze flicking to mine, she did the same with the other. Then she lay back, arching so her cream-covered tits stood up proudly. “Bon appétit.”

  I had a flash of appreciation for the truly terrible pun, but it was rude to keep a lady waiting. I bent, licking and sucking the sweet cream off her tits. Not that I needed the excuse. I loved the feel of her breasts in my hands, the way her nipples pebbled to stiff peaks in my mouth and under my tongue. Soon, there was very little whipped cream to be had. I kept going, pressing kisses between her tits, up her neck, tasting her skin inch by inch.

  Her breathy moans seemed to shoot straight to my dick. I couldn’t help myself; I pressed my shaft against her thigh to ease the ache.

  “Mmm,” she hummed. “Am I making you hard? You like these?” She arched her back, all but shoving her tits in my face. I had the urge to motorboat them.

  Instead, I took two handfuls and pushed them together. The bits of whipped cream I hadn’t managed to lick clean yet looked like splatters of come. “You know I do,” I said huskily, my thumbs tracing around the edges of her nipples. “I want to see them dirty.”

  “Then what are you waiting for?”

  I glanced at her just to make sure she was serious—the mischievous light in her eyes told me she was. Then, just to make her intentions crystal clear, Meghan brushed my hands away to cup her own tits. Squishing them together, she lifted them to create an enticing tunnel for me to fuck.

  “Go ahead,” she said. “I know you want to.”

  I wasn’t going to ask twice. Shifting around, I threw one thigh over to straddle her rib cage. Then I slid in. Soft and hot, I looked down to watch my cock disappear between her perfect breasts. She held them together to keep the tunnel tight, her mouth parted.

  “You’re so hot,” I breathed, amazed. “You’re getting off on this, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah.” She wasn’t going to pretend otherwise. “Are you going to come on my tits?”

  “Going to paint them white,” I promised and shifted to rub faster in and out between them. The sight was lewd and dirty and so, so hot. I was close already—the familiar feeling of hot pressure building behind my balls.

  When I was about to come, I pulled out and took myself in hand. Pleasure rolled up and down my spine. I ejaculated thick streams over those hot nips, some splatters nearly hitting her chin.

  Meghan tipped her head back and moaned. It was one of the most erotic things I had seen in my life.

  “Fuck,” I breathed, sitting back to admire the work. Meghan was a mess, and she was gorgeous.

  “Hmm.” She looked coyly up at me. “That was nice, but don’t tell me you’re done yet.”

  I smiled at her. “Not even a little.”

  She had made me come, and it was time for me to return the favor. Eating Meghan out was a pleasure. I loved the sense of power I had literally at the tip of my tongue. With the eager little noises she made, I knew my cock would be back in action in no time.

  Moving back, I knelt between her thighs and threw one of her legs over my shoulder. She parted for me, eager and glistening wet. I pressed my face against her hot, wet pussy.

  Her clit was hard with arousal against my tongue. I lapped my tongue right over the nub just to listen to her breathy moans. Her legs flexed involuntarily against me.

  Smiling, I teased her with the end of my tongue just to hear her curse. It didn’t take long. She was always delightfully responsive.

  “Hunter… Hunter, I’m close.”

  I could hear desperation in her voice. My own cock was hard in renewed interest. It was as if I had not come before at all. Finally, I put my fingers in play, plunging into her slick hole as I swiped my tongue over and around her clit.

  Meghan cried out and then clenched all over, rolling her hips into my face. I kept up until the spasms passed and then sat back.

  Covered in come, wrecked, she gazed up at me. Then her eyes fell to my half-hard cock. She smiled and let her legs fall aside.

  This woman, I thought as I reached for the condom to roll it on. This amazing, amazing woman…

  Her body welcomed me inside her. I was rock-hard again and done with playing, thrusting roughly, with quick movements meant to get us both off.

  Meghan rolled her hips up in time with my thrusts. She threw her head back, lips parting in ecstasy. Her nails bit into my shoulders as she clenched around me as I fucked her pussy unmercifully.

  She peaked again with a shout, and the feeling of her spasming around me tipped me past the edge. I came inside her, buried to the hilt.

  Meg was sprawled on the bed after I finished. I rolled off beside her, one arm draped over her waist. I reached up to cup her tits and then played with the necklace that hung between them.

  “Guess you gave me two ne
cklaces tonight.” She smirked.

  I pressed my mouth to hers, making her whimper softly.

  I need this for the rest of my life.

  59

  Meghan

  I woke up with Hunter wrapped around me. It was surprising how right it felt.

  I stroked his handsome face. His jaw was ever so slightly stubbled. I traced the tendon on his neck down to his collarbone, to the slight curve of his pecs, then to his biceps.

  He stirred and pressed a kiss to my neck. “This is how I’ve dreamed of waking up,” he told me softly. “Every morning I would be disappointed when you weren’t there with me.” He kissed me again. “But now I have you.”

  It made my heart soar. He nuzzled my hair then kissed the frizzy burned patch.

  “I don’t know what I’m going to do about that.” I wrinkled my nose. “I’ll have to have extensions put in, I guess.” Not that I can afford that.

  Hunter snickered. “Leave it. It’s cute.”

  “No it’s not. It’s a disaster.”

  “You’re my disaster,” he said, drawing me close to him.

  I slipped out from under the covers. “I’m going to grab breakfast,” I told him.

  He rolled over to face me. “You’re coming back, though, right?” He frowned slightly.

  I pressed a kiss to his mouth. “Of course! It’s just that the only thing I have here is stale goldfish crackers.” I shrugged on my sweatpants. The apartment building was around the corner from Between Her Biscuits. There was no need to get all dressed up.

  “You don’t want an orgasm for the road?” Hunter asked.

  “Sex makes me hungry.”

  “I’ll come with you,” he offered.

  “I want to come back and get to be surprised and delighted that an attractive man just appeared in my bed!”

  Hunter huffed out a laugh.

  I shoved a hat on my head because of the hair situation and slipped out into the hallway.