Kiss From a Rose

by Bella Fontaine

  I didn’t know one woman could have this effect on me, but I should have. She always had.

  “I want the food, but I want you too.” I brushed my lips over hers.

  “I’m kind of here already, mister.” She spoke against my lips but then pulled back. “I hope it’s okay. I don’t want you to think I think I can just show up at your house.” Suddenly, she looked uneasy. “It was just a spur-of-the-moment decision, but I should have told you just in case, um… you might have someone else here.”

  She turned away and picked up her little purse on the counter like she was getting ready to leave.

  I moved closer and turned her back to face me. The answer to that question was clear in my mind. So clear it scared me, because I didn’t do relationships.

  “There’s no one else. Why do you think that?”

  “Tall leggy blonde you looked cozy with the other week. She looked more like the kind of girls I’m used to seeing you with.”

  She actually wasn’t wrong, but I was the kind of man who saw a woman and was attracted to beauty. Anya was the first to attract me to her physical beauty as well as her inner beauty.

  “Nothing’s happening between me and the blonde, and I respect you more than that to go dicking around town. Besides, I can’t see any other woman right now.”

  I stepped back and took off my jacket, throwing it over the chair beside the breakfast table.

  With her brows lowered, she gave me a pensive stare. “What does that mean?

  I chuckled because she was acting the way I knew she would. “Anya, I’m too hooked on you to see anyone else. Example, I’m talking to the woman at checkout, and she says something that sounds similar to what you would say. So, I think of you. I pick up a jar of honey just to innocently spread it over some toast, and I think of you because it tastes like you. I look at the sea and how the sun sparkles on the surface, and I think of how it does the same thing on your skin, and fuck, when you put that shimmer stuff all over yourself, I’m practically a goner.”

  She was smiling. I wasn’t romantic, but that was me trying.

  Anya moved closer to me and pressed her hands to my chest. “That’s the sweetest thing anyone’s ever said to me. You think I taste like honey?”

  “Baby, I happen to know firsthand that you do.”

  She giggled and clutched my shirt. I loved when I knew what she was thinking, but sometimes I wished that I didn’t because when worry washed over her pretty face, I knew why.

  We hadn’t done much talking over the last few days, but the time to talk again was knocking at our door.

  I didn’t want her to have any part of what was going on. I wanted her out of it.

  She would be safer. Donny had threatened me with her, and I could have killed him for what he said. I felt an injustice at the thought that all I did was rough him up and didn’t at least shoot off something.

  “I’m worried, Caine.”

  “I know. I always know.”

  “It’s easy to forget when I’m with you, but sometimes I just can’t. There’s Halle and these people who want a hundred grand or the motel. I’m not stupid. Halle doesn’t have a hundred grand. She has the motel though.”

  “I told you. Let me worry about that. Focus on Halle. She needs you to be strong.”

  The one thing we took a break for yesterday was a call from Dr. Fernandez. He wanted to talk about surgery. So, it was going ahead. I knew it was for the best, but that didn’t make me worry any less.

  “I don’t even know if I can do that. Caine, what if she doesn’t make it? What if she just doesn’t make it? I don’t know what I’d do.”

  “Me too, but we can’t think like that.” Halle was like family to me. It would devastate me if anything happened to her, and worse because I knew that I could have helped more and she didn’t come to me.

  “I feel helpless. Maybe I should at least call the loan company and come to some agreement.”

  “No.” I absolutely did not tell her I’d gone there today, same as I wouldn’t divulge what happened when I went.

  “Caine, I feel bad because this isn’t your problem. I really doubt that when you decided to chill out for a year, you planned to get sucked into our drama.”

  “It’s not like that, not one bit. Anya, I’m going to beg you to keep out of this and let me take care of the situation.”

  She blinked a few times.

  “Can you trust me?” I knew that was a difficult question for her because I knew she didn’t. She’d told me herself already that she didn’t trust me.

  “It’s not about that.”

  “It is.”

  “How?”

  “Because if you trust me, you’ll believe that I can sort the problem out.” It wasn’t a promise. It was more of a statement of fact.

  I knew I’d basically declared war on whoever these guys were, but I could fight fire with fire. I didn’t allow myself or the people I loved to be pushed around by anybody.

  “It’s a really big deal, Caine, and it may get to a stage where you want to back out.”

  I sighed and looked her over. “I won’t. I assure you I won’t.” Pulling her closer, I cupped her face. “I need you to focus on Halle and yourself. Don’t forget yourself. Just say the word, and I’ll build whatever you need for this idea of yours. Have you thought much more about it?”

  “A little. I think it’s a great idea, Caine. Shawna mainly came up with it, and I can’t believe I didn’t think of it.”

  “Shawna hasn’t got half as much on her plate as you do, plus I always figured her grandma had her back. Very insightful that woman is, although a little creepy.”

  She laughed again.

  “When did you meet Shawna’s grandmother?”

  “I rescued her cat once, and she gave me a blessing. That was just before I left for the Navy. She told me if I sought the higher ground when I was in trouble, I’d make it back home. There was an incident when I took her advice very literally and climbed up a tree. That saved me from an ambush, and I was able to save my team. That’s how I got my medal of honor.”

  Her lips parted. “Really? That’s amazing. Caine, she thinks I’m cursed, and I haven’t found my way in life because I keep travelling unknown roads.”

  I grinned at her. “Well, baby, maybe being here on a road you know well, with a sailor who can travel by the stars, will work in your favor.”

  She seemed to like that. “Yeah, maybe.”

  “So, right now, I’m thinking we’ll eat, then I’ll indulge in you here, then we’ll go to the motel, and I can indulge in you there too, then we come back here, and I can indulge in you some more.”

  “Caine, you’re going to make me crazy.”

  I nodded and scooped her up into my arms. Being crazy in lust together was a hell of a lot better than facing reality.

  It would be okay for today. Tomorrow was a different story.

  Chapter 14

  Anya

  1 whole chopped cucumber

  3 tsp honey

  1 cup of brown sugar

  Three drops of rose oil

  Perfect.

  I smiled to myself and looked out the window at the little pond outside Caine’s house.

  I’d been sitting out in his sitting room by the window bay writing down all the recipes for my organic treatments.

  I got a notebook the other day and kept it in my bag. I got it because it looked pretty. There was a silhouette of a woman in an elegant dress standing on the boardwalk with the sunlight beaming on her. It looked very retro. Like 1920s, Great Gatsby style. I loved anything like that, so I’d grabbed it, and now I was making use of it.

  Most writers kept a notebook of sorts and jotted down anything worth noting. Bits of inspiration, ideas that popped into their minds, whatever caught their eye.

  I thought I could borrow from that and make it my own.

  That cucumber blend would definitely be an amazing face scrub for someone with combination skin, but the combination that was
more on the sensitive side. The cucumbers and honey would take care of that.

  I was that skin type, and I hated when I went shopping for skin care products and getting a whole bunch of products supposedly good for people with combo skin, only to find that they weren’t. For me, I would end up covered in zits.

  One of the things I absolutely planned to do if and when I finally made it in this business that I’d dreamed about for so long was create my own skincare range of organic products. There were so many things you could do with the many items in your kitchen.

  I thought I’d test out the recipes I had in mind when this spa took off. It would be a good test for me. I thought I could start off basic with the standard beauty treatments because I could do all of that, and then we could add in more things eventually.

  Like the sauna and steam rooms didn’t have to be ordinary like at most places. I thought I could jazz it up with different fragrances at different sessions of the day. So, maybe in the mornings, I could have something like eucalyptus and turpentine oil in the steam and the coal to open the pores and awaken the mind and body, and then in the evenings, I could have lavender or rose for relaxation.

  This was good stuff. I wrote that down and glanced at the clock. It was eight. At ten we’d have to go to the hospital to see Halle and talk about the surgery. I wasn’t looking forward to it at all.

  Writing down all this stuff was distracting, but I kind of had to wrap it up now.

  I’d left Caine in bed fast asleep. I couldn’t believe I was here at his place. Here and still here with no plans to leave before he woke.

  With everything going on, I still tried to keep in mind that we were… well, he’d said he wasn’t relationship material.

  He’d make a good relationship guy, but like he said, he wasn’t. I guess the label wasn’t for everyone, and it would be prudent for me to keep remembering that.

  “Baby, you complain about me making you crazy, but it’s you making me crazy,” said a very tired, sexy, literally just got out of bed Caine.

  Jesus Lord, how did he do it?

  How could anyone roll out of bed and look that good?

  His hair was ruffled, like it had been styled that way, a shadow of a beard covered his cheeks, and in his boxers his legs looked completely sculped, like one of those statues you’d see in the museum from the Renaissance era. The man was a masterpiece, and my heart skittered as I looked at him.

  God, he was sexy, and sexier when he looked at me and smiled like that.

  “How so?” I swiveled around, so that my legs were hanging over the bay. I wore a baby pink negligee he loved.

  The heat in his eyes as he surveyed me burned me from all the way over here.

  “The bed was cold where you lay. I wanted you again, and when I reached for you, you weren’t there. You treat me terribly, baby.”

  I couldn’t help but laugh, loving his playful manner.

  “I came out here to write some notes.”

  He growled. “No work. Come here. You know what’s just as good as sex the day before?”

  “What?”

  “Sex today.” He nodded and set his eyes on me, eyeing me sharply.

  Heat and lust made his gaze come alive.

  I set the notebook down on the window pane and pushed myself up to glide across to him.

  He waited until I got a breath away before he reached for me, grabbing on to the edge of the negligee and tugging. As he did, the top shuffled and my left breast popped out from under the strap.

  “Yassssss,” he hummed with a satisfied rasp and lowered to suck my breast.

  I moaned as sexual energy, hot, raw, and carnal, crackled between us.

  My hunger for him stirred to life deep within my soul, and a hot blush crept over me and inside me.

  As far as I was concerned, he could do that to me forever and ever, and I would quite happily stand here until the end of time getting lost in the sensations that took me.

  Desire crawled all over my skin, hot and sharp when he pulled away and gazed up at me with the wicked smile.

  “I’m going to take my own sweet time and feast on you,” he declared, turning that smile up a notch and filling it with eroticism.

  His magnetism hooked me, and I was eager to see what he had in store.

  “Feast?”

  “Breakfast is the most important meal of the day. You are mine.” His eyes instantly glowed with a savage inner fire that spoke of his desire. His desire for me.

  I’d never had a man look at me like that before, and I got the feeling I’d never feel like this with anyone else.

  The thought almost terrified me.

  Be careful not to fall for this guy.

  Yeah, right. It was very hard. Oh so hard, but here I was, falling against my will, as if I didn’t have enough problems.

  He ran his hands up and down my legs as he kissed his way up and reached for the hem of the negligee and pulled it over my head.

  His expression brightened when he saw I wasn’t wearing any panties.

  “Jesus Christ. I can’t get enough of you, all of you.” His voice broke with huskiness, and when he touched me, a shiver rippled through my body.

  “You too,” I told him, stroking his cheek.

  My mind went blank as he swept me up and carried me over to the sofa to lay me down. Then my mind drifted out far away, very far away, when soft, teasing, exploratory kisses were placed on the top of my feet, and then up and up to the crook of my neck, where he nuzzled his face and nipped at the edge of my shoulder.

  His kisses sang through my veins, making my body come alive with every stroke of his lips.

  His lips pressed against mine, and I smiled and kissed him back, showing him how much I enjoyed him and wanted him too. I wanted Caine like nothing else and no one else, and in that moment, I didn’t care about reality or the risk of being hurt by a man who’d told me he wasn’t a relationship guy.

  I wanted this moment, the dreamy intimacy of him.

  It was divine ecstasy when he kissed me back, and I drank in the passion he gave and the fiery possession of how he touched me.

  The kisses moved from my lips and took the journey back down my body, but he stopped in the valley of my breasts and licked at the skin there. When he closed his mouth over my right nipple, my blood heated up in my veins and sizzled from his prior exploration that made my sense and nerve endings spark with the electricity of his touch.

  God, I was going to come. I could feel the pressure building deep within me, teetering on the precipice of explosion.

  He flicked the sensitive tips with his tongue, and his fingers worked the other nipple. Next came my favorite. Him alternating his suckle from one breast to the other, and it was like I could feel him everywhere. Everywhere and all over, and that was it. Sensation rippled through me on a tumbling wave, and I cried out from it.

  “That’s just the beginning, Miss Thing.”

  I tried to catch my breath and just about managed to run my fingers along his sexy, sculpted abdomen before he stole my breath away again.

  Again. The man was like a sex god who knew exactly how to make me ripple with that explosive pleasure he offered.

  He nuzzled his face between my thighs and started pressing his tongue right into my entrance. Spreading my thighs wider, Caine licked the hard nub of my clit, and licked, and licked. Licked like he couldn’t get enough, and right then, as I started to writhe beneath him from the intensity, he started sucking. Sucking until it drove me crazy.

  Insane. It was complete insanity, and like he said, this was only the beginning.

  His tongue circled my drenched bud, and I arched into him as he ate me.

  I felt lost and loved being lost because I knew his touch. He was the sailor who guided me even when I felt lost in this wave of orgasm that lifted me up so high and sent me flying again into the sky.

  “Caine…”

  I felt myself come in his mouth, on his face, and he licked me clean.

  “Oh God�
�� Caine…”

  “Enjoy the pleasure, baby. Let me make you feel good.” He moved away from me, and I stopped him.

  “Where are you going?”

  “The condom supply’s in the bedroom.”

  “You don’t… um… I’m on birth control, so if you trust me, you don’t have to wear one.”

  “Fuck…” he breathed and looked at me like he was trying to figure me out. “I trust you, baby, that’s never been an issue. Do you trust me?”

  “I trust you.” It wasn’t even something I had to think about now.

  His eyes heated up again, and I watched in fascination as the green darkened with hunger and yearning.

  Growling with that sinful smile, the god-like man reached for me and flipped me onto my hands and knees, then smoothed his hands over my ass and squeezed hard.

  I didn’t take my eyes off him, and I continued to watch as he shrugged off his boxers and settled himself behind me.

  The harsh grip of my waist sent my hair tumbling forward over my face, making his smile sinful.

  “Nice, very nice and perfect. Just the way I want you.”

  I was ready for him. Throbbing for him. Begging for him. Eager for him.

  He pushed his heavy erection against my opening and paused briefly to see my reaction.

  Emboldened by my own reckless desire, I pushed back, pressing so hard he slid partway into me.

  “You want it.”

  “I want it,” I told him breathlessly.

  “You want me, Anya?” Sounded like the same question, but it was different.

  “I want you, Caine.”

  “Then I’m yours.”

  I gasped when his cock seared into me, plunging in and filling me up completely. The feeling was unreal, but I didn’t miss the emotion in his voice or what he said.

  I didn’t miss the way it pulled at my heart and my soul.

  He started moving inside me, and the feel of him without the condom was beyond belief. It was like I couldn’t get enough of him and wanted more. So much more.