by Adele Buck
Too late. He always wanted to know what she was thinking.
She looked at him as if from behind a barrier, wary as a prey animal. A sickening, nervous thrumming started up in his gut. “What’s the matter? Did I say something wrong?”
She shook her head, but her eyes were still guarded. “No. Nothing wrong.”
“Your mouth says nothing, but your face says everything.”
If he wasn’t so nervous, her expression would make him laugh. She was trying to make her face clear and guileless, but Freddie was no actress. Stress and worry radiated from the tension at the corners of her eyes, the set of her mouth. She shook her head.
“Freddie.” He smoothed a hand over her cheek. “You’re scaring me.”
She huffed a laugh as if she had been punched in the gut, her chin ducking into her collarbone. “Scaring you? What do you have to be scared of?”
James scanned her face as the attempt at cover faded away and he saw the real emotion. Freddie was raw, vulnerable.
She was scared too.
“Fred.” Wrapping his hand around the back of her neck, he pulled her in for a kiss. Her muscles were stiff, her lips lacked the responsiveness he had grown used to. Nipping gently, he pulled her on top of him, smiling as her body settled over his, warm and soft, her leg sliding up the outside of his thigh. Her lips softened and her tongue curled against his. Pressing his palms to her cheeks, he pushed her face back until he could look into her eyes. “Do you trust me?”
She blinked. “To do what?”
“To take care of you. Of us. To make sure this thing we have is good.”
The muscles of her face tightened under his hands.
“What’s the matter, Fred?” He resisted the urge to try to kiss away whatever was causing the turbulence behind her eyes, trying to breathe trust and acceptance into her as she rode the rising and falling of his chest.
“What would be the matter?” she said, her jaw working sideways.
He bit back irritation at her evasiveness, smoothing one hand into her hair. “You’re tense as fuck, Fred. Talk to me.”
She looked at him for a long moment, then breathed a shuddering sigh, her breasts pressing into his chest. “I’m not trying to keep score, but…this means a lot to me.” Her head dipped down against his chest, her forehead resting on his collarbone.
“And you think it doesn’t mean a lot to me?” He resisted the urge to pull her face back up, to make her look at him. Instead, he threaded his fingers into her hair, running his fingertips along her scalp until she groaned, the sound reverberating into his chest.
“I don’t know anything when you touch me, when you look at me,” she said. Her head came up, a wild look in her eyes. “When it comes to you, I’m…”
“Freddie.” His hands cupped her face again, his thumbs running along her cheekbones as he scanned her eyes. “If you need me to tell you I’m crazy about you, then here it is. I’m crazy about you.”
Her eyes stopped their frantic searching and settled on him. “Really?”
“Come on.” He pressed a chaste kiss to her lips, trying to ignore the arousal building from her body pressing up against his. “I was the architect of the go-slow plan. If all I wanted was to get off and get gone, why would I have suggested that?”
Freddie’s body relaxed a fraction, her softness and warmth humming in his blood.
That slight release was ambrosia to him. “You with me?” he asked.
Freddie lifted her head and looked at him, a cautious smile playing at the corners of her mouth. “Yeah.”
Emotion rushed through Freddie, threatening to overpower her. Tears prickled in her eyes and she couldn’t help a sob of an inhale.
“What’s the matter now?” James’ expression was a funny mixture of worry and the barest hint of humor.
“Nothing.”
His thumb stroked her cheek, trailed over to drag across her lower lip. “Stop hiding. You nearly crying isn’t nothing.”
Freddie took in a big breath, gathering herself. “No, I mean nothing is the matter. I’m nearly crying because everything is so great. I’m relieved, you big nincompoop.” She hit him on the shoulder with her fist, but it bounced off, a pathetic little ball of fury that he captured easily with one hand, teasing her fingers open with his own until he could kiss her palm.
“Good,” he murmured into her hand.
“How does that feel so good?” His lips were on her wrist now, teasing, shimmering sensations that caromed through her entire body. She closed her eyes as she felt him start to harden against her leg.
Without responding, James rolled them both so he was on top of her, teasing her with rolling hips, pressing his now-hard length to her, then pulling it teasingly away. She groaned, her eyes closing.
“You ready for me?” James’ breath was hot against her ear and she could only nod, an eager motion against the side of his head.
His weight shifted off of her and she heard a drawer open, then close, the rustle of a condom packet ripping open. Then he was settling back between her legs, positioning himself. He paused.
“Look at me, Fred.”
Her eyelids snapped open. James’ dark eyes were solemn and fathomless. They held hers as he began to push inside her with excruciating slowness. She wrapped her legs around him to encourage him, but he shook his head, never breaking eye contact.
“No. I’m going to do this slow. I want to be present for this. Every moment. With you.”
His face took on an almost meditative quality as he continued his relentless, gradual slide into her. She ran her hands along his lower back, down the curve of his ass, and he trembled at the touch. Finally, when he was fully buried into her, his eyes slid shut and he bent to kiss her, teasing her lips with his tongue and moving his hips in short, close rolls that pressed against her swollen clit and made her gasp.
“You like that?”
“Oh, God, yes.”
“Me too. It makes you all hot and tight and wet.”
He dragged his lips across her jaw and down to her neck, keeping up the relentless small movements that were ratcheting her body tighter and tighter. Teasing her neck with his tongue and teeth, he moved faster. Freddie gasped and clung tighter to him.
“Come for me,” he whispered. “I need to feel you.”
The words, the pressure of him over and inside her, and the tickling breath against her ear were like a key turning in a lock. Freddie shuddered and wailed as he rode out her orgasm, keeping his hips tight to hers, the pressure making rippling aftershocks.
“That’s my girl,” he said, rising onto his elbows and brushing a kiss across her lips.
“Now you.” Freddie gripped his butt with her hands and tilted her hips up, pleased when his face slackened with pleasure.
“If my lady commands…” He slid out, almost all the way, then back in, taking his time in long, sweeping strokes that made Freddie gasp as he slid home, emptying and filling her. She gripped his shoulders, then the back of his head as he increased the pace, making Freddie feel like she was clinging to something out of control, with no steering and no brakes. She watched his expression change, going from inwardly focused concentration to a slackening, unguarded rawness until he finally shouted hoarsely, pressing himself tightly to her and dropping his head, breathing heavily.
“So what next?” James dug in the carton of pork noodles with his chopsticks, grinning at how adorable Freddie looked with her hair still wet from the shower, practically swimming in his shirt, which was like a dress on her small frame. She could wrap a belt around her waist and put on a pair of sky-high heels and fit in on a movie premiere red carpet.
“What next with what?” Freddie grabbed a pot sticker with her fingers, dipping it in soy sauce and taking a bite.
“First things first. Chinese food with your hands? What kind of New Yorker are you, anyway?”
Freddie frowned. “The kind that thinks that pot stickers are a delicious, slippery trap designed to decorate clothing
with soy sauce, Jackson Pollock style. If someone was unpacked a little more, I’d use a fork. But your kitchen is a minefield of cardboard.”
James tilted his head, acknowledging the point. “Since you’re wearing my shirt, I guess I should be grateful that you’re not dabbling in abstract art.”
“So what’s the next thing you’re so curious about?”
“We’ve acknowledged we’re crazy about each other.”
“You admitted you were crazy about me.” Mischief sparkled in her big eyes and James kicked the leg of the chair she sat in.
“You nearly blubbered all over me because you were worried I wasn’t crazy about you.”
Her mouth tightened, as if acknowledging a hit. “Okay, fine. If you say so.”
“I do.” James took another bite of noodles, slurping them up messily.
“See? You can eat like a slob because you’re not even wearing a shirt.” Freddie picked up a carton and her chopsticks, looking pointedly at his bare chest.
James chewed and swallowed his mouthful of noodles. “You could go without a shirt and I’d be perfectly fine with that.”
“I’m sure the delivery guy would have been totally blasé if I’d paid for the food wearing nothing but track pants.” Freddie pursed her lips and nodded as if conceding the point, then returned her attention to her dinner. “There’s always a next time, I guess.”
“You can go without a shirt around me, since I wasn’t clear enough. No flashing other dudes. Or women.”
Freddie’s face went bright red and her eyes narrowed. “Oh really? I have to get your permission to do anything? Or do you only have veto power over what I do or don’t wear?” Freddie arched a saucy eyebrow as she dug a shrimp out of her carton—thankfully with chopsticks—and chewed it meditatively.
Geez, way to fuck up. James’ heart twisted in his chest. “Okay. Sorry. I was trying to be funny, but…” James set his chopsticks and his container down on the table, resting his elbows on his knees and looking at Freddie with his full attention. “Your body is your body. As the guy who’s crazy about you and who you maybe have some sort of mild affection for… Let me please request that your nakedness be reserved for me. Because it’s special.”
Freddie paused, took a breath, and nodded. “That’s better.”
Freddie’s heart hammered against her sternum. She hated standing up for herself.
She also knew she had to do it. Especially with James. If she couldn’t draw boundaries with him, who could she draw them with?
Waving her chopsticks, she forced herself to meet his eyes. “Fuck the patriarchy, know what I mean?”
“Fred, you can paste that fake smile on your face, but I know I upset you. I’m sorry.” James was still sitting there, his bare chest a blatant distraction, his hands loosely clasped, elbows resting on his knees.
“It’s fine. Eat your dinner.” Unearthing another shrimp, Freddie chewed it as if turning shellfish into pulp was her job and she was being paid by the hour, not the job.
“Hey.” A touch on her knee. Freddie concentrated on transferring rice into her mouth, grateful for the inefficient way she used chopsticks, the task requiring all her concentration.
His hand gripped her bare knee, sending electricity coursing through her body. “Hey.”
Freddie swallowed, the minuscule lump of rice sticking in her throat. She lifted her eyes to meet his.
James’ gaze was steady. “What’s going on here?”
“I…” Freddie couldn’t corral her swirling thoughts. “I just…”
“Let’s back it up. I said something stupid.”
“Not stupid, just—”
“Stupid. Like I had any right over you. Over your body.” His hand gripped tighter. Warm. Strong.
“You staked your claim pretty thoroughly not so long ago.” Freddie tipped her chin toward the bedroom.
“Only so long as you let me. Same as I let you stake your claim on me.”
“True.” Freddie set the container down on the table and looked around the cluttered room. “When do you think you’ll actually be moved in here? This looks daunting.”
“You changing the subject?”
Freddie picked up her water and took a sip. “Maybe.”
“Are we good?” His hand was still on her knee. Freddie covered it with her own.
“Yeah. We’re fine.”
“Good.” James straightened up, and her knee felt cool as his hand pulled away and wrapped around his container of noodles. “So, you want to help me unpack, or was that just a very obvious way of changing the subject?”
Freddie shrugged and sipped more water. “Sure. I could help.”
“I’ll let you do whatever sort of unpacking you want, especially if you keep wearing my shirt.”
“You like that, huh?”
James’s eyes glowed with mischief. “Sure do.”
Freddie shook her head. “We back to claiming again, big guy?”
“Nope. Just you looking sexy as hell.”
“Well if that’s the case, then…” She looked at the two big bookcases that dominated one part of the wall. “You got enough books to fill those things?”
James turned to follow her gaze. “Oh, I got books to fill those things double-deep.”
“You really know how to turn a girl on, you know that?”
Getting Freddie to wear his shirt while she unpacked books was either his smartest notion or his dumbest.
Smart: the shirt tails slid up every time she bent over to pull more volumes out of the box, revealing tantalizing flashes of thigh.
Dumb: he had committed to unpacking for at least an hour and the sight was making him crazy with lust.
“You’re never going to get this done unless you do at least one little thing every day,” she had said. He knew it was true. It was just that he really didn’t care just now. He moved to the corner and hoisted the area rug for the living room to his shoulder, musing that he would really rather carry Freddie the same way into the bedroom.
Well, they had had weeks of the go-slow plan. He now knew he could resist her if he wanted to.
For a while, at least.
Fifty-five more minutes, maybe.
Leaning the rolled-up carpet against the wall, he picked up the coffee table and moved it out of the way. Freddie rummaged in the box she had nearly emptied of books and the shirt rode up to show the edge of her panties. His breath caught in his throat.
Down, boy.
She wasn’t sporting a thong this time.
“I hadn’t figured on getting naked when I got dressed today,” she had told him. But frankly? The bikini pants patterned with silly, pale blue dinosaurs in some sort of soft material were as alluring as any scrap of lace.
Or, rather, the woman inside the panties was doing the alluring. Whatever she chose to wear was immaterial.
Blinking and turning away from the vision of unconsciously sexy, bookish femininity, James hauled the rug away from the wall and wrestled it into position, rolling it out in front of the sofa. Walking across it to retrieve the coffee table, his feet ached from their walk around the market. All those brick and cobblestone surfaces. He picked up the table and set it in front of the sofa, his attention straying again to Freddie. She stood in front of one of his bookcases, her hand on her hip, surveying the books she had already placed there. Abandoning the placement of furniture, he moved to stand beside her.
“Getting ready to fulfill my sexy librarian fantasies?”
Freddie gave him a look that could melt steel. “Dude. I have it on the best of authority that that is tired, clichéd nonsense.”
James chuckled. “Okay. So what’s got you concentrating so hard over here?”
“Well, I’ve got your biographies and other nonfiction shelved together.” She pointed at the lower shelves. “And it looks like you have plenty of thrillers. But I’m not so sure where to put this.” She held up an old paperback with a worn cover and a creased spine and James’ heart twisted. “I never
figured you for a Beverly Jenkins fan.”
James reached out a finger and touched the cover image showing a man about to kiss a woman. “That was my mother’s. She loved romance and Ms. Bev was her favorite.”
“I didn’t know that.”
James took a deep breath. “Yeah. She kept this with her through chemo and it was on her bedside table when she died.”
“Oh. I’m sorry.” Freddie’s eyes were bright with unshed tears.
“Not your fault. I like having it with me. It’s like having her with me.”
“This couldn’t have been hers, though.” Freddie pulled a second paperback from behind the first, its cover shiny and spine unmarked.
“Nope. I stood in line to get that signed right before I left L.A.” James took the book from her hands and opened it to show the inscription.
Freddie looked at the inscription, openmouthed. “You stood in line to get a romance novel signed?”
“At a romance-only bookstore in Culver City.”
“Really?”
“Yep. I’m that secure in my masculinity.”
Freddie turned a speculative glance his way. “But have you read it?”
James handed the book back to her and grinned. “Twice.”
Freddie took the two paperbacks and reached up to shelve them side by side. “I’ll just put these at your eye level, then. So you can find them easily whenever you want them.”
She turned back toward him and James trailed one fingertip down the curve of her cheek. “Thanks.”
“Sure.”
“You can borrow them if you want. Just don’t break the spine on the signed one.”
“As if I would. You’ve read it twice and it’s in pristine condition. I wouldn’t dare mess it up.” Freddie looked at the gleaming spine next to the battered one. “You’ve got both kinds of book love right there. The familiar and the reverent.”
James huffed a short laugh. “Guess you’re right. Though if Mom had ever gotten a book signed by Ms. Bev, she probably wouldn’t have carried it with her everywhere. She would have had it in a vault like the one they keep the U.S. Constitution in. Climate control, motion sensors, the works.”
