The Chef's Cutie (The River Hill Series Book 5)
Page 9
Eventually, she pulled into his long driveway, her hands clenching the steering wheel in a vice-like grip. Her heart was attempting to beat its way outside her chest, and her brain was yelling at her that being here was a mistake. But even as her mind tried to talk her out of it, she pulled her car to a stop next to his Land Rover and opened her door. Putting one foot in front of the other, she picked her way down his icy front walk and raised her hand to ring the doorbell. Thank god he was home. She hadn’t even considered that he might be stuck at the restaurant. It was technically still dinnertime.
She tapped her freezing foot against the flagstones, counting down the seconds until he opened the door. She had no idea what she was going to say when he did. What she was going to do. All she knew was that she had to see him. Had to tell him what she’d done. So much of their relationship had been about her guiding him when he’d felt cut adrift. Now she needed him to return the favor.
The lock flipped on the other side of the heavy wooden door, and Lizzie’s heart rocketed straight from the pit of her belly up into her throat, practically cutting off her air. Two seconds later, the door swung open, and Max stood there, his hair askew and a confused expression on his face.
“Lizzie?”
“Max,” she breathed out, at a loss for any further words.
“Are you okay?” Without waiting for her response, he stepped out of the way and hurried her inside.
She hadn’t realized how cold she was until a blast of heat from his fireplace enveloped her in its warmth. Her teeth chattering, she shook her head no, but her lips formed the word yes.
Max set his palms on her biceps and tipped his head forward to stare in her eyes. “What’s wrong, sweetheart?”
She licked her lips as her gaze bounced over his handsome face. The eyes she could get lost in. The cleft of his chin that she dreamed about kissing. The tiny scar just above his right eyebrow she’d learned he got in college when he and Ben had botched a fraternity dare and wound up in the emergency room instead. The lips she now knew the taste of.
“I quit my job, Max.”
He dropped his hands from her arms. “You did? When?”
“Just now,” she answered, that same calmness she’d felt earlier returning.
“That’s … wow.” He blew out a breath and ran his hand through his hair, a gesture she was coming to think of as so uniquely him. “Are you okay?”
Lizzie nodded, and felt a smile tilting her lips up and to the side. She wasn’t stupid. Her life was about to become very difficult, but standing here right now, in front of the man she was crazy about, she knew somehow she’d be okay. For the first time since she’d hung up on Kate, she was positive something better was around the corner. She didn’t know what it was, or how she’d find it, but if she was lucky, she’d have Max by her side the entire time.
“What does this mean?” His hands flexed at his sides ... as if he was fighting the instinct to touch her again. She lifted her face to his. “It means a lot of things that I’ll have to think about eventually, but right now, it means you can kiss me.”
“Thank fuck,” he said, tugging her forward and planting his mouth on her, his tongue slipping between her lips to slide against her own.
Thank fuck, indeed, she thought as she wound her arms around his neck and finally climbed him like a tree.
11
They stumbled toward the living room, wrapped around each other, and Max lost all sense of who, when, and where he was. Lizzie’s tongue matched his, stroking him to heights he’d never imagined. That New Year’s kiss was nothing compared to this. He bumped into the back of the couch and her full weight came against him, her legs wrapping around him as he lifted her into his arms.
It wasn’t until her cold hands snuck under his shirt that he had enough of a shock to his system to realize what was happening. He pulled away reluctantly. “Wait.”
Her lips traveled to his neck, biting gently at the spot where his throat met his shoulder
He groaned. “Lizzie. Wait a minute.”
“Hmm?” She licked him. Straight up his neck, like he was a popsicle.
He grabbed her wandering hands. “Stop for a second.”
She finally pulled her head back. “You have to be kidding,” she breathed, dropping her legs down to stand on her own two feet.
“No, I’m serious.” He closed his eyes briefly as she shifted against him.
“What—” her eyes widened, and if he hadn’t been so horny and confused he would have laughed at the way she looked wildly around in comic dismay. “Oh, my god. Mia. Where is she? I shouldn’t … we shouldn’t—”
“Relax,” he said quickly. “She’s spending the night at Maeve’s. I was supposed to be working late tonight since Wendy had her nephew’s bar mitzvah. But I closed early once the weather started getting bad.” The perks of being the owner. Guests had stopped showing up once the weather people had started talking about the predicted movement of this crazy storm. With no one to serve, he’d sent his staff home before packing up a few essentials and getting out of there himself. He’d only just gotten home a few minutes before Lizzie had shown up at his door, and the short drive from the center of town had been nightmarish already. He couldn’t imagine what hers had been like.
Normally, he would have been celebrating the fact that she’d decided to ride the storm out with him, but something wasn’t quite right. “Lizzie. What’s happening? We need to talk about this.”
“Noooo,” she said slowly. “We need to get naked.”
An image of her body bared to him flashed behind his eyes and he felt himself harden. “God. Lizzie. Wait.”
She frowned at him. “Why?”
“Did you quit your job because of me?” He gestured between them. “Because of this? I can’t—I can’t be the reason you quit, Lizzie.” He felt his teeth clench. “That’s not fair to either of us.”
She stepped fully away from him then, and he felt the loss of her body against his as keenly as if someone had just cut off his own arm. “It’s not like that,” she said. “Not really.”
He frowned. “What do you mean?” Her answer wasn’t the confident ‘No, of course not, Max’ he’d expected.
She sighed and walked around the couch to sit down on it, unwinding her scarf the rest of the way and then shrugging out of her jacket. She tossed both on the arm of the couch as he sat down next to her, not bothering to keep space between them this time. Their thighs lined up, touching along the full length of their legs, and she leaned into him. He wrapped an arm around her and tugged her back to settle comfortably into the couch, letting the warmth from the fireplace heat them both through. Not that he needed much heating after that kiss. He was practically sweating already.
Slowly, she explained her job situation. How her boss had been undermining her from the start, impatient and demanding and ineffective all at the same time. How budget cuts had meant it had gotten harder and harder to help the kids she’d started her career for. And then, the final straw: her boss had taken away all of her cases—including Mia’s—in some bid to make her an administrative minion.
“She sounds pretty awful,” Max said, wrapping a curl of her hair around his finger, marveling at the softness of it. “But—”
“It’s not just her,” Lizzie interrupted. “It’s all of it.”
He couldn’t resist. He leaned in and smelled her hair. “All of what?” She smelled like tropical fruit, and he pictured the two of them sipping fresh squeezed juice on a beach somewhere. Maybe it was the increasingly colder temperatures that winter brought, but Lizzie in a bikini was one of his favorite fantasies these days. And now it was starting to sound like he might actually get to see it someday.
Assuming this all actually went somewhere, and she wasn’t just here to … what, bang out her frustrations? Get him out of her system? He chewed his lip. He didn’t think that was where they’d been heading all this time, but he also hadn’t expected her to up and quit her job unexpectedly.
“Sorry.” He wasn’t really sorry, and it probably showed in his voice, because she poked him in the ribs. “Ow.”
“There’s a lot to it, okay? Yes, there was a breaking point in that I was three hours into a drive that I shouldn’t have even been making. I missed the meeting I was supposed to be driving to in the first place, and then there’s Kate taking all of my cases away. I knew going in that a big part of this work was documentation. But it seems like there’s been more and more, and it’s increasingly difficult to get to a point where you’re able to take any action to help anybody. The truth is, I’m not sure this is what I want to do anymore.” She bit her lip. “I hadn’t realized it until now, is all.”
“What do you want to do?”
“In the future? I don’t know. Right now?” She pulled away from him, and he had one brief, heartstopping moment to regret the choices he’d made since he’d stopped kissing her before his brain short circuited and started a hasty reboot process.
Because she’d just pulled off her shirt.
“I. Uh.” His tongue felt like it was sticking to the roof of his mouth. He tried to yank it free and realized he was panting. Actually panting, like a dog. “Lizzie.”
She grinned at him, a slow curve of her lips leading up to sparkling blue eyes that held none of the worry and stress she’d been radiating every time he’d seen her lately. She was nothing short of spectacular. “I think right now, we should get naked and see what happens.”
“But—”
She put a hand on his chest and he froze. “Listen. I’ve been reading quite a few romance novels lately.”
He blinked. It was such a nonsequitur that he found himself able to tear his gaze away from the view of her breasts cupped in perfect cream lace and back up to her face. “What?”
“I was pretty dubious about them, but it turns out that what they’re really about is women standing up for themselves and taking what they want. And right now, Max, I want you.”
“Feeling’s mutual,” he managed to croak.
“Then you’re wearing too many clothes.”
The next few seconds were a blur.
Somehow, they made it to the bedroom, shedding clothes in a trail he was going to have to remember to pick up before Mia got home. He tumbled her onto his bed, pausing for a moment to admire the sight of Lizzie sprawled against his sheets, eyes dark with desire as they looked him up and down. When her gaze took in his cock, he felt it harden even further and he groaned out loud. “You can’t look at it like that.”
She licked her lips and his knees buckled. He fell forward onto the bed, bracing himself above her with his arms locked. She wrapped her legs around his waist and he gave up all pretense of resistance.
Her skin was the sweetest thing he’d ever tasted; he was ruined for desserts forever. His lips made a trail from her neck to her breast, and the gasps and moans she made as he closed his lips around her nipple bubbled in his veins like champagne. He sucked gently and swirled his tongue in a circle around the hardening bud as her fingers clamped onto his arms.
“Max,” she moaned.
“I’m just getting started,” he said against her skin. He licked his way over to the other nipple, repeating the treatment. By the time he moved further down, she was arching against him and gasping for breath. When he reached ribs that were more visible than he expected, he scraped his teeth gently across them, surprised by how much weight she had lost since they’d first met.
The stress she’d described a few minutes earlier had taken a harder toll on her than he’d initially realized. But he was a chef; if there was one thing in this world he was good at, it was feeding people. Nourishing them. He liked to think in both body and soul.
He chuckled against her skin, reminded of one of his first steps down the road that had led them here—it all came back to wanting to feed her.
And he would. Again. Soon. Later.
He wrapped his hand around her knee and raised his head to look up at her. “Can I move you?”
“God, Max, you can do anything you want to me,” she whispered.
“Duly noted.” He bent her knee and slid her leg up and over. “How about this?” He slid a finger gently along her crease, following it with his lips.
“Yes, yes, yes,” she chanted.
“Mmm. And this?” He tasted her, finally, and her ‘yes’ turned into a shriek.
He grinned against her warmth and dove in, finding the perfect angle to swirl his tongue against her clit to make her shake. He kept one hand splayed against her hips and brought the other to her entrance, touching gently and waiting for her.
“Please,” she whispered. “More.”
He slid one finger into her, letting the flat of his tongue swipe against it as he took her higher. Her breathing grew faster, more labored, and she arched against his hand on her hip. He added pressure to keep her in one place and slid a second finger inside her, sucking gently on her clit and curving his fingers and tongue against her. He felt her stiffening a second before she came crying out his name. It was the best thing he’d heard all day. He stroked her through it until she went limp against him, then raised his head to look at her.
She met his eyes and smiled, dark and sultry, and his own hips bucked against the edge of the bed helplessly.
“Come here,” she said.
Obeying, he slid his body along hers, enjoying the shudders underneath him as he hit every sensitive part of her. He took it slow, and by the time he lay full against her, they were both gasping for air. She shifted, opened her legs wider, and he groaned as he felt his cock brush her warm, wet heat. “Nightstand,” he said. “Hang on.”
She nodded, and used the time it took him to reach with one arm into the drawer of his bedside table to reduce him to a quivering wreck by tracing the inside of his other elbow with her tongue and teeth.
“Oh, god. Lizzie … ah … let me—” Soon the words coming out of his mouth weren’t even words at all, more like grunts and half-formed syllables, as he tore the condom open with shaking hands and somehow managed to get it rolled on. Then he moved over her, and suddenly her hands were everywhere, raking against him, tugging him downward, sliding over his ass. Her lips met his again, the sweetness of her mouth mixing with the deeper flavor of her core, and he thought he might actually come right then and there.
He slid a hand down between them and closed it around the base of his cock, willing himself to hold out. She chuckled, a low and dirty sound, as he buried his face in her skin, mouthing her neck and breasts and every inch he could reach. She did the same, and the scrape of her teeth against his collarbone undid him.
He rose up, shifted them both, and finally did what he’d been wanting to do since the first day she’d showed up on his doorstep.
Sinking into her felt like coming home.
12
Lizzie shut off the light in the bathroom and slowly opened the door, cringing as its hinges squeaked in the hazy, post-dawn light. She paused in the doorway, admiring the view. Across the room, Max lay sprawled on his stomach in bed, the sheets pooled around his hips. The man had a truly excellent back. And his backside isn’t too bad either, she thought to herself as she recalled anchoring her nails into his skin and pulling him deeper into her body.
Goodness, they’d been insatiable for one another. Lizzie wasn’t a nun, but she’d never known sex could be like that. Hell, she’d never known she could be like that.
Everything about last night had been a revelation.
Normally, she was so focused on making sure her body was in the right position, or that she was doing something some magazine had recommended, that she’d often forget to enjoy herself. With Max, however, that hadn’t been an issue. At all. If anything, she felt slightly guilty for the amount of effort he’d put into pleasing her instead of the other way around.
But not guilty enough to actually
feel bad about it. She couldn’t lie; being worshipped was a nice change of pace.
Quietly, she slipped back into the bedroom and tiptoed her way across the carpet to the warm cocoon of Max’s bed. When she lifted the sheet to climb back in, he rolled onto his side and propped his head in his palm, his hair mussed and his lips tipped up in a happy smile.
“Good morning.”
She settled in next to him. “Morning.”
“I reached for you and you were gone.”
“Sorry,” she whispered, scooting closer. “Just sneaking off to the bathroom. Didn’t want to subject you to my dragon breath.”
“My very own Daenerys Targaryen.” He tugged her body closer.
“Does that make you my Jon Snow?” she asked playfully, setting her palm on his sternum and feeling his heart beating steady and strong beneath it.
He dropped a quick kiss onto her forehead and, without warning, swiftly rolled her onto her back. She squeaked, and he brushed a lock of blonde hair away from her face. “Despite it looking like Winterfell out there, no thank you. Dragon lady was hot, I’ll give you that, but I still can’t get past the whole Aunt Dany thing.”
She chuckled and linked her arms around his neck, tangling her fingers in the thick, dark hair at his nape. “Is it weird for me to tell you how much I like this?”
His eyes danced over her face appreciatively. “Only if it’s weird for me to say that I like you.”
“I like you too,” she whispered, her mood sobering slightly. Last night had been one of the most amazing nights of her life, but her happiness felt fleeting. Fragile.
With an uncertain future looming on the horizon, she didn’t want to get too far ahead of herself by spinning fairy tales in her head of happily-ever-afters when she wasn’t even sure she could give him a happily-ever-this-week. Still, after the intimacy they’d shared, she owed it him to be honest about her feelings.