by Christa Wick
"My dad used to say people don't appreciate the value of raw minerals. That if it wasn't in a store with a price tag on it, it was worthless."
"Your dad was right." Her shoulders picked up and her expression opened again. "We moved a lot when I was a kid. The samples my grandfather gave me were my only constant treasures. Kept them in a metal Folgers coffee can, easy to fit in my book bag. And the smell went away after a while."
She laughed, but the sound was hollow.
"Sometimes I'd sense a move was coming, knew that there would be no official warning or preparation. My mom would just show up at school with two garbage bags, one with my clothes the other with hers. So I'd carry the can to school with me every day."
Listening, I looked around the room and beyond the French doors. I was standing in the only home I'd ever known, outside of the Army's temporary duty stations. I felt both spoiled and lucky and a whole lot of guilty for being both.
Moving between the table and shelves, Rhea stopped and tilted her head at me.
"My mother put my collection in plenty of yard sales. Thankfully your dad never showed up at one. People would buy the little television or radio she'd given me a few weeks or months before, but they'd laugh to see the 'can of rocks' for sale. I guess they weren't even considered fit for an aquarium or the like."
She looked around just as I had done, seeing the home I'd been brought to as an infant, where my dad helped me tie my tuxedo tie for prom and all the milestones before and after.
"There," she said, putting everything down and walking toward me. "You pretty much know my whole, pathetic story. So tell me, Thomas Wylie..."
Her pause was pure torture. I leaned toward her, my feet too dumb to close the distance between us on their own.
"Tell you what, Rhea?"
"Why me?"
Not understanding the question, I didn't answer. She reached forward, fisted my shirt collar and pulled me to her as she repeated her query, the contact of our bodies adding enough context that I finally understood.
Why had I followed her from the club, why had I showed up at Harbor House to volunteer, and why was I still around after three weeks of her doing her best to ignore me and the teens bombarding me every time I came on shift—that was what she wanted to know.
Meeting her gaze, I wrapped my hand around her wrist and coaxed her into releasing the fabric. Keeping hold of her arm, I navigated her out of the library and down the hall. Stopping at the first closed door on the right, I opened it to show her the fishing room, just the boxes and poles left.
The next door we encountered was open—the mineral room.
"Your father's collections seem to have ruled the house."
She sounded confused, not yet understanding the point I was leading up to. She wouldn't get that until the next room.
I opened the door to my old bedroom, the one I'd had from cradle to college and was once again occupying. I nodded at the closed door over my shoulder.
"That one is my parents' room. They bought the house fifteen years before I was born and immediately started trying to fill the remaining three bedrooms."
"This is what you didn't want to tell Mae about," she whispered.
"Yeah." I released my hold on her arm and stood so that our shoulders and hips barely touched. "By the time my mom got pregnant with me, they had stopped trying. She was forty three, had half a dozen miscarriages and one stillbirth—"
Sucking in a sharp breath, Rhea leaned a little harder against me. I wrapped a hand around her shoulder for support, as much for me as for her.
"She was a big enough woman that her pregnancy with me didn't really show," I continued. "Expecting another miscarriage or worse, she didn't tell my father. When the time came, she drove herself to the hospital, waited alone for hours until her sister showed up with a video camera, then she had me while my father was at work and still oblivious."
I paused and reined my emotions in before they kept me from telling the rest of my parents' story. All the loss had happened before my birth, but I knew they had tucked each pregnancy into their heart and carried the children that "never were" with them until the day they left earth to meet them at last.
Clearing my throat, I finished. "Only once the doctor had pulled me out, slapped my ass and pronounced me thoroughly healthy did she have a nurse phone my dad. He was mad as hell of course."
"I bet," Rhea laughed softly. "But she was just trying to save him another heartbreak."
"Yeah," I agreed, pulling her a little closer. "You remind me of her, both at Tuttle's and Harbor House. She was tough, resilient...I saw that the moment you stepped on stage. But she had a huge heart, too. That really comes out at the shelter."
Rhea looked up at me, her mouth pulling down in a wry frown. "You didn't know that until you stalked me to the shelter."
I nodded. Couldn't argue the fact. "It was your thousand yard stare that hooked and dragged me that first distance, baby—"
Her frown flattened into a stern line. "Don't start calling me anything other than Rhea or Miss Butler," she reprimanded. "You know the rules."
I drawled my reply. "Like the one I'm breaking by having my hand on your hip?"
With a squeak, she looked down to see I was telling the truth. Her gaze jerked back up, her entire expression showing shock at how she'd let me lure her into my arms. She put her hand on my chest, as if she were going to push me away.
I pulled her closer. Combat is about knowing when to wait and when to push ahead. It was time to push—or, in this case, pull.
Drawing her tight, I circled my arms around her back and gazed into those muddy blue eyes that looked exactly like the piece of polished agate she had placed on the bookshelf no more than fifteen minutes before.
"That first week, when I was trying my damnedest to stay away, I thought I was just missing my team..."
Choking on the words, I stopped. My parents weren't the only ones in the family who kept lost souls tucked inside their hearts. Out of a twelve-man team on my last mission, myself included, ten didn't come back, but I carried them with me everywhere I went.
Rhea must have forgotten we weren't supposed to be touching like this because she reached up and cupped the sides of my face. "You say that like it's more than you just being out of the Army. You say that like they're dead or something."
"They are," I answered. "Except for Fredericks...and he's in rehab...so, yeah, dead or something..."
She started to ask another question, one I knew would center around how they had died. I shook my head, cutting her off. I didn't want this to be a day of tears, not hers or mine.
Letting my hand slide down her luscious backside, I gave a little squeeze.
"You don't realize just how good you look up there, do you, Miss Butler?" I said, exaggerating the pronunciation of her last name as a reminder that she had chastised me seconds ago for calling her "baby." If she wanted to hear "baby" again, she was going to have to work for it.
10
Rhea
Heat pulsed through me as Wiley squeezed my ass. Standing in the doorway, our bodies touching in ways I hadn't noticed until he pointed it out because it felt so natural, I was already warm and melty before his grip grew more possessive in such an intimate area.
He tucked me closer to him and I knew I was a goner. For three weeks, I'd been fighting to avoid him at the shelter without my rejection being obvious to the kids or staff. Apparently, Mae had noticed and intuited the real source of my objection to Wylie's presence.
I had wanted him from the first time I saw him, before I found out he had stalked me to the shelter.
"Rhea..." He said my name in a deep sultry drawl, somehow adding a syllable as both of his hands captured my bottom.
My pussy flooded, my breath almost as moist as I exhaled all the anticipation I'd been holding inside since that first squeeze.
Without asking, he bent his head and claimed my mouth. With my lips already parted, his tongue swept inside. I pushed harder against
him, the curve of my stomach colliding with his hard erection. One of his hands slid up to the lower curve of my spine, the force of his touch plastering my humid body to his.
Fuck...I hadn't felt like this since...ever.
I didn't know what to do, didn't know if I should touch him back. Letting him kiss me, letting his mouth possess mine with a fierce hardness was a tacit approval. But if my hands found his biceps and dug in, that was an admission of my wanting him.
He broke the kiss, but only so we could both draw air. He captured my face, but not before he unraveled the braid pinning my hair in place. When he dipped again to kiss me, his thumbs pressed against the tender spot below each of my ears and his fingers threaded roughly through my hair.
With complete control of my head, Wylie was free to gnaw and stroke and plummet against my lips and inside my mouth, devouring me, sucking air out before breathing life back into me. He walked me backwards. The back of my knee hit the edge of his mattress and we tumbled onto the neatly made bed.
He didn't try to take my clothes off, but he spread my legs and nestled the hard length of his cock against my mound. The air inside my lungs began to burn as I felt how big he was, the massive width teasing my labia apart beneath the layers of cloth so that the gentle but firm rocking of his hips transferred directly to my clit.
I gasped, eyes rolling upward as a fresh burst of cream soaked through my underwear and pants. His hand replaced his cock as he began to knead at my wet mound, the knowledge of just how wet he had made me burning in his eyes when he pulled back and stared at my face.
Like a fish cast onto the banks of the Mississippi, I fought to catch my breath, to pull air into me. This was all going too fast. He knew about Tuttle's, probably thought I fucked men all the time, that I was experienced.
All of a sudden, Wylie stopped and withdrew completely.
Thinking I had done something wrong, I went cold and started to shiver. When nothing but silence passed between us, I started to roll from the bed.
He stopped me with his hand lightly against my ankle. "I didn't mean to scare you, Rhea. At least let me take you back to the shelter."
Sitting up on the bed, I pulled my foot away from him and tucked it under my opposite leg. "You didn't scare me, Wylie."
"I know fear in a woman's face when I see it," he argued. "Doesn't matter if you have an assault rifle pointed at her husband's chest or..."
He waved at the pillow that had cushioned my head while he kissed and teased me.
"I was afraid," I admitted, the sudden stiffness that had infected my body at his apparent rejection starting to loosen. "But not about what you were doing."
11
Rhea
He looked at me, his gaze hard as he searched my face for something.
"You're not going to believe this," I started, one hand twisting the hem of my shirt into a balled mess. "What, with Tuttle's and all, but this isn't something I'm very experienced in."
"You're not talking just about the emotional part?" he rasped, his words brittle at their edges.
The question hurt, or maybe it was the look on his face. I didn't want to think of myself as emotionally cut off as he had just suggested, but it was true. No one got past my exterior. And if I couldn't let them past the exterior, that sure as hell meant no man had a chance at reaching my interior.
"When I was a resident," I started, face flushing hot at the memory and embarrassment it carried with it, "there was a boy. We did it once."
Darren had been trying to figure out who he was. I had been trying to see if I could feel a little less lonely. Realizing he did like girls, Darren went on to someone prettier, skinnier and with her own apartment. I aged out of Harbor House and into Tuttle's and that was all it took for me to lock all the doors and bar the windows.
Stroking at the underside of my chin, Wylie coaxed me into meeting his gaze. "There's so much more you're not telling me, baby girl."
I pulled away and looked down again. "You just need to know nothing you were doing was scaring me. So, if you still want to..."
Trailing off, I nudged the pillow with my elbow.
Surprising me, Wylie started to laugh then choke on his amusement. With his eyes watering at humor I didn't feel, he shook his head and wagged a finger at me. "Miss Butler, I already surmised you're not much of a romantic—or an optimist—but that proposition you just delivered really takes the cake."
Unable to stop myself, I laughed with him.
He plopped on his side, head angled to watch me with those sexy eyes of his. His gaze smoldered and the smile he had worn seconds before had burned away to reveal a satisfied grin.
"Come down here, baby," he ordered.
I complied, settling onto my side and leaving about four inches of space between us. His hand landed in the gap I had created then played at the bottom edge of my shirt, the back of one nail lightly rubbing against my stomach as he continued watching my face.
"I believe you," he said, his voice going all raspy again as his gaze heated. His hand smoothed higher to cup the underside of my breast. He squeezed and then his fingers found my nipple and he pinched. "And I definitely still want to. But you're going to have to keep an open line of communication with me. Understand?"
I nodded but then I shook my head. Darren and I hadn't really talked about what we were doing while we were doing it. We really hadn't talked about it before or after, either.
"You're going to have to use your words, Miss Butler. No means no, stop means stop, slower means slower and harder means..."
He gave another tweak to my nipple that curled my toes and curved my spine. Releasing a hot puff of air, I opened eyes I had just pinched shut and nodded.
"I understand."
He reached up, his long, lean body stretching, and pulled the cord on the ceiling fan.
"This is going to get very sweaty, baby," he teased, peeling his t-shirt away to reveal a chest that was even sexier than the one I'd been dreaming up the last three weeks.
The dark hair spreading out from the centerline of his torso looked soft as down, the volume just sparse enough to show the sculpted abdominals and chest plates. Grinning, I reached up and trailed the tips of my fingernails through the black silk.
"I thought I was a manscaping fan," I said, pausing to circle one small, hard nipple. "But you've converted me."
Wylie lifted a brow, a dirty smile pulling high and wide to reveal a mouthful of teeth. "Lots of manscaping going on, baby. I just haven't shown it to you yet."
He winked and I was pretty sure my entire body contracted. I knew my pussy had, the two layers of fabric at my crotch getting thoroughly doused again.
I rolled my lips, wondering if he expected a quid pro quo when it came to our getting naked. Hesitantly, I reached for the bottom of my shirt but he stopped me with a slow shake of his head.
"You're letting me undress you, Rhea."
I nodded and he stood, kicking off his shoes and socks then shedding his pants in one quick shove and two short kicks. He left his underwear on, sensible cotton boxer briefs. I smiled, glad he didn't have something silky or some cock hugging Lycra mix.
The outline of his erection looked perfect as it was, pushing thick and hard toward the heavy top band of elastic that forced it to detour in a wide curve that had the tip within kissing distance from his hip.
Wylie reached for my shoe and my brows shot up. "You still have clothes on!"
Knowing I was pouting, I tried to pull my mouth into a slightly less petulant shape but I couldn't hide the fact I wanted to see him completely naked.
"Ladies first," he answered smoothly and slid my shoes and then my socks off.
I snorted, less at what he had just said than how we were both dressed so...normal. I had gone for a decidedly unappealing look of jeans, sneakers, sweatshirt, plain white bra and underwear.
Growling, he brought his hands up to his hips, thumbs hooking the band of his underwear. He pulled lightly at the elastic, the powerful erectio
n responding with a gradual lengthening. Just when I thought the tip was going to pop out, he settled everything back in place and winked at me.
"Plain rude is what you are," I accused, mouth and pussy getting wetter and hotter by the second.
"Don't want you running away, baby," he answered, leaning over me to work the button and zipper on my jeans with one hand. "It's a lot for any woman, no matter how much experience she has."
I closed my eyes and rolled my lips as I felt him slide the zipper down.
"Can I touch it?" I asked. "Just a little bit. I'll keep my eyes closed."
"You keep working your mouth like that and I'll let you do whatever you want," he growled, his hand swiftly diving under my panties to mold against my mound.
My eyes flashed open, met his for one burning second before I snapped them shut again. My fingers crept along the sides of his body, feeling the warm, smooth skin and muscles beneath. Reaching the band of his underwear, I dipped under it, freeing his cock then curling my palm and fingers around the thick shaft.
We both released a shaky exhalation. My lips quivered with a smile. Eight years had passed since Darren. I remembered a lot of awkward fumbling, some quick thrusts, him coming and me never getting close.
Just touching Wylie like this, his hand cupping my mound, and I was ready to explode. I withdrew my touch quickly, sucked air into my lungs then hugged at my chest to keep from shaking.
"You okay, baby girl?"
His voice sounded so tender, so concerned. I didn't think any man would let something get this far but still sound like he would stop the minute I asked him to.
I nodded.
"Words, baby."
I opened my eyes, studied his face, settling at last on the line of his mouth.
"I want to continue," I said before getting braver. "And I want you to kiss me again, like you did in the doorway."
