He stared across the room at the dark shape in the middle of the table. “You baked me a cake.”
“Yes.” She smoothed her palms over her hips, then crossed one arm over the other on her stomach. “How did everything go? Are you doing okay?”
“No.” There was a lump in his throat that made it hard to say more. Where the hell had that come from?
“Do you want to talk about it?”
Still staring at the cake, Asher shook his head. He needed a mental break from the past couple hours.
“Okay.” She started to move away from the couch toward the front door. “Then I won’t bother you. I’ll—”
“No.”
He raised his gaze to hers, emotion swelling in his chest, burning his eyes. Abruptly, he turned to grab two forks from the silverware drawer, then joined her in the living room and silently handed her one.
She took it and backed up to sit on the edge of the couch. He dropped his ass to the floor and leaned back against the seat cushion while digging in and scooping up a forkful of what looked like double layer chocolate. He shoved it in his mouth as Honor reached to do the same.
Decadent flavor exploded on his tongue—rich dark chocolate soaked in moist caramel with creamy chocolate frosting. It was the best fucking cake he’d ever had.
On the second bite, he raised one knee to rest his forearm between forkfuls. He stared unseeing across the unlit room while the frosting melted in his mouth, making his taste buds sing. His shoulder rested against her knee, his arm against the side of her leg. The physical contact helped ground him, slowing the thoughts whirling in his head.
Four bites in, he opened his mouth but instead of shoveling cake inside, words spilled out. “I have another brother. Or half-brother.” That sounded weird out loud in his own voice. “His name is Grayson Cole. He’s thirty-one. Lives in Boulder.”
The information was coming out in bite size sentences. Bite, chew, swallow.
Choke. Not on the cake, but the words.
“He’s three months older than Loyal, so technically, he’s the oldest of us all.” He ate another bite. “News flash—literally—my parents divorced a couple years after they got married. Just not officially legally. They were separated for six months and were going to divorce, but the night they signed the papers, my dad went out and got drunk and had himself a one night stand who ended up getting pregnant.” His lip curled in disdain. “He said the next day, he realized he still loved my mom, and begged her to take him back, so they never filed the final papers.”
On speaker phone from Texas, Loyal had argued it wasn’t cheating since they’d been separated for so long and the papers signed. Merit agreed. Big shocker there.
He, Shelby, Celia and Robert were on the opposite side. Until the divorce was one hundred percent legal, the marriage vows were sacred. They’d all argued the semantics while Dad and Mom and the campaign staff were yelling at each other in the other room.
“Did he know?” Honor asked quietly, hesitantly. “Did either of them know about...”
He shook his head. “No. That news report was as much a shock to him as everyone else. The woman—Vivian—never told him.” He spat the name out, his hand fisted on his upraised knee. “He said he never saw her again after that night. He didn’t even remember her name until his press team read the details from the news.”
“Wow. So, why now? I mean, I assume it’s because of the politics, but your dad’s been through two governors races, so why not then?”
“We’ve all asked that question tonight. Just don’t have an answer yet.”
After a moment of quiet, she murmured, “That is a huge secret for thirty-one years. It’s crazy.”
He barked out a humorless laugh. “I told you.”
“I didn’t mean it against your family,” she said gently. “More so the fact this woman never told your dad about the baby, and didn’t ask for child support or anything.”
“The worst part is, I feel so bad for my mom. She’s devastated.” Because she’d been lied to for thirty-one years. His sense of betrayal was nothing compared to the pain he’d seen in her eyes tonight. “Now, she has to go through all this shit with the public watching and judging.”
Honor’s hand landed on his shoulder to give a gentle squeeze. “I’m sorry, Asher. This can’t be easy on any of you.”
That was an understatement.
“We knew the media scrutiny would be brutal with his senate campaign,” he spoke around another mouthful of cake, “and it being a national seat instead of state, but none of us expected something like this. It changes everything. My whole family is going to be different from this.”
His fork clattered when he dropped it onto the edge of the cake plate with an angry jerk. “Makes me want to punch something. Or someone. My dad maybe. The brother I should’ve known and grown up with, even though I know it’s not his fault. His mother, because I know it’s her fault, but of course, can’t hit a woman.” Hearing the sarcasm in his voice, he scrubbed his hands over his face, the scruff on his jaw abrading his palms. “Not that I ever would hit a woman.”
Honor’s hand shifted from his shoulder to the back of his neck, her fingers threading through his hair. “It’s okay to be angry, Asher.”
Ironically, her gentle touch soothed away the ragged edges of that anger, just like when he’d first laid eyes on her in his living room. He lowered his arms, closed his eyes, and leaned into her as the stroke of her fingers sent a warm tingle of awareness all the way down his spine.
In the silence, the clink of a fork sounded, and then he felt her move to sit directly behind his back with her legs bracketing his sides. Her hands landed on his shoulders and began kneading his tense muscles.
Asher let out a low groan and hung his head to his chest. Her hands were like magic, offering relief and comfort while quieting his mind enough to review the past fifteen minutes with her in his mind.
A few minutes later, he lifted his head with a quiet, “Thank you.”
Her hands slowed, then stilled, then left his body. “Sure.”
The uncertainty in her voice brought a wry smile to his lips. He pointedly shrugged his shoulders. “Don’t stop. The thanks was for being here and listening, and for the cake—which is fucking awesome, by the way.”
He felt the tension in her thighs ease. Her soft laugh was music to his ears as her hands returned to resume their expert treatment. “Glad you like it.”
This time, everything else fell away as his focus narrowed to only the woman behind him. The strength of her delicate hands, the warmth of her thighs against his arms, the ever-present scent of freshly baked cake mingling with the underlying hint of peaches and cream he’d noticed earlier at dinner when he’d brushed her hair aside to press his lips to her neck.
Reaching up, he captured both her hands and pulled them down in front of him. He held one over his rapidly increasing heartbeat, and the other he lifted so he could press his lips to her open palm. “The only thing better than your cake is you.”
Her front leaned against his back, and then her warm breath fanned his ear. His breath caught in his throat as pure anticipation rushed through his body from head to toe.
“You think I’m awesome?” she asked in a teasing voice.
“No.” He paused, then added, “I think you’re fucking awesome.”
The retaliatory nip she gave his ear shot an arrow of lust zinging to his groin. He reached up to grasp the back of her neck while turning his head to align his mouth with hers. The smile parting her lips allowed him to slip his tongue past her teeth, and he pulled her closer to plunder and explore without mercy.
She took it all and gave it right back, tangling her tongue with his as their teeth scraped and nipped, her eagerness escaping in a breathless whimper that had his pulse pounding with excitement and his own low rumble of need crawling up his throat.
When his neck began to ache, he maneuvered around until he knelt between her legs. The awkward jostling had them
both smiling, until he crashed his mouth on hers in earnest. He splayed his palms on her back, caressing up and down, plastering her chest to his as her hands clenched in his hair in their joint effort to get ever closer.
Desperate for skin on skin, he grasped the hem of her T-shirt and dragged it up between them. They broke apart long enough for him to toss it aside, then came back together in breathless, sloppy kisses.
As he felt for the clasp at the back of her bra, she wedged her arms between them and started unbuttoning his shirt. “Bedroom?” she asked between gasps for air.
“Yeah,” he agreed. “Hang on.”
The moment she wound her arms around his neck, he surged to his feet with her in his arms. She lifted her legs to wrap around his waist, and he felt his way around the couch before heading for the hall. He buried his face against her neck, nipping and sucking at the base of her throat as her hair swished against his hands at her back with every step.
“Asher…wait.”
His step faltered at the sudden dismay in her voice. He stopped completely, his heart high in his throat. “What?”
“I just…” She pressed her forehead to his in the dark hallway, her breath hot on his lips as she whispered, “This isn’t why I stayed.”
Whooh. Shit, those words made it hard to breathe.
He dragged air into his tight lungs as he lifted a hand to cup her face. “This isn’t why I asked you to stay.”
Asher stared into her eyes, their breath mingling, hearts thumping in sync, the knowledge that they both still wanted it to happen heavy between them.
Nothing over the past five hours had made sense.
But this…Honor in his arms, slaying him to the soul as she offered more than she knew with those few vulnerable words?
This made sense.
Chapter 23
Honor felt the difference in his kiss when he laid her on his bed and followed her down. Still reeling from that moment in the hall, she told herself she was wrong. It was no different from the mindless, consuming lust that brought them to his room in the first place. She ignored the deafening boom of her idiotic heart and only allowed herself to focus on the physical.
It didn’t matter how much she liked him, this was sex. Pure and simple—until her words came back to haunt her.
This isn’t why I stayed.
She shoved them away and concentrated on the delicious sensation of his weight pressing her into the mattress. How it made her ache for him with every single breath. She shifted beneath him, spreading her legs to cradle his hips between her thighs. With the throb of his rock-hard erection against her core, she moaned into his mouth.
Yes. That’s what I want. Now.
He rocked his hips against hers in time to the slow, deep, erotic strokes of his tongue into her mouth, and out again. The simulation had her writhing, her hands searching to rip off the rest of his clothes.
The rest of his clothes? He hadn’t even taken anything off yet.
She went straight for the remaining buttons of his shirt to remedy that situation, then shoved the material from his broad shoulders. He helped her wrestle his arms from the sleeves, and as soon as she tossed the shirt aside, she went for his belt. Asher shifted onto his side to give her room to undo the buckle and slide the zipper down. The press of her palm against his rigid length through his boxer briefs elicited a low growl as his lips left hers to trail down her throat to her chest.
She slipped her hand under the waistband to push the soft, clingy material down over the firm cheeks of his butt, but became distracted when he peeled her bra cup down and sucked her pebbled nipple into his mouth. At the same time, he cupped her other breast through her bra and pinched the tip with his thumb and forefinger.
The sharp clench of her core muscles had her gasping and arching her back for more. He flattened his tongue against her skin, then swirled it round and round her nipple before latching on for another hard suck. Her hips lifted off the bed as she dug her fingers into his buttock.
“Asher. Oh my God.”
Her throaty purr of approval deepened when he hummed against her skin and did the whole thing again while she took her bra off faster than she’d ever done before so he could move to the other side. And when he palmed his free hand down over her belly to her leggings, she eagerly helped him strip them and her panties off, too. Anticipation tingled along her nerve endings as he skimmed his fingers up her calf, along her inner thigh, straight to where she wanted his touch.
But he didn’t stop there, and she whimpered a protest.
He replied with one last suck on her breast, then trailed soft, wet kisses down over her ribs, and stomach, and lower, until he hit the spot she wanted him most. Like the night on the couch, he sent her soaring in record time, gasping his name as her orgasm hit.
“I could do that over and over again,” he murmured, kissing his way up her body the same way he’d gone down.
“Not without you next time,” she vowed after he’d pressed a lingering kiss to her lips.
“Good plan.”
She grinned and reached up to gently brush his hair from his forehead. As their gazes connected and held, an unexpected hard thump of her heart in her chest knocked the wind right out of her. Her smile faded and so did his.
A shaky gasp filled her lungs again, and she quickly averted her gaze to his chest while lifting a hand to explore the hard planes with their dusting of dark hair in the middle that arrowed down to bisect his ridged abdomen.
Physical.
Muscles.
Hot, sexy body.
Long hard erection.
Honor pushed him onto his back and sat up to kneel beside him while grasping the waistbands of his pants and briefs. He lifted his hips so she could drag the clothes down his thighs and legs. She whisked them aside and then drank her fill of the sculpted male beauty before her. Her mouth watered at the sight of him laying naked before her, one hand behind his head showing off a bulging bicep as he watched her with hooded eyes.
Real life was so much better than her fantasy.
So. Much. Better.
She swung a leg over to straddle his and ran her palms up his thick thighs. His erection bobbed as she got close, but she forced herself to keep going over his taut stomach, up to his chest.
Bracing her palms on his pecs, she asked, “You want to see just how good I am at handling stick shift?”
His surprised bark of laughter morphed into a choked groan, his gaze fixed on the sway of her breasts between them. He brought his arm down from behind his head and reached both hands to cup her flesh in his palms. “More than anything.”
The squeeze of his fingers and rough pads of his thumbs circling her nipples sent off another spasm of desire deep in her core. She lightly rocked her hips against his hard length while dipping her head to kiss his parted lips.
He took her tongue into his mouth, then thrust up against her when she sucked his bottom lip between her teeth. Her breath caught in her throat. It would be so easy to reach down, grasp his thick length, and lower herself down until he was buried to the hilt.
She skimmed her hand between them to wrap her fingers around his hot, hard flesh. As she stroked up and down, the clench of his hands bordered on painful as her name wrenched from his throat on a growl.
“Honor. You’re killing me here. I need to be inside you.”
“Soon,” she promised before pulling away to take her turn kissing her way down his body. His stomach muscles quivered beneath her lips, then his fingers tangled in her hair when she ran her tongue along the length of his erection before taking the tip of him into her mouth.
He groaned his approval, and she gave a soft hum as she took him in all the way to the back of her throat.
His hands fisted, pulling at her scalp with his sharp inhale. “Geezus fuck, that’s good.”
She lifted her head for a peek of his face through her lashes. “Better than frosting?”
His deep laugh jostled the bed beneath them. “Maybe. Give
me another taste and I’ll let you know.”
“Sassy.” But she grinned as she took him in her mouth again, this time swirling her tongue around his head before sucking hard.
His low, drawn out moan answered even before his words. “Yeah. Definitely better than frosting.”
After that, she took her time, licking and sucking to keep him making those sexy, throaty sounds that turned her on more than she’d even imagined possible.
“If this is any indication, I assume you liked my car?” he asked between deep, controlled breaths.
“Yes. I absolutely loved your car, Asher.”
Love you even more.
The words in her head caught her off guard, and she stiffened with alarm. He didn’t seem to notice as he suddenly gripped her shoulders, pulling her up, rolling her over to lie on top of her while yanking open the drawer of his nightstand. He put on a condom in record time and then nudged her legs open.
When he hesitated and his dark amber gaze locked with hers, she squeezed her eyes shut to break the connection.
No emotion. Just sex.
She reached up to pull him down for an open-mouth kiss while lifting her hips to urge him inside her. He eased in, then out, then in a little deeper, his body trembling over hers with his restraint.
Damn it. She didn’t need gentle right now. Didn’t want gentle.
Digging her nails into his back, she planted her heels on the mattress and spread her knees wide. “Hard, Asher. Please.”
As if her words unleashed his control, he surged forward and buried himself deep in one thrust.
“Yes,” she gasped. “Again. Harder.”
He complied with her request, and when she felt her climax begin to build, she arched up, urging him faster with each thrust of his hips. They lost rhythm as they both plunged over the edge.
He collapsed on top of her while they both caught their breath. “Hmm,” he hummed when he finally eased his weight off to the side. His hand rose to brush her hair back from her forehead, and her heart tripped as his gaze met hers. “Your cake is great, Butter Cream, but yeah, I’ll take you driving my stick any day.”
Must Love Frosting Page 16
