by Zoe York
She’d changed into cotton shorts and a structured tank top, and it dawned on him that she might just be naked underneath both.
“Give me a second to have a shower, then we could watch a movie or something.”
“Megan’s asleep upstairs?”
“Yeah. The or something would have to be under a blanket and really quiet.” He winced. “Was that really sleazy? I’m a bit desperate to get you naked again, the line of propriety is blurry for me right now.”
She sucked in a breath and held it for a second before letting the dam burst. “You, too? Oh, good. I thought I was a bit pathetic for coming over here for what amounts to a booty call while your daughter sleeps upstairs. Because really, that’s a terrible idea, right?”
“It’s not a terrible idea for me to fool around on the couch with my girlfriend. First base has already been okayed by Megan.” And as he said that, his hard-on disappeared and he grimaced. Great. Cock blocking himself again.
She reached out and entwined their fingers together, ignoring his repeated comment about needing a shower. “I like your sweat, remember? You are so unbelievably hot right now, it makes me—” She cut herself off. “Sorry, I won’t go down that road if you’re not comfortable with us doing anything down here while she’s upstairs.”
At some point, he wanted Karen in his bed every night. If he was totally honest, that point was right now. A tremor wracked through his body.
Fuck it. Fear could taking a flying leap. He had a claim to stake. “She knows I love you. This isn’t a booty call, and we don’t have anything to be ashamed of.” He moved to pull her hard against his body, but her hands came up between them and pressed a warning into his chest.
He’d missed something. Her face had blanched, her eyes were wide, and it took him a moment. He re-wound his words as he took a deep breath, and heard himself tell Karen that he loved her in the most off-hand way just as she pushed herself away from him. His hands, slick with sweat, grasped at her waist, but she had moved too quickly.
She paced a few steps away, then turned around, still speechless. Her thoughts were spinning a mile a minute, though, and he watched her face and body language as she processed. His first instinct was to spit out a bunch of other stuff, provide some context for the words that he’d felt long enough to get sloppy and share at the wrong moment. But there, it was out in the open.
And she didn’t hate it, which was good. But she was torn, that much was obvious. Why?
“I’m leaving at the end of the summer.” Her lips barely moved, and the words slipped out. He wasn’t the only one who’d been wrapped up in fear, apparently. Damn.
“Baby. That’s okay.” He crossed the room in two long steps and wrapped her in a tight hug. “I haven’t forgotten about school. That’s going to be hard as hell, but we’ll figure something out.”
“Just like that?” She shook her head. “I can’t disrupt your life like that. Or Megan’s.”
He hadn’t thought this through. He’d do a much better job convincing her upstairs. In his bed. “Come on.”
She protested as he tugged her into the hall. “No! Paul…”
“Shhh. I’m sneaking you into my room.”
Megan’s room was at the front of the house, and his was at the back. Between them was a small room he’d filled with all the boxes Karen had made him move out of his garage, but that was originally going to be an office, and beside that was the bathroom. He pointed Karen to his bed, and pantomimed that she should take off her clothes. She rolled her eyes and stayed dressed as he crept down the hall to make sure Megan was asleep. He switched on the fan on her dresser, grateful for the white noise, and clicked her door closed.
Back in his room, he did the same thing, and rolled up a towel to cover the gap between his door and the floor.
“Why do I think this isn’t the first time you’ve snuck a girl into your room?” Karen hissed gently, her eyes narrowed. Her lips betrayed her interest, though, and she lifted her arms agreeably when he gripped the bottom of her tank top and lifted.
“Not in twenty years.”
“Really? I thought…” Karen licked her lips. “Never mind, don’t want to know right now.”
He stilled for a moment, quickly rifling through the options. Shit. “You thought my reluctance to date again was because Megan had been exposed to my dating in the past.”
“Well, yeah.”
“Not exactly. Not like this.” So not what he wanted to be talking about right now.
“Okay.”
“Karen.” He tipped her chin up until her gaze met his. “I love you.”
She shivered, and he lifted her hand, laying a row of small kisses across her knuckles. “I’ve only said that to one other woman. Plus my mother. And Meg. And I’ve never felt it quite like this before, so you gotta know, all joking aside, I’m not sneaking you into my room. You belong here.”
A lone tear rolled down her cheek, and he moved his lips to capture it.
“Don’t cry, baby.”
“I don’t know—”
“You don’t need to know. I do. I promise.”
“There’s so much to talk about.” She ran her hands over his chest. “And that’s hard to do when you say beautiful things and look…beautiful in front of me.”
“Lower.” He glanced down at her hands. “Touch me.”
“Maybe we shouldn’t confuse the issue.”
He took her hands and helped her push down his shorts. “This isn’t confusing anything. This is putting the truth of us front and center. How good we are together. How much we want each other.” As if on command, his dick, already hard and panting for her touch, bobbed up and down.
“It’s just sex,” she whispered, her shaky fingers wrapping around his erection.
Instead of arguing, he surged his hips forward, pumping his cock through her grip a few times. Need unfurled in his gut and he sank to his knees, taking her shorts to the ground at the same time. Her scent swirled toward him, delicate and musky and intoxicating, and he buried his face in the warm soft skin above her mound. She stroked his head, and he nuzzled her belly before tilting his face up to look at her beautiful face. Eyes still wide. Lips still parted in disbelief. “This isn’t sex, Karen. This is love.”
With gentle precision, he eased her hips back against the bed, and lifted one leg, draping it over his shoulder as he reached between them to part her sex, both of them groaning quietly as his touch found her wet and ready. As he dipped his face and kissed her clit, he felt her lean back, bracing herself against the bed, and he pressed her knee up and away, revealing more of her lusciousness.
He was drunk on her taste. With each lick, his mind swirled faster and harder, and his dick pulsed between his legs, wanting to be inside her. As she trembled and shook, grinding against his face, he thought about telling her everything. Admitting just how far down their future path he’d imagined.
But he needed to follow her lead now. She had fears, and doubts, and he for all the promises that he wanted to make, that’s all they would be. There weren’t any guarantees. Hard to believe while on his knees, worshiping the woman he loved, but love wasn’t the only truth between them. Distance and responsibility couldn’t be ignored. The next year would be a challenge, but they’d get through it together.
Above him, Karen panted his name, and he redoubled his efforts, looping up and around her clit with his tongue, then dipping lower to surge inside, and back again, until one of her hands clamped onto the back of his head and held him in place as she exploded in a jerky, beautiful clench.
He almost pushed her flat on bed and mounted her bare, but at the last second remembered a condom.
It was the last conscious thought he had before he sank into her tight warmth and surrendered to his need.
“I had a whole thing planned out. It was going to be special, me telling you how I feel.”
“This was pretty special.” Karen trailed one of the damp washcloths that Paul had brought back from the bathr
oom over his back. It was hot and sticky, and the fan wasn’t quite cutting it. She lazily thought about opening his window, but it was all the way across the room.
“I wanted to ask you out.”
“Like on a date? That’s adorable.” She smirked, and he twisted to the side as if to tickle her, but his palm brushed her nipple and he shifted focus. As he drew tighter and tighter circles on her breast, pebbling the skin and stirring the hungry beast inside her—two crashing orgasms weren’t enough?—she fell back against the pillow and arched her back. “Tell me what we were going to do,” she panted.
“Maybe I shouldn’t tell you. We could still do it.”
“We will. But it doesn’t need to be a surprise anymore, does it?”
“I guess not.” He sucked her nipple into his mouth and hummed before releasing it. “I’d decided to take you hiking up the bluffs. Bring a camera, take a picture of us with the town and the lake below.”
Her heart skipped a beat. “Wow.”
“We can still do that.”
“You better believe it.” She should tell him. As he made love to her, the words had echoed in her head, over and over again. I love you, too. She did. But again, as an opportunity presented itself, she ducked.
“You okay?”
She nodded.
“Want to come again?”
Another nod. Good lord, she didn’t deserve this man.
CHAPTER TWENTY
It took a minute for Karen to realize she was dreaming. She was standing in her kitchen, making a cup of tea, and it wasn’t until she blinked and was all of a sudden outside, in the cool darkness of her backyard, that awareness set in. She turned around, trying to get her bearings. The upstairs light was on next door. She looked at her watch, knowing that it was Megan’s bedtime even though she couldn’t make out the face. Paul would be on his third trip up to tell her to put the books away. Despite her aching heart, Karen couldn’t help but laugh out loud, which wasn’t out loud at all. Dreams were weird.
Sadness flooded her chest as she looked at their house. She’d been in her own kitchen, and now she was standing on the outside, looking in. What had gone wrong?
She wondered how long it would be before she saw the eery glow of a secret flashlight, and barked another silent laugh.
“What’s so funny?”
She froze. His voice never changed. Years of feigning understanding with criminals had polished his tone into quiet consistency. It was the words itself that did the damage.
“Karen.” He stepped closer, his footsteps slow but undaunted by her silence.
“Shouldn’t you be telling Megan to turn out her light?”
He chuckled, and the warm rolling sound punched her in the gut. Her dream self started to fill in the gaps. This wasn’t tonight, or it was, but an alternate version where they hadn’t reconnected. God, she’d missed him, even in her dreams.
“We’re trying something new—natural consequences of staying up late. I’m going to haul her out of bed for a hike in the morning.”
“There’s nothing natural about that,” she muttered, and smiled despite herself. It actually sounded amazing. A thermos of coffee and a bag of Carrie’s muffins at the top of the moraine would make it perfect.
“I want to talk. About us.”
“Haven’t we talked enough? You made it crystal clear that you don’t feel the same way.” Had he? Where did she get that idea from?
“I don’t.”
Dream Karen waved him off. “Really not necessary to go over that again.”
“It is.”
Above their heads, Megan’s bedroom window went dark. “She’s so good, isn’t she?” It was reaching, but any subject change would work. But Karen didn’t know why she was changing the subject. Go back, she wanted to scream at her dream self. Let him talk, it’ll be worth it.
He nodded.
“You guys have done a great job raising her.” Her dream heart squeezed, and then she was inside herself, losing her objective view of the scene, and the pain was hot and real. “I’m really glad that it’s okay with you and Susan that Megan still hangs out with me.” Her voice grew tight and cold, and she hated it, but there was a limit to how polite she could be. “I’m going inside no—”
“Stop.” Again with that damn cop voice. How did he manage to make a request sound like an order, and an order sound like a plea? Reading true desperation into his unchanged tone would surely make her the pathetic one.
She halted anyway, but only to lob one last volley. “You don’t get any more of my time, Paul. Fool me once, ya know?”
Standing taller than she felt, she headed inside. He was following, but she knew he wouldn’t enter her house uninvited. Despite the late fall chill, a faint sweat burst across her upper body. If she could just close the slider door without turning around, before he said—
“I love you.”
It was as if she knew it was coming, and yet was blindsided anyway. Like a lift hill at the start of a roller coaster. Of course he loved her. She’d known that from their first kiss. Probably from their first late night conversation in this very yard. But he didn’t love her like she loved him. He didn’t want to love her. That’s why he pushed her away. And since he was able to push her away, able to hurt her so readily, with such ease, he couldn’t love her as he should. As she deserved. He’d found some of the words to describe how he felt, but they were too little, too late.
There was only one thing she could do. Protect her heart. Lie. “I don’t care.”
“Please, let me explain.”
She was still standing with her back to him. She wanted to turn around, wanted to sink into his arms and his words and let him make it okay, but it wasn’t going to be okay. They didn’t want the same things in life. There was no future, and she wasn’t going to waste any more time pretending that there just might be.
With a gasp, she woke up just as she headed away from Paul in her dream, and twisted into Paul in real life. She was in his bed, their naked bodies entwined in a sticky pile. And he loved her. For real. But also in a dream where they hadn’t been talking. Oh, god.
He’d told her he loved her, and she’d said nothing.
She had to go.
Lunchtime. He could stop at the store, pick something up, visit the woman he loved, even when she drove him out of his mind with equal parts desire and concern. She’d snuck out of his place while he was asleep two nights ago, and blown him off when he asked her about it the next day. She’d visited for a bit that same afternoon, played a few rounds of Wii Sports, but then headed into the city to see her sister and she wasn’t home when he went to bed.
Just because he’d said he loved her didn’t mean she had to spend every night in his bed. Yeah, right. Maybe if he repeated that to himself enough times he’d believe it.
A bell jangled overhead as he pushed the door open. Underfoot, the soft cream linoleum was worn, but clean and recently waxed. A cheerful greeting drifted his way from the cashier, and he nodded, but his gaze kept moving. Cataloguing the space without thinking about it. Tidy, full shelves. Sale signs, bright and in his face. A few mid-day customers, moving slowly, none of them taking notice of him. He’d become a part of the town. Constable Reynolds of the Wardham Detachment, seen at the grocery store picking up lunch. No longer a source of gossip. That would change shortly.
“Excuse me, miss?” The clerk glanced up. “Karen around?”
She pointed to the back corner of the store. “I think she’s stocking in aisle six.”
He heard her humming before he rounded the corner. Guns N’ Roses. Ha. He paused, giving himself a moment to soak in the goodness.
Her hair was piled on her head in a cross between a ponytail and a bun, and as she stretched to stack cracker boxes on the top shelf, an inviting curve of bare tummy revealed itself between her jeans and cotton t-shirt. She looked determined, if tired, and a renewed desire to ease her burden coursed through his gut.
But she wasn’t making that easy
for him to do. “You were out late last night.”
She froze in place, one long arm stretched above her head. He moved closer, stopping as he picked up her familiar tropical-tinged scent. Another foot and he wouldn’t be able to maintain any distance between them at all. Even here, safely just out of arm’s reach, every fiber of his being was humming with a need to touch her. Protect her. Consume her, which probably ran counter to the protection instinct.
“So?” She pushed off the shelf and turned toward him, her chest rising and falling slowly as she controlled her breath. He waited for her to cross her arms, or prop her hands on the tight waist he desperately wanted to stroke his own hands around. But instead she reached up to rub the skin at the base of her neck, and his gaze was drawn to the pink flush there.
“So nothing, just noticed is all.” Notching his hands on his belt, he relaxed his arms in a gesture he hoped conveyed all that he couldn’t say in a busy grocery store. Am I messing this up? I don’t want to be needy, I just want you. All the time. Because we don’t have that much time.
She closed her eyes for a moment, then opened them and offered a rueful smile. “I don’t know why I didn’t call you. I’m glad to see you now.”
“It’s okay that I stopped by?” He risked her siren call in the name of privacy and stepped closer. “I came to ask you out.”
A laugh was not the response he’d expected, but the throaty outburst wasn’t the worst answer she could have given. “Hiking?”
“Yep.”
“Okay.” She leaned forward, so their heads were mere inches apart. Her breath was warm and sweet, like she’d been chewing fruity gum. “I really am glad to see you today.”
He reached out and twirled an errant curl with his index finger before carefully tucking it behind her ear, an excellent excuse to touch her skin. He lingered there for a moment before trailing his fingertips along her jaw. When he reached her chin, he paused, then regretfully withdrew his hand.
Low enough to keep his words just for her, he opened his heart and let the truth out. “I’m not going give you a lot of space, unless you tell me to back off. I’d rather spend the next two months getting my fill of you than pretending that being apart is easier, because it’s not. Being apart from you is hell on earth.”
