The next evening, I’d dropped the boys off at my parents’ place, expertly ducking out before my mom could ask me why I wasn’t staying for dinner, and I was getting things ready for Meredith’s arrival.
I had steaks marinating and sweet potatoes wrapped in foil, both ready for the grill. I wore basketball shorts and a T-shirt because it was in the high eighties outside. Despite the shorts, I was still sweating. Had to be nerves. I was so fucking out of practice with this kind of thing.
I was halfway through a Corona when she knocked on the door. When I opened it, she smiled, and I could see she was nervous, too.
“Hey,” I said, stepping aside so she could come in.
“Hi. I brought red.” She pulled a bottle of wine from the large bag on her shoulder. “Is that okay?”
“It’s great.”
I finally felt like I could look her over slowly, savoring every inch of her, knowing I wouldn’t get busted by my sons. She wore a black strapless dress that showed off her legs, her turquoise swimsuit strings tied around her neck. Her dark hair was pulled up in a bun, showcasing the creamy, perfect skin on her neck.
“You look nice,” I said.
Her smile was the wide, pretty one I fantasized about. “You’re sweet. It’s a swimsuit cover-up.”
“Ah.” I grinned sheepishly. “I don’t know about these things. Looks like a dress to me.”
She followed me into the kitchen, where she set her bag down on the floor.
“I turned the hot tub on, in case you’re up for that later,” I said, moving our steaks from the container I’d marinated them in onto a plate.
“I’d love that. I haven’t been in a hot tub in years.” She set the wine on the counter. “How can I help with dinner?”
“I’m just gonna grill it. I’ll pour some wine, and we can sit outside while it cooks if you want. Or I have Corona with limes if you want that.”
“Fancy,” she teased. “I’d love one.”
I opened a bottle of beer for her and stuck a slice of lime inside. “I can’t drink a Corona without a lime in it. Not that I drink much.”
“Not your thing?”
I shrugged. “I used to have a beer with dinner now and then, especially after a long day. But the boys don’t like having alcohol in the house after Kim. They worry I’ll become an alcoholic, too. So I never drink around them.”
Meredith’s expression fell. “That’s really sad.”
I didn’t want to talk about my ex-wife anymore, so I moved on. “Means we’ve got six Coronas and a bottle of wine to finish tonight. You may need to stay over.”
She blushed and smiled. My cock twitched in my shorts, and I moved to stand behind the island so I didn’t look like an overeager pubescent.
Once I’d tamed the beast by thinking about the steak and potatoes, I took the food outside and Meredith followed.
“It’s quiet without the boys here,” she said, sitting down on a bench by the grill.
“Yeah, it is.” I turned on the grill and looked at her. “So how was your Friday at work?”
“Pretty good.”
“What do you do at the dealership?”
She waved a hand. “Just boring stuff. Payroll and benefits administration and accounting.”
“You like it?”
“I don’t mind it. I like the people I work with, and I like knowing my dad’s business is in good hands.”
“He’s lucky to have you.”
“That’s nice of you to say.”
She crossed her legs, revealing more skin, though she didn’t seem to know she’d done it. As I tried not to stare, she was obliviously sipping her drink.
“How about you?” she said. “Did you have a good day at work?”
“Yeah, the usual. I did an appendectomy and a gall bladder removal this morning. Had office hours in the afternoon.”
“What made you decide to become a doctor?”
I smiled. “You remember Dr. Porter?”
“I do.”
“I had to go see him when I was a kid because I had pretty bad leg pains. He sent me to a specialist in St. Louis, and it turned out I was just growing really fast, and that was the source of the pain. But that trip to the children’s hospital made me realize I wanted to be a doctor. I thought it was the coolest place in the world.”
“I like that.”
“I never really planned on becoming a surgeon, but Lovely Hospital recruited me when I was in med school. They needed a general surgeon and were set on a hometown boy settling in here long-term.”
The steaks sizzled as I put them on the grill. Meredith stood up and looked out over the pool.
“Well, you do have a great bedside manner,” she said.
“Thank you,” I said, trying to keep from smirking.
“What? That’s funny?”
I shook my head. Now I was the one blushing. I couldn’t tell her I didn’t want to be beside any bed she was also near.
“You hungry?” I asked her.
“Starving. I ate a handful of pistachios for lunch.”
“What kind of a lunch is that?”
She shrugged. “I was in the middle of something I needed to finish up.”
“Well, I’ve got pie from Gene’s in the fridge for dessert.”
“This is nice,” she said softly.
“The food?”
“No. I mean, yeah . . . I’m sure it will be. But I meant the company.”
“I agree.”
It was all I could do to keep my eyes off her and focus on the food I was cooking. I’d precooked the potatoes in the microwave, so within a few minutes, we were sitting down at the kitchen table with our food and two glasses of the red wine she’d brought.
“This is so good,” she said after her first bite of steak.
“Thanks. I grill about half the time. I’ve gotten pretty decent at it.”
“I think it’s amazing what you do. Balancing work and the boys and the house.”
“I wasn’t balancing it all until I cut back on work last year. I worked way too much when my kids were little.”
She arched a brow and grinned. “You mean you’re not perfect? You’re in good company.”
I wiped my mouth and set my napkin down. “Just tell me if I’m overstepping, but why’d you back out on marrying my brother?”
“You put it more kindly than most people do,” she said, looking down at the table. “I was young and stupid. The closer I got to the wedding day, the more unsettled I felt. My mom had died six months before the wedding was set, and I told myself that was why everything felt off. I never even told Reed how I felt, which is terrible.” She looked up and met my eyes. “My mom always used to say it’s never too late. And that day, as I put on the dress and looked at myself in the mirror, I just kept thinking about that over and over. The closer we’d gotten to the wedding, the more I’d told myself it was too late not to go through with it. But I felt like my mom was telling me it wasn’t too late. That marrying him when I wasn’t sure would be a much bigger mistake than not doing it.”
I nodded. “I agree with you there.”
“I loved Reed. But marrying him just wasn’t . . . right. I hate the way I handled it, though.”
“I think his ego recovered just fine. Don’t sweat it anymore. Not after all this time.”
Her eyes glistened. I realized in that moment that my mom couldn’t have been more wrong about Meredith.
“So . . .” She cleared her throat and tucked her hair behind her ear. “I heard Mason’s engaged. That’s great.”
“Yeah, he and April are a really good fit.”
I told her about the hunting trip I was planning as a bachelor party, which led to talk of my love for hunting and fishing. Turned out her dad was a fisherman, too.
“You think we can finish this off?” I asked, picking up the bottle of wine.
“Oh, I don’t think that’ll be a problem.”
I poured the last of it into our glasses, and we cleared the dis
hes from the table together.
“You feel like a swim?” I asked her.
“Sure. No relay racing this time, right?”
I laughed at the thought and told her I was going to change into my swim trunks.
When I got out to the pool, Meredith was sitting on the stairs at the shallow end of the pool. I held my breath as I watched her swirling an ankle around in the water. She was so damn pretty, her bikini top allowing me a full view of her long, lean lines. She had such a natural beauty—not a single nip or tuck on her. And I had a feeling she wasn’t the type to have work done as she aged, which I liked.
I sat down next to her on the stairs, adjusting to the cool pool water. She smiled at me.
“I’m supposed to make an appointment with you for a follow-up on the incision on my breast,” she said.
“Oh, yeah, I forgot about that. I can look at it now if you want to save a trip to my office. I mean, if that doesn’t make you uncomfortable.”
She shrugged. “Not at all. You’ve seen me already.”
“Yeah, but . . . I didn’t, really. I don’t think about my patients that way. In my head, it’s totally clinical.”
“You’ve never been turned on by seeing a naked patient?”
I cringed. “Never. No.”
She slid the left cup of her bikini top to the side, revealing the tiny pink incision from her biopsy. I cocked my head to get a good look at it.
“It’s healing fine,” I said. “I don’t think you’ll have much of a scar there.”
“It doesn’t matter. No one but me would see it if I did,” she said, looking down at the pool water.
Instinct made me reach over and brush aside the hair that was hanging down to conceal her face from my view. She turned her face toward me, and I leaned in, my lips meeting hers in a kiss that was slow and gentle.
As soon as she parted her lips, I cupped her cheek and kissed her deeper, savoring the taste of the wine on her mouth.
It was like the sweet, slightly exotic scent of her perfume and the smooth, soft feel of her skin were meant for me. I couldn’t get enough.
She slid closer to me and wrapped a hand around the back of my neck. Our tongues met in a dance that was only slightly familiar. I’d only kissed one other woman in my life, and this new territory turned me on hard.
When she pulled away, she was breathless. Her lips were red from the scrape of my stubble against them. As soon as she gave me that wide, gorgeous smile, I wanted to go back in for another kiss.
“I like you,” she said, her tone so soft it was almost a whisper.
“I like you, too. I could just sit here and kiss you all night.”
“I wouldn’t mind that at all.” She picked up her wineglass from the edge of the pool and took a sip.
“Are you blushing or is it the wine?” I asked.
“Probably both.”
I stepped down into the pool and went underwater, wiping the water from my face when I came back up. When I approached Meredith and put my hands around her waist, her eyes widened a little.
She hadn’t been touched in a while. We were two souls with more common ground than I’d ever realized. Both of us were starved for a moment like this.
When I eased her off the stairs and into the water, she smiled and wrapped her arms around my neck. I kissed her again, the water lapping gently at our chests.
We both got less tentative, exploring each other with our hands and lips. She ran her hands through my wet hair and over my scruffy, unshaven cheeks. I traced a finger up the ridges of her spine and cupped her ass as she wrapped her legs around my waist.
After about twenty minutes of kissing and touching without words, I eased my face back from hers and met her eyes.
“You want some music?” I asked her.
“Sure.”
I let go of her and swam toward the stairs, looking at her over my shoulder. “Need anything else? Another drink?”
“I’ll take another Corona.”
I smiled sheepishly. “You might not want to watch me get out of the pool. I can’t hide this wood.”
She laughed. “Oh, I’m watching. It’ll flatter me.”
I stepped out of the pool, and sure enough, my erection jutted straight out in front of me like it was drawn to an invisible magnet.
I wasn’t a player by any stretch. Though I was a good-looking guy, marrying my high school girlfriend had limited my experience with women. But I didn’t feel weird about that with Meredith. To the contrary, I wanted her to know that every kiss and every touch meant something to me.
How could I put that into words without sounding lame as fuck?
I grabbed two more beers from inside, then opened the garage door and reached around to the wall to switch on the pool lights and the sound system. Soft music filled the air, and I knew I couldn’t put anything into words right now. I just wanted to feel Meredith’s skin against mine.
Meredith
I was alone in the pool, my heart pounding with excitement and anticipation. I wondered if Kyle had heard me sighing as he touched me. I’d been unable to help it. There was no way I could tell him why his hand cupping my cheek had brought tears to my eyes that I forced away. It was because it had been years since I’d felt a man’s tender touch.
Truthfully, no man since Reed had taken his time with me. I’d had fast, decent sex with two men since him. One of them had been the man I’d had a disastrous month-long marriage with after leaving Reed. The other had been Tyler, a guy I knew from high school whom I’d gotten with in a moment of desperation more than two years ago. He’d jackhammered me for ten minutes, pouring buckets of sweat with the exertion of getting me off. Then he’d gotten dressed and said “Thanks for the lay” before leaving.
But hey, beggars couldn’t be choosers. Or so I’d thought before getting with Tyler. But I’d felt so much shame after that encounter that I’d decided no sex was better than meaningless sex.
Somewhere between the end of things with Reed and hooking up with Tyler, I’d come to feel like I didn’t deserve to be cherished. But that had all changed when Tyler left my house after our mediocre sexual encounter.
Maybe no man would ever cherish me again, I’d decided the next morning. But it wouldn’t be because I didn’t deserve it. And I wouldn’t settle for less.
The long drought had made me extra sensitive to a man’s touch, though. I’d broken out in goose bumps when Kyle kissed me, and I’d jumped a little when he squeezed my ass. I’d closed my legs around him a little tighter, trying to let him know I was just jumpy and that he should not, under any circumstances, stop.
When he turned on the pool lights and music, butterflies fluttered wildly in my stomach. He’d only been gone for a minute, and I couldn’t wait for him to get back. Already I missed the feel of his warm, powerful body against mine.
He walked over to the edge of the pool with two bottled Coronas in hand.
“Hot tub?” he asked, arching his brows.
“Sure.”
I walked up the pool steps, loving the feel of his gaze on me. He stood beside the sunken hot tub and waited, offering me his hand for support as I stepped in.
The steaming, swirling water felt amazing. I sighed as I relaxed into it.
When I sat down, he set my Corona on the deck next to my arm and then stepped in himself. He sat across from me, stretching his arms out to his sides on the deck. His arms spanned the entire length of the large hot tub, the definition of his muscles making my eyes linger.
“Feels good,” he said, leaning his head back on the deck.
“I never thanked you for dinner,” I said. “So, thank you. It was delicious.”
“My pleasure. It was nice to cook for someone whose meat I didn’t have to cut up.”
He grinned and sank down farther into the water. When his hands touched the calf of one of my legs, I felt a jolt of excitement. He slid them down until my foot was in his hands.
“You like foot rubs?” he asked.
“I’ve never had one.”
He started massaging a thumb into the bottom of my foot, and I moaned softly.
“Yes, I love foot rubs,” I said.
The water bubbled around us as he massaged both my feet. I sank down into the water until the tips of my hair were submerged, then sat back up, keeping my feet in Kyle’s lap.
“Tell me one of your secrets,” he said softly. “Something no one knows about you.”
I felt a brief twinge of worry, because I didn’t share secrets with anyone. All my private thoughts were safely locked inside me. But there was something very tempting about opening up to Kyle this way. The hunger in his dark gaze was unmistakable.
“I’ll go first,” he said.
He opened his mouth to start, but he closed it again. “This is harder than I thought it would be.”
“I swear it’s safe with me, whatever it is.”
“I know. It’s just . . .” He cleared his throat. “It’s something you probably wouldn’t guess about me.”
“Just go for it,” I said, easing my foot from his hand into his lap.
I ran my toes over his long, hard erection. He groaned and closed his eyes for a second.
“I’ve never had a blow job,” he said, opening his eyes as soon as the words were out.
I went still. “Never ever?”
He shook his head, his expression sheepish.
“Not even with Kim?”
“She said she was disgusted by it. Never even tried it.”
“Oh, wow.”
“Yeah.”
The vulnerability in his expression made me want to pull off his swim trunks and suck his dick here and now. I wanted him badly, but I also wanted to take away the part of him that obviously felt like less of a man over his secret.
Kyle Lockhart was one of the hottest men I’d ever laid eyes on. There was something so earthy and real about his big brown eyes and easy smile. And who could deny that six feet, five inches of lean, muscled man who was very well endowed was sexy?
He was right—I never would have guessed that about him.
“Whoever gets to be your first is the luckiest woman alive,” I said.
He smiled, and the corners of his eyes crinkled. “I don’t know about that. I’m sure it’s a chore for all women.”
Drawn Deeper Page 6
