She resisted the urge to face-plant onto the table again, the memory of his voice swirling inside her head. If you're bending over in these shorts, Al, I'd prefer it only be in front of me. Next time you do it, I'll keep you in that position for a long damn time. How had Mr Home Grown known exactly what would make her tremble, midsection quaking and tightening all at once? Even the memory of it was enough to have Alannah squeezing her thighs together.
And, astonishingly, she didn't want to share any more of that memory with Kayla, who had known Al's most embarrassing secrets for years. She'd called Kayla for reassurance the time Harry fell asleep during sex, told her barely an hour after Harry proposed, come to her for sympathy and tough love the day they broke up. None of that had made her uncomfortable at all—it had seemed only natural to share it with her best friend. But this… already, she was regretting telling Kayla as much as she had. It felt almost like a betrayal, a violation of the heady intimacy of the moment she and Rex had shared, when really all she wanted to do was curl up inside the base sensuality of the way he'd growled those dirty words. Wanted to beg him to keep talking to her like that, keep making her feel sexy and exciting and alive. Instead, the sexuality of it was draining away, leaving her ashamed and vulnerable. Why hadn't she kissed him? Why hadn't she done something other than be boring, reticent little Alannah Green, who couldn't take an exciting opportunity if it was right in front of her?
She drove home from the café in a funk of disappointed embarrassment and plopped down into her desk chair to scowl at the unfinished office building plans on her desk.
It hadn't been Harry's fault that the spark was missing from their relationship. In truth, Alannah wasn't sure it had ever really been there. Maybe she'd imagined the excitement of those early days, convinced herself he made her heart beat faster because she didn't know what the real thing felt like, hadn't realised that Harry's appeal would pale in comparison to true attraction. Rex had hardly even touched her, and already, she suspected they'd be explosive together.
Maybe this was the kind of passion she needed after Harry. Maybe a few weeks of Rex would be enough to experience the reality of excitement and craving, and then she'd be able to leave Shepherd's Creek without wondering forever what might have been. Rex might be back, but she was leaving. There was no getting around that. What she wanted from him—what it was starting to feel like she needed from him—was physicality. A reminder she was allowed to want more than she'd had with Harry, because that kind of passion and electricity was out there, if she'd only get out there and find it. She was… she was sick of being beige. Sick of having her predictable life stretch out in front of her like a straight road. Alannah wanted turns. A Dr Seuss-style winding pathway of rollercoaster-sharp pivots and breathless change when she least expected it.
That was why she was making these changes, wasn't it? The project that was taking her to Mansfield was bigger than anything she'd handled independently before, a challenge that beige, sensible, safe Alannah would never have had the courage to take on. After her mother died, Alannah had only really had Harry tying her to Shepherd's Creek. Without him, she was untethered to any one spot—she'd been able to rescind her refusal of the new job and jump in with both feet. Without that anchor, she felt almost naked, but at the same time, free in a way she had never known.
In light of her resolution to experience everything that was offered to her, Al could almost convince herself that she was obligated to explore her attraction to Rex. She had to suppress a moan at the thought of getting her hands on him. Thighs squeezed together under her desk, she conjured up the image of him like she was sketching out a design on the paper before her—her hands running over him, his wide chest, the hair below his belly button, the cock she'd felt up against her yesterday. She could picture the way his breath would hitch as she stroked him, the praise he'd growl at her. His body was so damn big that she wouldn't be surprised if he could lift her up, and damn if that didn't add a whole new dimension to her fantasy. Rex positioning her however he wanted, the same way he had manoeuvred her yesterday when she slipped on the stairs.
"Stairs." Her whisper was loud in the hushed office. She almost knocked over her mug of pencils in her rush to get the image in her head down on paper. She drew out the dimensions of her office project in rough lines. If she moved the staircase here, she'd free up the best part of an entire wall for more windows and go part of the way toward fixing the lighting.
See, Al announced to her prissy internal voice, the voice of beige. Embracing experience is already making me better at my job.
Chapter 3
Rex had spent most of his waking hours for the last week covered in sweat and sawdust. Jamie Cameron was one of the most intense perfectionists Rex had ever met, including his army superiors. He didn't speak much, unless he was giving instructions, but the two of them had fallen into a rhythm.
Rex's grasp of the use of sunscreen, he discovered by the end of that first week, was apparently not as good as he'd thought, because his shoulders were burnt bright red.
On Tuesday, after leaving the worksite, he hit up the supermarket for a tube of moisturiser—a throwback to his years as a randy teenager who went through boxes of tissues like a hospital in flu season. As much as he tried to tell himself it was for the burn he could feel around the edges of his shirt, he knew full well it would do double duty so he could wring his cock out each night. The goal—to calm himself enough to see Alannah sipping coffee in the mornings from his own kitchen window without wanting to fuck her over her sink—was not exactly being achieved. It felt like his eyes were magnetised to her each morning, like his internal alarm clock was set so he'd be up at exactly the right time to give her a wave as he left for work. There was something in her sleepy morning routine that flipped a switch in him: the halo of messy curls around her head, like someone had just finished running their hands through them, the heavy-lidded eyes that brightened each time he waved to her. He'd thought his time in the army might have beaten the sentimentality out of him, but all it seemed to have done was add an edge of sexual frustration to his sudden longing to step up behind her in the morning, sweep her curls to the side, and suck his mark into the skin of her throat so hard her coffee spilled.
Sexual relief during his time in the army had been sporadic. His focus had not been on scoring with a local girl whenever he had enough time to look around. Relief had come from his hand or, more likely, not at all; the regimented nature of his life during those years had taught him the value of channelling energy into those things that mattered. He'd run further, trained harder, learnt more than his fellows, because he knew where to place his focus, and it wasn't on getting his dick wet.
But now, even with his muscles burning by the end of each day, eyelids heavy before the sun went down, he found himself unable to sleep due to thoughts of her, to the erection she seemed to unwittingly inspire every time she so much as breathed anywhere near him. Roughly fucking his fist each night was enough to take the edge off, just enough that he didn't find himself thinking of the smell of her hair in the middle of the workday and have to hide his erection behind a pallet. Not enough to stop him sucking in a breath at the sight of her each morning, starting the whole damn cycle over again.
And the World's Most Persistent Boner was still refusing to go away. At this rate, his orgasm count would be well into double digits by the end of the week, every one of them a fucking homage to Alannah Green.
He'd seen her briefly beyond the wave they shared each morning, watering her vegetables in the evening—unfortunately not in the wet-dream shorts, though a slightly rumpled business suit was barely less flattering to her bombshell body. That night, he found himself picturing her coming home, jacket off, shirt sleeves rolled up, stepping out of those high heels and walking around the house in stocking feet. He pictured himself peeling the stockings down her legs and burying his face between them, taking her slightly dishevelled end-of-the-day look and roughing it up even more, mingling her screams of
pleasure with the slap of his balls against her ass when he took her up against the wall.
Yes, Alannah Green was fast becoming an obsession, and Rex couldn't bring himself to rein it in. This morning, when he hadn't seen her from his own kitchen window, he spent an inordinate amount of time standing alone at the sink, staring over the fence at the dark wall of Alannah's place. The home that was so inescapably her, even the parts of the old house that she had retained in her new design.
He needed to make time to meet with Simon, the real estate agent, to find a place to crash that wasn't his childhood bedroom. Living next door to a walking wet dream was clearly not doing him any favours, and at twenty-six, after eight years of independent living, Rex was more than a little uncomfortable being back in his parents' house.
Feeling like a teenager once more, with a supermarket bag containing only a tube of moisturiser, Rex spared Al's garden one surreptitious look in case she'd decided to make a second appearance in those wet-dream shorts. No sexy gardener, to his disappointment, but her car was in the driveway, its glossy exterior in sharp contrast to his dinged-up bomb. The rattling noise the engine was making was almost definitely worse after driving to Shepherd's Creek. He'd need to take Mitch's advice and get it looked at soon.
Rex was halfway through toeing off his boots inside the front door when he heard noises coming from the lounge room. He braced, instantly prepared for an attack, blood running cold at the thought. Shepherd's Creek was supposed to be safe. His mother's voice—a muffled scream? He crept closer—followed by a high, "Andrew!" and a single grunt and the sound of something scraping over the floor. Keeping his back to the wall, Rex snatched a peek into the lounge room and caught a glimpse of his parents, on the floor, only they were most definitely not struggling to fend off any attackers.
Faster than a bat out of hell, Rex was legging it right the fuck out of there, one boot off, trying to close the door quietly but suspecting he might have failed, hoping desperately they wouldn't try to come after him or, hell, even notice the sound.
Living with his parents had just gone from slightly uncomfortable to a fucking impossibility.
Rex found himself at Alannah's front door, hammering so hard, he wouldn't have been surprised if his knuckles left dents. Her eyes went wide when she opened it to find him with his head pressed against his forearm on her doorframe, doing his best to bleach from his brain the last few minutes.
"G'day, Al," Rex announced with a kind of stunned resignation. "Any chance I could stay in your spare room?"
Rex Castlereagh took up an enormous amount of space. She'd realised it the last time he was here, when he'd stood in her kitchen and dwarfed the space she'd worked to maximise, but having him sitting on the other side of the bench made the whole house seem smaller, as if she'd feel his presence even if they were rooms apart. Of course, that could be the way his presence seemed to reduce the amount of oxygen available, consuming it all with his big, manly… manliness.
Maybe she'd screwed up the house's ventilation and made it airtight, and they were slowly running out of air.
"What are you making?" Rex asked, startling Alannah out of her daze.
"Scones. When things are busy at work, I don't spend enough time baking. I mostly stick to the same old recipes because I could make them with my eyes closed, and I'm often out of brain power by the time I get home, old faithfuls that I have Mum's recipes for, like cupcakes, apple pie, meringues. Sorry, I'm rambling, aren't I?"
"You're fine," Rex said evenly, taking a long drink of the tea she'd made him.
Surely, it shouldn't feel so domestic to be sharing space with a man who made her pulse pound.
"What was it your mum was always trying to teach you to make?"
She managed a laugh. "Trifle. I'm still bloody terrible at it, you know."
"Isn't it just throwing a bunch of shit in a bowl?"
Al pretended outrage. "I'll have you know you have to carefully place a bunch of shit in a bowl."
Rex's rumbling chuckle was a thing of beauty, but he followed it up with a heavy sigh. "I'll have to go back over there sometime, right? To get my stuff—I don't know if I can ever look my parents in the eye again."
"I watched you move in," Alannah reminded him. "It's not like you brought a lot of stuff with you. Just abandon it and buy more if you can't face them."
"You make it sound so reasonable. Catch your parents doing the deed? Why not just throw away all your belongings and replace them?"
Al pushed her tray of scones into the oven and stood. "Reasonable is over-rated. You've just come out of the most disciplined job on the planet. I'd say you're well overdue to be a bit unreasonable."
His gaze felt like a caress as it traced over her. "Who is this sassy girl, and what have you done with Alannah Green?"
She knew he wasn't trying to be mean, probably thought it was a compliment, but her shoulders sagged. She hid it with a shrug. "Sick of being cautious, I guess. Better find some excitement before I'm too old to recognise it." She crossed the room so only the bench separated them, leaning forward on her elbows, not missing the way his eyes flicked down to the open collar of her shirt. "Besides," she added conspiratorially, "they gave me a key to water the plants. We can break in and steal your things as soon as the house is empty."
This time, Rex's laugh lit up his whole face, not to mention the rest of her kitchen.
"Now that's sorted," Al continued, beginning to clean up from her baking, "What would you like for dinner?"
"No way," Rex protested. "Don't think you're cooking for me and letting me sleep here. I'll make dinner."
"You can cook now? You once set off the smoke alarm boiling the kettle."
"You're confusing me with Jared," he protested, but his cheeks flushed. "And I'll have you know I am very good at ordering takeaway."
"I really don't mind cooking," Al said.
Rex leaned his forearms on the bench. The move brought his face perilously close to hers and she was struck with the sudden desire to run her hands along his stubbled jawline, down the thick cords of his neck. Her breath caught in her throat a little as he fixed her with a serious stare. "Alannah. Pick a damn restaurant."
Holy shit. When had being ordered around become the mother of all aphrodisiacs? Normally—hell, any other time—Al would have fixed him with the glare that had put fear into the hearts of other men and asked him who the fuck he thought he was talking to. But right now, she could barely think past the impulse to turn her stare teasing and ask, "Or what?" And what the hell kind of response did she think that would bring? "Or I'll choose," more likely than not. No matter that she wanted to hear something more along the lines of, "I'll put that mouth to better use."
God, she shouldn't have thought about using her mouth on this man while he had her skewered with those deep-set eyes. Now the picture she'd mentally sketched earlier of his bare body became a storyboard, Al, on her knees with her lips wrapped around him, his hands tangled in her hair as curse words ground out of him. She could see dark hair peeking out of the neck of his shirt and suddenly wanted to nuzzle her face into it, luxuriate in the texture of his rough skin, find out whether his happy trail really did lead to heaven.
"Al?"
Chest heaving, nipples tight, lips feeling swollen in a desperate cry for contact, Alannah blinked herself back into the moment. Don't think about his mouth. Don't even look at it. She launched herself away from him, banging a drawer open and digging out her pile of takeaway menus, a small pile, given the size of Shepherd's Creek, but large enough that she could shove it into Rex's hands and rush back to her cleaning like it was vital that her kitchen was free of baking detritus.
"Just pick something; I don't mind. Those are all places I like anyway. I'm happy to go with what you want." Especially if you give me very detailed instructions in that authoritative soldier tone…
She fought the urge to bury her face in her hands as arousal throbbed between her legs. Sweat was breaking out down her spine, and not just
because she'd been fool enough to use the oven on a scorching hot afternoon. Having Rex's eyes stroking over her like teasing fingertips was doing nothing to lower her core temperature, and her nipples were so tight, they were aching. And worse, in this thin shirt, her response was well and truly visible. She bent down, which had the dual purpose of hiding her flushed face and allowing her to start loading the dishwasher, thinking of the least erotic things she could. Chewing gum stuck on the underside of a desk. Gym showers. Dust bunnies.
She thought she heard a sound behind her but could hardly turn to face Rex in her state, so she glanced over her shoulder. "Sorry?"
He looked up from the takeaway menus long enough to shoot her a grin. "Nothing. How does Chinese sound to you?"
"Perfect. They do a really good Mu Shu pork." She skirted the kitchen bench, grabbing at the front of her shirt as though fanning it to cool herself down. "The spare bed's already made up, but I'll grab you a towel if you want to shower. Not that you need to shower if you don't want to. You don't smell or anything. I mean, I can't smell you. Not that I'm trying to. But I can't." She snapped her mouth closed before it could do any more damage and fled down the hallway to the linen cupboard, pressing her forehead to the wall briefly in an attempt to cool her blush. Smooth, Allie Cat, she heard her mother's voice say.
"I can't smell you," she muttered aloud. "Real freakin' smooth. No wonder you're single."
Her nipples had calmed down, probably because all the blood in her body was focussed on making her face the colour of a watermelon, so she could walk through to give Rex his towel without feeling like she was about to poke his eye out. He was hanging up the phone as she emerged. "Mu Shu pork in half an hour."
"I can go get it if you don't mind hurrying through showering so I can get one in too."
He raised one eyebrow. "Al, you're saving me from death by mortification next door. The least I can do is get your dinner delivered. I thought I remembered you liking spring rolls so I got some of those too."
He Comes Home Page 4
