The screen door was locked, but that barely slowed me down. A push in the corner dislodged the screen enough to get my hand through and unlatch it. The inner door wasn’t locked at all. I’d have to chastise her for that later.
“Rissa.”
She turned around from the sink. I couldn’t see what she was doing. Taking out her frustration by vigorously washing a set of innocent dishes, it looked like. Her gaze lasered in on the flowers I still held in my hand.
“What the hell do you want?”
Totally inappropriate, I know, but at that moment all I could think about was the fire in her eyes, unleashing all that passion on me while naked, demanding I do certain things to her. My dick agreed; it did its impression of the Empire State Building.
I probably should have wiped the smile off of my face at some point, too, because given the look in her eyes, she thought I was laughing at her. I wasn’t. I was a man who had just recently realized he’d finally found The One.
“I wanted to bring you these.” I held out the bouquet.
She looked at them with disgust. One minute they were in my hand. The next they were scattered all over the kitchen floor. Damn, she was fast. I never even saw her move. Of course, my eyes might have been glued to her heaving chest. I decided then and there that I was a big fan of that lacy white thing, but we would have to lay down some ground rules, such as ‘no wearing it around any other man with a working pair’.
“Why the hell would I want another woman’s flowers in my kitchen?”
She swore again, something vulgar and foul. A shiver ran up and down the length of my spine. Then I realized what she said and my mind kick-started again. The last thing she’d probably seen was Sugar coming up behind me while I had my hands full. That we were hooking up was a reasonable – and totally wrong - conclusion.
“You think I bought these for Sugar?”
At the sound of the other woman’s name, Rissa actually growled. One of those plates she’d been abusing was suddenly hurtling toward my head. I leaned slightly to the left, letting it sail past with a few inches to spare and slam into the wall behind me.
“I bought these for you, Rissa,” I tried to explain.
Another plate sailed by, this one on the right. She was washing two plates? She had made dinner for two? That got my attention.
Two strides and I was across her kitchen, pinning her against the counter. “Who was the second plate for?”
I felt her body tremble, not in fear, but in rage and maybe some lust. Good. We were on the same page.
“W-what do you care?” she hissed, but the effect was ruined by her stutter. I stared down at her lips. I’d never heard her stutter before.
Suddenly I was on my knees. That white lacey thing was up around her ears, the plastic clasp of her front-closure bra was ruined, and my mouth was sucking the rock-hard tip of one of her perfect breasts. She arched back, shoving it further into my mouth, and grabbed my hair. Hard.
I growled and bit her. Just a little. Just enough to let her know exactly who those perfect breasts belonged to. Me. My peaches.
“I did buy those flowers for you,” I ground out, shoving her jeans down her legs. Christ, she was wearing a thong! Was she trying to kill me?
I used my much larger size to my advantage and turned her around so she was facing the sink again. She struggled, but it didn’t do anything more than rub against my cock and make me even more focused on her perfect ass.
“Did you make dinner for me?” I asked. One arm wrapped around her just under her breasts, plumping them up for my over-the-shoulder viewing pleasure, their heavy weight resting on my forearm. My other hand found her hot, wet, and swollen between her legs.
She said something. I couldn’t hear it over the roar in my ears. I only knew it wasn’t ‘stop’ or ‘no’ or anything else that might have kept me from doing what I did next. I groaned and removed my hand only long enough to release myself. I slammed into her from behind.
“That dinner better have been for me,” I said in her ear, holding her immobile.
Rissa let out a whimper and tried to move her hips but I was a lot bigger and a lot stronger and so pumped up with primitive male urges that she didn’t have a chance in hell of doing anything I didn’t want her to.
“Tell me,” I coaxed, flicking my fingers against her. “Tell me who that dinner was for.”
“Y-you,” she moaned.
“Good girl.” My chest didn’t leave her back, but my hips cocked back and thrust hard. “And those flowers were for you.” Another hard thrust. “Because I wanted to apologize.”
Her hands were gripping me now, no longer trying to push away from me, but ensuring I didn’t go anywhere. “For what?”
“For leaving you the other night. Instead of doing this ...” Three more strokes, these less punishing and more rewarding.
“If you had,” she gasped, “we probably would have been crushed in bed.”
The possibility had occurred to me, but hearing her say it made me crazy all over again. Nothing was going to happen to this woman. My woman. I wouldn’t allow it.
Her sheath began to strangle me and I knew she was coming. That, I allowed. I followed right after, pumping her full of my seed. Now that I’d made up my mind, I was fully committed to this mission.
I backed onto a chair and pulled her with me until we both recovered our breaths.
“Did you mean it?” she asked.
I cracked open my eyes. I wasn’t sure what she was talking about, but I knew I hadn’t lied about anything, so I croaked out a hoarse, “Yeah.”
Then she was on the floor on her hands and knees, gathering the flowers. I could hear her sniffling. “What are you doing?” I asked.
“Picking up my flowers,” she said, her voice thick with tears.
I swear my heart burst and broke in that same moment.
Chapter 11
Clarissa
Travis bought me flowers. Beautiful flowers. Pink ones. Red ones. Yellow, white, peach, lavender. They were slightly wilted, but I put them in a pitcher with some water and they perked right up. I think the fact that I never even considered they might be for me is a sad commentary on my life and my self-image.
He could be lying, of course, but I didn’t think so. I was the one who was wearing his shirt and had a channel full of his swimmers, not Red Sugar.
Even in the worst-case scenario – he went to Harken with the intention of seeing Red Sugar but spotted me and left her hanging in the breeze – I still won. He still picked me.
Pathetic, right? I know. But this was about more than just some cat fight or catching the cute guy’s eye. This was about my perfect man, the one with whom I was falling hard and fast in love, the one willing to treat me as something more than a convenient hook-up or helpful neighbor with a great orchard.
The one who had just taken me like a crazed animal in my own kitchen and was now staring hungrily at me like he wanted to do it again. I know I did.
Instead, I tried to take a step back and make sense of what was happening, because I sure as hell didn’t know. I knew some things – like the fact that I was already head over heels in love with Travis Maxwell. That no man had ever tapped into me like he had mentally, physically, emotionally, and spiritually. That no matter what, I would never be able to walk away from him like I had Mark.
It wasn’t the dinner I had planned, but I managed to salvage enough of the roast to fix us both some sandwiches. We didn’t talk much for a while. After what happened, words seemed kind of anticlimactic.
“So,” he said finally, giving Ripper the last bite of his sandwich.
“So,” I said.
“I was thinking. You should move in with me.”
I swear time stopped for a moment. Everything stopped. Even my heart paused mid-thump. “Why would I do that?”
“Well,” he said, sounding too calm and reasonable when I was one breath away from a meltdown, “it just makes sense, doesn’t it?”
I
blinked stupidly. He was talking absolute nonsense. Nothing made sense anymore.
He slid off of his chair and went down on his knee before me. I could blink, but my heart stopped beating and I’d forgotten how to breathe.
“I mean, you don’t have a bedroom anymore, and I do.”
“Good point,” I whispered. Travis Maxwell was on bended knee in front of me.
“And seeing as how we will be sharing a bed from now on, it will have to be mine.”
“We will?”
He grinned. “Oh, yeah. Every night, baby. Every morning. Maybe even entire days.”
I gulped. My heart went from not beating at all to pounding frantically against my chest so hard you could see the palpitations. Days?
“Of course, I’ll need to make an honest woman of you, first. Well, I guess I don’t need to, but I’d want my kids to have my name, you know?”
I choked. My throat constricted for several moments. No air, no saliva, nothing was getting through that sucker.
Travix nuzzled the inside of my thigh. I inhaled sharply. There it was. I had air again, only to have it stolen right back.
“Seems like a foregone conclusion. First comes love, then comes marriage. You know the rest.” He moved closer to my core and kissed me there.
I grabbed his hair and pulled, hard, forcing him to look at me. “Travis Maxwell, did you just propose?”
“Sort of,” he grinned wickedly. “But it won’t be official till I can get you a ring. In the meantime, I thought maybe we could just skip ahead to the celebratory feast.” He lowered his head and pushed his way back to my happy place.
I leaned back in my chair and let him have at it. As pseudo-proposals went, it was a bit unconventional. Then again, the two of us were hardly conventional. For the next ten minutes, I completely lost myself to his skilled lips, tongue, and teeth. I was so close to the edge when he pulled back suddenly.
“Well?” he asked.
Was he kidding? He couldn’t just stop. “Well, what?”
“Will you?”
“Will I what, come? Hell, yes, I’ll come - if you get back in there right now and take care of business.” I pushed at his head with my hands and enlisted my legs for added assistance, in case he didn’t quite understand what I meant.
He grinned. “I know you are going to come. Repeatedly, in fact. But will you marry me, Rissa? Be my wife? Have my children?”
Oh, that look! I would agree to anything whenever he looked at me like that. Like I was his whole world. “Yes,” I answered, my voice little more than a whisper. Then he made good on his promise and I screamed it to the heavens – “YES!”
Epilogue
Travis
When Clarissa finally agreed to accompany me into Harken, it was not as Clarissa Sullivan, but as Rissa Maxwell. Yeah, we did it. We got married. After Rissa said yes, I spent the rest of the night and most of the next morning showing her just how committed I was to making her happy. Eventually, we pulled ourselves out of bed long enough to drive down into New Berlin and start the ball rolling.
Short of eloping to Vegas, getting married is not something that happens overnight. There were licenses, blood tests, and a bunch of other crap we needed to take care of before I could get to hear her say “I do”. I did get a ring on her finger right away, though.
For the next two weeks, I was sweating bullets. I did everything I could to keep her drunk with passion. And when I couldn’t be inside or on top of her, I was beside her.
Then she officially became Clarissa Maxwell and I was able to breathe again.
We talked about a lot of things in that time. Made a lot of decisions. One of them was razing the house left to her by her batshit-crazy uncle. It had too many unpleasant memories. Instead, we added onto my place, turned it into not just our home, but our private haven. Rissa got her deck with the hot tub overlooking the valley below. I got my living room with a fifty-six-inch flat screen and satellite service.
We even added on a few extra bedrooms, which turned out to be a pretty smart thing, because in another eight months or so, we were going to have something to put in one of them.
Another pleasant surprise – Clarissa was no longer the headliner of the Harken gossip mill. In fact, she was welcomed with polite and mild interest, but everyone was so abuzz over the latest news that we were practically snubbed.
What was the big news, you ask? Well, believe it or not, Malcolm Magners and Mildred “Sugar” Jefferson decided to run away together. At last report, they were in LA, working on the pilot of a new reality show that focused on small-town folk who left their roots and then tried to return. It was slated as being some real competition for such nail-biter dramas as “Breaking Amish”.
We didn’t worry about Rissa’s ex tracking her down anymore, either. On our last trip into New Berlin, there was a big manila envelope waiting for her. Addressed to Clarissa Donnelly, it had been forwarded to the post office box by the lawyer who had helped her slip off the grid. Amidst a bunch of legal stuff had been a letter. It was a written apology to Rissa. Apparently, her ex was in some kind of counseling, and the letter was an important step toward ‘finding himself’ or some shit like that.
Anyway, there was no way in hell she was going to “meet him for coffee sometime”. Her words, not mine. If nothing else, the letter gave her some closure.
I added another log to the roaring fire that was keeping our master bedroom suite warm and toasty. If we got the two feet of snow that was predicted for tonight, we would be without power for a week, maybe more. We were ready. Our earlier trip down into town topped off our stores and my beautiful wife had canned enough to get us through a long winter and then some.
At this rate, we wouldn’t be leaving our new home until spring.
That sounded damn good to me.
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Like short contemporary romances...
... with sexy, reluctant heroes and the heroines who win their hearts? Check out this excerpt from Celestial Desire...
As the first light of dawn began to peek through the blinds, Zane opened his eyes to find Celeste staring at him. Again.
“Stop looking at me like that,” he commanded, his voice deep and husky. “I don’t have any more condoms.”
She traced lazy circles on his chest with her fingers, regarding him hopefully from her perch atop his body. Eyes bright, naked and smooth, she was quite a vision, “I thought you were prepared.”
He gave her a martyred look. “Three’s usually enough.”
“What can I say?” she smirked, wiggling her behind and making him groan. “I’m an overachiever.”
He pulled her down to him, capturing her mouth in a hungry kiss. God help him, he wanted her again. By all reasoning, he shouldn’t even be able to get it up but there he was, already sporting a semi and ready to go into a full-out salute with nothing more than a wiggle of that cute little ass. And he’d made her come no less than seven times over the course of the night. He knew. He was counting. He was a bit of an overachiever, too.
“Can I see you tonight?”
Hope flared in her eyes, then disappointment.
“I can’t. I’ve got a thing.”
He was disappointed, too. He shouldn’t be. He’d spent the last several hours tangled in the sheets atop the mattress (she didn’t have an actual bed yet), wringing every last bit of pleasure from her lush little body. But he was. “A thing?”
“Yeah. I’m having dinner with my mom tonight.”
For some reason, those words soothed him. It was strange. After all, he’d known her for what, less than twenty four hours? Why should he care if she was seeing someone else? This was just a hook-up, right?
Ignoring the strange feeling of relief, he folded his arms behind his head, mostly to keep from touching her. Her softness fascinated him; he couldn’t seem to stop running his hands over all those curves and dips, squeezing and kneading, caressing and fondling every inch of her heavenly body. It was so much sexier than the lean, overly-toned bodies he was accustomed to. Far from being fat or even chubby, Celeste was the epitome of femininity. Lush. Soft.
“Tomorrow, then? Coffee?” he added with a wink.
She laughed, and he felt it spread through him like sunshine. “Maybe.”
Maybe wasn’t good enough. Maybe implied it might not happen, and that was unacceptable. Instead of his usual feeling of sated satisfaction, he was craving more. And if she kept wiggling her ass like that, he was going to break every safe-sex rule he had and bang her anyway. Just the thought of entering her bare, of coming inside her, had his balls swelling again.
“What can I do to sway you?” he said, glad that his voice didn’t convey the desperation he felt.
Her eyes twinkled as she sat up and splayed her palms across his chest, appearing to consider it. “Bring more than three.”
Lord, have mercy.
About the Author
Abbie Zanders (and her naughty alter ego, Avelyn McCrae) loves to read and write romance in all forms; she is quite obsessive, really. Her ultimate fantasy is to spend all of her free time doing both, preferably in a secluded mountain cabin overlooking a pristine lake, though a private beach on a lush tropical island works, too. Sharing her work with others of similar mind is a dream come true. She promises her readers two things: no cliffhangers, and there will always be a happy ending. Beyond that, you never know...
The Realist Page 10
