“Your tattoo.” She pressed her lips to his pec and spoke against his skin. “I want to know how and why you got this one.”
He let out a slow breath. “You kissing me is only going to make this conversation more difficult.”
“Talk to me.” She smiled.
“It was a stupid reason really. I was eighteen. I had just come back from boarding school and I wanted to get the most badass tat I could think of. And this dragon seemed pretty gnarly at the time.”
“It looks like it hurt.” She kissed his tattoo, right on the dragon’s face.
“It hurt like a bitch and is ugly as hell.”
“You don’t like it?”
“Nope. It’s big and angry. It kind of represents how I felt back then.”
She touched the anchor on his bicep. “And what about this one? What does it represent?”
“My grandfather. He was in the navy. We were close, even though he lived in Connecticut most of the time. He used to come rescue me from school when I was a kid and take me to Mets games. He had money, but he wasn’t like my father. It was just a circumstance of life for him. He never let it dictate who he was. He was the most down-to-earth person I knew.”
“And you got this to honor him.” She kissed the anchor and then climbed on top of Carter. His eyes widened and he let out a short breath, but he didn’t stop her. Instead he ran his hands up her thighs.
“We’re not supposed to be having sex. We’re just spending time together.”
“I’m not having sex with you. We are spending time together. I’m just on top of you.”
“You’re not wearing any underwear.” He grinned lazily at her.
“Oh. I guess I could see how that could be troubling for you.” She stroked her hands up his sides, running her hand over the simple R tattoo. “This one is my favorite.”
“I got it when Ruby was still in the hospital. It was on a whim. I wanted her at my side. I was so afraid that she wasn’t going to make it that…”
She could see that he was getting emotional, so thoughtful and sweet, a side she’d seen only tiny glimpses of when they were together before. “You wanted to keep a piece of her with you.” She leaned over until their chests were touching, and took his face in her hands, just looking at him for a moment as she ran her thumbs over his cheeks. “I’m so glad you have her. She’s made you such a good man.”
“I miss you, Bell. I don’t want to do this without you anymore.”
She closed the distance between them and kissed him. She missed him, too. She wasn’t sure she could go back to life without him.
*
It was almost strange to be in bed after all these years. Strange to have her curvy body on top of his, strange to feel her gentle kiss on his mouth. They had been through so much since he came to Durant. So much anger and hurt that he almost couldn’t believe that she was willingly giving herself to him, that her guard was all the way down, that she was loving him again. He had missed her so much after she first left. His bed had felt empty. His house had felt empty. His chest. For weeks he couldn’t bring himself to change his sheets because her smell still lingered there. He had been too stupid to call her to go after her, too prideful. Too angry. He was so mad at Bethany and mad at Belinda and bewildered by Ruby that he felt like he was drowning. It was a bad time in his life; the only time that was worse was when he was sitting in the hospital with a baby he wasn’t sure was going to survive.
Now she was back in his life. In his arms, and for once he felt balance.
She broke their kiss, sitting up to pull her nightie off over her head. She was fully naked for him and even though they had been intimate many times since he had come here, he had never seen her fully undressed. He couldn’t help himself: He stared at her. The sight of her nude, straddling him, with her loose red hair falling over her shoulders was nearly enough to take him over the edge. He hardened even more.
And when he looked into her eyes he noticed that she was looking down at him shyly, a flush creeping up her cheeks.
“What is it?” He sat up, causing their chests to touch and her nipples to scrape against him. She closed her eyes at the brief contact, and he knew that she was just as aroused as he was.
“I’m nervous,” she admitted to him, her tongue coming out to lick her lips.
He kissed her quickly, unable to stay away from her mouth. The glimpse of her pink tongue made him want to lick the moisture from her lips. “Why are you nervous, baby? We’ve done this before. In fact we’re quite good at it.”
She grinned at him. “I don’t know. It feels like my first time all over again.”
“Oh, Bell.” He shook his head. “My first time was nowhere near as good as this. In fact, if I had a girl as sexy as you my first time, I could have died right there on the spot and been a very happy, very satisfied seventeen-year-old.”
“Carter…” She rested her head on his shoulder. “This feels important to me, like if we do this we can’t go back.”
He grabbed her face, pulling it up so that he could look in her eyes. “This is important and you’re right, we can’t go back. I don’t want to.”
He rolled them so that she was on her back. He buried his face in her neck, kissing her there as he ran his hands down her body. He didn’t want her nerves getting the best of her. He didn’t want her second-guessing them. She was his wife. They were meant to be together. He had to prove that to her.
“You have to trust me,” he whispered in her ear, before he lifted his face to look into her eyes.
She stared at him for a moment, a hundred emotions flashing through her eyes before she nodded. She didn’t trust him. Not yet. He hadn’t realized how much he had hurt her, but the fact that they were together in her bed was a step in the right direction. He just had to prove himself.
“Trust me.” He leaned down to kiss her and just before his lips met hers, she sighed, her body relaxing beneath him. “Let me make love to you tonight.”
“I always wanted you to.” She smiled again. “You’re the one who said you just wanted to sleep tonight.”
“Sometimes I can be a very stupid man,” he said as he moved down and bent to kiss her stomach. “But in my defense, you seduced me.”
“Seduced you? Me?”
“You got naked and climbed on top of me. You knew what you were doing.” He kissed her thigh, shifting her body so he lay between her legs, and then licked inside her. “I wanted to show you that it’s more than sex between us, that I want to be with you because you are you.” He licked inside her, deeper this time. She let out a sound that was in between a gasp and a groan. He groaned himself. She tasted sweet and familiar. He sucked on her nub, eliciting a cry of his name. He stayed there playing, taking his time, bringing her to the edge and then pulling back. She moved against him, panting, begging, cursing him. Each sound she made spurred him on.
“Please, Carter.” She lifted her head and looked down at him when he removed his lips. “I’m ready.”
His lips traveled up her body to her belly, where he dipped his tongue into her belly button. Her fingers curled into his hair and tugged.
He looked up at her, the slight pain making him pause and turning him on at the same time.
“Now. I want you. Now. Please.”
“It’s been four years. I want to take my time. Let me.” He shifted himself up her body a little more, stopping at her breasts. He covered one with his hand and tested the weight; the other he covered with his mouth. He tugged on one nipple with his teeth and rolled the other between his fingers.
She came, shuddering so hard that her back came off the bed. His manhood twitched between his legs, jealous that it didn’t get to experience her orgasm.
“So sensitive.” He kissed her heartbeat, lifting himself slightly to settle between her welcoming legs. She wrapped them around his waist, rubbing her wetness against his hardness. He slid inside her, unable to take being apart from her anymore, gritting his teeth at the intense sensation of
being encased in her wet warmth. “Oh, God, Bell. You feel too damn good.”
“Don’t hold back.” She moved against him. “I need this from you.”
He didn’t hold back. It was impossible. She wouldn’t let him. She wasn’t passive, grabbing onto his hips as she pushed herself toward him, meeting his every thrust. He had been too long without her; being with her now made him realize that he couldn’t go back, he couldn’t half live anymore.
“Carter.” She dug her nails into his skin, and he could feel her orgasm building. It was almost enough to drive him over the edge, but he held on, stroking her slower, kissing her harder, tilting her hips so he could slide deeper into her. She cried out as she came, sinking her teeth into his shoulder. That caused him to explode and lose his breath, his mind, and the little bit of empty space he had in his heart.
“Hell,” she panted. “Or maybe I should be saying heaven and thanking God.” She kissed his shoulder. “That was good. Now be a dear and make me a sandwich.”
He blinked at her, and her mouth bloomed into a beautiful full smile. This is what he loved about her. She could be so serious, so intense in her lovemaking, but then she could be playful and sweet. The only woman he knew who could make him smile so much. He kissed the corner of her mouth, to thank her for that, to thank her for giving him back something he had been missing for so long. He would do anything to keep her that way. “I’ll make you a sandwich.” He kissed the other side of her mouth. “Just as long as you promise me you’ll eat it naked.”
“Of course I’m going to eat it naked. Make sure you make yourself one, too. You’re going to need sustenance, because we’re going to do that again, but this time a little faster.”
He rolled onto his back, taking her with him, loving the feel of her soft weight on top of him. “I’m not a machine, you know. I need time to recover.”
She lifted her chest away from his so that she could look down at him. “I know very well that you are a man. If I wanted a machine I could use the one in my dresser drawer.”
He cupped her breast, rubbing his thumb across her nipple. “You have one?”
“I call him Elvis. What did you think I did without you?”
“Cry?”
She smiled at him and then lowered her mouth to his. He could feel himself hardening again.
“I want to be in charge this time,” she said against his mouth.
“I thought you were in charge the last time.”
“I’m sorry”—she slid her lips along his jawline, kissing every inch—“but you’re really going to have to suffer this time. But I’ll be nice.” She kissed her way down his neck to the hollow of his throat, where she licked him. “I’ll give you plenty of time to recover.” She glanced at the clock. “Is three minutes enough? Think you can make and eat a sandwich in that time?”
“Forget the damn sandwich.” He guided himself into her. “I’m ready for my punishment now.”
*
The sun on her face woke Belinda from a deep sleep. It wasn’t the man wrapped around her with his hand on her breast and his lips on her ear.
“I don’t want to get up,” he said, his voice rough with sleep.
She said nothing to that, but she agreed. She didn’t want the night to be over.
He kissed the back of her neck. “I would try to make love to you again, but I think you took everything I got, girl.” He gave her bottom a little smack. “It’s going to take me three days to recover from last night.”
“Only three?” She turned in his arms to find him smiling at her. “I must not have tried hard enough. I was hoping it was going to be at least a week.”
He laughed, the sound of his soft chuckle sending tingles along her skin. “Thank you,” he said, giving her a long slow kiss.
“What’s your favorite color?” Belinda found herself asking Carter when their kiss broke, not wanting their night to be over yet.
He looked at her for a moment as if he was trying to determine if she was serious.
“I could say the green of your eyes or the red of your hair, but you would say that I was full of shit so I’m going to stick with blue.” He gave her an easy smile. “But I really don’t have a favorite color.”
“I like to wear a lot of colors. So I don’t really have one, either,” she told him. “I think every color has its place. Like sunflowers are supposed to be yellow, because yellow makes you happy and they wouldn’t look right in purple. And strawberries are supposed to be red to make them look so succulent and little girls should wear baby pink because it’s the only color that can capture their sweetness. You must think I sound like a crazy person.”
“I don’t,” he said seriously after a moment. He was staring at her mouth intently, which not only caused tingles to go up her spine, but made her wonder if he was paying attention to her rambling. “Each color does have a place. They are supposed to make you feel. Can you imagine how shitty life would be if we only saw in black and white?”
“I think it would be shitty only if we saw color and then it was taken away. We wouldn’t know how beautiful color was in the first place, so we wouldn’t know what we were missing. Take dogs, for instance. They don’t see color like we do, but they’re not any less happy for it. My aunt Mimi’s dog has just about the best damn life I have ever seen. I would gladly trade places with him. She takes him for weekly massages. Can you believe that? I’m pretty sure he doesn’t give two shits about the subtle differences between plum and eggplant.”
“No.” He grinned. “Probably not. I wouldn’t care so much, either, if I hadn’t taken a class in color psychology when I was getting my degree. I thought it was total bullshit until I had to redesign a school based on it.”
“That have classes on that?”
“Yeah. It was interesting, too. We learned that white always makes people think of innocence and purity, that purple sparks people’s imaginations, and red inspires passion. At the school we did we had the cafeteria painted powder blue because that color is supposed to make a person feel tranquil. Before it was painted red and purple and the principal told us that the kids were nuts after lunch. But with the blue they calmed down. Purple and red are great colors, but three hundred passionate and imaginative kids in a cafeteria wasn’t working.”
“Oh, boy. I can only imagine.”
Carter’s eyes made a quick sweep over her face. “I think that’s why I’m so damn drawn to you. There are so many colors on you to look at.” He stroked his thumb across her cheek. “Red hair, and green eyes, and this warm tan skin. I feel a whole bunch of things when I look at you.”
She blushed.
Damn it.
“You’re good, Lancaster.” She inched closer to him even though there was hardly any space between them. “I think you must have been reading up on how to pick up ladies because that BS was just too smooth.”
“Took an online class,” he said without missing a beat. “It’s called How to Hit on Your Estranged Wife. I did surprisingly well.”
“Of course you did. You were always a smarty-pants in school, weren’t you?”
He nodded. “Did you like school? For some reason I always get the feeling you didn’t.”
“It was hard for me,” she admitted to him for the first time. “I wasn’t smart. I was average. I had to work really hard to get Bs. It didn’t help that I was best friends with Ellis, who is a freaky genius. I just didn’t understand why we had to learn so much stupid math and science, when there was all that art and music and drama out there. I’ve used the color wheel many times since I left high school but I never once had to find X.”
“You’re creative.” He stroked his hand down her hair. “You can’t paint for shit, but you’re one of the most creative people I know. That doesn’t mean you’re not smart. You’re one of the smartest people I know. I wouldn’t have married you if you weren’t,” he said with absolutely no trace of humor.
“Stop picking on my painting skills,” she said, trying to ignore the achy
feeling in her chest upon hearing those words. She had always felt like such a screwup. But maybe she wasn’t. Not in all ways.
“I hated school, too.” He shrugged. “It wasn’t hard for me, but I hated it all the same.”
“That’s because you were away from home.” She felt sorry for the boy he was. His young life had been a lonely one, and it changed how she thought of him. “Don’t you think it would have been different if you got to go to school at home?”
“I’m not sure. My parents’ house never felt comfortable to me. For so long I thought I was a misfit because I couldn’t seem to make a connection with either one of them. I thought home was supposed to give me this certain feeling, but it didn’t. It wasn’t until I came to Durant when I was in college that I got that feeling.”
“It was Steven’s family who gave you that feeling. Why didn’t you stay in Durant then? Steven was here. He never left this place. You could have been his partner years ago.”
“I went back to San Francisco because I had to. My family expected it from me.” He turned to look at her. “Why did you run after college? You love it here. I can tell. Why did you leave it?”
Run. It was the right word to use. She certainly had run away from this place.
“I guess I was trying to find myself. I think I’m still trying to.”
“You don’t know who you are?” He seemed so surprised by that. She thought he would have figured that out about her a long time ago. “I think you do. I think you are just looking for that thing to fill you up and make you feel whole. I think a lot of people are.”
“Are you still looking for that thing to make you feel whole?” she asked him, needing to know.
“I had to look at my life really hard after Bethany died and I almost lost Ruby in that accident. I could literally lose everything—my job, my money, my house—but the only thing that would truly be a loss is if I didn’t have my kid, my family. That puts things in perspective for me. There are things that I want in my life, but it’s the people that I need.”
Gentlemen Prefer Curves: A Perfect Fit Novel Page 22
