He gave her a doubtful look. “I suppose it won’t hurt to hear you out. And I’ll take you up on canceling the fine. If you could just put that in writing, I would appreciate it.”
Emma laughed. “Of course.” She took her seat behind the oak desk and Mr. Billings sat across from her. “The high school kids you mentioned. Is that the club for community service?”
“Right. That’s it. But they don’t do lawn service, just snow,” he said patiently.
“Just because they haven’t before doesn’t mean they can’t.” She pulled up the school website on her laptop. After a bit of searching, she found the page for the community service club. “It looks like Celia Smith is still the organizer. I’ll send her an email.” She typed out a quick message, included her phone number, and hit send. “There. I don’t know when I’ll hear back, since school is closed for the summer, but I’ll let you know the second I hear—”
Her phone rang, startling her. “Good morning, this is Mayor Andrews.” The words sounded funny coming from her own mouth.
“Emma! How are you, honey?” Mrs. Smith didn’t wait for a response before plowing forward. “See, the thing is, we don’t do lawn service. Just snow. Do you know how many people have heart attacks every year shoveling snow?”
“No,” Emma said. “How many?”
There was a pause. “A lot.”
“Oh. Okay.”
“That’s why we count it as a community service. Now, I’m not against adding lawn service, but there has to be a need for it. A benefit to the community members.”
“I believe it would help the same community members who aren’t physically or financially able to clear their own sidewalks and driveways,” Emma said. “Heart attacks can happen when you mow the lawn. And, um”—she Googled frantically—“heatstroke. Plus there’s a fine if your lawn is taller than eight inches, so that makes it even worse.”
“Two hundred and fifty dollars!” Mr. Billings bellowed.
“What was that?” Mrs. Smith said. “Who said that?”
“Mr. Billings. He’s in my office right now. He needs his lawn mowed for the same reasons he needs his snow shoveled. And now he’s looking at a fine of two-hundred-and-fifty dollars.”
“Goodness. That changes things.” Mrs. Smith heaved a sigh. “I don’t see any reason why we can’t incorporate lawn service into the community service club. I’m sure some students would love to get those hours done before senior year begins. I’ll get the details ironed out and touch base with you on Friday. Hopefully we can send someone out to Mr. Billings this weekend. How does that sound?”
“Fantastic!” Emma shouted. “I mean, that would be great. Thank you, Mrs. Smith.”
She hung up the phone and grinned at Mr. Billings, who nodded. “Well, that was easy. Don’t know why no one thought to try that before.”
“Oh.” Emma deflated slightly. “Right.”
Mr. Billings winked at her. “Don’t worry, kiddo. You did think to try that, that’s what matters. You have my vote in July.”
Normally, Emma would have murdered just about anyone who called her kiddo, but in this case she figured she would make an exception. “Thank you.”
She breathed a long sigh of relief as Mr. Billings exited her office, closing the door behind him. The clock read 10:50. Ten more minutes, and office hours would be over and she could call her first official day a success.
Because it was a success, which honestly surprised the hell out of her. She was out of her depth, and she still only had the faintest grasp of the differences between laws, regulations, and ordinances, much less when they actually applied. But she had solved two problems today. She had made lives better, and that was so much bigger than lamp posts.
She could do this job. She could even be great at it.
She wanted to be great at it. She would be, some day.
She just had to beat Eli first.
Chapter Thirteen
Is sometime now?
Eli wiped the condensation from the screen and stared at his phone for several long moments. Leave it to Emma to text now. She could have texted him during any of the five hundred times he had checked his phone that day, but of course she hadn’t. He had been distracted all day, still buzzing from the orgasm from the night before, afraid he would miss whatever small window of opportunity she was willing to give him if he set his phone down for even a second. But the text never came.
Not that he had really expected it to. They had just had sex yesterday, after all, and parted this morning. She wasn’t needy like him. He had figured she could probably go at least forty-eight hours without wanting him again. Maybe even a week—although for the sake of his balls, he truly hoped not.
Around nine he had finally given up. He had jumped in the shower, carefully placing his phone on the sink—because even though he told himself to give up, he clung to a tiny sliver of hope.
And now, when his hair was full of shampoo, she had texted.
Is this a booty call, Ms. Andrews? he replied. And held his breath.
Three dots appeared, wavering, then disappearing altogether. Shit. He shouldn’t have pushed it with calling her Ms. Andrews. He started typing an apology when the dots appeared again. He stared at those dots, his torso hanging out of the shower curtain, soap dripping down his neck, as though they were the answer to the universe. What the hell was she typing, the next great American novel?
The dots disappeared again. He groaned.
And then—
Yes.
One word, but it was the only word he needed.
I’ll be there in twenty, he typed back. He wasn’t giving her a chance to change her mind by letting her come to him. No way. If she drove there, every red light would give her a reason to come to her senses.
He was out of the shower and halfway dressed before he remembered there was still shampoo in his hair. Annoyed, he shucked his jeans and turned the water back on. It was cold now, but maybe that was a good thing. He felt like he was burning up. If he didn’t get a hold of himself, it was going to be embarrassing.
Seventeen minutes later he fully dressed, hair still wet, and on her front porch. He lifted his hand to hit the doorbell when his phone buzzed. His heart stuttered. For a moment he considered ignoring it and ringing the bell anyway. If she wanted to call it off, she could damn well do it to his face.
But no. He wasn’t going to do that. He should. But he wouldn’t. He peeked at his phone from the corner of his eye, like it was a snake that might bite him.
Taking a shower. Let yourself in.
Oh, thank God.
He turned the knob, half expecting it to be locked, in a cruel twist of irony. But it opened easily and he stepped inside.
And then stopped.
Christ. It was the same as it had been the last time he had stepped foot in this house nearly a decade ago. Nostalgia hit him like Goat charging at his knees. The dark gray couch was the same one they had watched movies on every Friday night, each of them lying with their heads at opposite ends and their feet tangled together in the middle. There was the Tiffany lamp Emma had broken in sixth grade with a rogue volleyball spike and he had painstakingly glued back together. He wondered if she had ever come clean about that.
Beyond the living room was the dining room, and past that the kitchen. He knew it like the back of his hand. There was a time when he could have been sure that if he opened the fridge, he would find his favorite blueberry yogurt. Mrs. Andrews had always kept some on hand for him, since he spent so much time there. After she got sick, and Emma took over the grocery shopping, she had continued the tradition. His chest ached. He doubted there would be blueberry yogurt in the fridge now. Emma preferred lemon.
He could hear the shower running upstairs, and he followed the sound. It was a large, rambling house from the Gilded Age, with three bedrooms on the second floor and four more on the third. He had no idea which room she had claimed for her own.
To his surprise, it was her old room. He wondered
about that. Why hadn’t she claimed a bigger room, now that she had the house to herself? The third-floor bedrooms were the size of small suites, with large claw-footed bathtubs for soaking. When she was a child, her parents didn’t like the idea of her being so far away from them. Then when she got to high school, she didn’t want to be far from her mom, in case Mrs. Andrews needed her. But what was stopping her now?
She had left the door ajar and light spilled into the hallway. He poked his head in. “Emma?” he called over the noise of the shower.
“I’ll be out in a minute,” she hollered back. “You can wait in there.”
He assumed “in there” meant her bedroom and not the attached bathroom. Too bad. He wouldn’t have minded a second shower, not when it meant having Emma all silky wet.
He looked around. Like the downstairs, her bedroom was a time capsule to the past. Well, almost. The walls were the same pale blue he remembered, with the curtains a darker navy. The band posters were gone, as was the bulletin board where she had pinned pictures of her friends. Some of those pictures had made it into the frames that now topped the dresser. Not the ones of him, of course. Maybe she had burned those.
The bed, he realized suddenly. The bed was different. Bigger. He knew that for sure, because the feeling of being completely pressed against her, curling her tight into his body so she wouldn’t fall off the bed, was seared into his soul. It had only been the one time, the night her mother died, but he would never forget it, the desperate need to take her pain and make it his own.
He shook his head, trying to clear the memories. He did not come here to be sad. He was here to get laid, not reminisce about the past.
The sound of water abruptly stopped, and after a few agonizing moments Emma emerged, wet hair slicked back and a towel wrapped around her torso, obscuring the parts he most wanted to see but leaving plenty of bare, glistening skin above and below. Nostalgia fled. All that mattered was this moment, right now, with Emma standing mostly naked in front of him.
“Hey,” she said. “Sorry you were waiting. I realized I was pretty dusty from digging through the storage closet at City Hall. You would not believe the stuff they have in there. Most of it’s junk that needs to be tossed, but there are also these really cool old photographs that I thought we might want to display somewhere. Also—”
He could not care less about old photographs.
“Drop the towel, Ms. Andrews.”
***
Someday Emma was going to have a very serious talk with her body about the inappropriateness of its response to Eli calling her Ms. Andrews. When had something that had once annoyed her beyond reason suddenly become so erotic? Probably around the same time he had told her he wasn’t finished before putting his tongue between her thighs for the second time. Yep, that would do it.
“Ms. Andrews,” he said again, more sternly this time.
She shivered even though heat was spreading through her veins like liquid fire. She wanted to drop the towel, drop to her knees, whatever he demanded.
But she also wanted to fight.
To push him.
To see which one of them would break first. And, good Lord, she hoped it was her.
“Make me,” she said.
His eyes flared at the challenge.
Every cell in her body went on high alert as he moved toward her with deliberate, measured steps. She tilted her chin in an attempt to look defiant, or at least unaffected, when in truth her pulse was skittering like a wild thing and her breathing had turned to shallow pants.
He stopped just short of touching her. She couldn’t breathe. Agony.
“I’m not going to take it from you, Emma.”
She blinked. “No?”
He smiled slightly at her disappointed tone. “No.”
It was all he said. The moment stretched and lengthened as they stood there separated by mere inches of air. She stared at the hollow of his throat, holding her breath, fighting the temptation to fidget. Was this his plan? To...to awkward her into dropping the towel? It might actually work.
Just when she thought she couldn’t stand another second of this torture, finally—finally—he moved. She let out the breath she was holding in a shaky sigh.
He drew a single fingertip along the edge of the towel where it covered her breast, barely grazing her damp skin, leaving sparks of desire in his wake.
“Oh, no,” he said softly, achingly.
Her gaze shot to his face. “What?”
“Do you remember the summer I was a lifeguard? You had just turned fifteen.”
She nodded. “I went to the pool every day with Suzie and Luke so we could all hang out together.” It was her last carefree summer. By November, her mom’s cancer had been discovered and her world had changed entirely.
“You wore a blue bikini.”
“I had a lot of bikinis.” It had been important that she look devastatingly cute, but she had never allowed herself to question why. It occurred to her now that it might not have been a generic desire. It might have been about him, specifically. Funny how she understood herself better now, looking back, than she had while actually experiencing it.
“Yeah, but that’s the one I remember best. All your other bikinis had clasps like a bra, and I hadn’t quite mastered bras yet,” he said ruefully. “But the blue one tied around your neck in a bow and I knew how to undo knots. The first time I saw you in that bikini, you had your hair pulled up in some bun thing. I saw that bow and it wasn’t even a double knot. All it would take was a quick tug and it would come undone. And I thought...oh, no.”
She tried to laugh, but it came out as a croak. “Why?” Such a stupid question. So needy.
“Because I knew that moment would change everything for me. I wasn’t ready for it. Friends don’t untie a friend’s bikini top, and I wanted to untie yours like I wanted my next breath.” His finger kept stroking, tracing the outline of her body, skimming from her wrist up her arm and shoulder to the juncture of her neck.
It was at once soothing and unbearably erotic.
“I wasn’t wrong, you know,” he said. “It did change everything. I tried to push it away, to ignore it. Sometimes I even tricked myself into believing it was nothing. I was a horny teenage boy; of course I wanted to untie your bikini. It was completely normal and didn’t have to mean anything. But then you would do something like, I don’t know, smile, or be weirdly competent at something that had thrown the rest of us for a loop. Or stand there in a towel and say make me. And I’d be knocked on my ass again and think, oh no.” His finger paused at her jaw, where her pulse beat a rapid pace. “You wreck me, Emma.”
She was melting, her bones turning to water. Fire and heat and a clash of wills she could handle, but this...this soft onslaught of tenderness dismantled her defenses with all the devastation of a summer sun melting the last spring snow.
He tilted her chin, forcing her gaze to his, giving her nowhere to hide. “Drop the towel, Emma. I want you to wreck me.”
She dropped the towel.
It wasn’t a choice so much as a need. Somehow his vulnerability had turned the power dynamic on its head. She was so entirely in his thrall that she would walk naked down Main Street if that’s what he wanted her to do. Fortunately, he seemed intent on keeping her right where she was, all to himself, judging by the hungry look in his eyes.
He let out a low curse. Her skin was covered in goose bumps—how was she cold and hot at the same time? He cupped a breast with one hand, his callused thumb scraping against her nipple until it was diamond-hard. The other hand snaked around her ribcage and pressed firmly between her shoulder blades. She submitted to his unspoken request, arching her back. She was rewarded when he dipped his head, caught her nipple with his mouth, and gave it a languid suck.
Her head fell back on a moan, her hands digging into his shoulders for balance. His clothed shoulders. He was still wearing a black T-shirt, jeans...hell, even his shoes. Just like last time, he was fully clothed, and she was fully nake
d. Twice was not enough to constitute a pattern, but it was something. Like a childhood dare: show me yours and I’ll show you mine. Or maybe he wanted to make absolutely certain she wasn’t going to change her mind and leave the second he got his boots off.
It wasn’t fair, and if there was one thing Emma craved, it was fairness. Her life had been full of unfortunate events and terrible grief, but in this one thing, at least, she could have some control. She could reclaim her power. And if reclaiming her power also meant ripping his clothes off, climbing him like a tree, and rubbing her bare skin all over his, well, then so be it.
His shirt went first. She whisked it over his head before going straight for his belt buckle. He was silent as he kicked off his shoes and she slid his jeans down his legs. He stepped free and nudged the pile of clothes aside. Now he was every bit as naked as she was and God, he was a glorious sight. All that bronzed skin waiting to be licked. She wanted...she wanted...
She dropped to her knees.
Eli drew in a sharp breath as she wrapped one hand around the length of his hard cock. Slowly, she raised her gaze to his. She wanted to witness her effect on him. Wanted to imprint this image on his mind, of her on her knees, to remember for the rest of his life. Wanted to make him feel pleasure like he had never experienced before. Wanted to wreck him.
“Oh, no,” she whispered.
And licked him root to tip before enveloping him in her warm, wet mouth, her gaze never leaving his.
His shouted curse was very gratifying. She tried not to smile, not wanting to lose suction even for a moment. She loved having him in her mouth. Loved the little moans that came when she flicked her tongue against the silky head of his cock, the way he hardened and thickened even more, the way she could feel his legs begin to tremble. She might be on her knees, but she had all the power.
And then the sharp, panicked tug of her hair when he realized how close to the edge she had driven him. “Wait—oh, fuck—not like this. Inside you.”
She hesitated a moment, debating, then released him from her mouth with a long, slow suck that made him shudder. Suddenly she was swooping through the air as he scooped her from the ground like she was nothing. She wrapped her legs around his waist, locking them closed at the ankles. He took a step toward the bed and then stopped with a grimace.
Make Me Love You Page 13
