The Sweetest Taboo

by Alison Kent

  And the day after would be even worse being Sunday—the only day of the week she had time to take care of personal business, though lately the only thing personal she did was go to church and buy tampons. Oh, and catch up on her much needed sleep.

  The remainder of her time was devoted to the business of Paddington’s. The business of keeping Paddington’s alive for her own sake since it was her sole means of income. But also keeping the bar viable for Rory.

  Rory who wasn’t here, who would never be here again to tuck her under his wing, to encourage her to keep her chin up, or to praise the work she’d done to his place. No. Her place, damn it. It was her place. Why was she having so much trouble seeing things that way?

  Perhaps because more than anything else, he would never be here to forgive her for getting the hell out of Dodge the minute she’d received her inheritance at age eighteen. For putting her degree on the back burner next to his advice that she not blow the money her parents had intended for her education.

  Or for taking such little interest in a place that meant so much to him that, after moving to Texas to raise her, he’d worked the rest of his life duplicating his Devonshire pub only to have her turn it into what she wanted it to be the minute he was gone. She was some piece of work, wasn’t she?

  Before Erin took that thought beyond her comfort zone, the chime of her e-mail bell sounded. She leaned over and clicked it open to read.

  From:

  Tess

  Norton

  Sent:

  Friday

  To: Erin Thatcher; Samantha Tyler

  Subject: Re: My Scary Guy

  You bitch! (Oops, did I say that out loud? I meant, wow, how fabulous for you!!!) I mean it, girl. This is outstanding. I have no good advice, however. I suck at this relationship thing, remember? But I do think the way to approach this whole business is to do what feels right, even if it feels scary. Maybe because it feels scary.

  It’s all a crap shoot, dear Erin, didn’t you know that? And the dice don’t give a damn if you think you’re ready or not. So you might as well have fun as long as you’re already in the game.

  Perhaps lots and lots more sex will make things clearer. And if it doesn’t, you’ll be too tired to care. Love and kisses, Tess

  Ha! Tess was just way too upbeat this morning, damn the woman. If sex made things clearer, why this horribly muddled state of mind? She was right about the exhaustion level, however. At least about it existing. Erin felt like she would need the jaws of life to pry her body out of this bed.

  Now if she could only get to that place where she was too tired to care. Or at least too tired to think about caring. Too tired to think, period, sounded even better. Though dreaming about Sebastian sounded like an excellent plan. And she was drifting off to do just that when her e-mail chime sounded again. She propped up on one elbow to read.

  From: Samantha Tyler

  Sent:

  Friday

  To: Erin Thatcher; Tess Norton

  Subject: Re: My Scary Guy

  Oh, Erin. So many responses! And I’m having a hard time separating all my personal divorce baggage from what a true friend would say so bear with me.

  First of all, YUM on the sex. If I wasn’t sure I’d freak, I’d be asking if Sebastian (such a cool name!) had any brothers. In the meantime, I’m way happy for you. You deserve every orgasm and bowlegged morning-after you get. Whew! (fanning self)

  Second, oh God, be careful. Having sex with a scary guy is scary enough, but feelings? Weren’t those entirely outside of the point of Men To Do? They were, you know it.

  I guess I’d say follow your instincts. You’re not some dopey bimbo, so you know you won’t get in deep if he’s really no good. But be careful, careful and more careful. Men give their gender a bad name.

  Cheers and a victory salute, Samantha

  Erin smiled. No, she was not a dopey bimbo, she mused, disconnecting from her ISP. Samantha and Tess were the absolute best. Erin’s cyber buddies had provided the perfect sleep tonic to ease her mind, and given her the food for thought she needed to hold her until later tonight.

  Then she’d get Cali to talk her back to sanity.

  A NIGGLING LITTLE ITCH brought Cali from deep sleep to the edge of wakefulness. She snuggled her face into her pillow, pulling her sheet and thick duvet to her chin.

  But this wasn’t her pillow, she thought, eyes closed and frowning as consciousness began to return. And this wasn’t her duvet or sheet but a worn quilt that felt like the softest cotton on her skin. At least the skin exposed and not covered by the unfamiliar sleepwear…

  Will’s T-shirt and sweats. Will’s quilt and Will’s pillow. She smiled, rubbed the fabric to her cheek. If this was his idea of hanging out, she was definitely in for a pound. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d been this comfortable sleeping in her own bed.

  Which was silly, because she loved her bed. But sleeping here, in Will’s place, in his clothes, on his futon, beneath his quilt? She snuggled deeper into the pillow. It was as if she was surrounded by the one thing her life was lacking and she most wanted to find.

  Funny, because she truly thought herself happy and fulfilled. And she was happy and fulfilled. Life was great, what with her job and her classes and that disastrous relationship nightmare behind her…

  She found herself frowning again and this time opened her eyes, closed them, opened them again and blinked hard. Her heart dropped from her throat, where it beat like a wild butterfly’s wings, to her stomach. Will was lying beside her, facing her, his eyes looking straight into hers as she came fully awake.

  She curled her body into a tighter ball, keeping the butterfly close. “What’re you doing here?”

  He grinned his Cheshire cat grin. “I live here.”

  The purr of his words vibrated the length of her spine. “I know that part. I meant why aren’t you in your bed? Couldn’t you sleep?”

  “I slept. A couple of hours worth.” His face was so close she could see new tiny gold whiskers above the scruffy five o’clock shadow he never completely shaved.

  She could see the darker flecks in his light brown eyes, and the two or three wild hairs growing straight up out of his eyebrows. He wore glasses most all of the time and she’d never been so close to his eyes. Or to the rest of his body that, oh, God, she hoped wasn’t as naked.

  Her eyes widened, and she glanced down briefly to see what he was wearing. Not a lot. Nothing but a pair of gray jersey gym shorts. Her heart began to thump harder.

  Catching at her bottom lip with her teeth, she moved her gaze back to his, hoping against hope that she sounded calmer than she felt with cocoons bursting open in her belly. “How do you expect to make it through the day on two hours of sleep?”

  His arms crossed over his chest, his hands tucked into his armpits, he shrugged the shoulder he wasn’t lying on. “I’m young, hale and hearty. I’ll live.”

  He was so blasé. How could he be so blasé when her entire body flinched every time his long lashes blinked? “How long have you been looking at me?”

  This time he hesitated before answering, taking his time with the words as if they mattered more than those he’d spoken before. One corner of his mouth lifted and softly he said, “For at least two months now.”

  “No. I mean…” She stopped, stunned. Two months? That meant he’d been looking at her since they’d met at the beginning of the fall semester. He couldn’t mean…

  When all this time… And now he was looking at her… “I mean how long—”

  Will shifted up onto his elbows and leaned over her, his face but inches away.

  “Cali.”

  Cali rolled onto her back, deciding this wasn’t going to be about napping and hanging out after all. She could only manage to whisper her answer. “Will?”

  He reached out and twirled one of her wild blond curls around his index finger.

  “Last night. In Paddington’s. We talked about spending time together. Hanging out and having fun
. Not messing with the screenplay. Not trying to talk while you work. Do you remember that?”

  She nodded. Did he really think she’d forget?

  “What happened next?”

  She didn’t even pretend not to know what he was talking about. “I kissed you.”

  “Yep.” Will pulled his finger from her curl to touch it to the bow of her upper lip.

  “Did you know I couldn’t make a single note that made sense after that?”

  No. She didn’t know that at all. But she wasn’t about to feign disappointment, because that was the moment anticipation struck with a vengeance, sweeping through her belly and down between her legs. “Why?”

  “Because you walked away too soon. And I wanted more than anything to kiss you back.”

  She eased her grip on the quilt and pushed it to her waist. She wanted to be as close to him as she possibly could because she’d been ready for this forever. “Will?”

  His fingertips traced the whole of her mouth and moved to her chin. “Cali?”

  She lifted a hand to the round of his bare shoulder. “You can kiss me now.”

  His smile before he lowered his head nearly broke her heart. He brushed his lips oh, so lightly over hers, mouths closed and barely touching as they shared the air they both breathed.

  He shifted even closer, his bare chest brushing across her aroused nipples beneath the cotton of his shirt that she wore. The pressure increased, his mouth and his body and the ache buried deep in her core. She wanted him like no man she’d ever wanted. And she told him so when she opened her mouth, asking him to open his in return.

  He did and tongues tangled and teethed clashed and hands explored exposed skin and roughly shed clothes to bare more, to bare everything. His body was glorious, smooth and firm where her hands ran over his shoulders and back and buttocks.

  He shifted slightly, allowing room for her discovery to move where he most wanted her touch. Sliding her hand down his flat belly, she wrapped her hand around him, so hard, so satiny soft, and she shivered.

  He gasped and he groaned. “Cali, you’re making me crazy.”

  Crazy was a good thing, yes? Because, if not, this insanity would bring big fat regrets once they came to their senses. She stroked him again, running her palm up and over the head of his penis, so huge and so swollen. “This is good, then? I don’t want to do it wrong.”

  He gave a strangled laugh. “Nothing you could do would be wrong. Trust me on this.”

  He thrust into her hand. And this time she gasped, imagining that thrust taking him into her body. Yet that gasp became nothing when Will moved down her body and ran the flat of his tongue across the hard peak of her breast. He kiss-nipped the plump flesh before centering his attention on her nipple that begged.

  “Oh, Will,” was all she could say because now his fingers were slipping between her legs, slipping through the wet folds of her sex, slipping into her body that wept with wanting. She arched her hips into his hand and cried out.

  His fingers delved deeper, stroking, rubbing, his thumb teasing her clit that throbbed with the need to come. She didn’t want to come without him. Not this first perfect time. This time she wanted to come to the filling drive of his sex and the pressing weight of his body covering hers. “Will, please.”

  “Please what, Cali?” he asked, sliding back up to kiss the underside of her jaw, her ear, her neck where it met her shoulder.

  She could hardly find the words for what she wanted. And her whisper shook.

  “Please, please me. I want you to fill me. I want you inside of me. I want—”

  “Every damn thing that I want.” He braced his weight on his elbows, slid his arms beneath her shoulders and cupped the back of her head. “Cali, honey. You have no idea how much I’ve wanted to do this and for how long.”

  When he kissed her this time their mouths came together in a sweet expression of tender feelings, feelings new and unexpected and frightening in that way of a journey into the unknown. When he moved his hand to caress her breast, sensation heightened to a singing pitch of expectation, anticipation, a sharp, fevered want.

  When he deftly moved to ensure her protection, when he urged her legs open and settled his weight in her body’s cradle, when he guided his sheathed erection to the waiting center of her sex, Cali knew no moment in her life would ever again be this perfect.

  At Will’s first probing test of her readiness, she caught back a cry of emotion that quickly became a long sigh of nothing but relief at finally, finally, oh, finally he was there, inside her, his first beautiful thrust filling her and she shuddered and he stopped and he groaned, a sound that came from deep in his gut and was so much a part of what she was feeling she barely managed to breathe.

  But she didn’t want him to stop and she urged him to move with the fingers she gouged into his backside and oh, yes, that was where she wanted him, right there where she was so tightly wound up, pressing, grinding, there, that’s it, oh, no, no, not so soon. She wasn’t ready to come, wasn’t ready, didn’t want, no, this first time, not so fast…as if she could put a halt to what Will had started when she’d first opened her eyes and seen him lying beside her.

  “Will, I can’t wait. I want to wait.” She panted sharply. “I want to wait.”

  “’s okay, baby.” He sounded as out of control as she was. “Next time. We’ll do this slow and easy next time.”

  Next time? He wanted her again. He wanted her again. She didn’t even know how she would survive the here and now. “Are you sure?”

  He panted to a stop. “The only thing I’m sure about is that this has to happen now.”

  And then he surged upward, his back bowing as he drove into her body. Cali let go and the thrilling burst that followed took her higher than she’d known she could go. Will’s thrusts remained constant and steady, the pressure perfect, the position exactly right and she shivered and trembled until her focus eased away from the sensation between her legs to take in the sensation of Will.

  Cali smiled. He’d waited for her. He’d waited, making sure she found heaven in her release. She felt the taut restraint in the muscles of his shoulders and back and moved her hands to his backside that was equally tight. She dug her fingers into his buttocks, her heels into the backs of his thighs and rolled up against him.

  He buried his face in the crease where her neck met her shoulder and growled. The tempo of his movements increased at her urging. She met his every downward thrust with a hard upward arch of her lower body until she sensed he was on the verge of losing control.

  When he came he would’ve driven Cali off the end of the futon and into the wall if not for the buttress of pillows. He shook, shuddered, his entire body racked by a completion so powerful Cali found herself fighting back tears—and wondering if he’d been waiting for her as long as she’d been for him.

  6

  WHEN C ALI BURST THROUGH the door of the Paddington’s office thirty minutes before she was due to clock in for her Friday night shift, Erin looked up from the shuffle of paperwork spread across her desk. The caterer had just left after spending two hours finalizing the menu for the party, yet Erin still wasn’t sure the choices she’d made were the best.

  She was sure, however, that Cali was about to pop. Erin didn’t know if she would do better to come right out and ask, or to let Cali blurt it out when she was ready. What Erin did instead was broach the subject forefront in her mind. “Have you seen the rerun of Seinfeld where Jerry eats the black and white cookie then throws up for the first time in years?”

  Cali plopped down in the only extra chair in the office, a thrift-store number with crushed velvet gold cushions and freshly varnished arms and legs, and shoved her backpack up underneath. “I think so. Where he and Elaine are in the bakery to pick up a babka and she finds a hair? Why?”

  Erin nodded. “That’s the one. And I’m only asking because the caterer has black and white cookies on the menu and I wonder if that’s what everyone at the party is going to be thinkin
g about. Jerry Seinfeld vomiting.”

  Cali shrugged and tucked her crossed legs up into the chair. “So what if they are?

  It’ll add some appropriate Halloween gore.”

  “I don’t know.” Erin shook her head slowly while she thought. “I just think it has a huge potential ick factor, don’t you?”

  Cali nodded toward the papers on Erin’s desk. “What else is on the menu?”

  Erin put the pages of the proposal back into order. “Don’t forget, I had to take into consideration a mingling crowd and limited seats, so I did what I could to minimize the need for utensils.”

  “Finger

  foods.”

  “For the most part.” The look of concern, no, the look of disgust on Cali’s face gave Erin pause. “You don’t think that’s a problem, do you? I mean, it’s not like we’re a full service restaurant here to begin with. The caterer is the one putting things together.”