I’m still smiling as I pour melted chocolate into the recipe base for the pie that Elijah inspired, and I’m halfway to creating another recipe in my head when I hear the front door bang back on its hinges and my dad come tearing out of the house and across the gravel walkway toward Elijah. “CADE!”
Oh crap! I throw the spatula down on the bench and run for the door. My dad has Elijah by the collar of his jacket, holding him up against the back of the shop and, despite being younger, taller and musclier than Dad, Elijah’s hands are up in surrender. “I know what you’re thinking, but I didn’t pursue her, I swear. It just happened.”
“So you think that makes it okay? Because she came to you? She’s nineteen, she doesn’t know what the fuck she wants.”
“Dad!” I snap and the two of them glance at me. Dad backs off, but only enough so that there’s maybe an inch or two more space between them, and he’s no longer holding onto Elijah’s collar.
“Bob, your daughter’s old enough to know what she wants.” Elijah runs a hand over the back of his neck and then looks at me a little sheepishly. “For God’s sake look at her. Have you ever seen a more put together nineteen-year-old? Look, you’re my boss. I respect you immensely. I respect your family and your family’s reputation in this town, but your daughter? There aren’t enough words to describe how much I think of her.”
“Oh, I know exactly what you think of her. You and every other young prick in this town—”
My father is getting riled up again. His face is beet red and he practically has steam pouring out his ears. I wedge myself between them and gently push at his broad chest. “Dad, back off. What happens between Elijah and I is none of your business.”
He puts his hand over mine and looks down at me, “You’re my little girl; everything you do is my business.”
I shake my head and give him a sad smile. “No. It’s not. I can’t be a little girl forever, Dad. I’m not a little girl. I haven’t been since Mum died.”
“Aww, hell, kiddo.” Dad sniffs, and then, I guess to prove he’s not a complete pansy—because the definition of a “sheila” in my father’s eyes is a grown man who cries—he turns away from me and spits on the ground before taking a step back towards the house.
I glance at Elijah, making sure he’s not already planning to run for the hills. He gives me an odd but warm smile, and then his eyes widen when he sees my dad turn around again.
“Hey, kiddo, I’m sorry for what I said earlier. I didn’t mean it. I don’t mean it.”
I smile, because despite the fact that he can be a big and scary beast of a man at times, underneath he’s like a puppy dog—albeit one with a mean bite—but mostly, I smile because, in my entire nineteen years, this is the first time I’ve ever heard my dad say sorry, to anyone. “Don’t worry about it, Dad. I know you’re just trying to look out for me.”
He nods like he’s satisfied with that answer and then points a finger at Elijah. “You remember what I said last night. You think on it long and hard before you make any decisions that affect her or you’ll be seeing the wrong end of a shotgun. You got it?”
Oh god, please tell me he didn’t just threaten to have Elijah killed if he broke my heart? And suddenly Elijah’s speedy exit from the party last night makes perfect sense.
It’s Elijah’s turn to nod. “Yeah, I got it.”
“I’m gonna need you at work bright and early Monday mornin’. You good with that?”
“Yes, Sir,” Elijah replies and Dad walks back up the stairs and inside the house.
I snag my lip between my teeth and glance awkwardly at Elijah. “Hi.”
His smooth chocolate eyes fasten onto me and his lips tip up in the corner so that I know exactly what he’s thinking. “Hi.”
“What are you doing here? I wasn’t expecting to see you until tomorrow.”
He moves closer, until we’re standing toe to toe and I’m close enough to feel his warm breath on the top of my hair. “I kept thinking of you, all alone in that big old kitchen making pies. Then, naturally, I thought of how good your pie tasted and how I wanted to taste it over and over again.”
Somehow I didn’t think we’re talking about pastries, anymore.
“That so?” I squeaked.
“Mmm, that’s so.” He runs a finger up my arm, over my collarbone and cups the nape of my neck in his hand. He leans in as though he’s about to kiss me and there’s a moment of terrible, delicious torture as I wait for him to bring his lips down to mine, but he presses them into my cheek in a soft, slightly wet kiss instead. “Plus, if I have to choke down another cardboard microwave meal, my stomach’s never gonna forgive me.”
“And who says I’m going to let you taste my pie again?”
“Baby girl, five minutes alone with me and you’re gonna be begging me to taste your pie.”
“Well, I guess it was pretty brave of you to show your face in front of my dad after I spent the night in your motel room. Surely you deserve some kind of reward for your heroism? You get that he’s hurt people for a lot less, right?”
He chuckles and pulls me through the kitchen door. “Yeah, I got that.”
“And you get that you’re not getting a free meal here, right? I mean, if I have to work, then so the hell do you.”
“Wait, you really want me to help you cook pie?”
“No, I want you to stand there like some Greek Adonis looking all ridiculous and cute. Of course you’re going to help.” He looks as though he’s about to protest again so I arch my brow and say, “So help me god, if you say anything about a man’s place not being in the kitchen I’m going to kick your ass, Cade.”
He puts his hands up in mock surrender. “Wasn’t gonna.”
“Good.” I rifle through the drawer and pull out two aprons. “Now, do you want the pink, or the yellow with cupcakes? Personally, I think the pink is really more your style.”
Chapter Ten
Elijah
Someone was pounding on my door and that someone was about to get their head pounded in. I was sweaty, my head felt like it’d gone a couple of rounds with Tyson and I ached from head to friggin’ toe. Ana’s kid brother had come home from school last week sporting a nasty case of a zombie virus and had since shared it all around. Because sharing is caring. I’d tried to keep my distance, but seeing as Ana spends half her time with Sam and I spend the majority of my time with her, I’d ended up being one of the infected, too. Oddly enough, this damn flu had hit everyone in her family, but Ana seemed immune.
The pounding in my head and on my front door continues until I finally roll out of bed, snatch up the half empty bottle of vodka on my bedside table and take a hefty swig. It burns like a bitch the entire way down and feels even worse sitting in my empty stomach, but if it’ll help to burn out this flu then I’ll down the whole bottle now just so I can feel better and get back to work.
Still nursing the bottle, I stumble over to the door, wrapped in a blanket and a pair of trackies. I pull the door back, and Ana’s face is the one that greets me, so I have to rethink my plan of pounding in her head because that would just suck. Plus she looks like a fucking goddess in those jeans.
“Hey. How you feeling?”
I just stare at her. I’m sure my sweaty, glassy-eyed, crackhead appearance says it all. “You look awful.”
“Feel it, too. You shouldn’t be here, babe, you’re gonna get sick.”
“I never get sick and I got Holly to cover my shift for me so,” she holds her hand out for me to shake and says in a breathy, sexy voice that has my Johnson twitching in my pants, “hi, I’m Ana, and I’ll be your nurse for the rest of the day.”
“Oh good, ‘cause I have this ache in my pants that could use some TLC.” I smirk and take another swig.
“Nice try. How about you give me the bottle—” she reaches out to take it but I hold it above my head.
“How ‘bout you get drunk with me, instead?”
“Give me the bottle, Elijah, before I hurt you.” She’
s serious, too. On any other occasion I might have taken her up on that offer, but in my current state I’ve probably got all the coordination of a newborn baby, and no man wants to emasculate themselves in front of the girl they have perm-a-wood for. I hand over the bottle and surrender myself over to her care.
“Good boy, now go and lie down.” I waggle my eyebrows and she gives me her serious face before a laugh escapes. Even though my ears and nose are full of crap and my hearing’s reduced by about 50 per cent, her laugh is still the best fucking sound I’ve ever heard. “I made you some soup with dry toast. I have tissues, cough medicine, throat lozenges and every Fast and the Furious movie ever released on DVD.”
“Baby girl, what are you doin’ with a guy like me?”
“The same thing you’re doing with a girl like me.” My head is much too messy to even begin trying to work that shit out, so I trudge back to bed and watch her fine arse in those jeans instead.
Within minutes Ana is beside me, fluffing pillows and forcing medicine down my throat that tastes far worse than vodka ever could. Then she feeds me dry toast and the best chicken soup I’ve ever had—come to think of it I can’t remember a time when I ever ate chicken soup before this, but I’m sure even if I had, it was never this good. She slips a DVD in the player when I’m done and settles into the crook of my arm.
About twenty minutes in I remember she hasn’t eaten anything, and when I say as much she replies, “I ate before I came.”
I press my lips into her hair, slide my arm a little higher up her waist and whisper, “Say it again.”
“What?”
“Came.”
She laughs and I slide my hand up over her perfect tits and tilt her head up to mine to kiss her. I know I shouldn’t, but she’s here watching the ultimate guy movie with me and she made me chicken soup and forced medicine down my throat—and yes, she took away the vodka but that was probably for the best, too—and it occurs to me right then, in my fever heady state, that I’ve never had anyone take care of me before the way she does. And then it occurs to me that I could get used to having her care for me.
Too used to it.
My heart pounds around my chest uncontrollably. Fuck, when did I become such a complete pussy?
“Oh my god, you’re like some twisted little sex fiend when you’re sick.” She sits up and climbs over me until she’s straddling my waist. I lift her hips and seat her back down over my cock, which has been rock hard since she curled up next to me.
“Darlin’, nothing about me is little.”
She lets out a breathy laugh which is one part humour and all parts desire. “I can see that.”
She rocks back and forth gently over me. I can feel the heat of her sweet, hot pussy through her jeans and I sink my fingers into her hipbones, but it isn’t enough. I tug at her jeans.
“Off,” I grunt. “Everything off.”
“You’re kinda bossy when you’re sick, too,” she teases. “I like it.”
“Yeah?”
She bites her bottom lip. “Yeah.”
“Then take these damn clothes off and I’ll boss you around all you like.”
“Yes, sir.” She slips off the bed, careful not to take her eyes off me as she undresses. Once her t-shirt is off I know why: her bra is completely sheer. Seriously, there’s like the thinnest scrap of … whatever the hell they make women’s underwear out of between her full, beautiful tits and the world, and all I want to do is run my mouth over the fabric and tear it with my teeth. She smiles like she knows exactly what I’m thinking and slowly peels off her jeans, revealing a matching see-through-as-fuck G-string that definitely has a date with my teeth.
“Jesus, baby girl. Are you trying to kill me?”
“What, you don’t like them?”
“You’re shitting me right? The only thing I like more is seeing you in nothing at all and writhing underneath me.”
And speaking of.
I tug at the waist of my pants but Ana climbs back on the bed to help me. I must look pretty damn pathetic because she takes a hold of my hand and says, “Let me.”
She gently pulls them from me and throws them over her shoulder onto the floor, then leans back and stretches her arms behind her to unclasp her bra but I sit up and reach out to stop her. “Leave them on.”
She pushes on my chest so I’m lying flat on my back and then she’s taking me in her mouth, her hand gently cupping and squeezing my balls while the other milks my shaft. My eyes roll back in my head and I slide my fingers into her hair and tug on it, probably harder than I should. She makes a sound but, as it’s muffled by my cock, I’m not sure whether or not it’s one of pain or pleasure, so I do it again.
Definitely pleasure.
Whaddya know? My sweet, innocent Ana likes it rough. I did not see that one coming. And my brain isn’t quite sure how to process the information either. On one hand it excites me. Really fucking excites me. But on the other, it means I’m at an even greater risk of falling in love with her and that scares the ever-loving shit outta me.
Ana shifts on the bed so that she’s straddling my thigh. Her perfect arse is sticking up in the air and the thin elastic of her G-string follows the curve and disappears into her crevice. I trace the fabric with my finger and then hook my arm underneath her waist and lift her off of me. She giggles and shoots me a questioning glance before I shift her again and set her back down so that she’s still straddling me, but now she’s facing the opposite direction and her glorious pussy is in my face.
I run my hand over her arse but I can’t resist the urge to bring my hand down upon those beautiful, smooth cheeks. Some arses are just made for slapping, you know? Ana cries out. Her mouth is still wrapped around my cock, so once again the sound is muffled, but she rocks her hips back into my hand so I know I’ve done something right.
“You like it rough, baby girl, is that it?” I feel her hesitate. The steady rhythm she’d been keeping with her hand and mouth falters and she goes tense all over. “Hey, you’re safe with me. You know that right?”
I feel, more than see, her nod, and her voice has the sweetest quaver to it when she says, “I know and I think sometimes … I like it rough. I mean, it’s not like I have a lot of experience with this sort of thing, but I … well, I like everything you’ve done so far.”
“And if you don’t like something that I do?”
“I’ll tell you to stop.”
“And you believe I will?” I’m not challenging her, just trying to feel out how far her trust in me goes.
“I trust you, Cade.”
“Good.” I slide my hand over the red welts I’ve left on her arse and I feel her relax as she settles back into her own rhythm of exploring my cock with her lips and tongue. I pull her underwear aside and slide my finger from her arse all the way down to her clit. Ana squirms beneath my touch and I trace my finger back the way it came, pausing for a moment to play in the wetness of her opening. I glide my finger over the tight little rosebud of her arse and then circle the sensitive flesh. Ana’s whole body goes ramrod straight.
“Yes or no, baby girl?”
“I don’t… I’ve never—”
“Yes or no?” She pushes her arse into my hand. “That a girl.”
I dip my thumb into her pussy and glide it back to that sweet little puckered hole and gently, slowly, ease my thumb in. Her grip is so tight it’s sort of painful, and even though her mouth on my cock has ceased while she explores these new sensations, I almost lose my shit right there imagining what it’d be like to push my cock inside. Fuck me! I’ve never seen a woman more responsive to touch than she is.
“Okay?”
“Uh-huh,” she whispers.
The urge to flip her over and fuck her senseless is so great it could bring me to my knees, but I made her promise to make me work for it, and getting her off a handful of times doesn’t mean I’ve done jack shit to earn that right yet. So, for now, I busy myself by plunging my middle finger into her pussy and allowing my t
ongue the chance to explore everything else, from her clit to the inside of her thighs.
She hasn’t resumed her sucking. In fact, aside from the places where our bodies are connected, she’s not touching me at all and I couldn’t care less. My Johnson’s not happy about it, but he fucking should be considering I’ll never need a new mental image for my spank bank ever again. Seeing the way Ana writhes against my hand, the way her hips buck and shudder, hearing the breathy moans escape that ridiculously fuckable mouth of hers as she comes for me is enough to make me never want to look at another woman again, much less fuck one.
With all the shit I’ve done, the hurt I’ve caused people, some I barely knew and others I knew too well, for all the worthless hours I’ve spent wandering through this mess I call a life, looking at this girl before me—who is so perfect and innocent, and downright trusting in every way—I know that, somewhere along the line, I must have done something right for her to want to let me in.
I also know that I’m completely fucking screwed.
Chapter Eleven
Ana
“Come on. You have to give me more details than ‘it was nice’. I mean, why the hell haven’t you strapped him to the bed and impaled yourself on his enormous cock yet?” Holly whines.
It’s not that I’m not used to her being this vocal about my sex life—or up until recently, my lack thereof—it’s the fact that she’s sing-songing it throughout the diner when my kid brother is sitting at a booth nearby, and so is Sugartown’s one and only homeless resident, who carts around stray cats in his trolley and always smells like pee. He’s harmless. A little crazy, but he’s never been a threat to anyone. Ordinarily, Crazy-Eyed Callaghan would meet us at the back door at the end of the day and we’d offload any leftover pies into his eager hands. Today, for some reason, he’s a paying customer and has just as much right to be in here as anyone else.
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