1001 Dark Nights: Bundle Nine

by Carrie Ann Ryan

  Awestruck, quivering, she watches as he pulls his mouth from her slick nipple, brings his fingers slathered with her juices to his nose and takes a deep smell. “There’s my Amber,” he whispers. He slides her fingers between his lips and sucks on them briefly. Tasting her. Savoring her. “There’s my sweet Amber,” he growls. Then it seems as if he can’t decide between the lure of her pink, pebbling nipple or a deeper taste of the juices he just sampled as if they were divine nectar.

  Breathless with suspense, she watches him. He senses this and his eyes cut to her. He smiles devilishly. He’s got her right breast in one powerful grip and his other hand is rubbing lazy, cloying circles across her mound. “Let’s see,” he grumbles. “Decisions. So many tasty decisions.” He flickers her nipple with his tongue.

  But it’s just a distraction.

  In a flash, his still booted feet hit the floor. His hands grip her waist. He’s got her jeans off in no time flat, and then her panties, and then, as if that weren’t enough to make her skin catch fire, he grabs the back of her thighs, drawing her legs up and apart. And then he goes to work. And she screams. She literally screams.

  No one’s ever done it like this before. No one’s ever devoured her with this outright abandon, this determination not to miss an inch. In his every move, in every flicker of his tongue, there is as much a desire to dominate as there is a desire to please. He even dips just below her folds, coming to the edge of a place no man has ever been. Each brush of this place causes her to let out a small cry, and each time she does, he locks eyes with her. The message is the same. No part of you is dirty. No part of us, of the way we’ve always felt for each other, is dirty. Not here. Not anymore.

  His powerful hands slide under her butt, gripping her cheeks, lifting her off the bed so he can bend forward and get a better, more focused angle on her clit. She hears strange thuds before she realizes she’s balled her hands into fists and she’s striking the comforter on either side of her to keep from screaming.

  Devoured. Consumed. Taken. Never before has she connected these words to the act of sex. Hell, she would have laughed at anyone who did. But they all describe exactly how she feels now. Caleb gives her clit a rest now and then so it doesn’t go numb. He takes time to search her folds with his tongue and puckering lips, looking for new sensitive spots. The whole time he keeps his eyes locked with hers, searching for any evidence of new, unexpected pleasure in her expression.

  It’s not a certain spot that does her in. It’s those eyes. Those eyes she spent so many years refusing to meet for fear of being drawn into dangerous temptation. Those eyes that stare into her own now. Those eyes that belong to Caleb, the man she was forced to call brother before she could claim him as her lover. Those eyes and his name, which escapes from her lips unbidden. Which she says again and again and again until the dam breaks and the hands she’s balled into fists turn to claws and Caleb rears up, sucking harder.

  He uses the arm he’s braced under the small of her back to lift her further up off the bed. And as she cries out, he grunts sharply against her slick folds. She has some sense of what’s happening, but part of her thinks it can’t be true, and she can’t exactly pause to investigate while in the grip of her own orgasm. But just the thought of it quickens the waves of pleasure coursing her limbs.

  He’s coming too, she thinks. Is he really coming in his own Levi’s?

  He pulls his mouth from her sex as if it were a struggle, stands erect suddenly. She’s spent, boneless. For a few minutes the idea of moving seems an abstraction. Then she lifts her head and stares down at the foot of the bed. Caleb is just standing there, hair tousled and still rain slicked. The baffled expression on his face makes him look innocent, despite his God-like muscles. The bulge in his jeans is considerable. So is the wet spot.

  “Son of a gun,” he says. “Can’t believe it.”

  “Seriously?” Amber asks.

  She slides off the bed and hits her knees in front of him. He backs away, one hand going up to stop her as she reaches for the button on his jeans.

  “No, no, no,” he says, but he’s laughing. “No. This is embarrassing.”

  “Don’t be embarrassed. Show me your cock.”

  “This is the first time this has ever happened to me,” he says. But he’s moved his hands out of the way. “I swear.”

  She unbuttons his jeans. The idea that just the taste of her made him lose control like this is almost as gratifying as the orgasm that just pulsed through every cell of her body.

  “Well, tonight’s a first for a lot of things, isn’t it?” she says.

  Not once did she ever try to sneak a peek of him in the shower when they were growing up. The sight before her now is her thick, beautiful reward. The way his cock, still slick with his seed, peels away from his stomach once she pulls down his briefs makes it seem as if the thing is literally presenting itself to her. The only thing missing is a bow and a silver tray.

  He laughs softly, still embarrassed. This display of vulnerability as he towers over her awakens as much desire in her as the ministrations of his skillful tongue. She closes one hand around the shaft. A small sigh escapes him. He’s not laughing now. He’s dead serious as he gazes down at her, fingers twining in her hair, biting his lower lip gently. He must feel exactly the way she did when he was deciding between suckling her breast or devouring her sex. She can feel the tension in his body, the desire to force her mouth onto him fighting with the desire to take in the sight of her, submissive and on her knees.

  “You’re a big boy, Caleb,” Amber whispers.

  “Oh, yeah. Well, you’re a—”

  Before whatever porn star line he was about to deliver can come out of his mouth, she takes his cock into her own. The sound that comes from his half groan, half cry, there’s a tremble to it, the tremble of a strong, powerful man being shaken to his core. She’s sure it’s not just the physical sensations of his still sensitive cock sliding between her lips, but his surprise at having her suck his fresh seed from his shaft.

  Both of his strong hands grip her head now. But he doesn’t try to drive her; he’s steadying himself, taking care not to pull her hair. There’s a loud thud from above and she knows just what made the sound—his head slamming into the wall behind him.

  Once she’s cleaned him off, she pulls away. In response, he cups her face in both hands, even though his eyes are shut. He’s drawing her gently to her feet. She’s never done anything like this before. Never tasted the essence of another man in this way. Never wanted to before him. And the idea that she might have just destroyed his desire to kiss her pains her suddenly.

  Too much, she thinks. Too far. I went too fa—

  He kisses her tenderly, gently, at first. The way he holds her face as he does slays her thoughts and conquers her self-judgment and makes the motel room fall away.

  “So long,” he whispers. “I have waited so long for this, so long for you.”

  “I’m sorry if I—”

  “No,” he says, placing a finger to her lips. “No. There’s no sorry here, not right now. That, what we just did, was nothing to be sorry for.”

  As to prove his point, he reaches down and before she realizes what’s happening, he picks her up like a bride and carries her toward the bed. He lays her down gently, then settles down onto the mattress behind her, spooning against her, a reverse of the position into which they’d settled the night his parents died.

  He rolls away from her. She hears his belt buckle clacking against the button of his jeans. When he spoons into her again, he’s naked against her bare behind. The intimacy between them feels somehow sealed by this simple act. He’s already spent. He doesn’t seem to be demanding another go-around, and yet, he’s disrobed just so she wouldn’t feel more exposed than she currently does.

  “The kid in the office said I had to be out by sunup.”

  “I paid him already,” Caleb whispers.

  “Seriously?”

  “It’s how I got him to tell me which
room you were in.”

  “Good thing you’re not an axe murderer.”

  “Good thing a night in the sack with me didn’t rid you of your smart mouth.”

  “You got that right,” she says.

  “Good. I love your smart mouth.”

  “Do you?”

  He reaches up, grips her chin gently and tilts her head back so he can look into her eyes.

  “Do you know what I’m about to say?” he asks.

  “That if we get anything from this bedspread you’re gonna kill me?”

  “No,” he says with only a slight smile at her joke.

  Whatever he’s about to say, it’s serious.

  “You don’t need to wait for me to say it, do you? I mean, you’ve waited long enough, haven’t you?” he says.

  “Caleb—”

  “I love you, Amber Watson. I’ve always loved you. Even when I believed we could never be together, even when it hurt so bad to love you I couldn’t see straight, I never stopped. I couldn’t even try to make myself stop. It was true then, and it’s true now. I’d rather spend the rest of my life feeling the pain of not having you, than spend one moment of it not loving you.”

  “You won’t have to,” she whispers. “You won’t have to know what it’s like to not have me ever again.”

  It feels as if someone else has spoken through her, but maybe that’s what it feels like when you finally speak your truth. And when he kisses her, she feels like she’s floating somewhere just above her body, but maybe that’s what it feels like when you kiss the man you truly love.

  “I love you, Caleb…”

  And she stops.

  She was about to echo his words. She was about to use his full name, just as he used her own, but now?

  “Eckhart,” he says. “My full name, my birth name, is Caleb Eckhart, and when I was fifteen years old, a good man named Abel Watson allowed me to live with him and his wonderful family and so when he adopted me, I changed my name to Watson. But that time has passed now. There’s something new on the horizon. New and better. So as soon as we’re back in Dallas, I’ll get myself to a lawyer and find out how to change my name back to Caleb Eckhart, and you and I will be able to slow dance in the middle of Watson’s and won’t a soul be able to say a damn word about it. If that’s what you want, of course.”

  She smiles.

  “Do you want me to, Miss Watson?”

  “Yes,” she answers. “Yes. Because I love you, Caleb Eckhart.”

  People really can kiss like this, she thinks. Long. Slow. Forever.

  “Caleb,” she says a few minutes later.

  “Yes, Amber.”

  “Don’t get me wrong. This has been one of the best nights of my life. But I’m really slee—”

  Chapter 10

  A phone rings close to her head.

  Amber’s not sure where she is at first. She rolls over and recognizes the motel room’s corded phone, the same one she used to call her mother. But it’s not ringing. That would be her cell phone, which is on the opposite nightstand.

  She rolls in the other direction, grabs her cell, glimpsing the clock on the display as she brings it to her ear.

  It’s three thirty. Again. It’s the afternoon version of three thirty this time, and she’s not sure if this should make her feel guilty or not.

  For nine hours she slept. That’s probably a good thing. But she’s alone. And that’s not good at all.

  She sits up, panic tensing her limbs.

  “Hello?” she croaks.

  “I take it you’ve changed your mind about my imminent murder,” her mother says.

  Just then, Amber sees the spread of items on the dresser next to the T.V. At first she assumes the cowboy hat is Caleb’s, but it’s way too small, and it’s not the same color as the one he wore that morning. As the daughter of a man who ran a country music bar, she knows her Stetsons. This one’s a royal Western, flesh-colored with a slender black band. Caleb’s partial to a black skyline, where the band blends in to the dark fabric and the upturn along the brim is more severe.

  The reason this hat is different, she realizes, with a skip in her chest, is because it’s mine. He bought it for me!

  “You’re not answering so I assume that means you still plan to murder me?”

  “I am not,” she says, rushing to the bathroom mirror so she can see how she looks in her new duds.

  Wow. Huge mistake. She still hasn’t washed off her freak show makeup.

  “Oh my God,” she whispers. “Did we really have sex with me looking like this?”

  “That was more than I needed to hear.”

  “Oh, cut it out. You were the instigator of this whole thing! Don’t get all high and mighty now that you got your way!”

  “I see,” her mother says. “So crazy’s getting replaced by sassy this afternoon. You are aware it’s the afternoon, right?”

  “I needed sleep.”

  “Where are you?”

  “Some motel somewhere.”

  She returns to the dresser. Caleb’s also left out a just purchased, folded pair of blue jeans—almost the right size, but not quite—and a T-shirt which, for a second or two, she’s afraid has some dirty saying about riding cowboys written on it, but which turns out to be printed with the spare but lovely silhouette of a cowboy on horseback before a giant, setting sun.

  Sweet.

  There’s also clean underwear and a fresh pair of socks and bottles of her favorite shampoo and body wash.

  “Is Caleb with you?”

  “I think so,” she says. “I hope so.”

  She draws back the curtain, and there he is, sitting by the motel’s woebegone swimming pool, a postcard of cowboy perfection with his hat tilting forward on his head while he—

  “Caleb plays the guitar?” Amber asks.

  “Lord, I hope not. All that strummin’ and whining. Makes me want to drown myself in a creek.”

  “Momma. That’s no way to talk about the guitar.”

  “Really, Amber? After your track record with musicians?”

  “Is there a reason for this phone call other than to give me an apology you haven’t given me yet?”

  “Yes. Where are you?”

  “I don’t know. Some motel. We’re about an hour outside of Dallas. I was on my way to you.”

  “To murder me. Yes, I remember.”

  “I’m still considering it.”

  “Yes, well, that’s very interesting, baby girl. In the meantime, I’d like you to drive another two hours south because the pleasure of your company is being requested at The Haven Creek Inn.”

  “By who?”

  “By your mother, thank you very much.”

  “And whose company is that exactly?”

  “You and Caleb. Now I’m gonna get off the phone before you slip and tell me how big it is.”

  “Momma!”

  “See you in a few hours, sweetheart.”

  She wants to join Caleb by the pool, but she also doesn’t want to go out in public looking like a psychotic cowgirl who just survived the running of the bulls. She showers quickly with the products he just bought for her, each squirt of shampoo and body wash feeling like a kiss from the man who took the time to buy them for her.

  Only once she’s standing at the motel room door, clean and dressed, the cowboy hat he bought for her perched on her head, does the fear hit. Maybe he’s sitting by himself outside because he’s having second thoughts. The gifts could have been compensation prizes, not tokens of affection, and he could already be planning his next escape. He hasn’t looked in her direction once. Is he rehearsing a little speech about how last night was a giant mistake?

  Start walking, she tells herself.

  By the time she’s a few steps from the chain link gate, Caleb looks up from the guitar on his lap. As soon as his eyes meet hers, the fear vanishes. Everything about him seems relaxed and unguarded. Seeing her so close seems to brighten everything about him, from his smile to his eyes.

&nb
sp; The storm’s passed over completely, leaving behind towers of puffy clouds against a dome of blue. In broad daylight, the motel actually seems a little charming. The room numbers are all the same antique-style brass, the parking lot lines freshly painted. And the water in the pool looks clean, even if the pool itself is just a plain concrete rectangle fenced in by chain link.

  “Thanks for the care package, sir,” she says.

  “You’re welcome,” he answers. “Hope you didn’t think I was trying to brand you with all the cowboy paraphernalia. Nearest place I could find was a country western emporium, this being Texas and all. Although, I must say, you do look mighty cute in that hat.”

  “Thank you,” she says. “So, guitar, huh?”

  “Yeah, I’ve been taking lessons. Didn’t want to come right out and say it, you know, given your history with a certain songbird.”

  “That’s sweet. Thank you.”

  “You want to hear something?”

  Uh oh.

  “Sure, I guess.”

  “You guess? Well, that doesn’t sound very enthusiastic.”

  “I am. I’m very enthusiastic. Play me a song, Caleb Eckhart.”

  With a big grin at the sound of his newly modified name, he gestures for her to take a seat on the lounger next to his. She does, wondering, Is this going to be like one of those moments in a Nicholas Sparks movie?

  Caleb sucks in a deep breath. He grips the guitar’s arm carefully, his chest rising and falling. He strums.

  Something doesn’t sound right.

  He strums again and it sounds worse.

  Oh, shit, Amber thinks, trying to freeze a plastic smile on her face.