The Belle and the Beard

by Kate Canterbary

  I wasn't sure I ever had.

  No one ever grabbed me because they were just so greedy to get their hands on me. They didn't nip my tongue and tighten their fist around my hair. No one sank into me like they'd been starved for my body, like they were relieved just to touch me. They never came at me with a rush of need so intense, so unavoidably present that everything felt quiet and fuzzy and overwhelmingly real, like that moment right before waking up from a dream.

  "Is this all right?" he asked, his mouth on my neck. Which meant his beard was also on my neck and the double duty made me feel hot and dizzy and wonderful.

  "Mmhmm," I managed.

  He bucked against me, growled into my shoulder. "Give me the words, Jas."

  I was surprised to find I enjoyed those growls of his. If someone had told me Linden was a growler, I would've looked at him and said, "Yeah, that tracks" and I would've considered it highly concerning behavior. Why would any adult human growl? Seriously, why? There were no conditions in which growling was appropriate, let alone sexy. But this…this was something I wanted in my life. It was a predatory hum, a groan that got twisted up in desire and turned into a snarl, a primal warning of what was to come.

  Those growls made me smile. They filled me with feminine triumph and I wasn't sure I'd ever experienced triumph that I could call specifically feminine. He was reacting to me, not threatening me. And I liked that.

  I dragged my nails up the corded muscles of his back and shoulders. I shouldn't have been able to feel that much definition with several layers between my hands and his skin but I did. I felt it all. I dropped my head back, only slightly surprised when I connected with the bark.

  "Jasper," he grunted. "Talk to me. Say it. Give me the words, baby."

  "What words?"

  He growled again before pulling that tree trunk of a cock away from where I needed it. "You're not ready."

  "I'm—I'm what?"

  "You're not ready," he said, my leg still looped around his waist and his erection still outlined in his jeans. "I shouldn't have pushed."

  "I believe I'm the one who gets to decide whether I want to be pushed or not."

  He tipped his head to the side. "How would you like to be pushed?"

  "I, well, I mean, I'd, um"—I gestured between us—"that was fine."

  He gave one decisive nod and said, "You're not ready."

  "I'll get ready," I snapped. "I can—"

  "Don't," he interrupted. "Don't force it, okay? When you can say it, when you stop distracting yourself with bullshit like beard oil—"

  "I am actually curious about that."

  He stared at me the way parents stared at children who were covered in chocolate sauce but swore they had no idea where it came from. For reasons that were completely unkind and unfair, he looked magnificent doing this. I was as turned on by the stern, disappointed stare as I was by the growling and kissing that bordered on sex.

  "Like I said, when you can say it, then you'll be ready. I'm not going to be the guy who pushes you into anything." He glanced up when a bird squawked somewhere nearby. "Not today."

  "Some other day?"

  He ran a thumb over my cheek, my birthmark, my lips before leaning in and kissing me again. This wasn't like the time before but it was possible this was better. It didn't make me think about all the things I'd never felt before, rather it made me think about fucking the plan. Abandoning expectations. Rejecting anyone else's definition of success. Maybe I could do this. Maybe I could start over.

  I could climb a man in the middle of a forest and not give a damn about it. Maybe I could do this too. Maybe.

  "Some other day," Linden whispered against my cheek. "If I don't invite myself next door and steal you out of your bed in the meantime."

  "I can't tell if you're serious about that."

  "I spend most nights thinking about it."

  "About…kidnapping me?"

  "I wouldn't call it kidnapping so much as preventative retrieval," he replied. "I've told you since the start, you shouldn't stay there."

  "I thought that was because you didn't like me."

  "I didn't like you being in that house alone."

  Still feeling some of that feminine triumph, I said, "But if I wasn't alone? If my husband was there?"

  "I've already told you," he warned. "We're not talking about that guy. Understand?"

  "I think so."

  He eased me back onto my feet, his hands firm on my waist as he held me steady. "All right there?"

  I nodded, touched my fingertips to my lips. "Yeah. I'm fine."

  Ugh, why am I such a mess? Such a terribly needy mess who has to cry all over this man's shoulder then dry hump his leg?

  I stared at his shirt because I couldn't meet his eyes. Somewhere between setting the kitchen on fire and wrapping my legs around his waist, I'd uncorked my personal shit and poured it all out. I couldn't believe myself. I never did this. I never talked about Preston or why our marriage had been doomed from the start. I never shared my plan for leaving Timbrooks. I never exposed myself like this and I couldn't undo it now.

  I couldn't clean this up.

  Every time Linden looked at me, I was certain he saw the pointless marriage and the bombed-out career. He saw the person who wanted to leave but hung on to both of those things longer than was smart or even sane. What did that look like through his eyes? And why did he have to be so nice? Why couldn't he go back to yelling about crowbars and insulting my pies? Why did he have to see so much of me—and then kiss my lights out?

  His arm hooked around my waist, he steered me toward another tree. "Now, this is why we came here."

  I lifted my face to take in the full height of the tree. Linden was talking about nature and things like that, making marks in his notebook and circling the tree to inspect it from different angles, but I didn't hear him. I continued staring at the sky. It was a gorgeous, cloudless day and it kept my attention away from Linden's thick thighs when he crouched down to inspect the base of the trunk.

  What was I going to do about that? It was dangerous to even think about what came next with me and Linden.

  No, really, it was actually dangerous. The fire had started when I wandered away from the kitchen to check if he'd arrived home yet. At that point, it was much earlier than he said he'd return but I wanted to see him and couldn't stop looking for him. And then my toaster turned into a fireball because I was daydreaming at the window.

  It seemed I couldn't manage Linden and living a safe, fireball-free life at the same time. It was one or the other.

  And when he came up beside me, twined his arm around my waist, and flattened me against him, fire seemed like a fine consequence for all the barrel-chested goodness.

  "Let's head back. We have about half an hour before we lose the sun."

  I dropped my forehead to his chest and let my shoulders sag. "What changed?"

  "What do you mean?"

  "My note. The one from yesterday, what's changed?"

  I kept my face stowed against him as I waited for his response. He took a good, long moment formulating it too, long enough to start me thinking that his notes, his kisses, perhaps they held no meaning. Perhaps this was a bit of fun for him, a game, and—

  "I realized I was wrong. Last week. I didn't give you a chance to explain how it was and why you let me kiss you if you were married."

  I shook my head but it had the effect of rubbing my face between his solid pecs. "I don't like this new, amenable side of yours. It's confusing."

  "Would it help if I threw you over my shoulder right now and carried you back to the truck?"

  My belly flipped. I wasn't the kind of woman anyone threw over their shoulder. No one even joked about that sort of thing with me. "You wouldn't."

  "I would. I'd smack that ass while I had the chance too." He drew his hand down my spine to settle, once again, on my backside. "You were in my shower. All week. Do you know how many times I turned around? How many times I almost went home? How much I
wanted to walk in there and, fuck…just watch?"

  The hard shaft nudging my thigh suggested the number was greater than zero. And that wasn't the worst thing in the world. "Why didn't you?" I asked.

  "Because we'd established the rules and I wasn't about to break them until I knew you'd want me breaking them. Until you were ready for me to break them."

  So precise.

  "I never pay much attention to rules. I look for ways to get around them."

  He smoothed his hands down my sides and back up. "That's a solid argument for me to respect them even more."

  "You might be right."

  I hadn't been desired—not in a non-sexually-harassing way—in a dreadfully long time. I'd stopped believing I could be desired like this.

  But that was one stop too far on the self-discovery train.

  I wanted it, I wanted Linden's interest and attention. And I wanted to be pressed up against trees and kissed silly, to be playfully kidnapped, to be thrown over his shoulder, to be smacked on the ass. Though I couldn't experience any of those wants until my world stopped spinning. I'd just now—this afternoon!—turned clear eyes on my life and I had to understand what I was seeing before I allowed it to get blurry again.

  "We're losing the light," Linden said. "And god forbid you get your shoes muddy. We better go."

  We untangled ourselves from our embrace and walked side by side back to the main trail, our hands linked. Linden pointed out birds and commented on the trees, which were young or old, healthy or declining, native or non-native. He didn't seem to mind that I was only half listening. He might've been giving this guided tour for that exact reason, considering he rarely spoke more than necessary. With every murmur and nod I offered him, another newly distilled realization sounded in my head.

  You only stayed in that job because you didn't know what else to do.

  You stayed because Timbrooks let you do whatever you wanted.

  You stayed because you didn't want to start over, didn't want to work your way up all over again.

  You stayed because you felt important there.

  You stayed because you wanted to prove to your family you were better and smarter and more capable than they said you'd ever be.

  You stayed because you wanted to prove it to yourself. Because you wanted to believe it.

  We returned to Linden's house and there was no debate as to whether I was coming inside with him.

  There was stew in the fridge, he'd said by way of explanation.

  We'd have stew and we wouldn't talk about any of my confessions, I'd decided. Though I didn't say it, Linden picked up that signal without a problem. From the moment we stepped inside, he chattered on about a golf course on Cape Cod he visited frequently because they insisted on planting trees that didn't belong in this region, the baseball game he recently attended with his siblings, and something about neighborhood Halloween festivities.

  I leaned against the countertop while he poured the stew into a cast-iron pot to warm and went on about the baseball season and how it was running long this year. Everything he said hit me about ten seconds after he said it, as if my brain was stretched beyond the point of withstanding regular conversation. I knew it was happening because he'd stare at me expectantly in moments when I was due to react or respond but I'd only blink at him.

  "What was that?" I asked. "I'm sorry. I didn't catch the last part."

  "No worries," he murmured, setting several muffin-y things on a baking sheet. "I just asked if you like popovers."

  I pointed at the sheet. "Those are popovers, I take it?"

  "Yeah. My mom bakes them whenever she's cooking stew. She believes it to be a symbiotic relationship." He cocked his head to the side, frowned. "Are popovers not a thing in the South?"

  "I can't speak for the whole of the South but they're not a thing where I'm from."

  Nodding, he shoved the tray into the oven. "They won't be as stunningly bad as your cupcakes so you might not like them."

  "It's a risk I'll have to take."

  Linden pulled a bottle of wine from the fridge and I decided it was pure coincidence he had the same bottle I was drinking last week on hand. Lots of people drank sauvignon blanc. It was nothing. This was nothing.

  "Would you like a glass?" he asked.

  "Please." I wanted to cross the kitchen and stand beside him while he prepared the meal, letting our hands and hips bump as we worked together. I wanted to drop my head onto his shoulder and be content for one minute. I wanted to wrap my arms around this thick torso and bury my face in his shirt. I wanted to crawl into his lap and let him hold me. I wanted to link my arm with his, tip my head toward the bedroom, and let him lead me there. I wanted to be the person who asked for those things without talking myself out of it, without convincing myself he'd refuse me. Without believing I didn't want or need it. "So, this stew. Does your mother cook for you frequently?"

  He barked a laugh into the refrigerator as he reached for a beer. "Hardly. I mean, she always has a freezer full of soups and casseroles and will send me home with twenty pounds of rice if I'm not careful."

  "And somehow you ended up with half a dozen popovers and a week's worth of stew."

  He rolled his eyes. "My mother was in rare form today. I took a lot more than stew."

  "What does that mean?"

  "Some of the shrubs in her yard died over the summer—that drought was a bitch—so I agreed to meet her at a garden center to pick out replacements. To say my mother is a kid in a candy shop when it comes to garden centers would be an insult to kids. My mother doesn't care whether a tree is too big for her land or she doesn't have room for more potted plants. She will buy it all and then she'll get back to the house and holler at me to make it work for her."

  "The next time you accompany her on one of these shopping trips, I'd really love to come along. I won't say a word, I just want to watch."

  "You're hilarious." He tapped his beer bottle against my wineglass. No disasters occurred this time. "But here I am, thinking I'm along to help with the shrubs, and she busts out with all this—" He stopped himself, taking a deep pull of his beer. "Well, she had a lot of little things she wanted to share with me and then she casually says she and my father are having a fortieth anniversary party because they don't want to wait in case either of them die before they hit their fiftieth."

  An unpleasant wheezing noise came up from my chest. "Oh. Oh, wow. That's—"

  "It's fucking nuts," he said. "And, like, do I need to think about my parents dying sometime in the next ten years? No, I really don't. That's what we have my brother for. He's the one who handles that shit. Not me."

  I stared at my glass for a moment, my pointer and middle fingers on either side of the stem. There was never a time when this topic didn't hurt like hell. "But you got stew out of it, so that's not a terrible bargain. Right?"

  "The stew only came my way because my dad took off on a last-minute golf trip with some of his friends yesterday. I'm told she gave him a very hard time about choosing between golf and the stew, which she'd spent all day making."

  "Sounds fair," I replied. "It also sounds like you see a lot of your family."

  "I do." He pulled open the oven door, bent down to peer inside. "My brother and sister both live in Boston and my parents are in New Bedford. I'm always seeing one of them."

  "That must be nice." There was a note of bitterness in my tone that I hadn't intended and Linden noticed immediately.

  "What about your family? Are they in Georgia?"

  I shook my head because no, I didn't have any real family there but more importantly, no, we could not talk about this now. "Not too much. Can I get out some dishes or set the table? Tell me what to do. If you don't, I'll invent something to do."

  He stared at me for a long, knowing beat before saying, "Yeah, sure. Grab some of the deep bowls up there, in that cabinet."

  We sat across the battered old kitchen table from each other as we ate. The stew was really good. It was the kind of mea
l my mother liked to call stick to your ribs food. And the popovers were interesting. The hollow muffin seemed like a symbol of my present stage of life but it was tasty with butter.

  Also symbolic.

  We discussed my projects at Midge's house and the times I'd spotted Sinatra wandering around the yard. We discovered neither of us had seen a new movie in years and we seemed unscathed by this. There was a touchy moment when Linden asked if Cleary was my married name and I only shook my head in response. He grabbed a recent copy of the local paper and pointed out an article about the Halloween events.

  Halloween was a big deal around here.

  Apparently it was almost October and I needed to start caring about Halloween.

  We washed the dishes together, me at the sink because I was going to crawl out of my skin if Linden refused to let me do something. He parked himself beside me while he dried the dishes, an eye on me as if he expected me to light the sponge on fire. Then he set the last spoon aside and came up behind me, his hands falling to my waist and his body warm against my back.

  "I want to kiss you again." He dragged his lips along the back of my neck, under my ear. "But I don't think that's what you need."

  I braced my palms flat on either side of the sink. "And who are you to determine what I need?"

  There was a moment where he hesitated but it was gone before I could examine it. He tightened his hold on my hips and rocked against me, every hot inch firm against my backside.

  "Someone who tends to be right about these things."

  I didn't know whether he was trying to be amusing with that comment but I laughed just the same. "Why do you think you're right about this?"

  He hummed against my neck—maybe it was a growl—and I nearly lost my balance from the rumbly waves that noise sent coursing through me. "Because I know I won't stop at kissing you."