by Shirl Anders
She didn’t understand, staying rooted to the spot right inside his front door. “What?”
“Your leather. Had it cleaned.”
Her eyes widened and her lips parted. He’d gotten her favorite leather jacket cleaned! She watched him pushing up the sleeves on his long sleeve brown shirt. His gaze was deep and unreadable. She stepped toward him, where before she’d been uncertain.
“Thank you,” she offered. “Really.”
He lifted his chin slightly. A gesture she took to mean “You're welcome” in hardass land, then he went to the big, double-door stainless refrigerator. She turned her gaze from mouthwatering over his refrigerator's beauty. Gorgeous man, gorgeous fridge. Oh boy.
The crass comments she’d overheard Vincent saying that morning after they tumbled into bed did not seem to align with his recent actions. As in, just nearly just laying her out to fuck her silly in his truck, then having a hard time stopping, and now getting her jacket cleaned. The first could be a horny man looking for an easy lay. His wife was a bitch and they probably didn’t do it much. She knew she and Steven hadn’t had sex for over eighteen months, four days, and about an hour. She counted each long month, day, and hour. It hurt. Maybe bad enough not to feel very guilty about going to bed with Vincent. Who gave her orgasms.
Tess’ cheeks heated, and she saw Vincent looking at her with that hyper-alert and intense gaze he had. As if he knew she’d been thinking about sex with him.
“Baby, you want coffee?”
She loved it when he called her that, with his deeper than deep voice that slid through her. It made her hurt inside, in a sweet yet intense way.
She made certain to make her voice sound level when she answered, “Sure. Thanks, and just black is great.” She walked forward and set her purse on the beautiful granite top and reached for the dry cleaning bag, as she said, “Coffee will help with the late night driving I have ahead of me. Maybe I will try that hotel out on the highway.”
Before she’d finished the word highway, she felt heat at her side. “Stay here.”
She was startled, and she tried to back up, but hit the granite edge, looking up at Vincent’s rugged and intense features. “I couldn’t.” Her voice sounded breathless. “Remember our violent-prone, soon to be ex’s?”
That's the reason she decided to use? Not that it’s the craziest thing she’d heard of … two cheated on spouses living together. Of course it wouldn’t be living, just offering a room for a while, but no … no. If Steven found out. She couldn’t. She also couldn’t get her mind off living with Vincent, and maybe seeing him in the morning after just waking, seeing him sitting in front of the TV, on the couch. Vincent maybe with his shirt off.
She jerked her head to the side, away from Vincent, afraid he could read her mind. Was she that starved for affection that she’d…?
“Can’t let you leave,” Vincent stated. She stilled, completely caught on the possibilities of what he meant. His hand lifted and grasped her chin, turning her gaze back to his. That close in the light she saw nothing but endless black in his eyes. “Not safe,” he muttered, looking at her mouth.
“If Steven found out,” she whispered.
“He won’t,” Vincent answered with finality.
“I can’t, Vincent,” she kept whispering. “I don’t know you.”
His gaze drilled into hers and it felt as if he’d just licked her slowly, right between her legs. “You know me,” his voice rumbled. “I know you.”
He meant as intimately as a man and woman could get through sex. He rubbed his thumb over her bottom lip, and a slow grinding ache sparked, low … low on her body. “Can’t let you stay at a hotel. Not safe. Can’t let you stay where Luna could find you. Not safe. Can’t let you stay where Navarro can find you.”
She started to say, “But...”
He kept talking. “You go to that hotel you're not letting your husband know where you are … right?”
“Right,” she agreed, and he dropped his hand, stepping back and taking a step back of his intensity with him.
“Same thing,” he shrugged, then he turned and went around the island back into the kitchen, while she followed long enough to watch his ass in jeans. Yum.
He seemed to think it was all settled, and she realized the last thing she really wanted to do with Vincent was argue. She’d leave it until later, right before she left. But, ohmygod, him saying, “I know you.” was melt worthy.
“Coffee. Then eggs,” Vincent said, setting a mug of coffee on his side of the island and bringing her around to him. She set her cleaned leather jacket over the back of the curved, wrought iron stool with embroidered material stretched across its cushion. The picture woven into the material was of a hawk flying over mountain trees. It went along with most of the southwestern theme throughout Vincent’s home or hideaway as he called it.
Vincent was whipping eggs in a blue glass bowl by the stove when she grabbed the mug of coffee he’d set out for her. She saw immediately the stainless steel gas stove, built in, wider than a normal stove. It was beautiful and she really wanted to go over and pet it. To keep herself from doing something so silly, she looked around the rest of Vincent’s amazing kitchen.
Her gaze landed on the stainless steel apron sink, then lifted and drifted across the cherry wood cabinets. It was a beautiful space and she was certain he must love to cook.
Her mouth said it. “You must love to cook.”
She’d spoken very softly but he caught it. Of course. The more she knew him, the more she was becoming amazed at Vincent’s skills.
“Only eggs.”
Her gaze returned to his back as he was pouring whipped eggs into a pan on the stove. She watched the play of his muscular back as he moved. “You mean you only cook eggs?”
“Yeah.”
She sipped her coffee, then set it on the island to the side of her as some uncomfortable feelings assaulted her. It had to be for a woman. There was no other explanation for having a kitchen as magnificent. She’d noticed on her survey that there were no small touches. Bowls, vases, pictures. And, he had said, he’d never cheated.
He could have lied. She’d never met a more powerfully sexual man and it seemed impossible to her that he went without.
“Eat.”
She looked up and he was standing in front of her with a plate of scrambled eggs. His gaze was watching her hands as she twisted the wedding ring on her finger. He didn’t have one.
“Thanks,” she said, producing a smile she might not be feeling. No return smile, but she felt a bit of the smoldering-panties feeling in his gaze, like she’d had with him in Lulu’s.
He set the plate by a stool, and reached down to open a drawer on the island to pull out a fork. She sat on the stool and took the fork, poising it over her plate.
“You’re not eating?”
He shook his head as he leaned against the counter looking at her. She wasn’t going to let him intimidate her with his intensity while she was eating, and he wasn’t. So she dug in and found the eggs were ordinary, but really helped fill up the gnawing hunger she’d been feeling. Running around with Vincent Whitehorse was like going on a diet, she silently mused, as she put food in her mouth watching him, watching her.
Then the sound of her cell phone started, playing “Stairway to Heaven,” disrupting the silence. Without thinking on it much, she looked away from Vincent, grabbed her purse and pulled out her cell. Before she could lift it to answer, Vincent’s hand closed over both her hand and the cell. How did he move so quickly and silently?
“That your husband, give him an excuse. Not you saw them,” he ordered. By the intensity of his gaze alone she nodded.
But then she added, “Won’t be him.”
She was so confident of this she answered brightly and without looking, once Vincent released her hand.
“Tess, where the hell are you?” Steven. Her eyes widened and she might have looked at Vincent a bit panicked. Steven never called her, only texted, and that not
very much.
“I, um …” Vincent clasped the back of her neck, while his strong body, pressed into her side. “Why the hell do you want to know?” she asked back tersely.
“You PMSing?” She wanted to scratch him as she controlled her temper. “I need some flowers, and you're not at the shop,” he complained.
She rolled her eyes and Vincent relaxed a bit against her. “Steven, it’s past nine at night.”
“T, you sound like you're PMSing. My new talent needs the royal treatment, which means freaking flowers when she gets off stage or maybe even on stage.”
Tess hated it when he called her T so she gritted her teeth. “I could have ordered something if you’d planned,” she started to say.
“I need a damn key to your shop,” he huffed.
No way. She’d avoided that like the bad flu. “Um ... sorry.” She did not sound sorry in the least. “What’s her name? Your new talent?”
“Luna Whitehorse. She’s got it all. This is big, T. I’m telling you this is the one. Going to take a lot of time. You get it. My guys are impressed. Think I have to change that last name though.”
Tess tilted her gaze up to Vincent at this revelation. He could hear it all, and he did not look pleased. “Are you coming home?” she asked.
“At least not till Monday, Tuesday. Don’t hold me to it. Now some other shop going to get this flower business T, you could have had the advertising. Got to think of stuff like that. Later.”
The call went dead, and she held the phone up looking down at it. Vincent’s fingers moved on her nape gently. “He always leave off like that?”
She nodded, not looking up at him, feeling lousy at how much that revealed about her, and her marriage. But overriding those feelings was the fact Vincent picked that to comment about. He was thinking about her first. Not the crazy thing going on between Steven and Luna.
“He’s lying.”
Tess turned her gaze back up to Vincent ... he was really close, and she fought the need to lean into him. “Luna’s only talent is her pussy. Even that’s sorry.”
She wondered if he were trying to make her feel better because she didn’t. At all. Luna’s only talent’s in bed. Luna had sounded pretty good up on that balcony. What bothered Tess was how much more it bothered her hearing Vincent talking about Luna’s pussy. His wife.
It was very good she and Vincent were cooling it.
“So talk,” she demanded, setting her phone down ... glad a second later when Vincent stopped touching her.
Vincent looked at Tess’ long red hair with the dark blue, drop ceiling light over the island hitting it in different rich shades of red. Tess had some fucking hair when it was dried, curling, and waving down to her shoulder blades, and it was thick.
He’d felt that when he’d had her on top of him, pulling her up and down off his cock. She’d had no fucking rhythm, so he’d done all the work, and she’d rode deep on every one of his hard thrusts, making sexy noises for more and harder. Tess Navarro liked it rough. So did he.
But he’d not seen her hair up close nor her long shapely legs in a ruffled skirt. Those legs had clamped his ass and up around his head twice. Once when he was eating her and once when he'd pulled her legs up that way fucking her pretty pussy with its trim strip of red hair. Hell, that strip of fluff had mesmerized him. He’d not seen a trim like it before, leaving the pink beneath a visible bare, soft slit.
He pulled his hand from her nape and through her thick hair. Hell, he needed to get his head straight. Stop looking at Tess Navarro. How many times had he found a reason to be close to her or touch her? Too damn many. He knew he’d hurt her talking about Luna’s pussy. He’d not meant it that way, but he’d seen the soft pink of Tess’ lips pulling down.
He stepped away with her sky blue eyes watching him when he put a stool between them by sitting the next one over.
“I fucked up, put Luna on the board of Whitehorse Endowment,” he stated flatly. “W.E. controls Whitehorse Training and Security Facility for women.”
Tess leaned his way looking serious, as he finished. “Luna gets wind I’m cutting her loose before I tie up this mistake, she will make those charities suffer.”
“Charities?”
He knew what Tess meant, being amazed anyone would try to mess up charities for their own personal gain. “Yeah, she’s that bitchy if she thinks she’s losing something, as in attention first and money second.” He paused and ground his chin with his palm. He’d known a long time he’d made a mistake putting her on the board, back in better times between them. Back when she’d put sex to good used getting him to do it. “She’ll do it because she knows it is the only fucking thing that will hurt me.”
“Are you stuck, then?” Tess asked softly, and he appreciated the fact she was being soft with him and looking worried for him.
“Yeah, beautiful. Got a plan.”
Then Tess surprised him by instantly offering, “I’ll wait … whatever you need, Vincent.”
She didn’t make it easy for him to stay away from her. Navarro was a stupid moron giving her sweetness up for crazy-assed Luna.
“Thanks,” he muttered on a low note, and her gaze got softer on him.
“Can’t stay here, though,” she whispered.
“Tonight,” he ordered, then added incentive. “I’ll figure something you’ll approve, after.”
It took her a minute, searching him with those sky blues of hers, but then she nodded slowly and did a kitten stretch that nearly had him on her. “I am really tired. Probably shouldn’t drive.”
He managed a stiff nod. “Take any room upstairs. Don’t care which.” He stood and started to walk back away from her around the far side of the island, thinking it was best to keep his hands out of grabbing distance. “Got some work.”
He was out the other side of the kitchen and down the hall before her voice stopped him, making him look back.
“Vincent?”
“Yeah?”
“Have to be at my shop by nine, and um …” She looked away from him, then dragged her gaze back. “This might sound funny, but I’m sorry my husband is doing what he’s doing to your marriage.”
He’d felt like that. The crazy need to apologize, as if by proxy, he should be guilty his wife was fucking up pretty little Tess Navarro’s life.
“Marriage was already fucked,” he ground out, then he turned on his boot heels and went to one of the offsite home offices he’d set up.
FIVE / HARDER
There were two bedrooms upstairs to pick from, if she wasn’t going to do the master bedroom, and there was no way she was.
Tess did look at it though, and it made her instantly horny in a clutch-her-legs-together kind of way. The bed was a king size and low to the floor with a curving brown leather headboard. She could imagine them getting lost together in the yards of mattress. The big bed was rumpled and looked as if Vincent had just rolled out of it. Naked. Of course she’d conjure him naked as on edge as she was with him … about him. About his hands just recently lifting her naked breasts up and fingering her taut, sensitive nipples.
Looking at his big rumpled bed made her vividly remember his touch. The room was decorated in dark maroons and browns, with big solid furniture. There was an on-suite bathroom, but she didn’t dare enter the room far enough to look into it. As it was, she had to fiercely remind herself that if she started more of an affair with Vincent she could be putting him in danger from her husband’s questionable associates.
That centered her mind off rolling naked with Vincent in his big master bed, even if her body was still banging. She wasn’t hugely experienced, only having been to bed with two men in her life, but Vincent’s brand of control and command topped with his rough edge in bed was breathtaking and hard not to crave. Everything she’d had before it was truly uninspired. Including her marriage bed.
Turning away from the temptations of his bedroom, she went to check the others out. Both looked like well-designed guestrooms, as if he’d
had a designer decorate them. The southwest theme was strong in both rooms, one done in more terra cotta and reds, and the other one more greens and browns. Both beds looked nice and what decided her was the small attached bathroom in the wild horse room with a thick, sage green comforter. The pictures of wild horses on the walls were stunning, as if the photographer had stood in the middle of a stampede to get them.
Rummaging through her purse, she found a hair pick, lip gloss, and some mascara. It would have to do. Then in the bathroom she found some shampoo, lotion, and mouthwash. This meant she was taking a hot shower. Although when she stepped into the shower she considered turning on the cold water to cool her thoughts down … thoughts such as standing naked a couple of rooms away from Vincent.
She began wondering if she was trying to transfer the rough road to the end of her marriage with a hot new guy … like hotter than any man she’d ever been close too. After her shower, Tess swiped steam off the bathroom mirror, looking at her blurry vision.
“Okay,” she muttered to her reflection. “It’s just bracing, to you, that he wants you when Steven is throwing you away." Again. She was trying to convince herself that her over-the-top attraction to Vincent was so intense, because … well, it was the purest form of revenge on Steven.
That had to be right? She was just starry-eyed-in-lust because it showed she was worth wanting, and it had nothing to do with any real an instant attraction between them. That was just crazy. Lusting after the husband, of the bitch, screwing your husband. Tess shook her head.
“Shoot,” she muttered, putting lotion on her face. When she thought about it like that she saw she could easily be taking revenge.
It was depressing, and she was still horny and worried about being at Vincent’s house when she climbed into bed nude, because she had no nightclothes. She could have looked through the drawers but she didn’t want to be any closer to Vincent’s stuff. As it was, she squirmed on the bed this way and that not able to stop thinking about marathon sex with Vincent, interspersed with the first base action in his truck.
