by Ali Parker
Haven’s coffee-eyed stare was wide when she appeared, almost as if she was as nervous as I was. She lifted her hand in an awkward wave, but as it dropped back to her side, it drew my gaze down with it.
My greeting died on the tip of my tongue when I realized how beautiful she looked. I was also pretty sure I felt my jaw slacken, if not drop.
Her dress was made to be taken off slowly, preferably with my teeth. It clung to every curve and showed off miles of delectably tanned skin. Dipping between her rounded breasts and hitting just above mid-thigh, it had nothing but thin straps holding it up over her shoulders.
The mole above the right side of her lips rose when she smiled, a light flush spreading across her cheeks. “Is it too much?”
“No.” I cleared my throat and yanked my eyes back up to hers. “It’s gorgeous. You look gorgeous. I just…”
My hand flew to the back of my head as I stood there like a complete fucking virgin.
Haven laughed, shifting from one foot to the other. “Thank you. You look gorgeous too.”
“Thanks.”
For another beat, we just stood there staring at each other. Ross would have a field day if he ever found out about this.
I laughed. “Fuck. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to make it awkward. I just haven’t been on a date in a very long time.”
“I thought this was about your dog, not a date.” She chuckled before giving me another smile, a softer, more understanding one this time. “It’s okay. Neither have I. It wasn’t you making it weird anyway. It was me.”
Her easy agreement and the clear sound of her own nerves broke the ice for me. Both of us were nervous, but neither of us had any real reason to be.
I held out my hand like the gallant gentlemen I wasn’t, and placed hers in the crook of my elbow when she gave it to me. “Let’s just agree that it was both of us making it weird and that we’ll stop doing it right now.”
“Done.” She grinned as she closed her front door behind her, clutching a small purse in her free hand. “God. I don’t even know why I’ve been so nervous. I mean, sure, it’s been a long time, but it’s just eating food with someone. Talking about animals, right?”
“Well, with you in that dress, eating food wasn’t the first place my mind went to, but yeah, I guess that’s all it is.” I smirked. “I suppose we can talk about animals a little bit too.”
Haven smacked me on my shoulder with her purse, but it was a playful smack, and she laughed while she did it, so she’d obviously taken my comment as the joke it was meant to be. It didn’t mean it wasn’t true, but I really had said it to lighten the mood.
“Where are we going anyway?” she said when she finally stopped laughing. “I still feel like the dress might be too much. My intern took me shopping. If she hadn’t, I’d have been wearing jeans.”
“I like jeans.” I more than liked the dress, but I figured making yet another comment about it would take me into inappropriate territory. “You’re not overdressed, though. I made a reservation for us at The Hillside. Have you been?”
She shook her head and climbed into the car after I opened the door for her. “No. I think I’ve seen the ads for it. It’s new, right?”
“Yep. Only opened last month.” I jogged around and climbed into the driver’s seat. “I’ve heard the crowd that likes to hang out there is pretty trendy, but that’s not why I wanted to go.”
“Why did you want to go?” She sat up straighter, her eyes shining when they met mine in the rearview mirror. “Wait. Don’t tell me. It’s for the pasta, right? I’ve heard it’s all freshly made and divine.”
I chuckled as I turned the engine over. “The person who told me about it didn’t use the word divine, but yeah, it’s for the pasta.”
“What did they say?” She leaned forward slightly after buckling up. “You can tell me.”
“It’s rude,” I warned. “My friend, Ross, doesn’t really have a way with words.”
Humor lit up her eyes as she cocked her head. “I don’t mind rude. Despite what the dress might make me look like, I’m no delicate flower.”
I glanced at her from the corner of my eye. “Never thought you were.”
“Then are you going to tell me what this Ross described the pasta as?” she asked.
“He said it was almost as good as sex.” Personally, I thought he had to be doing something wrong if he could compare pasta to that, but whatever. “Those were his exact words.”
Haven didn’t skip a beat before she started laughing again, the sound melodic and free, completely genuine and unassuming. When it subsided, she swiped beneath her eyes and shrugged. “I guess we’re about to find out.”
It turned out that once the ice had been broken, she was surprisingly easy to talk to. On our way to the restaurant, we covered some of the topics we knew we had in common. We talked about Tiger and Mae, how he was settling in and how no amount of training made the Mastiff easy to walk.
She told me some stories about times when taking Mae for a walk had ended in disaster, laughter, or both. Before I knew it, we were seated beneath a low-hanging chandelier with a smattering of candles on the table between it.
It was so narrow that our legs constantly touched underneath it, which automatically made me hyper aware of how attractive I found her. The fact of the matter was that she was beautiful, incredibly sexy, and the fact that she seemed unaware of it appealed to some baser part of me that desperately wanted to prove it to her.
Her tongue darted out to wet her lips as she took a sip of her beer—because apparently she’d never developed a taste for wine—and her pupils were slightly dilated when she brought her eyes to mine. “Tell me about you. Are you a local or a transplant?”
“Local. We moved here before I even became a teenager, so I figure I’ve earned the right to call myself that. You?”
“I lived here for a total of a few months when I was child, but it was so brief that I don’t think it makes me a local. We moved around a lot when I was growing up.”
“Army brat?” I teased.
“No,” she said. “Similar in a way, since we moved for my dad’s jobs, but no, he wasn’t military.”
The investigator in me burned to know more about her past, but when she shook her head and her smile turned sad, I realized I was on the wrong track. This was a date, not an interview or an interrogation.
Get it together, man.
“I’ve heard it’s tough to move around that much,” I said, acknowledging but not pushing for more information. “We only moved once or twice before we came here. Mom fell in love with the place and got a good job, so we stayed.”
“I’m assuming you went to school here then?” That sparkle from before came back into her eyes. “The lady who owns the shop next to the clinic told me the funniest stories about the local swim team. Is it true pranking is part of their tradition?”
It was a clear attempt to steer the conversation away from her, but I didn’t mind. There was a lot about my own past that was too heavy for “getting to know each other” conversation.
While we ate, we talked about the town and some of the more outrageous pranks that been pulled, keeping things light. The only thing hard about talking to her was the situation between my legs.
Her legs kept slipping between mine every so often when she moved. Whenever she did and my knee ended up between hers, her lips parted and that flush would spread across her cheeks again. It was safe to say I wasn’t the only one turned on.
After dinner, I took her home and walked her to the door. We’d been talking nonstop, but she paused with her hand in her purse. Tilting her head back slightly to look into my eyes, I saw a flash of uncertainty in hers.
But then she pulled her shoulders back a fraction and licked her lips once more. “Would you like to come inside? I think this is the first date I’ve ever really had fun on. I’d hate for it to be over already.”
“We could always do it again,” I suggested as she unlocked her door. “But
in the meantime, yes, I’d love to.”
Despite the fact that neither of us had that much to drink, I wasn’t quite sure what happened next. I looked into her eyes, saw the same pure lust I felt reflected in them, and then we surged toward each other.
Haven pushed onto her toes as I lowered my head, her soft lips practically crashing into mine. As if we were both reading from a script and knew exactly what we had to do to make up for the difference in our heights, my hands went for her thighs just as she lifted one to my hip.
My fingers closed around the backs of her legs and she wrapped them around my waist, her arms around my neck as I walked us inside. I had no idea where I was going, but I also couldn’t really think.
Not when her tongue slid past my lips and her hips rocked into mine. Not when I deepened our kiss and she moaned into my mouth. Certainly not when I felt her heat against my stomach.
I honestly hadn’t thought tonight would end this way, but I’d be lying if I said I hadn’t been hoping.
Now all I had to do was figure out where the fuck her bedroom was. Or her dining-room table.
On the other hand, the walls, door, or floor would serve me just fine too.
There was a fleeting thought at the back of my mind that I’d forgotten something, but it couldn’t be important. If it was, it would probably come back to me later anyway.
Chapter 11
HAVEN
The first time I kissed a boy, I was thirteen. It was so awkward and terrible that I hadn’t tried it again until much, much later.
The kisses that followed were better. Not great but better. I couldn’t blame those boys for not knowing what they were doing. Everyone was still trying to figure all that shit out back then. I doubted I had turned anyone’s world upside down with my kisses either.
During college, I’d hardly dated at all. Since then, there had been a few times I’d let a boy into my bed for a night but never, not once, on the first date.
There would always be a few dinners, coffees, or some kind of interaction before I even considered having sex with them. Even then, more of my dates had ended in a goodbye at the front door than had ever made it past the door.
Colton, it seemed, was the exception to the rule.
I’d been surprised by how we’d clicked when we talked, how any awkwardness between us vanished so effortlessly, how it was like he’d known instinctively which topics not to push me about if we wanted to keep things from getting too heavy.
What I’d been most surprised about, however, was how insanely attracted I was to him. I’d heard of people experiencing a physical pull to others before, but I’d never felt anything like it myself—until now. It was like all I could think about was touching him in any way, even an insignificant way if that was all I could get. I just needed to be touching him.
I kept finding myself looking at his lips while he was talking, wondering what it would feel like to kiss him. I noticed the way the fabric of his shirt stretched when he moved and how hard the muscles in his legs were when they pressed up against mine.
Never before had my body or my mind instantly noticed so many small things about a guy, but I was starting to understand why. The guys I’d dated before were all still classified as “boys” in my mind.
Colton was no boy.
He was all man.
It seemed silly, but it was true. The distinction between a boy and a man had never been clearer to me.
It was there in the way he looked at me like he was picturing taking me right there in the middle of the restaurant and wouldn’t care who saw, in the way he kissed me like he’d been designed to make my brain melt, and even in the way he moved with sure confidence when he carried me into my house.
He’d never gotten so much as a glimpse inside it, yet there was no hesitation. He kicked the door shut behind us, then turned us so my back slammed into it while he pressed that hard body into mine.
One of his hands fell to my hips, his long fingers splayed across it and flexing as he held me up. His other hand moved to cup the side of my neck, fingertips stroking the nape and sending shivers down my spine.
He was rock hard between my legs, rubbing against me as his tongue delved into my mouth. His kiss was possessive and dominant, his body owning mine in what had to be less than a minute.
For someone who prided herself on being a strong and independent woman, I melted like a damn candy bar in a hot car and gave in. I wanted him, and he clearly wanted me, so why not?
Sex was one area I’d never understood why people felt the need to compete in. It was a consensual give and take in which both people ideally wanted to walk away satisfied.
I liked the way he was taking charge. I’d been the one to invite him in, after all. It would’ve been really damn humiliating if I’d gone in for the kiss I’d been craving and he had turned away. What was happening now was the absolute best I could’ve hoped for when I’d decided to throw caution to the wind.
From the very first moment I saw him, I’d wanted him. We were both single, and judging by the way I’d caught him looking at me every so often and the way he was kissing me, he felt the same way.
I never did stuff like this, but I couldn’t deny that kissing a guy I barely knew and was so instantly attracted to was a thrill. Those hazel eyes had burned into mine all night, one lock of his dark hair that refused to play along always falling onto his forehead. Hearing him laugh had done things to me, as had finding a person I could talk to almost as easily as I did to Mae.
Arching my neck, I broke off our kiss and moaned into the dimly lit entrance of my home. I’d only left a standing lamp on in the dining room and the bathroom light in my bedroom.
“Colton,” I gasped between heavy breaths. “My bedroom’s just down there.”
He pulled away from me with that same wicked smirk I’d seen playing on his lips back at the clinic. “Why? Have you got something against doors?”
“No, but my knees might.” I’d never had an orgasm standing up before and the way he was rubbing against me was getting me there too fast. “I have to be on my feet all day tomorrow. I can’t go in bruised.”
“You’re thinking way too logically,” he growled beneath his breath. “I think I can do something about that.”
He released the hand from my hip and wedged it between us, moving away just enough to slide his fingers into my panties. My dress was pooled around my waist, and the lacy scrap of fabric I’d worn beneath it didn’t offer much of a barrier.
I owned zero pairs of sexy underwear, but after we’d bought the dress, Kayla had dragged me to a lingerie store. She’d insisted.
Apparently, dresses like this one demanded appropriate undergarments. At the hitch of Colton’s breath when his fingers scraped against the soaked lace, I vowed to go back to buy some more.
My breaths were coming at a hundred miles an hour as he hooked his fingers around the front panel of my underwear, groaning when he brushed against my bare skin.
“Fuck. I wasn’t expecting that.”
“It’s called waxing. I like it.” Bringing my head forward, I licked a path to his earlobe and nibbled it between my teeth.
“I know what it’s called, and I like it too.” There was so much heat in his words that I writhed a little against him.
Who knew talking during foreplay could be hot?
As he said the words, the tips of his long fingers played at my entrance and I went limp. He chuckled darkly against my neck, laying open-mouthed kisses on my warm skin while driving me to the brink of insanity.
Low sounds of pleasure reverberated from his chest and into mine. My nipples were so hard they were likely to cut through the lace they were encased in.
Like a desperate monkey who didn’t know how to control herself, I let go of his shoulders with one arm and wound my hand between us to cup my breast. His eyes darted down when I did, and he let out the most frustrated sound I’d ever heard.
“I think we might need that bed,” he groaned. “I don’t
have enough hands to do this justice.”
Without waiting for an answer, he gripped my legs again and moved us away from the door. I nearly yelped, scrambling to get my arms around his neck again. When I was finally sure I wasn’t about to fall and ruin the moment, I played with the soft locks of his hair and giggled into them.
I wasn’t a giggler—didn’t even know if that word existed—but there was no other way to describe the sound that broke out of me. “In the movies, they always make it look so easy to hold on to someone like this. It’s really difficult though.”
He smiled against my temple, the sharp edges of that five-o-clock shadow scraping against the soft skin there. It wasn’t painful or uncomfortable, just a new, telling sensation. “We’re almost there. Just hang on.”
We reached my bedroom only a few moments later, and he laid me down diagonally on my bed. My legs spread for him as if they were acting by themselves. Colton shook his head, moving back to stand at the edge of the mattress.
With slow determination, he reached for a button about halfway down his shirt. I’d managed to get the rest undone during our fervent kisses, but he took over now.
He unbuttoned them with deliberate movements, then shrugged out of the shirt and let it fall to the floor. To my surprise, his chest, arms, and sides were covered in tattoos. The bathroom light behind him only just illuminated the room enough for me to see them but not really to make out the details.
I itched to lay him down, switch on the lights, and examine every piece of art that adorned his skin, but I wanted to see the rest of him more than I wanted to ask about his tattoos.
Figuring that it was a tit-for-tat situation, I kicked off my heels—also a new purchase—and smirked at him as I propped myself up on my elbows.
“Oh, that’s the way it is?” He arched a brow at me before reaching for his jeans.
I nodded. “Your turn.”
A cheeky flick of his fingers with a matching grin had his button popping free and his zipper sliding down. He shoved his pants off, along with his underwear, an expectant look in his eyes.
