by Connor, Eden
Eric aged about a year, he felt, waiting for Amy to pass judgment.
Deep in his heart, he’d always feared Lila would use what’d happened to Sarah as her excuse to break Colton’s heart. Teenage pregnancies didn’t happen in nice families—respectable families, like the Walkers and the Sizemores. He couldn’t look at either woman, for fear he’d see that same look from Lila or Amy that he’d seen on the face of the Hammond guy the other day.
“Let’s go home,” Amy whispered. “We aren’t going to find these damn records. Let’s go home, Eric.” She grabbed his hand.
Couldn’t she see? He was home. This was the place he’d never be able to leave—or outrun.
“It’s just laundry, Daniel. You wash it out and you wear it. My mother was a teenage mom, too. This discussion is over,” Cynda announced with a regal tone Eric had never heard her use. “I’m going to put dinner on the table.”
Chapter Eighteen
Lunch was a miserable experience. The family hadn’t brought up Sarah again after Cynda’s decree, but the discussion about John Carpenter hadn’t been much of an improvement.
Amy had some opinions about what’d happened, but upsetting Eric further wasn’t on her list of things to do. What seemed to be on his agenda was another matter.
He grabbed her hand the minute they stepped through the front door of the cabin. Her heart leaped when he headed through the kitchen and down the short hall to his bedroom.
“I’m going to start a fire. You get naked.”
Fitting his large hands around her waist, he tossed her gently onto the bed, making her squeal. Amy could guess he was using sex as an excuse not to talk, but she was okay with that. Men talked when they got good and ready, not before. She based that premise on her father’s behavior. Alice could save herself a lot of complaining with some patience, she privately thought.
She gazed around the masculine space when he stepped out of the room. A rock fireplace dominated the wall opposite the bed. Knotty pine furniture with wrought iron handles looked like something her grandmother once owned. But the bed was unique.
The wide head and footboards were lines of square brass tubing, arranged like lattice. At each junction, there was a rosette.
No notches.
She’d guessed everything wrong about this man. The brass didn’t have the over-bright, fake appearance of plating. She ran a finger over one of the medallions behind her head.
“Old elevator safety gates,” he explained when he returned with an armload of wood.
“Ingenious,” she murmured admiringly. How had anyone ever called him stupid? “You have the most amazing creative streak, Eric. I’d never in a million years have thought to use these like this.”
He shook his head slightly, stooping to stack the wood on the grate. “When I went to the scrap yard to find some stuff for the wind turbine, I saw ‘em. Piece of local history. They came out of one of the old banks downtown. Seemed a shame to let ‘em go into the furnace.”
“Wind turbine?”
He lifted his shoulders, reaching for a container of long matches. “I was fooling with the idea of going off the grid.” He cocked a brow. “Get naked.”
The need in his tone made her tummy tighten.
Amy removed her shirt and jeans before tucking her hands behind her head, enjoying her view of his back and thighs. Muscles rippled beneath his dark skin. Watching the motion sent a strong current along the inside of her thighs.
When the fire was crackling, he yanked open a drawer and began to toss rolled-up athletic socks over his shoulder. They bounced across the quilt and came to rest on the tangled sheets. When he turned, he held one pair of socks. Unrolling them, he held her gaze while he knotted the two together.
“Oh.” Her heartbeat kicked up like a hurricane but she smiled, thinking of his promise to identify every single thing that turned her on. She’d never been tied up to have sex before, but she was game.
“Oh, yes.” He unrolled another pair, tying them together. “Your inquisitive little mind’s getting busy now, wondering what I might do when you’re restrained. You might even be getting a little bit wet.”
A small throb bloomed inside her clit and her nipples hardened.
He noticed. “You have the cutest little nipples, did you know that? And I do like that underwear. Now take it off.”
The catch in his voice told her he was still devastated. She didn’t know what to expect, but she’d do whatever it took to get that look out of his eyes. She sat up to unhook her bra.
Her tummy muscles drew taut when he tugged on the socks to test his knot. She slipped her underwear down her legs. Her mound felt sensitized just from his heated look.
When he had four lengths made, he fastened the end of one to the footboard. Moving around the bed, he tied the doubled length of socks to each corner of the brass bed, leaving them dangling. Her excitement mounted with each knot.
He lay down next to her, tracing the curve of her cheek before leaning in to kiss her.
The scruff on his face rasped her cheeks and lips when he dragged his chin across her skin. There was something primitive about the act, and her body responded to the harsh touch. Her folds began to swell. The thrum in her clit became more insistent. He grazed her nipple with his thumb.
Amy arched into the light touch, wrapping her arms around his neck and trying to ignore the small ache that said he’d never be hers for more than a few moments at a time. Why waste them?
His kisses were gentle teases, interspersed with hard nips of her lower lip, only making her crave more. He maintained control, pulling away with a look of warning when she tried to move closer, silently teaching her the rules of this game. Soft touches, brushes of his fingers over her mound, his warm breath caressing her naked ear were her clues.
He buried his face against the side of her neck, his kisses wet and warm on her skin. His open palm moved in a circle, barely grazing one hard point. The circling made her squirm, needing more. He didn’t give it.
When he moved off the bed she was aching and wet. He bound each wrist. The act positioned her arms above her head. In turn, that made her breasts rise, gaining his attention. He bent to tease one with his tongue. The restraints were soft, but held her fast, making her crave the ability to touch him again.
His bed was so large, she was spread wide when he tied her foot. Moving to the other side of the long footboard, he reached to trace the arc of her mound with his finger. She wanted more than one soft stroke, but he turned to the business of tying her last limb.
Then, he simply stared. Her pussy seemed to clench of its own accord. She seemed to feel his gaze moving along her inner thighs and her folds.
Shades of gold, brown, and rust predominated in the room. So she felt she might be forgiven for overlooking the feather duster—until he plucked the brownish-feathered item from the mantelpiece.
His expression was enough to make her stomach hollow. Rifling the feathers across his palm, he approached the bed. Picking up a roll of socks she hadn’t noticed, he pulled one loose. “Close your eyes. All I want you thinking about is what you feel.”
She couldn’t stop thinking about what she felt. That was the problem.
He laid the soft cotton knit across her eyes, knotting the socks at her temple.
Her hearing seemed to become more acute, but she didn’t think he was moving.
Then she felt his warm breath skitter across her breast. He dragged something—his lips?—along the hardened peak. His tongue came next, briskly flicking the nub. Her other nipple ached for his touch. When he sucked the point into his mouth, the sensation was so sharp, she cried out.
Just as her world narrowed to his mouth, he released her nipple. Another sensation intruded. She had no trouble identifying the feather duster, dancing across her breasts. Shrieking with laughter, she squirmed, trying to break free.
* * * *
Hearing Amy’s giggles stimulated an organ that wasn’t his cock. The sound lightened something
dark inside him that had arrived so long ago, he barely noticed it now. She laughed like a child. She used her entire body to do it, just as she seemed to put her entire little being into everything she cared about.
Her sense of sexual adventurism blew him away. No coaxing required, she was willing whenever he was. Was that because she thought she owed him, or some other reason?
He’d had to cover her eyes. He had no idea what emotions might play across his face while she gave him control of her body. He moved the duster lightly down her legs to her feet. Dragging feathers between her tiny toes, he enjoyed the breathless music of her laughter and the sexy sight of her writhing.
So small and helpless, yet nothing about her was weak. He relented, watching her breasts heave while she panted. He plucked one feather from the hefty wooden handle, still admiring her curves. Her pussy was wet. Her nipples were rigid. His gaze traced her voluptuous form until he reached her slit. Her folds gleamed with her juices.
Being tickled turns her on. Can I make her come?
* * * *
Amy felt something soft sweep across her clit. She tried to focus on that sensation. The need to identify it filled her. She ached to know what he touched her with. It was too small to be the feather duster. Too slim to be his finger. A feather. Just one.
Lost in darkness, that tiny stroke traced such a short path and yet, the sensation echoed along the insides of her thighs. She almost felt as though he stroked the crevice between her butt cheeks, though the thing never deviated from the miniscule length of her most tender point. A second sensation joined the first, this one on her nipple. The paired strokes made shivers march down her spine.
Was he staring at her nipples or her folds?
The tiny stroke on her breast played the melody, but the beat driving her blood was the touch at the top of her slit. Like a metronome, the small sensation sent a flush moving along her thighs, over her belly and along the curve of her breasts, inciting helpless contractions in her core. Juices trickled from inside her and traced a silky path through her folds, the sensation magnified by the focus she placed on her opening.
She couldn’t move, yet couldn’t lie still. Pressing her mound upward did nothing, and yet seemed to do something. Pleasure sizzled along the single point, so small, yet echoing loudly in her nipples. A harder touch became a desire, then a need.
All she got was the unrelenting, teasing caress.
The soft burn from his goatee began to sting, a warm reminder he’d been there. The side of her body that had touched his skin minutes before seemed warmer than the side which had not. Her lips stung from echoed nips long since taken. Pictures flipped inside her head. The look on his face when he knelt in front of her at the mall. Eric leaning over her at the wheelchair tournament, bending close enough to kiss. The shocking sensation dancing up her leg when he sucked her toe into his mouth. Their tender kiss after the sponge ball fight. She seemed to feel the vibration of his voice when he explained about the hot spring, though he remained silent now.
Every time they’d touched crashed through her nerve endings, ghostly caresses as real to her as the insistent stroke on her clit, until it seemed he touched her everywhere, though he wasn’t touching her at all.
In the churning wake of the memories was the swelling, rising, all-consuming need to come.
* * * *
She was so close. Eric watched her tiny opening flutter, dropping the feather he’d used to tickle her breast so he could stroke himself. He had to. The sight of her, flushed and writhing, had his cock aching with each heavy thud of his heart.
At least one problem seems cured. Not stress, then. If anything, his concerns had increased, but his cock was rigid.
I was protecting her, because she deserves more than I usually give.
How much of me does she want?
Her cries seemed to pound inside his balls, but he kept up the steady tickle along her clit. She panted, she squirmed, she begged to come.
He changed the direction of the feather’s tip, sweeping right to left, across her clit.
Such a small adjustment, a minor correction of course, but it seemed to push Amy over. She cried out. Her back arched off the mattress.
There was something—something important—flickering in the back of his mind, some realization that wouldn’t quite come to him, because he wanted her so badly.
The condoms were in the drawer beside the bed. He donned one quickly.
He had to be in her. And he knew what that would mean. This couldn’t be—had never been— sex like he knew it. This had to be more. Was more.
Tugging loose the knots fastening her feet, Eric climbed onto the bed, covering her quickly. Sliding between her thighs, he felt her strong legs go around his waist. He pushed the sock off her eyes, reveling in the stunned and faraway look he loved to see in her dark eyes. Lowering his head, he claimed her mouth, driving his tongue past her lips. He wanted to kiss her roughly, exactly the way he needed to fuck her, but he forced himself to seduce. Fumbling to untie her hands, he felt a surge of emotion when she slid her palms behind his neck. He wanted all of her wrapped around him.
Her hips thrust toward his, telegraphing her impatience.
Eric was taking his time, but he wasn’t holding back. She was small and no doubt would be exquisitely tight, but he could trust her to let him know if she felt discomfort. He could trust her with anything.
* * * *
The odd sensation she’d had when they’d fallen asleep together on the couch was back. Every molecule in Amy’s body was buzzing in recognition of... what? What was that? It felt like some circuit completed whenever he touched her. The head of his cock was poised at her entrance, but she was lost in the look on his face.
“Eric.” All she could do was whisper. If she said more than his name, she’d say too much.
Lowering his forehead to hers, he rocked into her slowly. Amy felt full in every way, her body, her heart, her soul. She breathed in his scent, took in his cock, reveled in the look on his face. He didn’t turn away or break their connection by closing his eyes. Did he know he was taking more than her body?
The friction of his cock inside her was so sweet and the pressure so intense, she needed him to move. Digging her nails into the back of his neck made him smile.
“You’re perfect.”
Could that be true?
* * * *
Eric was lost in the dazed wonder in her eyes. Her cries made patience impossible. Soon, he was thrusting into her so hard, she moved a hand to the headboard. Lacing his fingers together, he cradled her head, driving deeper. She met his thrusts, crying out when she came.
He let go, filling the condom. Not his best effort, but his most sincere.
Turning to his side, he cradled her to his chest. He couldn’t seem to stop staring at the warm cinnamon speckles in her eyes, so much like a tiny solar system. He wanted to stay lost in that world, memorize every freckle, learn the story behind every scar. Maybe, if they just kissed and talked, he might figure out how to say the thing he’d never said to a woman.
Snow had begun to fall. He tightened his arms around her and turned off the lamp, watching the firelight flicker across her pale curves.
He dozed but came wide awake when he heard her soft whisper.
“I love you.”
Fear grabbed him by the throat. All he had to do to have what he wanted was to return the words, but he couldn’t get them out.
How long will she settle for a mechanic?
Chapter Nineteen
Amy yanked open the dryer, cringing at the popping sound made by the door. “Thanks for returning my call, Jay. Yeah, you’ll be impressed when you see your brother play. Kevin’s really come a long way since the accident.” She dragged her ref’s uniform out of the hot drum, wincing when the synthetic fabric crackled. Her striped shirt clung to the cheap cotton-and-polyester pants like a drunk to a light pole. She thought she spied both socks, but didn’t see her bra. Eric didn’t have dryer sheets or f
abric softener.
Maybe no one would run into her on the court. It’d be a shame to electrocute a perfectly good high school basketball player.
“I’m so glad to hear you’re willing to help. Yes, all donations would go to the team, if that’s okay with you.” Amy cautiously peeled one sock off the shirt, wincing at the loud crackle of static. “Awesome. I’m looking forward to seeing you again. I’ll let you know the exact date.”
Raising her head, she let her cell drop, catching it one-handed. Glaring at the snarl of clothing with a sigh, she laid the phone down so she could she peel the other sock off her shirt. Bending, she peered into the recess of the dryer, relieved to see her bra and the detestable pair of waist-high cotton panties. They were a necessary evil. Running up and down the court would have any of her growing pile of sexier lingerie up her crack in no time.
Everything but the shirt still felt damp, but she feared if she started the dryer again she really would electrocute somebody. Still, the good news caused her to raise her fist and spin the bra in a circle. Jay Jarius had agreed to sign autographs. The appearance of a local-boy-turned-NFL-player virtually guaranteed her exhibition would raise some heavy-duty cash for the team. She was so thrilled by the news, she did a little bump-and-grind to celebrate.
Now, she had to pressure her dad to find some way to satisfy Phillip Chapman’s safety concerns. She’d work on that as soon as she came off the court from calling this playoff game.
She grabbed the wad of clothing, trying to recall what she’d done with her whistle after Saturday’s wheelchair games. Spinning, she caught sight of a tall figure standing beside the bar. Amy shrieked. Tiny lightning bolts sizzled across her naked breasts, stomach, and bare legs as her static-charged clothes fell to the floor.
