A moment later, the sound of splashing water filled the air as she stepped in behind him and her hands brushed his back from shoulder to shoulder. “You’re so big.”
The softly spoken words didn’t have a sexual lilt to them, so rather than take them the way he wanted, he tried to hear them as she’d intended. He was taller than most men and he had good muscle mass to go with it. The high school football coach tried to convince him to play ball for the team, but Wade wasn’t interested. He enjoyed hunting and fishing and hanging out with his friends, and he didn’t want to be stuck at school every afternoon, practicing. He’d always considered his size a good thing, especially in his younger, rowdier days when fighting was fun and a way to pass the time when bored. But Callie’s soft-spoken comment had him rethinking things.
He swiveled his neck to see her, but he didn’t turn around. “Do I scare you, Callie?”
Her eyes played hopscotch, something he’d figured out she did when she didn’t want to give a completely honest answer. As she gnawed on a non-existent hangnail and thought over her answer, he was hyper-aware they were standing in the shower with nothing but steam and a few water droplets between them, but he refused to let his eyes to dip lower than her face.
After a moment, she said, “You used to. When you gave me evil glares and snarled at me.” She smiled shyly. “But not now, since I’ve gotten to know you.”
Taking advantage of the built-in tile bench that ran along the far end of the shower, he sat down to put distance between them and also reduce his size. He hadn’t planned on getting into this with her anytime soon—if ever—and certainly not when he had her butt naked, but he supposed they needed to address this at some point, so it might as well be here and now.
He let his head fall back against the wall and said, “I’m sorry for the way I treated you. As Kevin pointed out, I’ve been ass, and I am sorry. But”—he leaned forward and braced his forearms on his thighs—“my actions were in response to the way you treated me when we worked together last year on the Vanguard project.”
Her head slumped forward and her gaze fell to the floor.
“It seems both of us might be different than the other originally thought. You’re not at all the hard-ass bitch you came off as back then, so what’s the story?”
Her shoulder and one foot angled toward the door, but before she could bolt, he leaned forward and grabbed her hand and pulled her down onto his lap. “Talk to me, baby. I want to get this behind us…” So we can move forward, was on the tip of his tongue, but he bit down and cut off the words.
She crossed her arms over her chest, shielding herself from him, and said, “You were hurting, and Kevin told me to keep you busy.”
“What?” Only Kevin would come up with some fucked-up logic like, He’s hurting so treat him like shit and maybe he’ll forget. “That doesn’t make sense to me.”
She lifted her eyes a few times, but never quite made eye contact. “Apparently, you’d just gone through a bad breakup.”
A bad breakup. He supposed that was one way of putting it. Having his heart ripped from his chest and stomped on while also being humiliated was a little more accurate, but… You say po-tay-to; I say po-tah-to.
“So you decided to kick me while I was down and out?”
She gasped and horror filled her eyes as she grasped his face between her palms. “God, no!” She shook her head while vehemently denying the accusation. Mumbling mostly to herself, she said, “I knew I should’ve handled things my way rather than Kevin’s.” To him, she said, “Kevin wanted me to keep you busy, working you non-stop so you didn’t have time to think about anything. That’s a direct quote. The approach didn’t feel right to me, and several times I considered trying to talk to you, to ask you if you were all right and if there was anything I could do. But I didn’t know you, and Kevin did, so I deferred to his orders.” She shrugged. “I kept you hustling so you wouldn’t have time to think.” She smiled softly. “I know the problems were still there, waiting for you each night when you got off work. But you didn’t have time to dwell on them on my watch.”
He was completely flabbergasted. All this time he’d held a nasty grudge against Callie—which was easy since she reminded him so much of Miranda—and she’d only been following Kevin’s orders, who was trying to help him by working him like a damned dog.
He laughed at the absurdity. “I can’t decide if I should thank or throttle Kevin.” He dropped his gaze to hers and flashed his teeth while lacing his smile with wicked intent. “But I know exactly what to do to you.”
Chapter Eleven
As Wade’s gaze swept over her body in an intimate caress, nervous excitement had Callie trembling, while dread settled like a lead weight in the pit of her stomach. She was cradled in his arms, sitting sideways across his lap, her middle section directly below his mouth. The deep-seated hunger filling his eyes as his tongue swept across his lower lip made his intentions clear. He didn’t have any long-held beliefs about oral sex being dirty or nasty. And he wouldn’t stop until his mouth claimed her.
Desperate for distance that would spare them both the awkward embarrassment of her persnickety, silly, stupid prudish attitude toward something that every other couple in the world probably enjoyed, she slid off his lap and bolted to the other end of the shower.
“Hey, where’re you going?” He grabbed for her arm, but her skin was slick from the water raining over them and she slipped free of his grasp.
She crossed her arms, trying to create a physical and emotional barrier, and paced the small space. She had a man in her shower—not a first, but not an everyday occurrence, either—and she needed to get grip before he lost patience and decided she wasn’t worth the time or effort.
“I’m sorry for scaring you again.”
His quiet apology halted her, and she spun to face him. His knuckles were pressed into the tile bench on either side of his hips, his legs bent as he prepared to stand.
“No, wait.” She threw her hand out to stop him. “You didn’t scare me. I scared me.”
Even in the dim, flickering light, she read his confusion. His eyebrows rose and he twisted his head so his ear was closer to her, like he needed a repeat.
God, this was embarrassing, but he deserved an explanation so he didn’t continue to think he’d done something wrong. Motioning for him to scoot over, she sat next to him and stared at the water spraying over their heads, landing just beyond their feet. Trying to muster as much dignity as the circumstances would allow, she said, “You looked like you were going to gobble me up.”
“So my big, bad wolf impression scared you.”
When she turned to him, prepared to once again reassure him he’d done nothing wrong, he grinned and winked. “Take a deep breath, sweetheart, and tell me what’s going on.”
Even though this was the most awkward, humiliating discussion she’d ever had, his tender smile and compassionate eyes made her feel safe and secure enough to open up. “I… ummm… I don’t do oral sex.”
Ugh. Putting it out there was even more embarrassing than she’d expected, and she cut her gaze to the floor, wishing she could crawl into the drain and disappear with the water. From the corner of her eye, she saw his chest expand, then slowly relax as he exhaled.
His mouth twisted and he chewed on the inside of his cheek, then leaned forward and fiddled with the body spray nozzle off to his right. As if needing to keep himself busy or distracted, he moved it up and down his legs, across his lap, across his chest, then finally settled with the water landing on his feet.
Easing back against the wall, he said, “You don’t do oral… as in you’ve never done it, or you have, but you don’t like it?”
She wrapped her arms a little tighter around her waist and slapped at the water puddled around her feet. “It’s always freaked me out because it seems so dirty. I’ve never given it a try. Giving or receiving.” As he continued to chew on the inside of his cheek and went back to playing with the nozzle, she quie
tly added, “But you make me want to try new things. I don’t want to be Callie the Prude anymore.”
She risked another sidelong glance, and the heat of his searing gaze melted her to the core. Oh yeah, he also wanted to pull her out of her comfort zone, maybe even more than she wanted to be removed. Heat built around her neck and licked at her cheeks, and she knew if a man were ever going to get his mouth on her, it would be Wade.
“We’re in the shower,” he said in a slow, easygoing drawl. “The cleanest place on Earth.”
She laughed and ducked her head. “True.” She ran her toe through the puddle and bit down on her lip. “But what about the craziness in my head. How do I deal with that?”
He brushed her hair away from her face and licked the shell of her ear before nibbling on the lobe. “You let me worry about that part.”
A fevered chill shot down her spine as his mouth slowly crawled from her ear to the side of her neck and down to her shoulder. “Will you trust me to take care of you?”
Oh, God. “Yes.” She wasn’t sure she’d spoken loud enough for him to hear so she bobbed her head a couple of times, then let it fall limply to the side, giving him uninhibited access to her neck and shoulder.
Her arms were still crossed, which prevented him from going farther than the top of her shoulder, and without conscious thought, she let her hands fall to the sides, opening herself to him completely.
Without taking his mouth off her, he snaked one arm around her waist and used the other to cup her breast as he slid his tongue over the sharp ridge of her shoulder, then left a trail of hot kisses down to her breast.
She gasped and drew in a sharp breath as he worked his mouth over and around her nipple, and she nearly came undone from the mastery of his tongue. After several moments, she was so relaxed and putty-like, she feared slip-sliding right off the bench and into a heap on the floor.
“Slide around here, baby, and put your feet on the seat.” She cracked her eyes open and found him crouching next to the bench, encouraging her to lie back. “Do I need to lay down a towel so it’s softer for you?”
“No, I’m fine.” That was actually an understatement. How about freaking fantastic? Despite the nervousness trying to creep in, he had her so loose and relaxed she thought her skin and muscles might fall off her bones.
His grin was cocky, his eyes hot, and he was quite pleased with himself for turning her into a sacrificial virgin on his altar. She had the ridiculous urge to cross her wrists and hold them out to him, letting him know she was his for the taking—in whatever way he wanted.
Instead, feeling more wanton than she’d ever been in her life, she took a deep breath and exhaled as she raised her arms above her head and rested them on the bench. The position thrust her breasts upward, and based on his flaring nostrils and dilated pupils, he’d noticed. But her bent legs were still tightly clenched, and try as she might, she couldn’t pry them apart.
After running a full body scan and taking particular notice of her locked legs, he readjusted his favorite showerhead to land on her calves, then stood and unhooked the removable showerhead from its attachment.
When Kevin remodeled the bathroom, he’d insisted on several additions: the built-in bench, removable showerheads at both ends, and two additional nozzles down low. Of course, Callie, wearing her suit of naiveté, hadn’t understood why he’d been so adamant that he even brought Sam in as reinforcements. Trust me, Callie, someday you’ll be glad Kevin made these additions.
The moment of truth had finally arrived, and she couldn’t believe she’d been so clueless as to their importance. Thank God Kevin had the forethought to build a shower she could use for more than getting clean. Too bad she’d never be able to thank him for it.
Wade seemed twelve feet tall and five feet wide standing beside her. He was semi-erect and the heavy mass hanging between his legs had her licking her lips and water pooling in her mouth as she, again, considered tasting him. His pull was like that of a super magnet and her palms vibrated with the need to reach out and latch onto his thick legs covered in coarse, dirty-blond hair, using them as supports while she took him into her mouth.
As he continued to adjust the nozzle, getting it the way he wanted, she felt her upper body lifting, propelling her mouth closer to him. His chest rose and fell in a sharp rhythm, and right before her mouth made landfall, he twisted his hand and directed the spray at the center of her chest, driving her backward.
“No.” His tone was sharp, but his eyes danced with laughter from having used the shower spray as a weapon against her. “It’s my turn to play. You lie back and be patient.”
The shock of his actions left her speechless, but his playfulness had her laughing and doing as he directed. He finally found a setting he was happy with and she sighed as he directed the steady, hypnotic pattern on her feet and calves, then slowly made his way up her legs and along her side.
She closed her eyes and tilted her head away so the spray didn’t land on her face, and her sigh turned to a heavy moan as the pulsing spray massaged first one breast and then the other. He brought his hand closer, then moved it farther away, constantly changing the intensity and point of contact.
Good… so freaking good. She’d had no idea a shower could be so tantalizing. She would never set foot under the spray again and not think about Wade, or crave more of his attention.
“Is it safe to assume you have a tankless hot water heater?” His thick, rich voice dripped in her ear, and she lifted her heavy eyelids enough to see him kneeling next to her.
“Yeah. That’s something else Kevin said I’d be glad he did.” She moaned again when he hit a particularly sensitive spot on her thigh. “He was right.”
Wade’s chuckle reverberated deep in her chest. “I figured Kevin was responsible for this setup. Kinky bastard.” He moved the spray across her stomach, over her thighs, and down to her calves and feet. “You’ve never taken advantage of all this shower has to offer, though, have you?”
Normally, she would’ve turned ten shades of red over her lack of sexual sophistication, but unlike Jen, Wade’s tone didn’t carry judgment or censure, nor did he seem disappointed by her lack of prowess. He not only accepted her as-is, but seemed to enjoy helping her explore her newly formed sexual curiosity. Smiling, she shook her head. “No, but thanks for the introduction. My showers will be a lot more interesting from now on.”
His eyes narrowed and his nostrils flared. She didn’t know his thoughts but hoped they ran along the lines of him wanting to continue being an active participant. After a moment of singeing her with his hot stare, he dipped his head to her breast and redirected the water to her lower abdomen.
He lavishly licked and laved her nipple, then clamped down with his teeth and tugged. The zing shot from her breast, down through her abdomen, and straight to her sex, nearly launching her off the bench. She’d never felt anything like the sensations coiling around her midsection, and when he repeated the move with her other nipple, she whimpered with greedy need.
He skimmed his free hand across her stomach, then slipped his fingers between her thighs and spread them apart, encouraging her to open for him. The water falling over her skin was effectively washing away her inhibitions, so she relaxed one knee against the shower wall and rolled the other to the side, resting it on the bench.
Not wanting to chance slipping back into her old ways and getting caught up on the voices in her head, she kept her eyes closed and lost herself in the sensations spiraling through her, the feel of his hand stroking the sensitive flesh of her inner thigh, and—she gasped—the spray of water stimulating her sex.
“Oh, God.” It was too much yet not enough. The spray stung, in a good way, and she writhed on the bench, trying to get away while also trying to get it in just the right spot to send her soaring into space.
She’d never been so turned on in her life, and she blindly grasped for Wade, needing something to ground her. She gripped his shoulder and thrust her hips, too far gone to st
op.
Except then it did.
The spray moved from her swollen, throbbing sex down to her feet, and she settled back down onto the tile beneath her. Taking a risk on breaking the spell, she opened her eyes and sought his gaze.
“Why’d you stop?”
His lopsided grin and smoky eyes hit her full force in the chest, quickening her breath and making it difficult to swallow. “Things are just getting good.”
“Exactly.” She hadn’t meant to shriek, but she finally grasped the concept of complete and utter desperation. “So why’d you stop? I didn’t do that to you.”
He chuckled and leaned over to kiss her lower stomach while keeping his gaze locked onto hers. After a few soft kisses and measured strokes of his tongue along her hipbone, he said, “No, you didn’t, and I appreciate that.” His breath was hot and whisper soft against the sensitive skin of her lower abdomen. “But I’m not ready for this to be over yet… and neither are you. We’re just taking a little break.”
Her bottom lip jumped out in a pout. “How do you know I’m not ready? I seemed ready to me.”
His eyes smiled, then grew hot and heavy as he dipped his head again, going a little lower on her hip this time. “You said you trusted me. Well… trust me. We haven’t gotten to the best part yet.”
She gulped and a spike of heat rolled through her. He was going to do it. He was going to put his mouth on her, and he would make her come.
And she was going to let him.
Her breathing accelerated and she wanted to tell him to get on with it before she changed her mind. But she also wanted to trust him to take her to heights she’d never dreamed of, so she bit her lip, relaxed as much as possible, and pressed her shoulders harder into the bench, forcing herself to stay put.
“Thank you, baby.” His lips crawled from her stomach up to her breasts, where he kissed each nipple before moving on up to her mouth. With his lips against hers, he said, “I promise, you have nothing to worry about. All you need to do is close your eyes and let me make you feel good.”
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