Wishes and Stitches

by Rachael Herron

  Rig’s hand wrapped around hers, stilling her. “Dammit, woman, you could make me come by touching me like that.”

  Naomi felt herself get wetter at the sound of just his voice. She let him draw her hand away.

  He leaned forward and whispered in her ear. “Be with me here. Bring your heart with your body.”

  The words shocked her. Her heart? But she’d already . . . Couldn’t this be just sex? And what about him? She bit her bottom lip.

  Rig watched her and grinned. Obviously, he knew exactly what asking that of her meant. Then he pushed up against her again, their jeans grinding a glorious, heated friction. She felt the muscles in his thighs contract and moved against him.

  It felt like a butterfly was lodged in her throat. “Okay.”

  His laugh was more like a growl as he stood, lifting both of them. He kicked the knitting farther away and opened the fly of her jeans with a flick of his fingers. Pushing them down, he lifted one of her feet, then the other, and she shuffled out of first her shoes, then her pants. For one moment they stood in front of the curtained window, looking at each other, Rig in only his jeans, fly open, his chest rising and falling as hard as hers was, she in only her bra and panties.

  Rig seemed to be waiting for something. For her to do something, and she had no idea what it was, but she made the best guess she could, and reached back to unclasp her bra. Her fingers shook so badly she thought she might have to ask for help. For the love of God, could she not retain one small shred of self-control? In giving it up, did she have to give all of it up?

  Finally, she let the bra slip with a whisper to the ground, and Naomi thought she heard him take a quick breath, but when she looked up at him, she couldn’t tell what he was thinking. Yes, he’d wanted her a second ago. No, he wasn’t stopping her from taking her clothes off. But he was still waiting.

  All she had left on were her panties, and she pushed them off her hips, down to her knees, then let them drop. She nudged them away with her bare toe.

  She still didn’t understand what showed on Rig’s face. Something . . . it had to be lust, right?

  Oh, God, what if it wasn’t? She started to shiver all over. What if she’d just made a fool’s mistake? What if he was about to ask her to put her clothes back on? What was he waiting for?

  She could think of only one thing left to try. “Please,” Naomi said.

  It was the right thing to say. His eyes got darker and she sensed his muscles moving under his skin, coiling, ready to spring.

  “Please,” she said again. “Oh, Rig, please. I need you.”

  He was on her in the space of a second, his arms tight around her, lifting her against him, pushing her back until she hit the leather of the sofa. Then he pushed his own jeans and shorts down, then off.

  Rig was huge, and ready, and how he already had the condom in his hand, she’d never know because she hadn’t seen him take it out. Without lifting his eyes from hers, he rolled it on. She knew that he was going to be inside her within seconds, and every fiber of her being screamed for him to move faster.

  He smiled, suddenly, and the eyes that had darkened so much lit up, sparkling. “You’re incandescent.”

  She gasped, her nerves on fire. The leather behind her was cool, and she opened her mouth to his. He kissed her deeply, thoroughly, and then reached down to slip one finger inside her wetness, as if testing her to see if she was ready.

  She was. She writhed against him, trying to pull him down with her arms, her legs. But he stopped her, pressed the tip of himself against her heated flesh, just at her very opening. When she pushed forward he pulled back. He drew his mouth away from hers so that he could look into her eyes again.

  She wanted everything. She needed him, God help her. Him, his body, his heart, his mind, and she finally found the words she needed, the words she’d been trying to find since he showed up in her life for the second time. “Please, Rig. You. I just need you.” The words shocked her, making her ache inside, and there was only one way to fix it.

  His eyes sparked heat, and he agreed with his body, sinking into her with one sharp thrust. Once inside, he held himself there, waiting one more time.

  She whispered the very last of the breath she’d been holding, “Please.”

  He rocked her then, his rhythm urgent, every stroke filling her farther, harder, deeper. She had nothing left but the thought of him, the feel of him, and in his eyes she saw only herself reflected back. She rode against him, and they fit each other as if they’d been waiting for this, only this. He slipped the finger that had been inside her into her mouth, and she sucked—he moved even faster. His lips moved against her ear, whispering gasped words she couldn’t quite hear but understood. Time collapsed against itself, and Naomi lost any thought but where she was in her climb, and what he felt like as he lifted her there. And when she came, she came around him, clenching so tightly he moaned into her mouth, groaning as he pushed harder, faster. The orgasm spiraled around her, and kept going, stretching out until he was roaring above her, his bottom lip wet from her tongue, the corded muscles at his neck strained, his eyes never once leaving hers.

  “Please, please, Rig, please . . .” she whispered, not knowing anymore what she was asking for, just knowing he was giving her everything she needed.

  He sank down, covering her body with his, stroking her face with the backs of his fingertips. His voice, when it reached her ears, was a low whisper. “I needed you, too, Doc.”

  Chapter Forty-six

  Joy is a finished object that fits.

  —E.C.

  Rig felt her start to wake and didn’t move a muscle. It was all he could do not to slide back a bit, just a few inches, really, and slip into her again. He was ready to go, had been since minutes after they’d stopped earlier. She did something to him, made his blood race and churn in a way he’d never felt before.

  This thing, whatever it was with Naomi, was deep. And it was scaring the shit out of him. It was probably something he needed to stop, actually. Put some kind of kibosh on it. But he didn’t want to be anywhere else, and he sure hadn’t kiboshed anything earlier, when he’d been sunk into her, buried in her as far as he could go . . .

  And besides, he thought, how do you put the kibosh on love?

  Holy Christ on a cracker. The thought paralyzed him.

  He was in love?

  Well, damn, that would explain a lot of it. How his heart felt twelve times its size when he was near her, and how it got even larger, beat faster, when he touched her. How she made him rethink that whole bachelor-forever thing, because a life with Naomi would be better than any kind of life without her. But jumping off helicopters during storm surges over the Gulf hadn’t scared him more.

  Fear made him momentarily dizzy. No wonder Jake acted the way he did. Rig could see himself being crazy terrified of losing Naomi.

  She gave a small sigh and frowned in her sleep. Then her eyes flew open.

  “Holy shit,” she said, frozen underneath him.

  He laughed. “Hi to you, too.”

  “I didn’t . . . I don’t . . .” She stuttered to a halt and put one hand over her eyes, biting her lower lip.

  While he longed to do the same, he didn’t—he just lifted her hand to peek under it. “Me, neither. Don’t worry.”

  “But we did.”

  And her voice sounded so like herself, smart and controlled, nothing like she’d sounded earlier, that he laughed again and hugged her against him.

  “You’re incredible,” he said.

  “We’re both crazy.” She stood, pushing against him, still buck-ass naked and gorgeous as anything any sculptor had ever carved. He loved the way her hips flared, the way her breasts swayed, the way her curls dropped over her bare shoulder.

  “Yeah, probably.” And really, he agreed. It was crazy to feel like this about Naomi Fontaine. But it was a little late for reasonable thought.

  “What did we do?”

  “You want me to show you? I can remind yo
u.”

  She stamped her foot, which was probably more ineffective than she realized, as her breasts bobbed. He longed to taste them again.

  “Oh, lord,” she said and started pulling her clothes on. A crying shame, really, that her body ever had to be covered. He watched, unashamed of the way his body was reacting.

  “You!” She snapped her fingers toward his obvious arousal. “Down, boy. We have to get out of here.” But her eyes lingered below his waist, and Rig’s blood pressure rose again.

  “Why don’t you come sit on my lap?” He gestured.

  “We should go,” she said, but there was hesitation in her voice, still hoarse from the sounds she’d made earlier.

  “It’s our place, though. Your center. You can do whatever you want to here. And you should do whatever you want to.”

  Naomi covered her breasts ineffectively with her hands and moved forward slowly. “Oh, God. We’re holding a dance here. Not a lap dance.”

  “Then give me just a kiss.” His heart beat in a syncopation that he didn’t recognize, that he’d never felt.

  She leaned over him, letting her hands rest on his shoulders. Then she dropped a light kiss on his mouth. Rig brushed her perfect nipples with his fingertips, and felt her tongue skim his lower lip. Goddamn, he couldn’t get any harder. Hadn’t she just used him up, not even an hour ago?

  Naomi’s hand touched his hardness, and he felt her smile against his lips. Maybe, just maybe—

  There was a rap at the window inches from the couch.

  “Shit!” Naomi jerked backward and grabbed her shirt from the floor, pulling it over her head. “What the hell is that?”

  “Don’t worry.” Rig swiveled on the couch so that he was facing the curtain. Through its sheerness, he could just make out the figure of someone standing at the window, looking in.

  “I thought you said you couldn’t see in here through those!”

  Rig shook his head. “I didn’t think you could.”

  “Yoo-hoo!” It was a high, female voice.

  “Shit, shit, shit.” Naomi hopped in front of him, yanking up her jeans. “Shit!’

  With the sofa hiding the most outrageous parts of his nakedness, Rig leaned forward and pulled the curtain aside an inch. A woman with long red hair waggled her fingers at him. “Hi!” she called, her voice coming clearly through the glass. She was wearing a short electric blue skirt and a matching blue jacket and had at least six necklaces strung around her neck. Her heels were high, and her lipstick was bright.

  “Who the hell is that?”

  Naomi looked green at the gills. “Trixie Fletcher. Reporter. Shit.”

  “Crap.” Rig pulled on his jeans and shirt. “Are we decent?”

  “Why? You can’t talk to her. No way.”

  Rig nodded and moved toward the door.

  Naomi continued protesting as she wrestled with her shirt, her arms flying over her head. “We can’t. Don’t you dare. She’ll know what we were—”

  Rig opened the door a crack and said, “Yeah?”

  “Trixie Fletcher, with the Independent.” She had a trace of lipstick on her teeth, and Rig suddenly loved the fact that Naomi never appeared to wear anything more than Chap Stick on her naturally pink lips.

  “Yeah?” he said again.

  She peered over his shoulder at Naomi, who was suddenly miraculously clothed. “I just thought you should know that the curtains are so thin that if the lights are on in here, which they are, I can see the freckles on your shoulder, Naomi. Main Street can be busy, and the smokers outside the Rite Spot tend to wander when they’re out here. I wondered what they were doing down here, and I shooed them off when I found out.”

  “Shit,” said Rig.

  “Just thought you should know.” She waggled her fingers. “Toodles!”

  He locked the door behind her and turned slowly to face Naomi. Shit, shit, shit.

  Her face was pale as she sat in an armchair and pulled on her shoes. “So we just performed for all of Cypress Hollow.”

  “I didn’t know—”

  “You said that you did! I didn’t buy or put up those curtains, you did! I trusted you! And now the whole damn town will think I’m a whore.”

  Holding up his hands, Rig moved forward slowly. “This isn’t the eighteenth century. People have sex.”

  “Not. In. Business. Windows.” She glared. “Maybe in Amsterdam’s red-light district, but not in Cypress Hollow.” Tugging her hand through her mop of curls, she stood. “I should have known better.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  “Aren’t you embarrassed at all? This is your town, too, after all. You’ll be able to walk into Tillie’s tomorrow with your head up? She’s a reporter, for Christ’s sake.” Naomi took the long way past him on her way to the door, moving around the low footstool as if she was trying to stay as far from him as possible.

  “It was just sex, Naomi.” It wasn’t—the words hurt to say. But he had to make this better somehow. “No one will care.”

  Her eyes, as she pulled open the door, were bruised. “I care. I hate people knowing my secrets.”

  “Wouldn’t it be okay if I wasn’t a secret?” Rig hoped she’d say yes. She had to say yes.

  But she just said, “I’m walking home. By myself.”

  And then she was gone, the snap of the door latch reverberating in the large room, leaving Rig standing barefoot, more alone than he could remember ever feeling before.

  Chapter Forty-seven

  Sometimes, though, we have to admit we made the wrong choice: the wrong yarn, the wrong color, the wrong size. Sometimes we knit for the wrong person. It happens to all of us, at least twice.

  —E.C.

  It was a foggy walk, but Naomi didn’t feel the chill—her emotions kept her warm as she walked the familiar sidewalks. Anger—he should have known better. Embarrassment—what was to keep townspeople from gossiping about her? Sadness—she wasn’t really sure where that was coming from, and she pushed it away. Naomi was good at that.

  She’d already had enough to do in this town just trying to be accepted as a good doctor, but now they’d never, ever trust her. Sex in public, good God. In view of the local bar. She curled her fingers tightly, the nails biting into her palms.

  But . . . it had been amazing sex. With an amazing man. At Naomi’s core, she felt a flare of heat, remembering the feeling of Rig being inside her, his eyes focused only on her.

  No. She reached again for her anger, her feeling of betrayal, and walked faster.

  In front of her house, she got her keys out as quietly as she could, praying they didn’t jingle. She’d forgotten about her mother and Buzz staying with her until she saw Buzz’s white truck parked in front of the house, taking both the parking spaces.

  She did not want to talk to Maybelle right now—she wanted to take a shower, wash Rig’s smell off her body so she’d stop having that dizzy, floating sensation whenever she thought about how he’d touched her, how he’d made her body feel.

  And how he’d made her heart feel.

  She shut the door behind her, willing the latch to click silently. Instead it shot home like a bolt with a loud snick. Naomi waited.

  And it came: “Is that you?” Maybelle’s voice called from down the hallway.

  “No, Mom,” Naomi said. “It’s not.”

  “Very funny.” Maybelle entered the room wearing a long pink nightgown that looked like it was made of nylon. It clung to her hips and belly, and there was no way Naomi would ever have imagined her mother wearing anything like it.

  “I’m scarred for life, Mom.” Naomi opened the bathroom door and tugged her fuzzy red robe off the hook. “Cover up, would you?”

  “Oh, honey, it’s Buzz’s favorite.”

  “I don’t want to know that. Good night, Mom.” Naomi went into the kitchen, hoping her mother wouldn’t follow her. No such luck, of course. Maybelle trailed behind her, her eyes wide and innocent.

  “What’s wrong? How did things go
with Rig?”

  “Fine.” Naomi poured herself a glass of water. What did her mother know? God forbid they’d driven down Main on the way home and looked at the health center’s windows . . . It wouldn’t have been on the way, not from Jake’s, but would they have . . . ? Oh, lord. “Why do you ask?”

  “I just wondered. I sensed a real chemistry between you two.”

  Naomi drank her water too quickly, and some of it went down the wrong way. She coughed, and then managed, “Oh.”

  “Are you choking?” Maybelle pounded her on the back.

  “Mom, stop!” Naomi kept coughing.

  “Do you need the Heimlich? Put your hands to your throat, and I’ll go get Buzz. He knows how to do it.”

  “Mom. You can’t choke on liquid.” Naomi coughed again and tried to stifle it.

  “I’m sure you can.” Maybelle sniffed.

  “I’m the doctor, Mom. You can drown, but liquid eventually goes down. I don’t need the Heimlich.”

  “You may be the doctor, but you don’t always have that much sense.”

  Her mother had just found out that her sister was knocked up, and she was the one getting the criticism? “It’s late, Mom. Is Buzz asleep?”

  Her mother smiled slyly. “I gave him the old knockout one-two.”

  “Jesus! Mother!” She’d have to buy new sheets for the guest bed. Naomi closed her eyes. Maybe if she pretended she were somewhere else . . .

  “And anyway,” Maybelle continued, “I don’t mind setting a good example for you. You and that Rig, what’s the story?” She sat at the kitchen table and looked at Naomi expectantly. “Will you get me some water, too? Please?”

  No getting around this one. Naomi accepted her fate.

  “Here,” she said, setting the glass of water on the table.

  “Now sit down, yes, right there. I want to hear everything about Rig. He’s very handsome, isn’t he?”

  Rig was the best-looking man Naomi had ever seen, and even more, he was the best man she’d ever known. Kind, and smart, and completely unbothered by what other people thought. Ridiculously hot. And he cared about her. She could feel it.