by Lily Everett
His hardness slotted against her softness with a series of rhythmic nudges that stoked the fire inside Quinn higher and higher. In the dream, her panties melted away like fog, and he was naked too, and they were pressed together so intimately and perfectly and yet, somehow, there was still something in the way, a barrier to Quinn getting what she really wanted. Frustration mounting, she reached down between their hot, straining bodies and felt … cotton?
Quinn blinked and suddenly, instead of staring up at the waving pine needles of the Lantern Point woods, she was looking at the familiar starburst pattern of the plaster ceiling in her girlhood bedroom.
Her immediate thought was a dismayed No, let me go back to the dream! But in the next instant, she realized Marcus was still on top of her, his hard chest and strong arms caging her in. Their legs were tangled hopelessly in the sheets and they were both still wearing what they’d gone to bed in, but other than that?
The dream was real.
Eyes still closed, Marcus twisted his hips, grinding wickedly against Quinn’s most sensitive spot and scattering her thoughts like dried pine needles before she could figure out what to do. She reacted mindlessly, her body taking over and bowing up hard, her arms going around Marcus’s neck.
Through her haze of heated lust, Quinn saw the exact moment Marcus woke up.
Chapter 10
Marcus catapulted straight from one of his favorite dreams—Quinn laid out like a feast on top of his bar—and into a reality where he was sprawled over her and thrusting against her in her parents’ house with her mother and father right down the hall.
Or maybe they were downstairs, he realized distractedly as he noticed the soft morning light washing over Quinn’s face. Her skin was pearly and clear, gleaming with youth and vitality. The hectic red flush of passion across her cheekbones only made her more irresistible.
She was everything soft and welcoming, even in this moment where both of them were frozen into stillness, waiting to see what the other would do.
Marcus knew exactly what he should do. He should make a joke or make her mad, get himself away from the silky, lithe temptation of her body twined with his in innocent pink cotton sheets.
He drew in a breath to gather himself to move off her, but they were so close together that the inhalation made his chest brush the very tips of her breasts, and Quinn convulsed under him with a soft cry. The feel of her hard nipples, even through her thin tank top, lit a flash fire in Marcus’s belly that obliterated all higher reasoning.
Dragging his chest against her breasts, he savored the shivery moan of Quinn’s breaths and the spasmodic clutch of her fingers at the nape of his neck. His cock was iron hard and aching, trapped in his underwear and pounding with need.
He propped himself on one elbow and dragged the opposite hand down the center line of Quinn’s beautiful body. Between her taut breasts and over the jumpy muscles of her stomach to gently cup his palm against the soft liquid heat between her thighs. He wanted in. Wanted to be as close to Quinn as he could get, to put himself inside her and live there forever.
She writhed against him, agile as a cat, and Marcus snuck a finger under the elastic of the lace panties he remembered with painful clarity. He could tell by touch that they were the black ones with the little satin rosette at the back, right above the shadowed cleft of her bottom.
Burying his face in her sweet-smelling neck, Marcus set his open mouth against her collarbone and fought back a primal shout of triumph at the slick of her silken folds around his fingertip. Quinn’s chest heaved enough to press his teeth gently into her skin, which she seemed to like, going by the way her fist clenched in his hair. Marcus got it. He’d never gotten off on a woman pulling his hair before, but with Quinn, sometimes the feelings racing through him were too big, too wild for gentleness.
With Quinn, every sensation was magnified and twisted into pleasure. It was a strange alchemy Marcus didn’t understand. All he knew was that it had been far too many days since he’d experienced the special magic he and Quinn created together.
“Stop teasing me.” Quinn trapped his hand between her thighs and tugged his head back by the hair, far enough that she could stare into his eyes. Her gaze was direct, hot, a little desperate. He rewarded her with another rub of his fingers, right where she wanted them most. “Oh! I missed you, Marcus.”
She whispered it like a confession, like an admission of guilt, and it made Marcus pause. The moment he stopped moving his fingers, a tragic look crossed Quinn’s face. “Don’t…”
Marcus hung over her, poised on the point of no return, but he never found out whether Quinn was saying “Don’t stop,” or “Don’t keep going,” because at that moment a knock rapped against the bedroom door.
“Rise and shine, you two,” caroled Mrs. Harper’s chipper voice. “Breakfast is ready!”
Quinn, who’d twitched at the sound of her mother’s voice, dropped her hands from Marcus’s neck to throw an arm over her eyes and hide her red face. “Coming, Mother.”
Some devil prompted Marcus to lean down and whisper, “We could be, if she’d waited five minutes.”
Quinn convulsed in shocked giggles under him, which made Marcus grin instead of grimacing while trying to smoothly remove his hand from her underwear. His dick, like most dicks, had no sense of time or place or the inherent unsexiness of nearly getting caught in the act by his girlfriend’s mom like a couple of teenagers.
No, his dick still thought the original morning plan was A-OK, ready for action, go go go. But Marcus was in charge, so instead of following orders from below the belt, he swung off of Quinn.
The physical pain he felt was simple sexual frustration, he told himself. Reality had intruded on their stolen moment of passion. Now that they were fully awake, he couldn’t shut his eyes and ignore the fact that sleeping with Quinn now would make it that much harder to disentangle himself at the end of the month.
But unless his position had changed when it came to whether or not he and Quinn could be together long-term, he had no business touching her. He wasn’t some undisciplined raw recruit with no handle on the consequences of his actions. He was a grown-ass man. He had more respect for himself, and certainly for Quinn, than to think he could screw her casually and have it mean nothing.
He wouldn’t apologize for this morning, he decided, staring down at his hands where they lay on his knees. It had been mutual. Mutual pleasure. Mutual mistake. There was no need to belabor the point, since it wouldn’t be happening again.
Resolved, Marcus stood up and crossed the room to dig through his backpack for his toothbrush and a change of clothes.
“Can you toss my bag over here?” Quinn asked.
He picked it up and turned to hand it over. The sight that greeted him immediately tested his resolve not to touch Quinn.
She stood on the other side of the bed, hair tousled into strawberry-blond waves over one bare shoulder. All she wore was a tank top with tiny straps that seemed too delicate to contain the bounty of her breasts, which were clearly outlined under the thin material. On the bottom … the black lace panties were every bit as sinfully tempting as he remembered.
Quinn held out an expectant hand, her brows lifting in question at his pause. But she wasn’t impatient or embarrassed or anything like that. No, she was as near to naked as made no difference, in front of the ex she’d convinced to pose as her fiancé, and she met his gaze as directly as if she’d never heard of the idea of shame. Instead, she smiled at him.
“Everything okay? We need to get moving. Breakfast is kind of a thing in this house.”
In that moment, Marcus knew he loved her. He handed over her bag wordlessly and held himself very still as she brushed past him and into the bathroom.
Once the door between them closed, he allowed himself to sink back to sit on the edge of the bed and drop his head into his hands.
He was in love with Quinn Harper. And he was pretty sure she loved him, too.
The bitch of it was, it c
hanged nothing. He was still no good for her. She was young, and as much as he hated it when her parents dismissed her commitment to the Windy Corner Therapeutic Riding Center, there was some truth behind their skepticism.
One day, Quinn would wake up and move on from Marcus, and that would be the best day of her life. He believed that with his whole heart. She deserved better. That hadn’t changed. Nothing had changed.
Except how bad Marcus was going to hurt when this was all over.
*
No matter what was going on in your life, no matter how messy things got, you could still take pleasure in the little things. Paul looked over his bowls of crumbled goat cheese, sautéed mushrooms, caramelized chopped onions, and lightly beaten eggs with satisfaction.
Like life, omelets moved fast. He liked to get all his fillings ready ahead of time so when the eggs were just barely set in the pan, he wouldn’t overcook them while he got the other ingredients together.
No surprise, his wife was more of a fly-by-the-seat-of-her-pants type of cook. Paul carefully regulated the heat under his nonstick skillet. Too high, and the butter would scorch; too low, and the eggs would absorb too much of the butter before they set enough to add the fillings. Omelets were a tricky, delicate business, which was why they were more his province than Ingrid’s.
Ingrid didn’t cook much, in general. She didn’t mind throwing things together, like a stir-fry of leftovers and whatever random things she could scavenge from the fridge, but she didn’t like following a recipe. If a technique caught her interest, she would be relentless about practicing it until she had it down—she beat the egg whites into meringue for Paul’s lemon meringue pie, for instance. Insisted on doing it by hand, always getting them to the perfect stage of glossy, stiff peaks. But ask her to follow the exact proportions for the lemon custard filling, and she’d get bored and distracted halfway through, and wander off to another project.
It felt like an uncomfortably apt metaphor for their marriage. Paul stared glumly down at the melting butter and wondered if this was how the lemon custard felt when she left it to curdle on the stovetop.
They’d fought the night before, when Ron went out to drive around the island. Paul couldn’t believe she’d invited “Dr. Ron” to stay with them. Two full weeks, never able to get away from the man. Paul had lost it, in a way he rarely had with Ingrid.
But unlike the few other times Paul put his foot down about something, this time, Ingrid hadn’t immediately backed off.
No. This time, with tears standing in her beautiful, cornflower-blue eyes, she’d pressed her lips together and stubbornly refused to call Ron and rescind her invitation. At first he believed her when she argued that it would be rude—Ingrid hadn’t been raised on Sanctuary Island, but she’d wholeheartedly embraced the island’s signature warmth and open-arms welcome of visitors.
The longer they wrangled around about the visit, however, the more Paul became convinced that there was more to it. Finally, after an hour of long, cold silences punctuated by angry words, Ingrid had said, “He’s staying. Don’t you see, Paul? This is our last chance.”
As she’d no doubt intended, that ended the argument. Paul’s blood still ran cold when he remembered the serious look on Ingrid’s face. It wasn’t a look he’d seen often, in the decades of their marriage. Not that Ingrid was frivolous—on the contrary, she took everything seriously, things no one else cared about, like saving a perfect spiderweb glittering with dew, or the importance of eating a strawberry within fifteen seconds of picking it, for the best flavor.
But when it came to interpersonal relationships? Ingrid tended to go a little hazy. People bewildered her, because they so often cared a great deal about the things she found unimportant, and seemed to not even notice the things that were central to Ingrid’s life.
Paul had always appreciated her, even if he didn’t understand her. He’d marveled at her ability to float through life, focusing only on what brought her joy. Since the moment they met, he’d been the person who was on the inside of Ingrid’s bubble, borne aloft on the breeze with her.
Last night, for the first time, he’d been forced to accept that he was on the outside of the bubble. And he had no idea how to get back in.
“They’re coming down,” Ingrid announced, wafting back into the kitchen.
Paul jumped, startled. Looking down at his pan, he saw that he’d managed to burn the butter after all. Grabbing a paper towel, he wiped out the pan and started over with fresh butter.
“It’s lovely to have a full house,” Ingrid tried, bustling around to get a fresh pot of coffee started and put water on for tea.
Paul concentrated on pouring the beaten eggs into the pan and swirling them around evenly.
When he didn’t respond, Ingrid sighed. “Should I wake Ron up for breakfast, do you think?”
The eggs were setting up nicely, pulling away from the edges of the pan but still creamy in the middle. Paul reached for his bowls of fillings and started sprinkling them carefully along the center line of the pan. “I don’t think Dr. Ron seems like the breakfast type. He seems more like someone who’s used to sleeping in.”
“Who’s sleeping in?” Quinn asked as she trooped into the kitchen, followed by Marcus Beckett.
“Ron,” her mother said. “Coffee?”
“Yes, please.”
In spite of the tensions of the morning, Paul had to grin at the fervor of Marcus’s answer. “First omelet’s up in thirty seconds. Who wants it?”
Never shy, Quinn piped up, “I’ll take it! Unless you want it, Mother. Don’t worry about Marcus, he’ll be communing with his coffee for the next ten minutes before he’s ready for anything more challenging, like conversation. Or food.”
With a practiced flick of his wrist, Paul released the egg from the pan and folded it over on itself. He tipped it onto a plate and turned to hand it to his daughter in time to see the glare Marcus sent her over the top of his mug. Paul also saw Quinn’s totally unrepentant smirk before she thanked him for the omelet and sat down to dig in.
Paul hurried through the rest of the omelets and joined his family at the table. Quinn was nearly done with hers, and she was sitting shoulder to shoulder with Marcus and talking a mile a minute about her new job. Every now and then, she’d say something to distract Marcus so she could try to filch a stray mushroom from his plate. Marcus caught her every time, but all he did was narrow his eyes as she plucked up the mushroom and popped it in her mouth with a smug smile.
“If you’re still hungry, I can make you some toast,” Paul told her.
He wasn’t surprised when she shook her head. “No, thanks, this is more fun.”
“Fun for who?” Marcus grumbled, but Paul didn’t miss the way his daughter’s fiancé followed her with his gaze when she hopped up from the table to pour herself another glass of orange juice.
And for a moment, when Quinn’s back was turned, Paul caught the strangest expression of longing on Marcus’s face. As if he were looking at something he wanted desperately that was forever out of his reach.
Then Quinn came back to the table, offering juice to anyone who wanted it, and the fleeting expression was gone. But the memory of it stuck with Paul, even as he watched Quinn and Marcus jostle each other at the sink like kids while they did the dishes, flicking soap bubbles at each other and getting water all over the place.
Well, Quinn flicked soap bubbles. Marcus endured it stoically until all the plates and glasses were clean and in the drying rack, and then he turned the detachable spray faucet on her.
Quinn shrieked, Ingrid laughed, and Marcus went brick red like he’d forgotten they weren’t alone. Paul waved away his promises to clean up the mess.
“Don’t worry about it,” he told Marcus. “It’s only a little water on the floor. Small price to pay to see my only daughter so happy.”
“Happy!” Quinn twisted her hair to wring water out of the ends. “I’m soaked!”
“Soaked in love,” Ingrid said, clasping her
hands under her chin. Her eyes shone as she stared back and forth between Quinn and Marcus. “Oh, I think Ron was so right to suggest that y’all stay with us for a little bit. It’s doing me a lot of good to have this youthful, happy energy in the house. I can tell a difference already.”
Quinn wrinkled her nose. Paul was willing to bet she was thinking that Ron’s “suggestion” was more of an ultimatum. But instead of immediately blurting that out, she very diplomatically said, “I’m happy if we’re helping you, Mother. Truly.”
Maybe his little girl was finally growing up, after all. And maybe Marcus Beckett was ten years older and about a hundred times rougher around the edges than anyone Paul would’ve picked for his daughter, but maybe he also had something to do with Quinn’s newfound maturity.
Not that he thought Marcus could make Quinn behave a certain way, or that it would even be healthy if he could. But Paul, of all people, knew that part of being in a great relationship was bringing out the best in each other. He didn’t know Marcus well enough to be able to tell, but he wondered if the taciturn, grim-eyed ex-soldier might be a bit lighter and easier when Quinn was around. It wouldn’t surprise Paul to find out he was right about that.
He had no intention of admitting it to Ingrid, much less to Dr. Ron, but Paul could admit privately that he was glad to have this time with Quinn and her fiancé. There was nothing like living cheek by jowl, all cozied into one house, for getting to know someone. This up-close-and-personal view of his daughter’s relationship was doing a lot to ease Paul’s mind.
Now if it just lasted longer than a few weeks, he might start to believe Quinn was finally ready to settle down.
Maybe if he and Ingrid could stop worrying about Quinn, they’d have time to work on their marriage. Paul looked across the kitchen to where Ingrid was sipping her second cup of green tea and laughing at something their daughter had said. His heart clenched.
