by Nicole Helm
She wrapped one leg around him, moved her hips up and down. He had a fleeting thought of pulling up her skirt, dropping his pants, and going at it right there, but it didn’t feel right. Things were moving too fast.
“Stop.”
“Are you fucking kidding me?”
He had to laugh at the outrage in her voice. “I meant, momentarily. Not stop altogether.”
She let out a breath that fluttered her bangs. “Good, because I was going to have to kill you otherwise.”
“Give me your keys.”
“Why?”
“Because we’re going to go inside.”
She pressed up against him and a groan escaped his mouth. Her lips grazed his chin. “Why?”
“Because we’re going to do this right the first time. In a bed. We can do it up against your front door some other time. Now, keys.”
He held out his hand and tried not to chuckle at her pout, but she fished the keys out of her purse and handed them over.
Callie frowned at Trevor while he punched the key into the front door and opened it. She would have been just as happy getting it over with right then and there. At least temporary would seem a lot more plausible.
Then he turned to her, a light from inside spilling out and illuminating his face. He smiled, and she kind of forgot all about temporary. He took her by the shoulders, leading her backward inside and through the kitchen and down the short hallway to her room. He backed her against the door, his eyes never leaving hers.
“Open the door, Callie.”
It was continually surprising how much Trevor bossing her around was a turn on. She groped for the doorknob behind her and twisted. When the door moved open, Trevor continued to push her inside until they were in the center of her room.
Then his hands moved to her face, his blue eyes staring straight into hers for a few humming moments before he kissed her. Soft, slow, seductive. All demands disappeared as his tongue lazily mingled with hers.
The kiss lingered, but his hands moved down her neck, to her back, where he slowly unzipped her dress, his thumb brushing the bare skin below as he went down. She shivered at the light touch.
Things had slowed, some of the demands melting into sensations Callie didn’t know what to do with or how to fight. A mix of jittery nerves under the warm pull of everything he was doing to her. A part of her brain was urging her to do something, to move forward, to hurry, but the thoughts never became action. She was drugged into Trevor’s agonizingly slow, sweet pace.
Trevor inched the dress off her until it fell at her feet. She wasn’t the most well-endowed woman in the world and she hadn’t been able to find a bra that didn’t show under her dress, so she’d gone without. Now she stood in front of Trevor in nothing but panties and she would have felt self-conscious if he didn’t look like he was about to start panting in appreciation.
Though her hands shook, she kept her eyes level with his. Part of her might be freaking out right now, but that didn’t mean she’d give up all control. She stepped out of the dress and toward Trevor.
Slowly, keeping her eyes on his, she unbuttoned his shirt. He undid the buttons on his wrists and then she pulled the shirt off his arms in a long, fluid movement, and then she let her hands travel down the hard line of muscle from shoulder to wrist, and then over to his abs and up his chest.
He hissed in a breath and Callie’s mouth curved into a smile as his hands secured on to her hips and pulled her to him.
Still in her heels, it only took him bending his head for his mouth to fasten onto her breast. She threaded her fingers through his hair, holding him there as the liquid warm pull of excitement waved to her core.
She moaned as he switched breasts, his hand moving up to massage the one he’d abandoned. Everything else disappeared. Where they were. All those jumpy nerves. Why this was a bad idea or temporary or anything. All she could focus on was the here and now, the sensations coursing through her body.
Callie reached for his belt, quickly undid it and the button and zipper. She took his pants and boxers and pushed them all the way down to his ankles, slowly brushing against him as she stood back up.
“For the love of God, please tell me you have condoms somewhere in this place.”
She arched a brow, pushed him toward the bed. He toed off his shoes and stepped out of his clothes. “You didn’t come prepared?”
“No, I didn’t come prepared. Are you—”
She clucked her tongue and shook her head, then gave him a little push onto the bed. She wiggled out of her panties and stepped out of her shoes. The way he watched her as she grabbed a condom from the nightstand had her whole body humming with electric need. She moved over to him, slid onto his lap, and ignored the way her hand wanted to shake as she rolled the condom on.
Her heart stuttered as she moved close enough to guide him inside of her. This was it. Point of no return.
Slowly, she slid all the way down, him filling her completely. When she finally stopped, Trevor’s hands dug into her hips, holding her still, his head pressed against her shoulder as he took an audible deep breath.
It was everything and nothing she had expected. So much more than she could have ever imagined. Everything she’d been afraid of for so long, but in the moment the fear was gone. A culmination of all the years they’d skirted around this very moment.
“You’re so soft, Callie,” he murmured into her skin. “Not so tough.”
Callie squeezed her eyes shut, refusing to let the tears that threatened win. She leaned her cheek against his forehead and let the moment sit. She wanted to remember this. No matter what happened after. This was the perfect moment.
He kissed her shoulder and moved tantalizingly down to her nipple, taking it into his mouth, teasing it with his tongue. Callie began to move, riding him slowly, taking an agonizingly long time as her climax built. Trevor’s fingers on her hips urged her on as he began to meet each thrust.
As she got closer, she quickened the pace, her hands moving from his shoulders to wrap around his neck. He moved from one breast to the valley between. He kissed the soft skin there and then moved to her other breast, taking the other nipple into his mouth, using his teeth lightly.
She called out as the action had the climax rushing over her quick and hard. He held on to her almost as tightly as she held on to him, breathing in the same, hard rhythm.
“Roll over, Callie.” His turn to be in charge. She was more than okay with that.
On her back, he leveraged his body over hers. His hand roamed her calf, her thigh, teased and brushed over her sweat-slicked skin. His mouth moved like his hands without pattern so she never knew what to expect next. Before the aftershocks of her first climax were over, he entered her, had a second building all over again.
This time as they moved together, his eyes held hers and she couldn’t look away. Couldn’t ignore all that feeling inside of her. The second wave washed over her, as powerful as the first.
“Callie.” He said her name like a sigh, and then his own release took over and he pushed deep inside and held her close. Callie held on, afraid to lose the moment, afraid of what she might feel when it was over.
Trevor kissed her shoulder, her neck, then her lips. When he smiled down at her she managed to smile back.
“Well, hell. Why’d we wait so long to do that?”
She chuckled, the humor lightening up all the dark pooling emotions inside of her. “Who knows?” She framed his face and kissed him before he rolled onto his back, pulling her into his side.
Not that he had a choice; on her full-sized bed if he didn’t hold on to her she was liable to fall off.
“You need a bigger bed.”
“I don’t generally share.”
He nuzzled into her hair. “Sharing is good for you.”
A little squirt of panic sliced through the warm afterglow. “Trevor, I meant it when I said this was—”
He clamped a hand over her mouth. “I don’t want to talk about that ri
ght now.”
“Trevor,” she protested into his hand.
He got off the bed, disappeared into the bathroom for a second. When he returned, he squeezed right back onto the bed.
“We should—“
He leveraged himself over her, shook his head. His blue eyes were serious even if his tone was light. “We can talk about it all you want tomorrow. For tonight, shut up.”
“Fine.” No use arguing with him now. Later, but not now. “That’s really not the most romantic way to talk to a woman you’ve just had sex with.”
“Well, trying to tell the guy you just made love to this is all a one-time thing isn’t exactly whispering sweet nothings, is it?”
“But—”
“Keep talking and I’ll leave and then we won’t get to have sex against the front door.”
It was ridiculous, and yet she found herself laughing. His laughter mixed with hers and there was a wholeness, a rightness to this moment. It reminded of her of how she’d felt with her family.
But this one couldn’t last, and she couldn’t forget that.
Chapter Eighteen
Trevor woke up to a sharp pain underneath his shoulder blade. Still hazy with sleep, he couldn’t muster the energy to open his eyes; instead, he merely grimaced and stretched out his arm hoping to alleviate the pain.
Then he noticed the faint smell of coconut from the pillow his head was buried in. He would have smiled, except he realized he was in Callie’s too small bed all by himself.
He sat up and tried to rub the sore spot on his back. If this happened again, and Trevor was determined it would, they were going to have to find some better sleeping arrangements.
Trevor slid out of the bed, rubbed bleary eyes and headed for the door to find Callie, but he was sidetracked by a mirror lined with pictures in the corner of the room. Considering the rest of her room was so sparse, the collection of photographs seemed odd and out of place.
Trevor stepped closer, studied the conglomeration of photos, colors faded with age. There was a picture of a couple he was pretty sure were Callie’s parents holding a baby, which he imagined was Callie. Then there were a few Polaroids of her grandparents both at their house and at AIF. There was another Polaroid of Callie, Em, and Lawson when they were kids, posing outside of the AIF office building with their arms around one another’s waists, grinning hugely. Trevor had to smile at that one.
The one that had him stopping short was a picture of him and Callie from high school graduation. His mom had taken a bunch of pictures at graduation, but none had Callie in them. Trevor tried to think to the moments after graduation and who would have taken this picture.
Fred Baker wasn’t the camera-carrying sort, and Callie’s grandma had been gone. He supposed Em must have put it upon herself to play photographer even though she would have only been fourteen.
Trevor studied the picture. Two eighteen-year-olds ready to start their lives in hideously ugly bright red and white graduation gowns. Or at least, he had been ready to start his life. Ready to escape, to leave behind the pressure of Pilot’s Point and his parents. His smile reflected that, an excited eagerness.
Callie was smiling too, but it was different. Her screw-the-world smile, one hand on a cocked hip and the other around his shoulders. She’d still been fighting her way out of a life that had been too hard on her.
Ironic that nearing thirty she was the one settled into the life she’d always wanted—down to having all three Baker grandchildren at the helm of AIF, and his plan to get out had been screwed six ways to Sunday. Hell, he didn’t have a plan anymore.
Which kind of explained why he’d given into years of temptation last night. Without a plan, how was he supposed to be sensible and navigate away from Callie and everything she offered? Avoiding her the past few weeks when she’d been within reach had been akin to torture. And avoiding her had put him no closer to knowing what to do.
He pulled on his discarded pants and shirt from the night before on the off chance Em had returned. He really hoped not. As much as he was all for ignoring their issues last night, they definitely needed to discuss them this morning.
When he stepped out into the small interior of the cabin, there was no evidence of Em. Callie was sitting on the window bench, her knees pulled up to her chin and her eyes glued to the window. She was in baggy sweats, her hair was a mess, and though she’d obviously washed her face, there were still traces of the makeup she’d worn last night.
She wasn’t exactly looking beautiful, and yet his heart squeezed as he looked at her.
She turned to look at him, rested her cheek on her knees, and offered a really weak smile. “Hey.”
“Hey.”
“There’s coffee.” She gestured toward the kitchen.
As much as a cup of coffee might be nice, he crossed over to her instead. He sat next to her on the bench, then picked up her legs and put them over his lap.
The morning outside the window was a misty gray and fog rolled around the low-lying areas of trees surrounding them.
“This is weird.”
He smiled, because it didn’t feel all that weird to him. “Weird how?”
“Well, for starters I know what you look like naked now.”
Trevor slid his hand up the inside of her sweats along her calf up to her knee. “I can refresh your memory if the details are a little fuzzy already.”
She snorted, kicked his hand off her leg, but she was smiling and it wasn’t that weak smile she’d managed when he’d walked into the room.
“We need to talk about this. Set some ground rules.”
“Ooh, ground rules. You really know how to get a guy hot.”
Her smile upended into a frown. “You said we could talk about this all I wanted this morning.”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah.” Trevor leaned against the cool glass of the window. “Talk away.”
“Temporary.” She said it as if it explained everything, as if it was the one word that would solve all their deep-seated issues.
“I’m getting to be less and less a fan of that word.”
“It’s important.” Adamant didn’t begin to describe the way she said it. Desperate was closer. A panicked holding on to something even if that something was fading away.
“I don’t think it’s as important as you seem to think it is.”
“We’ve been over this a million different ways, and yet we haven’t gotten anywhere. Maybe that’s because we were so busy trying to keep our hands off of each other. Well, that’s done. Now it’s time to come to a conclusion. That conclusion has to be you going back to Seattle. The choice that will make you happy.”
“I understand where you’re coming from, but you’re hitting this same note over and over again and I’ve moved on. Things are different. Staying here wouldn’t be… It’s not as bad as it used to be.”
She shook her head and Trevor wanted to smack his own head against the glass until he could figure out a way to explain it so she’d understand.
“Guilt won’t keep you here forever. Look at Lawson.”
She frustrated him, challenged him, but now she was downright confusing him. “What the hell does this have to do with Lawson?”
“He married Sue because he felt guilty about getting her pregnant. Then he went to L.A. with Sue because he felt guilty about messing up her plans. That worked for a while. Long enough for them to have another kid and make each other completely miserable and get a nasty divorce, but it didn’t change the fact Lawson belonged here. No amount of guilt could keep him there.”
“First of all, that’s completely different.”
“No, it’s not.”
“Being sixteen and pregnant is a lot different kind of guilt than being my sister’s only family. We’re all different people, at different stages in our lives, with different circumstances and motivations.”
“But guilt is at the center.”
It had been a long time since they’d argued—really argued over an important point.
He’d forgotten how impossible she could be when she had an idea stuck in her head. It would take an act of God to get through to her. He’d start praying for one tonight.
“Let’s pretend for a second that you stay and you decide this is what you want. You promise to stay forever, but then ten years down the line Shelby’s off in some big city being whatever she wants to be with a family of her own. And you’re stuck here, missing the FBI so bad it hurts.” She fisted her hand at her heart, and she looked at him so earnestly he could tell she could imagine it, picture it.
Strange he couldn’t. “Where are you in this scenario?”
“It doesn’t matter.”
“It matters.”
“Bottom line is you’d want to leave. Promises you made ten years ago wouldn’t seem so important. I know you, Trevor. You’d stick to a promise if it killed you, but who would want to be around you if it was killing you?”
Frustration bubbled up enough he was sorry her legs were trapping him on the bench, because he wanted to pace, move.
“Promises can’t be kept.”
Irritation started to poke through understanding. “Come on.”
“Life gets in the way. Even if you’re living that life, desperately trying to keep that promise, something happens.” She took his hand and squeezed, and he saw the desperation in the gesture, in her expression. “You can’t plan the future. You should know that. Anything can happen to break that promise. Maybe you wouldn’t want to break the promise, but circumstances make it so. I don’t want there to be any promises, anything like that. Because I’ve lost too much to be able to forgive you if you leave.”
Trevor tried to wrap his mind around her logic. She seemed so certain, and he wished he could share in that certainty, but he couldn’t make it add up in his head.
She was shoveling on, determined and focused on temporary. “If we agree this ends in September, if there’s a plan set in motion, there’s no threat hanging over our heads.”
“Or I could stay. Or…” He pulled his wallet out of the pocket of his pants and unfolded Shelby’s list. “Shelby gave me this the day she helped you out with Dana and you said something to her to make her feel guilty, I guess.”
