by Lauren Dane
The walls going up the stairs were full of photographs. He pointed. “This is Tuesday?”
Natalie smiled. “Yes.” She paused with a smile. “This was us back in the day. She was the first person I met when I started school. Other than staff and stuff, I mean. I went to my dorm room and she was there already. I knew within an hour that she would always be important in my life. Funny how that works.”
He understood it, though.
“This is our group.” She indicated a series of photographs. “Delia, Zoe, Eric, Rosie, Jenny, me and Tuesday. We’re 1022 because that was our room number. We had a five-room suite thing. One shared main room and a bunch of bedrooms. Eric was honorary because he lived next door. He and Tuesday married a year after graduation.”
“He’s the one who died?”
“Yeah. He was all sporty, like Tuesday. They did all this crazy stuff, like every year they did a bicycle trip from Seattle to Portland. They kayaked and canoed. It started when he was tired a lot. But he was a busy dude, so for a while they just attributed it to his job. And then he got bruises that didn’t go away.”
She swallowed hard, the emotion clear in her voice. He brushed his knuckles down her back, wanting it to be better.
“Typical dude, he didn’t want to go to the doctor, but finally he was really bad off, so he went after Tuesday pestered him relentlessly about it. They learned a week later that he had cancer. He died three months after that. He was a great guy. He and Tuesday were right. You know what I mean? Anyway, that was four years ago.”
“I’m sorry. I can’t imagine.”
“It sucked. But we all go to the doctor now if we’re sick for longer than seems normal.” She moved again, and he followed.
“The rest of your group, 1022 I mean, do they all live local?”
“Delia is a documentary filmmaker. She lives in Portland. Zoe and Jenny are in Seattle. Zoe is a biologist. She’s a freak about cetaceans. Orcas mainly. Jenny’s a schoolteacher. Third grade. Rosie lives in Brooklyn. She finds locations for commercials and advertising shoots.”
“Wow, you guys are all so interesting.”
“We went to a liberal arts college with no letter grades in the middle of the forest. It’s our kooky wheelhouse.” She pushed open a set of doors leading to a rather large bedroom with a sitting room attached. “This is my room.”
Not surprisingly, the entire room was neat and orderly. The only thing that showed any messiness at all was her bed.
“I’d have pinned you for a make-your-bed girl.”
“Why? I’m just going to get back into it, anyway.” She disappeared into a closet and came back out holding a bundle of clothes.
“Can I look in your closet?”
She took him in warily. “Why?”
“I want to see if my suspicions are correct.”
“I’m going to put my stuff in the wash. You have at it.” She waved in the direction of the closet and then left.
He poked a head in and smiled. Ruthlessly organized, just as he’d figured. Her shoes were in neat boxes, her things hung according to type and color. He opened a drawer and hummed.
“Someone likes sexy underwear.” He didn’t touch the rainbow of silky panties, which would have been sort of creepy. He’d need to propose removing them from her body with his teeth, instead.
“So, are you stealing my shoes or my socks like a foot fetishist does?” She poked her head into the closet, and he jumped. “Wow, guilty people jump like that. Should I be scared? I have mace.”
He snorted a laugh and then indicated the drawers set into the walls of the closet. “I’m far more interested in your panty collection.”
“Lipstick, a pretty bra, some nice underwear, little things that can totally make a crappy day better.” She shrugged. “Just started the laundry. We could stay in instead of eating out. We could just order pizza. There’s soup, which I can do relatively well. And stuff for sandwiches. I’d say we had junk food but other than doughnuts, I’d be lying because Tuesday thinks apples are living wild. But I do have a stash of Hot Tamales in my dresser.”
“I have plenty of junk food in my pantry. And a washer and dryer, too. I’m just saying.”
“The clothes are already in the washer. Plus, in about five minutes, I’m going to be in yoga pants and a T-shirt.”
He tossed himself on her bed after he toed out of his shoes. The scent of her skin rose from her sheets, and he didn’t stop himself from burying his face in her pillow to breathe her in.
“I’ll supervise. You don’t need a bra for just being around the house. I’m not really company, after all.”
“You’re so thoughtful.” And with that, she unzipped her skirt and stepped from it, folding it over her arm.
His mouth dried up. “Are those...are you wearing...stockings?”
She looked down at herself and then back at him with a smirk. “I do believe so, yes. Can I tell you a secret, Patrick?”
He gulped and nodded. She laid the skirt on a chair and pulled her blouse off, leaving her in nothing more than a pretty bra, barely there underpants and stockings.
She moved to him, climbing on her bed, hands and knees to him. She straddled his lap, and he leaned forward, burying his face in her cleavage until everything was perfect.
“Tell me your secret, then, Natalie.”
“I like wearing stockings. I like it when the breeze blows up my skirt and I can feel the difference between where my legs are covered and where they aren’t. It’s like a dirty secret right there under the fabric.”
“Christ.”
Her mouth canted up at the right corner, and he licked over the dimple. “You’re so dirty. You wouldn’t know it from first glance. But holy shit, you make me hard as hell.”
She reached back and undid her bra, letting it fall down her arms. “No one else has to know about a secret, Paddy. That’s the point. I can be dirty here with you. Like this. No one at my job needs to know I’m wet for you. No one at the grocery store needs to know I chose my showerhead not only for the way it massages my back.”
He might have whimpered, but it was hard to hear over the roaring white noise in his head as he imagined her in the shower, one foot up on the side of the tub as she pointed the showerhead at her pussy.
“What I am here—” she took his hands and placed them on her breasts “—belongs to me and to you. It’s not for anyone else.”
He licked over one nipple and then the other. “I love to live my life at a hundred miles an hour. I love the wild freedom of it. But I can most certainly appreciate this perspective, too.”
She paused, clearly wrestling with whatever she wanted to say next. He reached up to brush the pad of his thumb over the dent in her chin. “You can say anything to me, you know.”
“I don’t actually, but that’s not the problem.”
“What do you mean you don’t? Know that you can trust me to be honest?” He wrestled between a little bit of hurt that she would feel that way and pleasure that she’d share her feelings at all. “I’m feeling my way around here. I don’t know how to do this very well. Mainly because I haven’t done it before.”
“Done what?” She rolled her hips, grinding the heat of herself against his cock. “This? Because oh, yes, you have. I’ve been there more than once when you have.”
“Stop that. It makes it hard to think when you do that. I mean a relationship. I haven’t done it. I date around, and I have great sex, and I move on. This is different.”
One of her brows rose, and he smoothed it with his fingertips.
“Relationship seems like it might be rushing things.”
He snorted. “I’ve been on your trail since July. It’s mid-September now. I haven’t gone out with anyone else. Haven’t even thought about it. You’re what I think about. All the time. I’m not saying we’re engaged or anything, but this is a relationship, Natalie.” He kissed her because she was delicious, and he needed that after his declaration. His anxiety softened when she kisse
d him back, her fingers sifting through his hair.
He nipped her bottom lip. “You can trust me to be honest. How can we do this right if we don’t talk stuff through?” He sounded so emotionally mature, he wanted to call his mom and tell her about it. Ugh, maybe not thinking about his mother when he was in Natalie’s bed would be wise.
“Part of me loves that you’re wild because it’s who you are. But I have... I just don’t have the best feelings about that sort of life. I don’t mind wild, I just like it in private.”
She had said this all to his ear, and he gently touched her chin to get her gaze. “Thank you for saying that. What happened to you? Something in college? You seemed nearly as wild as me back in the day.”
She sighed. “In a manner of speaking. But it was more that I figured my shit out in college. Not having choices or options is to lack control. Lacking control makes me feel helpless. It leaves a person vulnerable.”
“So you put yourself in a place where you could give yourself control and you make your own choices.”
“This is a weird conversation to be having right now.”
“We’ve already established that you’re weird and tragically broken, Nats. Keep up. So. Control?”
“I spent a lot of time responsible for other people. From a very early age until I got the hell out of there at seventeen. That was a step, a huge step in yes, taking back control and owning my life and my future. And then later, I also found a measure of safety and a huge helping of control when I chose to make firm boundaries in my life. My private stuff is for me. That’s how I want it. That’s how I need it.”
“Okay. Well, tell me about your childhood.”
She grabbed his shirt and pulled it off. “I’d rather fuck.”
“Come on, talk to me.”
“I’ve talked all I want to right now. I’m nearly naked. We’re in my bed. Alone in my house. Show me how wild you are, Paddy.”
He wanted more from her, but he could see she was past her comfort zone. Desire drove him hard. So hard, he should have feared it. So hard, he let her change the subject.
He shifted enough to land her on her back, and he loomed over her, quickly getting out of his jeans and shorts. He kissed up her ribs and across her belly, up the valley between her breasts, pausing to lick the curves there. He drew his tongue up her neck, closing his eyes at the hum of pleasure she gave him in response.
He took her lips, and she wrapped herself around him, her thighs around his waist, nipples against his chest, arms around his shoulders so her nails scored into his back.
He hissed and she arched, brushing the heated silk of her panties against his naked cock.
He took her bottom lip between his teeth and pulled. The rush of heat at his cock made him even harder. “Someone likes it a little rough.”
His lips found the place where her pulse thundered, the sweet spot just below her ear. He swirled his tongue there and gave her the edge of his teeth before he moved down to her nipples.
He pushed her breasts together so he could easily travel back and forth between both nipples. The sounds she made tore at him, tore at his self-control.
“Please fuck me!”
“I was going to make you come first.” He worried her nipple between his teeth.
“Yes,” she muttered, holding his head in place. “Coming is mandatory, obviously. But you can do it while you’re in me.”
“You’re bossy.”
She squirmed, getting a hand between them and grasped his cock, fisting it a few times. Reason and patience scattered like birds.
She reached out, one-handed, and rustled through a drawer in her bedside table. Finally, she cheered and held a foil packet aloft. “Victory!”
He laughed, taking it from her and using it quickly. Then he didn’t bother stripping her panties off; instead, he shoved them to the side and thrust into her body in one stroke.
She sucked in a breath, nearly choking at how good it felt. At the dark thrill of being handled like that. He was rough. Not to harm, but like he couldn’t stop himself because he wanted her so much.
This was wild. And she was a grown woman who liked what she liked. He made it easier to do that. When she was in a relationship, she had a high libido and most definitely Paddy matched her in that department What they had when they were like this was wicked-hot chemistry. It made her feel so alive.
He put most of his weight on his forearms, resting his forehead against hers for long moments. He looked right through her. She wanted to close her eyes against it, but it was too real; she was so connected right then, it would have been a lie.
“You said you were going to take care of it yourself. The last time we were together, I mean. You should do that now.”
Maybe she should have blushed or been embarrassed. But that didn’t happen. The burst of heat wasn’t from embarrassment, but desire.
He pushed himself to his knees, holding her calves around his butt. She was totally open to him. Above her, he was like an inked, pierced sex god. She was honest-to-goodness having superhot sex with a rock star, and it was everything others had it cracked up to be.
A lock of his hair fell forward over his forehead as his gaze seemed to burn her skin. She slid a hand down her belly as he leaned in enough to roll and tug one of her nipples.
Her hand went under the material of her underpants, and she gasped when her fingertips made contact with her clit.
“Jesus. I’ve never seen anything hotter than this right here. Your hand moving as you touch yourself. Your skin flushed. Nipples hard and dark. Your body keeps gripping my cock so hard, I see stars.”
She wasn’t usually one for dirty talk. It often made her cringe, in fact. Maybe it was that it never rang true, or the men she’d been with who tried it sounded like bad porn dialogue.
Whatever the case, his words wrenched something loose inside her. Sent sensation hurtling through her even though she’d barely touched herself. She said something incoherent and he snarled, fucking into her body in hard, sharp digs, his gaze flitting between where her hand was in her panties and his fingers on her nipple because her boobs bounced merrily with each thrust.
It seemed to stretch—climax and this moment between them where she was laid bare to this man, where he was open to her because he allowed her to see inside him. Whatever it was, she’d never experienced it before, and it left her raw. In the best kind of way.
He groaned, pushing so deep, the muscles in her thighs burned a little as he held them wide with his hips. Her name was a snarl on his lips as he came, and she liked it that way. Liked knowing she filled him with the same sort of savage need he did her.
As he pulled out, he took her hand, the one she’d been using on herself, and he licked her fingers. She stared, transfixed, her skin heating all over again. With a wicked grin, he kissed her fingertips.
“Be right back.”
CHAPTER TEN
“WHAT ARE YOUR plans today?”
“Good morning, Paddy,” she mumbled, pushing the hair from her face.
He kissed her. “I mean, I know you have your presentation, but what about after?”
She groaned, throwing her arm over her eyes. “Are you perky in the morning? Because if you are, we might have to break up.”
“What’s not to be happy about? I’m here in your bed. You’re warm, and you smell good, and there’s a good chance of morning sex.”
“You have to make me breakfast for that.” A smile hinted at the corners of her mouth.
“It’s really a good thing I can cook.”
“It goes well with the big package and the ability to make my knees turn to jelly with it.”
He laughed and snuggled closer. “So? This afternoon?”
“Why?”
“I forgot to tell you Mary invited us to dinner. It’ll be all my brothers. My parents may stop in, but they’ve been away this week.”
“You forgot? Really?”
“I came into this room, and you took your clothes of
f. I forgot everything after that.”
She moved her arm away and gave him the eye. They both knew he hadn’t forgotten.
“Mary is a really, really good cook. I’m not kidding. Her food will change your life. And it would make me happy for them to meet you.”
She rolled her eyes, but kept smiling. “All right. I’ll come up there tonight. Just tell me when.”
He made them both breakfast and after a rousing bout of morning sex, she shooed him out, saying she had to prepare for her presentation.
He paused at the door. “Stay with me tonight. You’re off tomorrow. We can sleep in and go do something fun afterward. We can go out on the boat or ride horses. Whatever. Things are about to get busy on the ranch. It’s nearly time to harvest the pears, so I want to get as much time with you as I can. Let me be selfish.”
“You have to make me breakfast again.”
He laughed, pulling her back into his arms to kiss her soundly. “I will happily make you breakfast. And lunch, too. What do you say?”
“Okay. Now go. I need to go over all this PowerPoint junk. I’ll see you tonight.”
It wasn’t until he got back to his car that he saw the doughnuts on his front seat. He’d give them to her later. After dinner. When he could lick off any of the cinnamon sugar that got on her.
* * *
THIS WAS STUPID.
She looked at herself in the mirror, yet again. “I don’t know. Maybe I should just call and say I don’t feel well,” she said over the phone to Tuesday.
“Really, Natalie? Really? Come on. You’re a grown-ass woman. Why is this man making you act like you’re in tenth grade? Jeez. Has he been saying mean things to undermine you?”
“What? No! My God. He’s not a jerk. He’s actually a nice guy. It’s just...dinner with his family? Are we even at that point?”
“Now that we’ve established the rock star is a nice guy who isn’t being mean to you, we can move on to the next issue. I should charge you for this therapy.”
“Eat it, Eastwood.”
“Ha! You wish. Anyway. So obviously you are at that point since it’s happening. It’s not like you just met him today. It’s not like you just met him a week ago. You knew him years ago, and you’ve been circling each other for the last few months. You like him and not just because you want to make it okay to do naked things with him. You guys are dating. And people who date meet one another’s families and friends. Just don’t have sex on our kitchen table because I eat on that table.”
