Sweet Summer Sunset

by Delores Fossen

  “Want some coffee?” Nico asked her and added a wink. Some women would have considered that funny charm. Not Rayelle, though. And he wondered if there was anything that made her laugh. Or cry. She seemed to be one-note when it came to emotions.

  “Thanks but no.” She used the same dismissive voice as she had with Hog. “I’ll be leaving in a minute.”

  Yeah, once Hog had driven off, but since Nico had her here, he might as well bring up something he’d been wanting them to discuss.

  “Has Piper said anything to you about her fear of having to go into another foster home?” Nico hadn’t sugarcoated it because he wanted to get to the bottom of this.

  “No.” Rayelle stiffened her shoulders and looked surprised with the question. “I wouldn’t do that. I promised Brenda that Piper would stay with me.”

  And there it was. Nico’s concern all spelled out for him.

  “I’d hope you wouldn’t move her because you want her with you, not just because of a promise you made to your sister.” Again, not a grain of sugarcoating on that.

  Rayelle kept her gaze on him, her hand moving to her chest and over her heart. Maybe he had offended her, and if so, he’d apologize. In the meantime, he also kept staring at her, waiting for an answer.

  “Piper has been somewhat of a handful,” Rayelle finally said. “What with Brenda’s death and her breakup with that boy.”

  “Jax,” Nico provided, though it nearly stuck in his throat to coax Rayelle into remembering his name. Still, Eden had said that Piper cared for Jax, and that was enough to make Nico care, too. Of course, his caring came with an asterisk attached. Jax had better not hurt Piper again.

  “Jax,” Rayelle repeated as if it’d stuck in her throat twice. “Piper’s been moody about all of that.”

  “She’s sixteen. Moody is a requirement. I sure was when I was that age.”

  Since Rayelle didn’t jump back into the heart of their conversation, Nico did it for her. “If you don’t want to keep Piper with you, then tell me now so I can do something about it,” he spelled out.

  Her hand pressed harder on her chest. “Like what?”

  “Like get Piper in a home with someone who wants her.”

  “I want her,” Rayelle practically snapped, and despite it being a snap, it pleased Nico. That sounded like the sincerest thing he’d ever heard from Rayelle.

  He didn’t question the woman’s motivation for wanting to keep a teen who she’d labeled as moody. Maybe Rayelle saw this as her only chance to ever have a child. Nico didn’t care why.

  “I just want my sister to be brought up in a loving home,” he added. “She shouldn’t be shut away in some box that’s locked away.”

  Okay, that wasn’t his best analogy, and it caused something to flare in Rayelle’s eyes. Seriously, it was like sparks of gold fireworks, and she turned on her heels so fast that Nico was surprised he didn’t feel the breeze coming off the woman.

  “I have to go,” Rayelle snapped.

  She grabbed the umbrella, whipping it up over her head as she sloshed across his yard. Obviously, he’d said the wrong thing.

  “I’ll be over in the morning to fix that roof,” he called out to her. “But I warn you, it’ll be noisy with the hammering.” Nico was talking to the rain though because Rayelle was already in her car.

  Nico didn’t shut the door. That’s because he spotted a visitor he actually wanted to see. Eden. She drove up almost as fast as Rayelle drove away, and neither of them stopped. Eden pulled up in front of his house, barreled out of her car and into the sheet of rain. Nico fumbled around for an umbrella to go out after her, but Eden made it to the porch before that could happen.

  Oh man. She looked good, despite the rain-plastered dress. Or maybe that helped with the good looks. Either way, Nico knew he wanted to kiss her, and he likely would have done that if he hadn’t taken a better look at her face.

  She’d been crying.

  His heart jumped right to his throat. “Is everything okay? Did something go wrong with Piper’s appointment?”

  Eden walked straight into his arms. “I just found out Damien cheated on me when we were married.”

  Oh. That.

  A lot of things went through Nico’s mind. How had she found out? And did she know it was more than a onetime thing? Did Eden know that he knew? But he didn’t voice any of those questions because hearing the answers wouldn’t help her get through this. He just continued to hold her while he maneuvered her inside and shut the door.

  “Damien just blurted it out,” she went on. “And while he was cheating with Mimi, she was sort of making fun of me. She wrote to my blog asking for sex advice. Advice on how to spice up the sex she was having with my husband.”

  Hell. Nico figured that had to have felt like a punch to the gut. Damien was an idiot.

  “Why did Damien tell you all of this?” he asked.

  “I don’t know. Maybe to clear his conscience. Maybe because he’s a jackass.”

  It was probably both. Nico had heard his former friend say that Eden wasn’t handling the divorce well, but Damien was the one who was doing the mishandling. There was no reason to throw his affair in Eden’s face like this.

  Eden wasn’t crying now, but since she didn’t seem so steady on her feet, he led her to the sofa, had her sit and then went to get her a beer. He opened the bottle, but when she didn’t take it, he set it on the coffee table in front of her.

  “Mimi wrote to my blog a year ago,” Eden went on. “So, they were having an affair at least several months before he left me. In fact, she’s likely the reason he left. All that time, he lied to me, and she used the advice I gave her to have naughty cowgirl sex with my husband.” Her gaze zoomed to his when he sat on the sofa next to her. “And Damien looked at my computer calendar.”

  In the grand scheme of things, that last part didn’t seem to be much of an infraction, but Nico guessed that maybe it’d gotten all rolled into the nasty mix of a cheating ex who couldn’t keep his stupid mouth shut.

  Nico hooked his arm around her, drew her against him and just held her. It wasn’t the start to the evening that he’d planned, but it was what Eden needed. If it helped for them to sit here like this all night, then that’s what he would do.

  “I don’t know why I’m upset,” Eden continued several moments later. “I mean, it’s not as if I still love him. I don’t. But this hurts.”

  Yeah, because the asshole had betrayed her. Not just with Mimi, either. Nico didn’t know exactly how many other women there’d been, but Damien had cheated at least two of the three years he’d been married to Eden. Heck, he’d cheated on her even before that.

  And that made Nico feel like shit.

  All three of them had been friends, and by keeping the secrets of one friend, he’d hurt another. He’d hurt Eden. And he wasn’t sure she would forgive him if she ever learned the truth.

  Which, of course, meant he needed to tell her.

  No way should he let her go on believing that he was the good guy, someone who’d always been loyal to her. Because if he had been loyal, he would have ratted out her cheating bastard of a husband.

  Nico eased her around to face him so that he could add another blow—his confession—to the shitstorm she’d already had dumped on her today. He managed to get his jaw unclenched so that he could speak, but one look at her, and no sound came out of his mouth. Well, except a soft grunt.

  Unfortunately, it was the wrong kind of grunt.

  Oh man. She looked good. Despite her earlier crying and frazzled expression, he could easily see the woman he’d been lusting after for days. Not good. Eden didn’t need his lust-driven moves right now. She needed Nico, her friend. Her truthful friend, who didn’t keep secrets from her.

  Eden was staring at him, too, and she seemed to be holding her breath. Waiting for him to say or do something. Which m
eant this was the perfect time for him to fess up.

  Or not.

  She launched herself at him, her mouth landing right on his, and Eden dragged him against her. Of course, she didn’t have to put too much effort into the dragging because he seemed to be weak and mindless when it came to kissing her. One taste of her, and he was no longer thinking about Damien, affairs or confessions. He was thinking about getting in Eden’s pants.

  That confirmed to Nico that this situation had the potential to make him a dick. His friend had come to him with a problem. She’d wanted to vent and verbally bash her cheating ex-husband. She wasn’t in any mental shape for sex.

  Nico repeated that to himself.

  While he continued to kiss her.

  That wasn’t a good sign, but he did put a mental stopwatch on this lip-lock. He savored, deepened and let the feel of her slide him into some scalding sweet pleasure before he finally caught on to her shoulders. He moved Eden back just a few inches so he could make eye contact with her.

  “This is about Damien,” he said to jog her back to reality.

  The jogging worked, more or less. She looked at him with her heavily lidded, lust-filled amber eyes. “Huh?” she asked.

  Considering that she seemed very confused by his comment, Nico wondered if he’d gotten it wrong. Of course, he was wishing he’d gotten it wrong so he could haul her off to the bedroom, but he needed to make sure he wasn’t crossing a line here. Damn. It was hard to figure out the rules when you wanted to have sex with a friend.

  “I just don’t want you to jump into something you might regret,” he tried again. “I don’t want you using this—us—to get back at Damien.”

  He could see Eden take a second to consider that. Could also see her dismiss it, and she did the dismissing by going back for another kiss. It didn’t just stay a little kiss, either. She fisted her hand in the back of his hair, anchoring his mouth against hers, and climbed onto his lap.

  This time, Nico didn’t grunt. He groaned, and the sound was a mix of pleasure and pain. Pain because he wasn’t going to be able to let this go where Eden wanted it to go. And he had no doubts about the destination she had in mind because she slid her free hand lower to the front of his jeans.

  Over the years, he’d used a trick when he found himself running too hot. Like now. He mentally hummed old show tunes. Something too perky to add to the heat and force him to think about anything else instead of getting inside the woman who was on his lap and brushing herself against his erection.

  Oh yeah. He had an erection all right. Even “Hello, Dolly” didn’t stand a chance against Eden’s mouth and squirming body.

  After he’d gone through every single word of “Hello, Dolly” that he knew, Nico was still losing ground. Worse, he was doing his own touching now. His hand was also between them, jockeying for position with Eden’s so that he could remind himself of just how good her puckered nipples felt between his fingers.

  Damn good.

  “Eden,” he managed to say, and there must have been something in his voice that caused her to pull back. Not to stop touching though—

  His eyes crossed when she gave his dick a squeeze.

  “I want you,” she said.

  “Yeah. You made that clear, and that part of me you’re squeezing makes it clear that I want you, too.” Just in case she’d fried her every brain cell, he gave in to the heat and kissed her again.

  Sheez. Why did she have to taste like that? Like everything he’d always wanted but didn’t know until he’d tasted her. Nico figured that was going to be a question for the ages and definitely not something he could suss out right now. After all, his hard-on was frying some of his own brain cells.

  “Eden,” he repeated when he finally forced himself to tear his mouth from hers. “This might not be the right thing for you to do.”

  Oh, it hurt to say that, and if his hard-on could have managed it, it would have knocked Nico upside the head.

  “Why?” she asked, and that one word was filled with her warm breath. A breath that brushed against his mouth like a kiss. No. More than a kiss.

  He had to clear his throat, and his head, so he could speak. “Because you might be doing this since you’re upset with Damien. I get why you’re upset,” he quickly added. “You have every right to be, but I don’t want you to regret something we do here after you’ve cooled off.”

  “I won’t regret it.” Her breathy response rushed out so fast that Nico knew she’d given it exactly zero thought. Under different circumstances, he might have liked that since he’d never thought of sex as a deep thought kind of experience.

  But this wasn’t normal circumstances.

  This was Eden.

  “Besides,” he went on when he managed to speak, “we need to talk. There’s something you should know.”

  “I don’t want to talk. I want to have sex with you,” she insisted. “No talking,” she added when he tried to speak. “I don’t want to hear anything that’ll stop what’s happening.”

  Well, hell, that put a lid on his confession. Though it shouldn’t have. Nico knew he should push it, that he should make her hear the truth, but Eden put an end to his resolve with just three words.

  “I need you,” she said in a breathy whisper.

  Okay, so that spurred a change in his plans. First, he’d get rid of this lust storm that was bearing down on both of them, and then he could tell her about Damien.

  “Just in case you might regret it,” he tried again. “We’ll do something that might end up causing you fewer regrets. It’ll give you some thinking time,” he added when she opened her mouth to protest.

  Since it was obvious her protest would just continue, he kissed her. No hardship on his part. Eden was just as hot and tasty as she had been a few moments earlier, and Nico could feel his erection testing the zipper of his jeans.

  Speaking of jeans, Nico slid his hand into hers. Right past the loose waist and down into her panties. His fingers found her. Wet, of course, which made his stupid dick start to beg him to make this something more than a hand job.

  And it was indeed something more.

  “You’ve got a Brazilian,” he managed to say once he groaned. Hard to think with discoveries like that. “I didn’t expect that.”

  She nodded. “I had it done a couple of years ago for blog research and decided to keep it. It’s good for swimsuit season. You don’t like it?”

  “I’m a guy. I’ll like pretty much anything when it comes to that part of your anatomy. Any part of your anatomy,” he added when he ran his gaze down her body. Even though he didn’t get that good of a look, he peeked down into her jeans, too.

  Yeah, he liked the Brazilian.

  His fingers liked it as well because they went to work on her.

  Eden gasped, but it was from pleasure, and her eyelids fluttered as her body bowed. “You can’t do that,” she said. And yep, there was her breathy voice again. Air foreplay. “I won’t last.”

  Nico would thank his lucky stars if that was true because his willpower was waning fast here, and he didn’t want to cave in. But then he remembered their sex talk. The one where she’d told him about her quick-draw orgasms.

  Her body was still bowing, and her hips still thrusting so that his fingers slid deeper into her. “Alabama,” she said, gutting it out.

  “What?” Nico managed just as Eden said, “Alaska.”

  And then she shattered. The orgasm racked through her, and he could feel her wet slick muscles squeeze his fingers. Tight little spasms that would have felt damn good around his dick. He pushed that aside though and gathered Eden in his arms as she collapsed against him.

  Her breath wasn’t brushing now. It was gusting, and he could feel her heart thudding against his. Nico gave her a minute, then two before he had to ask.

  “Alabama, Alaska?”

  She
kept her face buried against his shoulder. “It’s a trick I use when I run too hot. Which is pretty much all the time when it comes to sex. I recite the states in alphabetical order.”

  So, it was like his show tune thing, but he liked her trick better and might borrow it. It didn’t feel right for a cowboy and rodeo champion to mentally hum “Singing in the Rain.”

  Eden finally pulled back, looked him in the eyes. “And now you’re going to ask how far down the list I’ve made it before I climax.”

  No, he wasn’t going to ask it, but mercy, he wanted to know.

  “That’s it,” Eden said when he didn’t answer. “Never got past Alaska.”

  For some stupid reason, that made Nico smile, and it made him think something equally stupid.

  Eden and he were going to have so much fun trying to make it all the way to Wyoming.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Dear Naughty Cowgirl,

  My sweetie’s b’day is coming up soon, and I want to do something extra special for him. Maybe something to do with his hobby since he likes to tinker with fixing up cars. Any ideas?

  Raring to Go in Dallas

  EDEN FOUND HERSELF smiling when she read the post, and unlike the last couple of months, a lot of suggestions instantly came to mind. Hot, dirty suggestions. So many of them in fact that she took out a notepad from her desk at the law office so she could jot them down. Roy was in with a client, and there was no one else scheduled for an appointment so she figured that she’d have some privacy to whip out some ideas and then narrow down how to respond.

  Apparently, Dallas wasn’t the only one raring to go.

  Her climax the night before with Nico had left her with a nice buzz. Strange, considering that they actually hadn’t had sex, but after he’d sated her with that hand job, she had understood his reasoning for what he’d done. He hadn’t wanted her to plunge into sex with him until she was positive it wasn’t some reaction to hearing that Damien had cheated on her.