Cooking with Kandy

by Peggy Jaeger

  Before she ended the sentence Josh had the watch open and was handing it back to her.

  “You don’t have to look so smug about it, you know.” She tossed it into one of the cabinet’s drawers, then slammed it shut.

  When she turned around to face him again, he’d moved back to her bedroom and was leaning against the dresser.

  “That was some pretty colorful language,” he said, trying to suppress a grin.

  Her face heated and she crossed her arms in front of her chest. “I’m sure you’ve heard worse.”

  He let the grin break free. A moment later his face went serious again. “You okay?”

  “I’m hurt, more than anything.”

  “Mason?”

  She nodded. “I get he wants to leave. I really do. But I wish he’d been honest about it and had come to me, discussed it. Talked it over. It hurts that he felt he had to go behind my back. But.” She stopped and took a ragged breath. Biting down on her bottom lip, she glanced away from his face and added, “I realize that’s probably as much my fault as his.”

  “Oh?” His own face could have been a blank piece of paper for all the expression—or lack of it—she saw looking back at her.

  Her eyes narrowed to slits, her lips creasing at the edges. “Yes, oh. You’re the one who made me see how overbearing and domineering I could seem—”

  “I never said that, Kandy.”

  “—to others.” She shook her head. “Maybe not in those precise words, but the thought is the same, so I take some of the blame for him being so secretive. What I can’t understand is why he wants out. The show is number one. Nobody leaves a hit show. It’s like professional suicide.”

  “You ran out of the kitchen before I got a chance to finish.” Josh told her about the conversation he’d had with Cort at the reception bar.

  When he was done, she sighed. “I should have realized it had something to do with Alyssa. That woman is a soul-sucker.”

  His soft chuckle warmed the air around her.

  With the pads of her fingers she rubbed her eyes, and blew out a breath. “I’m so tired of all of this. Every bit of it, from nasty phone calls to thieving ex-boyfriends. I want this over. I want my life back, Josh.”

  “I know.”

  What propelled him to reach out for her she’d never know, but when he pulled her into his arms—arms she folded into easily and willingly—and whispered against her hair, “It’ll all be over soon, Kandy, I promise. It’ll all be okay. Soon.”

  She closed her eyes and drank in the comforting, solid, and steadfast feel of him. “When?” she asked, her face burrowed in his shirt. “I want it over now.”

  With one hand around her waist to keep her secure, Josh trailed the other up and down her back, gently rubbing, while his lips pressed against her temple. “Shhh.”

  In a heartbeat she went from tired and angry to aroused, as his fingers danced up and down her spine. She knew he meant to comfort her, but his actions had entirely the opposite effect.

  She stilled, and when his grip loosened, her hands wound up around his neck and she brought herself fully against him, clinging with all her strength. She tilted her head and skimmed her lips across his jaw.

  “Kandy—”

  She ignored the warning plea in his voice and brought her mouth to his.

  At first, the kiss was slow and thoughtful. His mouth was gentle and full of tender solace as it pressed against hers.

  But Kandy didn’t want gentle, and she certainly didn’t want solace. She laved at his bottom lip with her tongue, pushed his lips apart and dived in.

  In a snap, the kiss changed.

  What was unhurried and caring, became urgent and wanting, sending spirals of delight up and down her spine, making her feel as if she’d burst into flames.

  Her mind went into a tailspin at the velvet warmth pressed against her. Her nails raked at his neck, slunk down the collar of his shirt to tease the skin at his back. When his mouth moved to her neck, sucking at the soft spot just under her ear, Kandy’s nipples hardened to hot, throbbing pebbles.

  Cupping his face in her hands, she forced his lips back to hers and with a boldness she was coming to accept from herself, plunged her tongue back into the delectable caverns of his mouth, and feasted. His heart pounded under her fingers as she wove them into the front of his shirt, snaking a hand around the buttons and popping them open. His chest was stone-solid and molten-hot. When her nail scratched across one flat nipple and felt it pucker in a twinkle of time, power surged to her very soul. She moved her lips down the angle of his jaw, over the rapid heartbeat at his neck to rest in the soft mat of hair on his chest. Trailing wet, open kisses across the firm pack of his pecks, Kandy heard him moan, and felt his shudder of need burst underneath her hands.

  In one swift and effortless motion, he lifted her and carried her to the bed.

  Staring up at him, a myriad of emotions blazed like gamboling flames in his moss-colored eyes.

  “Kandy?”

  She laid her palm across his mouth and her stomach muscles tightened when his tongue licked across it.

  “Don’t say anything,” she whispered. “Please.”

  He took her hand with his own and kissed it with such utter tenderness, Kandy melted from the inside out.

  Stretched out fully on his side, Josh rested on an elbow; Kandy was spread on her back next to him.

  Without another word, he brought his mouth back to hers.

  As they drank from each other, Kandy sensed how right being with him felt. Nothing was as right, as certain, as this was.

  Their kisses grew frenzied, bolder. The dull ache in her heart at Cort’s betrayal disappeared as if it had never existed when Josh sighed against her neck.

  She rolled on top of him, her dress hiked all the way up her thighs, and straddled him, her hands tethered around his neck so she could kiss him again.

  His erection pulsed against her, held in check only by the fabric of his pants.

  Josh reached behind her and dragged the dress zipper down her back, slipped the material from her shoulders and down, freeing her breasts into his hands. She knew no other man, at no other time, would ever make her feel this good, this cherished, or this adored.

  The couture dress was reduced to a huddled slip at her waist as he dragged it down the length of her torso, his wicked mouth following in its wake.

  As his tongue tantalized and teased her sensitive nipples, rolling around their hardened peaks, she arched to give him free range to all of her. When his tongue dipped into the tiny opening of her navel, she lifted her hips and Josh switched their positions, holding her as he spun them around.

  Flat on her back now, Kandy laid back on the pillows as Josh moved lower, his mouth never leaving her skin, marking her as his own with each and every touch. He pulled her dress off and carelessly tossed it to the floor. His teeth scraped along the outer edge of her lace thong, grabbing it between them and drawing it down. Kandy lifted her hips as he slid it down and off with mind-numbing slowness. Every inch of skin it skimmed across, his lips and tongue followed.

  All kinds of sensations danced on Kandy’s body as he sucked the hollow at the back of her knee, the indentation where her ankle began, the spot just below the arch of her foot.

  At last, he tossed the thong on top of the dress and parted her legs with a gentle nudge of his nose. When he put his mouth on her and drew his tongue across the length of her heat, she fisted his hair in shaking hands. His tongue danced and dipped around her, pulling the swollen nub deep into his mouth, sucking as if its existence was nourishment he desperately needed. Wave after rolling wave of pleasure shot out from his touch.

  He glided two fingers inside her, his thumb continuing its rhythmic dance across her heat.

  “Josh.”

  She wasn’t sure she’d said his name or even why until she felt his warm breath against her and heard him say, “Right here, Kandy. I’m right here with you.
”

  His fingers continued their tantalizing torment, moving in and out, stretching her sensitive skin. She clenched around him with each soft thrust, his fingers slick with her moisture.

  The crest began to peak and she grew helpless against it. When the deep, rolling spasms engulfed her a moment later, all her senses were centered on the pleasure pitching through her.

  Her insides were still quaking when Josh placed a sweet kiss to her thighs. Slowly, slowly, he removed his fingers from inside her. Kandy watched him stand and shed his own clothes, carelessly tossing them on top of hers.

  Raised in a house almost entirely of women, the Laine girls had spent countless hours as teenagers wondering about the male body and imagining what it looked like, how it felt, how it functioned.

  Naked before her now was a man so magnificent, nothing in her imagination had come close to the reality of Joshua Keane.

  He bent to her and claimed her mouth again, his hands exploring every inch of her body.

  Kandy’s hands began a none-too-subtle exploration of their own.

  She trailed her fingertips across his torso, raking the skin with a featherlike scrape. She smiled when she felt how rapid his breathing was, his chest rising and falling as she moved in his arms. She pinched his biceps, charmed when he flexed against her fingers.

  His stomach muscles were defined and toned, and the glimpse she’d seen of them when he’d gotten into bed reminded her of a marble statue, carved and cut to exquisite perfection. The thick mat of hair trailing down his abdomen, down farther, had her fingers itching with need. She circled her hand along his shaft, felt it jump and pulse as she wrapped her fingers tightly around it. Kandy swore Josh stopped breathing. His mouth, his glorious, hot mouth, went still on her neck, as she moved up and down the length of him, deliberately, tortuously.

  “Kandy.”

  “Right here.” She smiled, giving him back his words. “I’m right here with you, Josh.”

  He pulled up to look at her. Kandy’s own breathing ceased at the shocking, mindboggling level of intensity and heat in his eyes. She couldn’t see any green at all; his black, dilated pupils had obliterated all color.

  “Sweetheart,” he said, softly. “I don’t have anything to protect you.”

  Without a word, she reached over to the nightstand. In a heartbeat she had a condom foil in her hands, ripped, opened, and on him in less time than it took him to draw a jagged breath from her touch.

  He shifted and parted her thighs with his knee when she fell back again. Kandy opened for him, lifting her legs up high over his hips to rest, crossed at the ankles, on his back. She could feel the coiled tension across it, the muscles flexing and extending. Josh, stared down at her face again, a question in his eyes and across his brow.

  For a silent answer, she snaked her hand around his neck and pulled his mouth back to hers.

  In the next instant, she felt him, stiff and fiery, at her entryway. She dragged a hand down his back, rested it on one exceptionally fine, firm butt cheek and pressed him fully into her.

  Heat met scalding heat.

  He fit perfectly, sliding along her walls, not a fraction of space to spare between them. With a slow and languid rhythm, Josh moved within her, filling her all the way up to her soul with each small thrust.

  That extended beat promptly changed, as he quickened the pace, Kandy keeping up with the tempo, movement for movement.

  This was the only man for her, now and forever. She knew it in her heart, in her very being.

  Blinding lights exploded behind her eyes when Josh moved one final time, emptying into her and draining them both. On a broken sigh, Kandy whispered his name and with it, her love.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  It was difficult to believe he could still breathe. It was unfathomable to think he could experience such pleasure and live. He had to have died and shot straight to paradise, because that’s where he was.

  Heaven. Pure and simple.

  When her nails scratched gently at his back, Josh knew even heaven didn’t feel this good.

  Rising on an elbow, he stared down at her lovely face.

  The lazy smile traipsing from corner to corner of her mouth made the hairs on the back of his neck stand at attention. They hadn’t even moved apart and already he wanted her again.

  She was so beautiful. Her face, calm and peaceful for the first time in hours, was devoid of all the heartache she’d been put through.

  To say he was pleased to have put a smile on her face was an understatement.

  To feel his life and their relationship had changed forever in the span of an hour was the absolute heart-stopping truth.

  To know he loved her with all his being and yet he still had a job to do for her was torture.

  Complete and gut-wrenching torture.

  He hadn’t meant for this to happen now. He’d wanted the person tormenting her locked away and out of her life before he told her what she meant to him.

  Seeing her so despondent, so saddened by her disappointment in Cort had cut right through his heart. When he’d taken her in his arms, his only goal had been to reassure. The moment he felt her lips on his, that objective had shifted to need.

  His.

  He’d heard those small words, gasped, just as she came that final time with him buried deep inside. Words that changed everything, not only because he felt the same, but because he knew she would never have given them a voice unless they were true.

  He needed to tell her what she meant to him, what he wanted with her, for her.

  For them.

  But still, his deep sense of honor to see her problem through came first.

  “Kandy?” he whispered.

  “Mmmm?”

  Her satisfied, sexy smile made his insides clench.

  When she opened her eyes, and he saw every emotion she possessed swimming in them, he hated himself.

  “Are you okay?”

  Her mouth spread into a huge grin, as her eyes laughed at him. “I am now.”

  He rested his forehead down on hers and sighed. His own ears heard it wasn’t the sound of contentment it should have been after what they’d just shared. She shifted and stared up at him, her unlined brow furrowing.

  “What’s wrong?”

  His heart broke when he heard the doubt seeping in the simple question.

  “Kandy…I don’t know what to say to you.” He sat up and threw his legs over the side of the bed, head hung in his hands.

  “About what just happened?” she asked, sitting up as well, pulling the sheet over her exposed body.

  “Yeah.” He swiped his hands through his hair and sighed again. He moved to the bathroom, discarded the condom, and came back to her. “It shouldn’t have. Not like this. Not now,” he said, unable to meet her eyes. “You were upset. You needed to be comforted and I, well, I let it go further than I should have.”

  When he finally looked at her, his heart broke in two.

  Ravaged was the only word to describe the way she glowered at him. Eyes wide and constricted, moisture forming at the corners, trembling lips now white, almost matching the chalk in her cheeks.

  He’d hurt her. Hopefully, not beyond repair.

  “Kandy, I’m sorry—”

  “No.” She shot up from the bed, yanking the sheet as a shield. “Don’t you dare say that. I’m the one who’s sorry. More than I can ever tell you.”

  “Kandy, please—”

  “Get out!”

  On that order, she fled into the bathroom and slammed the door.

  Her sobs broke free immediately. Knowing he was the cause of such heartache was devastating. Torn between duty and love, he had to choose duty. Rising, he reached for his pants, gathered up the rest of his clothes, and went back to his room.

  * * *

  Kandy cried herself dry.

  He’s sorry. Sorry! God, what a thing to say after…she sat down on the edge of the tub, still co
cooned in the sheet.

  It was more than just sex. It was.

  There’d been a connection, a melding of more than just bodies. She’d felt it the moment his lips responded to hers. Total surrender on both their parts to what was happening between them.

  She was no fool, no naive little girl. She knew the mechanics of sex, the hows and whys. She hadn’t known what true lovemaking was, though; that was the truth. To give yourself—your total self, your control, and all that came with it—over to someone, was amazing. She’d never done that before, never allowed herself to be so unconcerned, so uncontrolled in her actions. She’d relinquished every ounce of herself, her body and her spirit, to him. Kandy knew what they’d shared had been unique. She could feel it in her bones. Josh had wanted her with a desperation and desire only she could quench.

  And she’d felt the same.

  He was everything she’d never let herself dream of, wrapped into one beautiful and able-bodied package.

  “And,” she said aloud, turning on the shower, “he’s sorry for what happened.”

  While the steaming water sluiced over her, she could feel small tremors shuddering through her insides, where Josh had been just minutes before.

  She wasn’t sorry for what they shared, that was certain.

  Stepping from the shower, she wrapped a towel around her body and sighed as she towel-dried her hair.

  Mechanically, she slathered lotion on her face and ran a comb through her hair, pulling it up into a high ponytail.

  Men.

  A look of disgust fanned her face as her reflection mirrored back at her.

  Angry, hurt, confused, and knowing she’d never get any sleep, Kandy tossed on a pair of jeans, a T-shirt, and her running sneakers.

  Work was the only thing to help her forget all the unpleasant things she’d heard tonight. From Alyssa’s accusations, to Cort’s secret, and finally to Josh’s hurtful apology, all Kandy wanted to do was run away from it all.

  So she sought refuge in the one place she knew no one would be around to bother her.

  * * *

  Josh finished his shower and wrapped a towel around his waist. He thought he heard a noise in the foyer, opened his bedroom door, and peeked out.