by Sienna Ciles
Finally, we reached the spot I’d prepared and Eve sucked in a gasp.
“Welcome to your picnic,” I said, gesturing to the blanket, the fairy lights in the trees surrounding the clearing, and the lanterns around it dimmed to provide just enough light but no intrusion.
“Wow,” she whispered. “Wow, this is incredible. I – how often do you do this, Joshua?”
“What?” I took her hand and led her to the spot.
“I mean, this is really well laid out.”
I frowned – was that what she thought? That I was a Casanova who romanced women on my ranch? “I did it for you,” I said, putting down the basket. I took the glasses from her and set them down on top of it. “I don’t – I haven’t dated in years. And not in Hope Creek.”
She worried her bottom lip. “That’s really sweet,” she said, softly.
Someone had to have hurt her in the past, if her first assumption was that this was my bachelor pad and I brought women back here for one purpose only.
“Sit,” I said, “please.” I took the champagne bottle from her, then worked the cork out. It gave a muted pop. I lowered myself to the picnic blanket and poured the bubbly into the glasses, then set the champagne aside in the cooler I’d prepared. “Here we go.”
We took a champagne glass each, clicked them together, then both drank way too deeply. She was probably as nervous as I was.
“Tell me about yourself,” I said, “I feel like I don’t know that much about you.”
“Oh, you know.” She waved her hand. “Not much to tell. I was a chef in New York, I moved here, that’s it.”
“Okay.”
Awkward silence and the air between us jellied with tension. She was close enough to touch, to kiss. I glugged back more champagne instead and tried not to think about it. This was supposed to be carefree and fun.
“Are you hungry?”
Eve swallowed and put down her glass. “Look, I owe you an explanation. I’m not really prepared for anything serious with you. It’s just – you’ve gone to so much trouble and you’re so –” She cut off and wrung her hands in her lap.
“What? You can tell me,” I said.
“You’re so gorgeous, and sweet, and I can’t stop thinking about you. I don’t want to but I do.”
“Why?”
“Because of all the reasons I just mentioned.” She blushed.
“No, I mean, why don’t you want to?”
“I’m recently divorced,” Eve whispered. “I – my ex was unfaithful and I’m not ready to move on with anyone else. I can’t when I don’t even know who I am anymore.” She crept toward me on her knees, peering up at me, desperate for me to understand her. “I can’t possibly be with someone when I’m too afraid to be myself.”
“I understand.” I hadn’t had the opportunity to have my heart broken to pieces or to love before. Every one of my relationships had been short and to the point. Any complications had only driven me into my work as opposed to my then-lover’s arms. But this was different.
I wanted to know more about Eve’s complications. I wanted to know everything.
“You’re not mad?”
“What? Of course not. How could I be mad?”
“I feel like I led you on,” she said. “I know you like me and I like you, too, but I’m just not ready. I should go.”
Eve made to stand up but I caught her wrist. “Eve, sit down. There’s no pressure here, okay? I’m not asking you to marry me and this doesn’t even have to be classed as a date if you don’t want it to be. I just want to spend time with you. As a friend, if that’s what you’re comfortable with.”
She hesitated, then sank back down again. She rubbed her arm where goosebumps had risen.
“Are you cold? I can get you a jacket from the house.”
“No,” she said, “I’m not cold. It’s whenever you touch me.”
I stared at her and she matched me. Silence, apart from the chirp of crickets in the underbrush and the gentle whisper of wind in the leaves.
“Whenever I touch you,” I said.
“Yes.” She gulped. She was so close but so far away. I couldn’t make a move on her, no matter how much I wanted to. She wasn’t comfortable. She didn’t want –
Eve placed her hand on my arm. “Like this, see?” She ran it upward, over my shoulder and to my neck. “Look.” The hairs on her arm were raised.
My breath caught. “I see. Eve, I know I said just friends but when you touch me, it makes it… difficult for me to –”
“To what?” She searched for an answer in my expression, soulful, palm still against the side of my neck.
“To resist.”
“To resist what?”
“Kissing you, touching you, making love to you. Having you as mine.”
“Yours,” she whispered, and tears gathered. God, she’d cry now and it’d be all my fault. “Yours.”
“I’m sorry. I don’t –”
“Don’t apologize.” She brought her face closer, her lips eclipsed the picnic, the trees, the lights.
“Eve,” I said, and my breaths came out forced, sharp. “Eve, I don’t want to do anything you don’t want me to do. We just spoke about it.”
“I know,” Eve whispered, hot against my skin. She touched her forehead to mine and my resolve exploded.
I grasped the back of her head, smoothed fingers over her cheek with my other hand, then kissed her. Magnetic, instant chemistry. Eve tasted of champagne and country air. “Oh, god,” she moaned, into my mouth.
I wanted to offer to stop but I couldn’t if I tried. I’d dreamed of this since the moment she’d crashed into me with her Ford.
And Eve didn’t stop either. She was in my lap, now, her arms around my neck, kissing me back hard. Our tongues intertwined. I sucked her bottom lip, gently.
“It feels so right,” she muttered.
I couldn’t have agreed more.
She shifted in my lap and inhaled, sharply. “Oh,” she said.
“Sorry,” I replied but I couldn’t summon up the decency to be embarrassed on my raging erection. I could barely block out the thoughts of her naked beneath me.
“Don’t be,” she said, turning around. Eve straddled me, arms still around my neck, then tipped me backward onto the blanket. She kissed me again, eyes closed, the intensity increasing exponentially. She fumbled with the buttons on my shirt.
I broke the kiss. “Are you sure? Eve, are you sure?”
“Don’t stop,” she said, and the sheer desperation in her voice made me ache. Eve managed to undo one button, gripped either side of the shirt and pulled. A rip of fabric and the ping as buttons popped free. One hit the champagne bottle.
Eve’s lips found mine, then traveled lower, along the side of my jaw, down my neck to my collar bone.
On fire. I was fucking on fire. I slipped the straps of her dress from her shoulders and pulled the top half down. Two pale breasts popped free, pink nipples puckering in the cold night air.
“Good god,” I growled, and looped my arms around her, forced them toward my face. I took one nipple in my mouth and sucked, nibbled, tasted her skin.
Eve arched her back and bucked her hips against my crotch. My cock couldn’t take the confinement anymore.
I reached between her legs and unzipped my pants, brought it out, pressed it against the wet triangle of her underwear – lace panties. The sensation took me to new heights. My eyes rolled back in my head. “Fuck, you’re so wet.”
Eve didn’t speak, just shifted her underwear aside and rubbed herself against me. She was so hot, slippery.
I planted my hands on her back again and rolled over, trapped her beneath me as I’d dreamed of doing for the past few nights. “You’re beautiful,” I said, kissing the tip of her nose, her cheeks, her chin. “So beautiful.”
Eve wrapped her legs around my waist and caught my bottom lip between her teeth. She nibbled, then sucked, then kissed me again.
I couldn’t take another second without be
ing inside her. I placed my cock at her entrance and pushed slowly, ever so slowly, until I was inside, then I buried myself to the base.
We cried out together. Eve tugged a handful of my hair. “Hard,” she said, “and fast.”
I did as she asked, anything to make her tighten up around me, to make her scream if I could. I pounded into her, blowing out breaths, kissing her between, my body shuddering for more, and her breasts pressing against me.
“Yes,” she whispered, “Joshua, yes.”
“Fuck. Say my name again. Please, say it again.”
She dug her fingernails into the back of my neck, fixed me with her gaze, overflowing with pleasure, desire. “Joshua. Joshua, I’m going to – I’m going to come.”
I lost it. I pounded into her, pulsed and released myself, even as she tightened around me. We were together, our foreheads touched, her heart beat against mine. This was how it was supposed to be.
This was what I’d missed out on all along.
“I think I’m falling for you,” I whispered, still buried inside her, the last throes of my orgasm racking me with belated shots of pleasure.
Eve didn’t reply. She closed her eyes and clung to me. At least, she didn’t let go.
Chapter 9
Eve
“You have to tell me what happened,” Cassidy said, shifting the beer bottle on its coaster. “Please! I need to enjoy this vicariously. It’s not every day I get to discuss the romantic prowess of a man like Joshua Jackson.”
This was hardly the place to discuss anything. The Hope Bar was just down the road from the Cowboys n’ Cuts and attracted plenty of locals on a good night. On a bad night, it was half-empty and filled with truck drivers and the odd biker with an array of tattoos.
Tonight was one of the ‘good’ nights, which meant most of Hope Creek was in the bar. Sure, they probably couldn’t hear our conversation over the AC/DC pumping through the speakers on either side of the somewhat grimy dancefloor but I wasn’t all that keen on talking about Joshua anyway.
“Come on, everyone in the town is talking about it. He did ask you out at the fair, after all. I mean, we all know you had a date,” Cassie whispered, then raised her palms. “Fine, you don’t have to tell me.”
“It’s not that I don’t want to tell you, I just respect his privacy and my own, and also –” I struggled for the words to describe how I felt about Joshua and what’d happened two nights ago.
“Also what?”
“Also, I’m not sure I’m even going to see him again.”
Cassidy’s mouth dropped open and she shook her head in disbelief, strangely in time with the thump of the base beneath their bar stools. We’d chosen a corner table but it wasn’t inconspicuous enough. Women, in particular, kept shooting glances in our direction.
This was what I got for going on a date with the most eligible bachelor in town.
“Are you telling me that I asked Ma to stay in and watch Charlie only to come out and be told that my wildest fantasy of living vicariously through you is about to be ruined?” Cassidy asked, her wild red hair bobbing from her enthusiasm. “Please tell me you’re kidding around.”
“It’s not set in stone,” I replied. “It’s just complicated.”
“Why?”
This was hardly the place to talk about it. I cast a glance back over my shoulder, then scanned the interior of the bar. “Look,” I said, “I came to Hope Creek to get away from everything. To get away from emotional attachments and sadness.”
“And now you’re here and an amazingly gorgeous man, who just happens to be rich, has popped out of the woodwork.”
“I don’t care about the rich thing,” I said, and it was true. Money had never bought me happiness with Bryan. He’d been pretty well off after opening a chain of successful restaurants – I’d never cooked in any of them. I’d never wanted for anything, except love. Except real affection. Except a loyal spouse.
“Sure, but it doesn’t hurt to know that the man who’s after you is loaded.”
“Really, I don’t care either way. And I’m not sure what to do about the situation.” I lowered my voice and leaned closer. “He’s called me at least five times in the last two days and I haven’t answered any of the calls.”
“Why not?”
“I’m not ready. I told him I’m not ready.”
“Kind of piggish of him to keep trying then, isn’t it?” Cassie asked, rolling her eyes at the general piggishness of men.
“It would be if I hadn’t gone ahead and given him the wrong idea, again,” I said. “He’s just so irresistible.” If I’d been a superhero, Joshua would’ve been the one thing that could bring me down.
“You slept with him, didn’t you?” Cassidy’s eyes lit up again. “Oh, my gosh, you did!”
“Shush, shush, keep your voice down,” I hissed. “And I’m not the type of person who does that and talks about it afterward.” Possibly because talking about it would bring back all those feelings, the pressure in my core, the absolute need, not a want but a need to have him inside me. To feel this person who’d done nothing to deserve my distance.
“I can’t help thinking that he’s just another Bryan,” I said.
“Who’s Bryan?”
I’d never shared my past with Cassidy. I told her quickly, cutting across the painful bits and distilling what’d happened into concise pieces of information. Married right out of culinary school, fine at first, then he’d betrayed me, again and again, eventually found out he’d badmouthed me to my boss. That was it, in summary.
“Oh, my god, he sounds like a dick.”
“He was. I lost myself for a while and that’s what I’m trying to do here. Get myself back,” I said. “Except now, all I can think about is Joshua.” And his eyes, and warm hands, and the look on his face when he’d said that he’d started falling for me.
“I don’t blame you,” Cassidy said. “He’s a hunk.” She gave a wistful sigh. “I wish I could meet a hunk.”
“Maybe you will.”
“Ha, good one. The only hunk I’m going to get my hands on is a hunk of meat from the butcher’s. Budget cuts. I have to keep tabs on our spending now that Mom isn’t working anymore.”
Man, I was an idiot. Here I was complaining about a billionaire lover and Cassidy couldn’t catch a break. Selfish. “Let’s forget about all that,” I said. “I’m really happy we could come out together. I know I was a bit weird in the beginning but –”
“Forget about it,” Cas said, and flapped her hands at me. “At least, we’re friends now and you’ve brought a butt load of interesting gossip to the table. Spice up my life.”
I exhaled, then drew my wallet out of my purse. “Here, could you get us another round? My treat. I’ve got to run to the ladies’ room.”
“Sure,” Cassidy replied, and downed the rest of her beer. “Let’s try something different, though. What about a vodka lime?”
“Surprise me.” I scooted off the barstool and made for the entrance to the bathrooms at the far end of the bar. I had to cross the dance floor and dodge between enthusiastic dancers and head bangers – apparently, AC/DC was fair game for both.
I slipped into the tiny passage that led past the men’s room, then pushed open the ladies’ room and entered the dingy tiled bathroom. Two stalls sat against one wall, across from a bank of sinks and mirrors – both cracked. The first stall had an out of order sign taped to its door, the other was occupied.
I surveyed my appearance and grimaced. I didn’t look terrible but the dark circles under my eyes said it all. I’d come to Hope Creek for peace and quiet, and ended up smack dab in the middle of trouble.
I’d done this to myself, though. I’d said yes to a date with Joshua, and he seemed like such a fantastic guy. I needed to relax and figure this out. That was what tonight was all about. Relaxing with my friend and mulling over what to do about Joshua.
I sighed and brushed my hair back, checked my makeup – just a dab of mascara and some lip gloss.
The stall door slapped open behind me. “Well, isn’t this an unpleasant surprise.” Faith Stone stood behind me, arms folded across her tiny chest. “Look at you, all done up. You come out to catch another man?”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked. The urge to leave Faith in my tracks overwhelmed me. Clearly, I’d angered her by dating Joshua but what did I care? She was just a spoiled brat.
“Oh, come on, everyone in town already knows what a hussy you are. There’s no need to pretend with me. Isn’t it true you spent the night at Joshua’s place?”
Images of him on top of me, kissing me, plunging deep inside, hard and fast, satisfying my fucking soul, streamed through my mind. I blanked out Faith and focused on my breathing.
“You’re such a slut. Did you really think that he wanted you for anything other than your body?”
“Oh, fuck off,” I said because I’d grown tired of this. There was only so much bitchiness I could take before I snapped – this was the type of attitude I’d never have accepted in my kitchen back in New York. I’d made my sous chef burst into tears once because she pulled this kind of thing with me. She hadn’t called me a slut, though.
“What did you just say to me?”
“I told you to fuck off,” I replied, coolly. “I don’t have time for your bullshit. Listen, if Joshua wanted you, don’t you think he would have asked you out by now? But he doesn’t, right? So why hang around waiting for him and acting pathetic? Move on with your life. Bang another farmer.” I shrugged and walked toward the exit. Forget freshening up, anything to get away from this crazy cow.
“You’ll regret that,” Faith yelled at me. “I’m going to make you regret that. Mark my words, bitch. I’ll make you –”
I exited the bathroom and let the door swing shut behind me. Faith’s screams cut out and I made my way back down the short passage and out into the bar proper. I scanned for Cassidy and spotted her over by the bartender, gripping a tall glass in either hand.
I smiled and walked to her but stopped in my tracks again.
