Flustered, she didn’t seem to know what to do or what to say. Nervously, she ran a hand over the strands of hair falling across her face, then looked down at the shirt and crossed her legs, then uncrossed them and walked to the refrigerator. I watched her as she walked, amused by her embarrassment.
She was looking for the juice, and I handed it to her. “It looks better on you than it ever did on me,” I said, and I meant it. Her legs looked so smooth and lithe and, even with the bagginess of the shirt, I could see the outline of her naked breasts. I knew she wasn’t wearing anything underneath.
“Oh, is this yours?” she asked, innocently, as she took the orange juice and poured herself a glass. “I just found it in a drawer.”
“Was that drawer perhaps under my pillow?” I asked, and she looked at me wide-eyed.
I moved closer to her, lowering my face down to her neck, inhaling. “Hey there, Goldilocks,” I teased. “Who’s been sleeping in my bed?”
She didn’t move, only stood there as if frozen, and I could see her pulse beating rapidly in her neck. I moved a little closer, my lips now against her ear. “Wonder what I’ll find underneath if I lift it right over your head,” I whispered.
Just at that moment, I heard footsteps on the stairs and, as quick as a flash, Caitlyn darted away into the pantry. Cheyenne came into the kitchen, bobby pins in her mouth as she tried to force her auburn curls up where they’d stay for the duration of her shift. She looked at me and rolled her eyes.
“You don’t have to come over every morning,” she said. “I’m a big girl. I can get myself out of bed.”
She saw the two glasses of juice on the counter. “Is Caitlyn with you?”
“I believe she’s in the pantry,” I said, enjoying myself. I called out to her. “Caitlyn! Are you hiding in the pantry?”
“Just looking for some cereal!” came a higher than usual pitched voice. Cheyenne looked at me, her eyes narrowed.
“You’d better not be upsetting her,” she said.
“You heard her,” I said. “She’s looking for cereal.”
“Well, I don’t have time to fix her anything,” Cheyenne said. “I’m running late. Tell her the cereal’s in the cupboard by the fridge, where it’s always been.”
She grabbed a piece of fruit from the bowl on the table and left, still trying to fix her hair. Once the back door closed, I went over to the pantry. Caitlyn was standing there, looking nervous.
“The coast’s clear,” I said. “You can come on out now.”
Stepping out of the closet, a sheepish look on her face, Caitlyn edged past me to leave the kitchen, but I grabbed her arm. “Where do you think you’re going?” I asked. “I don’t believe we’ve finished talking just yet.”
“Talking about what?” she whispered.
I smiled and placed my hands on her waist, pulling her against me. “Well, for one thing, you… wearing my t-shirt.” She flicked her tongue over her lips, wetting them and looked up at me. That was enough of an invitation and I leaned down and kissed her.
I could instantly tell that she’d wanted it too. Her lips closed over mine and she immediately responded. She leaned forward and pressed her breasts against my chest. The kiss was slow and soft at first, and then it became more urgent as the desire burned between us. I couldn’t resist moving my hands down and lifting up the bottom of the shirt, my hands cupping her ass.
She tensed a little and broke away from the kiss. “I think maybe I’d better go,” she said. “If Cheyenne sees us, she won’t be happy.”
“Stop making shitty excuses,” I said. “Cheyenne’s on her way to work and we have all the time in the world. I want to do something I should have done back at the shed.”
I clasped her close to me, and my hands were on her face and in her hair. My tongue was in her mouth, searching for her hungrily. I wrapped my arms around her waist and lifted her up against my body, moving over to the kitchen table where I lowered her to sit on top of it.
I pushed her legs apart and stepped in between them, taking her wrists and pinning them behind her back, holding them between the fingers of my one hand. I kissed her jaw, her neck, and then her mouth again. The quivering moans that escaped her lips nearly drove me insane. I wanted to feel her warm, naked skin beneath my fingers and my hand moved to her thigh, stroking the smooth length of it before moving underneath the t-shirt and up to the glorious softness of her breast.
She gasped and cried out in pleasure, arching her back at my touch. I knew she wanted more. My thumb flicked over her nipple and I could feel it harden underneath my fingers. I couldn’t bear not seeing what I was touching and I let go of her wrists. I moved to push both hands underneath the t-shirt and lifted it right up over her head.
Fuck, she was breathtaking, sitting there in front of me fully exposed except for a pair of lacy briefs.
Her immediate response was to try to cover up her breasts, and she moved her hands up to hide her nakedness.
“No, sweetheart, don’t hide from me,” I whispered, and gently moved her hands away. “You’re exquisite.” She was beautiful, the soft orbs of her breasts peaking with stiff pink nipples. I lowered my head and took one of them in my mouth, sucking on it gently and then hungrily. She moaned and buried her hands in my hair, pulling me to her.
I wanted more of her.
I pushed her back so that she laid back on the table. I stood over her, kissing her face, her lips, and then moving back down to her glorious breasts, which had teased me long enough. I squeezed them, sucking on her nipples and then brought my tongue up through the deep valley that ran between them. I kissed down her stomach, my lips stopping just above the rim of her panties, but I wanted to go further.
With one hand planted on the table, I pressed my lips to hers once more, and then with my other hand, I trailed softly down her belly and, this time, I didn’t stop at the lip of her underwear. I pressed underneath, my hand disappearing under the elastic of the lacey material to move down to the roundness of her pubic bone.
I looked into her eyes, and her lips parted slightly, her breaths were shallow and fast. She was aroused, that much was clear, but to test it further, I ran two fingers between the lips of her moist slit and we both moaned together.
She was so wet, so wanting. I pressed my fingertips gently against the nub of her clit, playing there until she clasped my hand to her with frantic desire, her nails digging into my skin. I was so hard; my cock pressing against the table, but all I could think about was pleasuring her first. Between our bodies rose the sweet, musky scent of her, and I wanted her, right there and then.
But something was stopping me, and my suspicions about her were confirmed as my fingers slowly moved inside her, stopping at her core. I paused and slowly removed my hand. Then I kissed her gently and stroked her cheek.
I could see the confusion in her eyes. “Don’t stop, Logan!” she cried. “Please!”
Her fingers were on my face and I held them and kissed the tips, the scent of her lingering on my own fingers. “I don’t think this is a good time,” I told her. “I can’t take your virginity on a kitchen table.”
Surprised, she sat up and she became very aware of her nakedness. She reached for the t-shirt and held it to her breasts.
“How did you know?” she whispered.
“I had a feeling when you ran away from me,” I told her. “You were like a shy little rabbit and you blush like the proverbial virgin. I wasn’t completely sure until now, though. And, I’ve been with enough women to know when they’re virgins or not.”
She closed her eyes and bit her bottom lip, but I held her chin and tilted it up to me, kissing her softly.
“I can’t for the life of me understand how that’s still the case, though,” I said. “I’d have put money on someone as beautiful as you having been made a woman long before now.”
“There wasn’t anyone else I wanted,” she said, simply. “Until now.”
It was one of the hardest things I’d ever had to
do, but I knew that now wasn’t the time to rush for my own pleasure. I held her to my chest, kissing her hair and then told her it was time for me to leave.
“I have to get going,” I said. “Believe me, I don’t want to.”
But I knew it was the right thing to do, and I left the house and climbed into the cab of my truck and turned on the ignition, waiting for my erection to subside. I turned the radio on to distract myself from thoughts of turning the engine back off and going back inside and taking her up to my room to finish what I’d just started.
“Shit. I should be given a fucking medal,” I growled to myself before backing out of the driveway and heading towards town.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CAITLYN
†
THE FRUSTRATION OF HIM stopping just as I thought it was finally going to happen for me, and with him, was so strong I wanted to scream. I came alive under his touch and now I felt empty, as though I were the subject of a cruel joke, a tease. I sat on the kitchen table for a while after he left, wanting to howl with misery.
I couldn’t understand why he hadn’t taken what I was offering him. Why he hadn’t taken what he knew was his. It didn’t make any sense to me after everything Cheyenne had told me about Logan being some brute of a guy who fucked women left, right and center.
He’d been commanding, but gentle. Confident, but not cocky. He could have been inside me in a heartbeat and I wouldn’t have stopped him. Instead, he’d been the one to put on the brakes, almost as though he actually cared about me.
Between his reluctance to deflower me in the kitchen and the way he’d looked after Charlie and Eleanor Edward so selflessly, it made me wonder, yet again, if I’d been completely misinformed about him altogether.
I hopped down from the table and went upstairs for a shower. Before I left the house, I neatly folded the t-shirt and pushed it back underneath his pillow. Before I did, I held it to my face and inhaled deeply. I was tempted to take it home with me but decided against it. I knew that he’d probably check.
I didn’t see him at all the following few days and by the weekend, although I would never have admitted it to anyone, I was missing him. It wasn’t just that I lusted after him, although that was clear to both of us now. It was that there was so much I still wanted to know about him, all that was going on inside of him that I wanted to be part of, but I didn’t know whether he would ever allow me close enough to see, even if it was only a small glimpse.
Dad’s back was still a little tender, but he stopped taking any pain pills and he’d even stopped drinking completely. I was so proud of him. I mentioned to him that maybe he should consider looking for a part-time job, something to keep him occupied during the day; Now that you’re not spending so much time at Mike’s bar, I thought but didn’t add.
“You’re right,” he said. “I’ve always thought I should take better care of this place. When your mom got sick, she made me promise her not to let the house go. She loved this place so much. But, look at it. Everything’s falling apart.”
“You can’t be expected to do everything yourself,” I said. “But, even a lick of paint would help brighten everything up a little. Especially now summer’s coming and you’ll be spending more time sitting out here on the porch. How about we paint the chairs?” I suggested.
It was a spur of the moment decision, the kind that wasn’t always thought through too well, but there was a can of blue paint in the garage left over from painting the fence at the bottom of the yard, and I found a brush that would do the job. Dad sourced another from a drawer in the kitchen and, together, we sat on the grass in the front yard and began to paint.
After a few moments, though, Dad stood up, holding his back. “I think I’ll have to call it quits,” he said. “Back’s still a little bit too tender.”
“Then don’t do any more,” I said. “I’m sure I can finish it in no time.”
But, it was more difficult than it looked. The paint must have sat for too long in the garage because there were dried globs on the brush that were sticking to the thinner paint. It stuck to it so that I had to pause every few seconds to remove them and, of course, this meant the paintwork looked terrible and uneven.
At one point, I became so frustrated I screamed out loud, yelling up at the sky with clenched fists. I needed a drink and although Dad had laid off the liquor, I certainly hadn’t. There was a cold beer in the fridge with my name on it.
When I stood up, my foot hit the bucket and it tipped over, covering my foot and a patch of the grass in bright blue paint. I hopped around on one leg desperately looking for a towel, only to leave several blue footprints as I went.
Then I heard a deep roar of laughter and looked up to see Logan standing at the edge of the driveway, looking at me. His truck was parked on the opposite side of the street; I hadn’t heard anything in my fury.
I looked at him and scowled. “Stop laughing at me, Logan Steele, or I swear to God, I’m going to kick you with my blue feet.”
“It looks like a giant Smurf’s marched all over your yard,” he laughed, and he found it so funny that it actually brought tears to his eyes. I was still a little mad and now the paint was drying on my foot and cracking.
But, seeing him laugh like that, made my heart soar.
I pretended to be annoyed, though and stood there with my hands on my hips.
“Glad you find it so amusing. What do you want, anyway?” I asked. “You couldn’t have come all the way over here just to make fun of me.”
“No, as a matter of fact, I have a cheque for your dad,” Logan said and he reached into the back pocket of his jeans to pull out the folded paper. “I’ve taken the car apart and sold enough of the parts to make your dad a tidy little sum.”
“Well, he’s in the house,” I said. “Go ahead and let yourself in. And grab me a beer while you’re in there, won’t you?”
When he came out again, I’d all but given up on the painting, but Logan was keen to finish at least one of the chairs.
“With a little water, you can thin the paint out,” he said and he poured some into the leftover paint from a large glass he’d taken from the kitchen. “Keep stirring until there are no lumps left. You didn’t add any water and that’s why you’ve got the little lumps on there.”
He took the brush from me and inspected it, removing one or two loose bristles that would otherwise have been trapped under a coat of paint. Then he carefully dipped the end of the brush into the bucket and, with neat sweeping motions, applied the paint to one of the chairs.
“You know, you could have sanded these down and put a primer on first,” he said. “Then the paint would stay on longer and give a nicer finish. This is not the ideal paint, either.”
“Sorry,” I said. “I forgot you’re the local paint-whisperer, being an expert carpenter and all.”
He laughed. “I wouldn’t say I was an expert,” he said. “It’s just a hobby, but I think it’s becoming more of an obsession these days.”
“You should do something with all those pieces,” I said. “They’re so beautiful and one of a kind. People would snap them up. You mentioned opening up your own place the other day?”
“I have and I’m planning to soon,” he said. “It’s been on my mind for a while. I thought I’d get attached to everything but now I have so many, I think I could let some pieces go.”
He was quiet for a few moments, his brush strokes careful and precise. “I didn’t want to make anything after Willa died,” he said. “I thought all my creativity had died with her. And everyone was trying to tell me to move on and get over my grief. But I kept telling them that they didn’t have a fucking clue what they were talking about.”
“People always seem to be quick with offering up advice,” I said. “They don’t seem to understand that everyone deals with things in their own way.”
He looked up at me. “Yeah,” he said, softly. “Right.”
“You know, when my mom died, people would tell me all the time th
at I shouldn’t be sad. That my mom wouldn’t want me to feel that way. But, the truth is, I think my mom would want me to be sad, at least a little bit. I mean, it would have meant she wasn’t a good mom if I didn’t miss her even just a little. Does that make sense?” I asked.
He was staring at me intently and I shrugged and looked away. “Probably sounds dumb.”
“No,” he said. “That’s just it. It doesn’t sound dumb at all and you’re right. People were telling me the same thing. Telling me that Willa would hate to see me sad. And I kept wanting to yell at them that they didn’t know what the hell they were talking about. I mean, this was a girl who’d hung onto my leg and wanted to come to school with me when she was little. She used to wait at the window for me when the bus came home again like a little puppy dog. She demanded every second of my attention until the age of six. Fuck, she’d literally scream if I wasn’t one hundred percent focused on her. Of course she’d want me to grieve for her.”
I didn’t say anything, I just wanted to let him talk. But he was right. Willa, the youngest and most spoiled member of the Steele family, was the center of everyone’s attention, demanding it rather than asking for it and, most of all, she wanted the attention of her big brother. She adored him and he doted on her.
She’d put on her own shows and plays when she was old enough to talk, and if she caught anyone not looking at her, she’d stop and made them turn their head her way. She wanted to be center stage.
But, Logan had hit the nail on the head. It wasn’t for anyone else to tell him how to grieve.
“Sometimes I fear that she might look down on me from heaven in a moment that I’m not thinking about her and she’d be hurt, thinking I’m forgetting…,” Logan said, his voice cracking with emotion.
I could literally feel my chest hurt as my heart broke for him.
“Other times, I tell myself not to be so stupid. That’s when everything just seems so fucking hard. It’s when all the quiet coping becomes too much and it’s just easier to hide away and drink or pretend nothing bothers me. But, I know it’s not the truth.”
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