“What?” she said, furling her brow.
He cocked his head. “Oh, nothing.” He stuck both hands in his pockets and she glanced down at the most inopportune moment to notice that he’d suddenly sprung a bulge in his shorts.
“God,” she said, pointing at his crotch. “You men are so Pavlovian. How does someone merely eating a pastry get you hot and bothered?”
“First off, it wasn’t the pastry-eating that caused that autonomic response, thanks. It was the sound of you moaning as if you were in the throes of an orgasm. And yes, the sound of an orgasm is all it takes for a guy to get a hard-on.” He shook his head. “And the other thing is maybe it was just my body’s way of proving your lie from last night.”
She frowned. “My lie? I didn’t lie about anything.”
He held up his hand, spreading his thumb and pointer finger apart about an inch. “This ring a bell?”
She smiled. “Heh. Well, yeah, so?”
“So what if I wanted to ask Binti out on a date? Now she wouldn’t even go, because she thinks I’m diminutive.”
“Diminutive? Is that what they call it?” She walked farther into the living room and began shifting piles of stuff to make a clearing in the center of the room. “Besides, you can’t date my best friend.”
“Why not?”
“Because you’re you,” she huffed. “What you did to me permanently disqualifies you from being with anyone I know or love. You screw me, you screw them.”
He held his hands up in surrender. “Okay, okay, fine. I will never date anyone you know, have known, will ever know. But at least clarify that I’ve got a big cock, would you? It’s the least you could do, having ripped into my reputation.”
Ugh, the mere mention of that big cock of his had things stirring in parts that she thought had fossilized. She crossed her legs against the sensations now supercharging her clit. It was undeniable: he had an award-winning penis and knew how to use it. But she couldn’t let on to him that she remembered it. Badgering him the way she had about something that happened long ago was so unlike her. But under the circumstances, it was too easy to do, and she felt validated for having the chance stick it to him. It was the least she could do.
“Honey, you ruined your own reputation when you walked out on me.”
He rolled his eyes and pretended to buff his nails. “Whatever. I guess I can show Binti when the time is right that you were a hundred percent wrong about me.”
“You mean about your girth, or your worth?” Oh, snap. That was a good comeback.
He surprised her by bursting into laughter. “Oh, Daphne, I remember you always had a great sense of humor.”
Well, then why did you up and blow me off like you did?
She decided not to continue the discussion and instead rerouted them toward the business at hand. “Enough chitchat. It’s time to get down to business. I’m going to start in this corner.” She pointed toward the window end of the living room on the right. “And you’re going to be across from me, there.” He got defaulted to the corner on the left. She wanted to keep him close by to ensure he didn’t throw out anything of value—emotional or financial. “I am going to grab some sheets from the closet, and we will make piles on each sheet for the appropriate way of dispensing of things. Now if there is a legitimate piece of trash, you can clear it with me before throwing it in the garbage. Got it?”
“Yes, sire. At your service, sire.”
She lifted an eyebrow and turned around without comment, not even asking him why the grandfather clock was covered in tablecloths.
THEY FELL INTO SILENCE for a while as they worked. Daphne figured it would be awkward. but she got so caught up in memories that she almost forgot The Jerk was even in the room. It was easy to purge piles of old magazines and things that almost no one would want. But the sentimental things were tough. She picked up Violet’s favorite sweater—a snagged, old blue cardigan—and held it to her face, sobbing quietly.
“Everything okay over there?” Brady said.
She peered from around the sweater and wiped away her tears with her T-shirt.
“Do you normally cry over outerwear?”
“Stop,” she said. “It was Violet’s favorite sweater. I think her sister knitted it for her years ago. She wore it all the time, especially after her sister died. It was kind of a touchstone to the past for her. I can barely think of Violet without thinking about this sweater draped over her shoulders.”
Brady was silent for a beat.
“I’m sorry.” Standing, he looked around till he spotted a box of tissues and carried it over to Daphne. “Here.”
She was shocked that he had the capacity to have feelings. Which wasn’t very charitable of her. Plenty of people had the capacity to have feelings even if they’d done cruel things too. It was the human condition, wasn’t it?
“Thanks,” she said, smiling weakly. “Every now and then it hits me in weird ways. Like in the afternoon, at five o’clock, when she and I would sit down with a cup of tea and talk about the day. I miss that so much.”
“She sounds like a nice lady.”
“You don’t know the half of it. Violet was something special. So sweet and thoughtful and joyful. She used to sit on the porch and wave to everyone who walked by.” She flailed her arms like she was Violet on the porch waving. “Half the time she’d insist they stop and talk to her. Or she’d offer them a brownie or a cookie. Violet loved her sweets. She made the most delicious shortbread I’ve ever had. I never did get the recipe from her. I guess I always figured I’d have her to make it for me.”
Tears filled her eyes again.
“I’m sorry, Daph. I know she was special to you.” Brady came over and sat next to her and put his arm around her.
“She was like a grandma and a mom and a good friend all wrapped up in one to me,” she said, her voice trembling. “I miss her so much.”
She tried to hold back her sobs but it wasn’t working and pretty soon she was ugly-crying, which was the worst. She sounded like a goose in heat. If geese went into heat. She wondered if that was even a thing. Maybe they just laid eggs. No, that would be like immaculate conception. Impossible. There had to be a boy goose in there somewhere. She remembered watching a video about how horribly violent male ducks are, forcing their ugly duck selves on poor, unsuspecting girl ducks who are going about their business, tooling around the lake. What was it with the males in the world? Did they merely do whatever they wanted, when they wanted, and to hell with the females? Was it even fair to wonder about that? It’s not like all males were awful. Well, certainly male ducks. At least from what she saw on that YouTube video. She shuddered. It was pretty awful. She was glad she wasn’t a girl duck.
Wait a second. Was that Brady reaching around to give her a hug? And was she supposed to hug back? Wasn’t that proper hug protocol? When someone is comforting you in your time of need with a hug, you reciprocate the gesture, right? And what about when he’s running his fingers through your (very tangled) curls? And dragging his fingertips along your scalp in that way that made you mew like a satiated kitten when he did that all those years ago. Because that was what he was suddenly doing. At eight thirty in the morning in Violet’s living room while they sifted through her life. And why did it make her into that very Pavlovian dog she’d accused him of being, because she was suddenly feeling all sorts of tingly in her long-neglected girl parts. Was this because she hadn’t been touched by another man in, like, forever? She’d truly forgotten how sensual the touch of another human could be.
She decided the appropriate course of action was to relent, to simply ride the horse in the direction it was galloping and hug him back. After all, he was being kind enough to either care or at least approximate a degree of caring. That had to count for something.
But then he doubled down, pressing her head to his shoulder, his hand flattened to the back of her head as he intermittently stroked her from the top of her scalp to the bottom of it. And she couldn’t help but mel
t into him, just as the years suddenly melted away and they were back in her apartment all those years ago. And she remembered why she’d felt so safe in his arms: they were warm and secure and caring. But how could she reconcile this Brady with that Brady and stop hating him so intensely?
Chapter Eight
WHAT A DIFFERENCE A day made. Was it just a little more than twenty-four hours ago that Daphne was a full-on raging Medusa toward him? And now here they were in a lover’s clinch of sorts—albeit one rooted in her sadness, not lust, but still. This was progress. It’s not like he had some grand scheme to seduce her, but now that he held her in his arms, he was starting to remember the old Daphne, the sweet girl he met on the first day of their senior symposium during their last semester of college. He’d been so impressed with her smart questions and the way she carried herself with such confidence. She seemed so much more mature than the other girls he’d dated: smart and ambitious and not willing to take no for an answer. It didn’t hurt that she showed up at the lecture in her workout clothes—usually a tiny sports bra and a pair of yoga pants. Those outfits left little to his imagination, which ran rampant even when he merely looked at her rack.
They’d hit it off immediately. Their casual banter alone was so sexy, it nearly got him hard remembering it. He hadn’t realized what a turn-on a smart woman was until she came along and now he wondered why he’d found her so easy to cast aside. They’d gone from casually chatting before and after their lectures to dating pretty exclusively within a couple of weeks. So maybe it was unfair for him to act as if they’d barely dated at all. It had been nearly six months by the time he bailed on her. Granted he’d tried to tell her what he had planned. But she never wanted to hear it. So, he’d stopped discussing it. It was far easier to talk the language they spoke best, in bed. And there they had no disagreements, ever.
As he stroked Daphne’s hair, he couldn’t help but nudge his face toward hers, till their lips were almost touching. He turned a little bit more and pressed his forehead to hers. Daphne had stopped crying, and the only thing he could hear was their breathing, twined together. And the damned grandfather clock ticking away. He slid his hands around to cup her face and angled his head, settling his lips on hers. His breath hitched in his chest as a flood of memories washed over him, the soft warmth of her mouth on his, the sweet bite of the cinnamon gum she always kept tucked away in her mouth, the soft coo wafting up from her throat, all of it bringing him back to those simpler times when they hadn’t a care in the world.
At first it was all him, as he slowly slipped his tongue into her mouth, probing, exploring, searching, trying to elicit a response from her. He grew discouraged, worried she wasn’t going to reciprocate, but then he heard the moan rising from her throat and felt her tongue warm against his as they tangled and explored each other’s mouths. Brady pulled her tighter toward him as one hand slipped lower and settled briefly on her waist before beginning to explore, inching beneath her tank top till it found her bra. Luckily it was one of those thin ones, not all padded and wired, so he could feel the shape of her breast and trace the outline of her hardening nipple. God, he didn’t want to rush this, but how could he not? His fingers pressed beneath the lower edge of the bra, pushing it up and over her breast, and finally—finally!—he felt the warmth of her flesh, the curve of her beautiful breast, the hard press of her swollen nipple against his fingers.
Daphne moaned again, and he took that as a green light, moving his other hand along her body as he leaned forward to ease her onto Violet’s oriental rug, giving him easier access and enabling him to slip his fingers beneath the waistband of her shorts as she thrust her hips toward his probing hand. With ease, his fingers slid beneath her panties, quickly parting her lips and finding her slick and ready. He groaned into her mouth and she cried out at his touch.
“Is this okay?” He knew he had to at least ask.
“More,” she said, pressing her pelvis toward him. “Please. More.”
The man was honor bound to continue, immersing his fingers in her moist juices, then plunging into her center as she pulsed against him, encouraging him on. Meanwhile his other hand massaged her breast, tweaking her nipple with his thumb and forefinger, causing her to moan even more. Every note of her voice was going straight to his dick, which strained the seams of his shorts at this point. He’d have liked nothing more than to strip off his clothes and quickly bury his hard cock into her wet center but knew he’d have to take it slow, or else this scared filly would hop the fence and run away in no time flat. At long last, he broke their kiss, only to trail his lips from her mouth, along her chin, and down her neck. Tracing his tongue down to her nipples, he laved first one, then the other, then nipped them with his teeth.
Daphne’s hips continued thrusting faster and faster against his hands as he fingered her, alternating swirling his fingers around her clit and plunging them into her dripping channel.
“Come for me, Daph,” he murmured against her nipple as he drew it into his mouth to suckle. “I want to feel you come around my fingers.”
She squirmed against him, her body searching for her climax as he sucked and pinched and pulled her nipples and pumped his fingers inside her as if his hand were his cock. If only. Then she let out a piercing wail as her pussy spasmed against his slick fingers and her body twitched with the intensity of her orgasm.
Finally the icebreaker he’d been looking for. Surely Daphne would finally warm up to him after that powerful stress reliever.
Chapter Nine
DAPHNE LAY THERE CATCHING her breath, panting hard, when the clock struck ten. And only then did she awaken from her lust-soaked stupor to realize that she was just finger-fucked by her traitorous ex on the living room carpet of her dear departed neighbor Violet. Good God, what would Violet think of her? And what was she supposed to do now? And holy shit, did that feel amazing. If only she could do that at least once a day, life would be so much more relaxing. She could even stop meditating. A good orgasm was worth way more for your mental health than a dinky little meditation session.
Nevertheless, right now she was lying on the floor of Violet’s home, her ex’s fingers resting on her very sensitive clitoris, his face pressed against her hard nipple. Talk about awkward. Yet awesome. Yet super, super awkward. ’Cause she so could not have this happen with Brady. She needed to keep this all aboveboard and professional and completely void of bodily fluids of any kind. Even if said fluids did help her achieve the best—and only—orgasm she’d had in as long as she could remember.
She didn’t dare open her eyes, as if that would make it more real than it actually was. And suddenly she could feel Brady’s mouth work its way toward her mouth and his tongue once again slip, unimpeded, past her betraying lips. What was she to do but participate? It felt so, well, so right. That was the problem: something so wrong felt so damned right. But never could anything sexual with Brady McGovern feel right. He was so off-limits he was practically on-limits. She had to bring this debacle to a stop, immediately. She slid her hands up, accidentally bumping into the telltale bulge in his shorts—yowza, she was pretty sure that wasn’t a banana in his pocket. Her hands pulled away like she’d touched a hot stove. And he was too hot to touch. If she dared even go there, it would be so far down a rabbit hole of lust that they’d need to send in a search and rescue team to save her. Instead, she used her hands to push against his chest, even as he was pulling her closer, spreading tender kisses on her forehead, her cheeks, her chin. It all felt so soft and warm and loving. But she knew better.
“Uh, er, um, well, I hate to say it but that was a big mistake,” she said as she squirmed away from his reach. “I mean, well—”
“Mistake?” Brady raked his fingers through his hair and closed his eyes. “That was anything but a mistake, Daph. That was amazing.”
“It’s just that, well, I mean sure, it was amazing on one level, but—”
“No buts, Daphne, it felt good. It was downright revelatory.”
Ugh. She hated that he was right. It was revelatory, in that it showed her how badly she needed to sex up her celibate life, big time. How could she have gone so long without that? But with him? Why would she do that to herself? She knew his record, and it wasn’t a shining example of what she wanted from a man in her life. She wanted stability, trust, reliability. He was the opposite of all that.
“Yes, but no.”
“Yes but no?” He grabbed her hand, his fingers sticky with her juices, which was such a turn-on. At that moment she wanted nothing more than a command performance, stat.
“This is so wrong,” she said.
“Only if you make it that way.” He pulled her toward him. “I’m here, you’re here, we’re working toward a common goal, we have a past—”
“Uh, hello, not a stellar one.”
“It was till it wasn’t.”
“In a big way.”
“I was young and selfish and didn’t use my head to think about you. I’m not that boy now. I’m a different man.”
Daphne heaved a sigh. She was so not interested in anything more than sex with Brady. But then again, what would be wrong with a little dalliance? This thing they were caught up with was a temporary happening. What would be the problem with taking advantage of him—someone she knew intimately already, someone who could, well, for lack of a better word, service her? Daphne needed some servicing at this point. Someone to get her back into fighting shape. One thing this orgasm taught her was that being trapped in a sexual dry spell meant she’d been missing out in a big way. It would be better for her to do it with a known commodity rather than swiping left—or was it right?—to find some stranger she might end up sleeping with. ’Cause ugh, she didn’t want to get intimate with a stranger. And here, now, she had her very own boy toy on hand to use to her advantage, which seemed downright brilliant.
Hard to Get Over Page 4
