by Stacy Gail
That was better than nothing.
“What, Coe?” She arched up until her lips feathered his with each word. “Am I doing something wrong?”
“I wouldn’t say wrong exactly.” Short, panting breaths whistled out of him, and she ate up that telltale sound with a spoon. “I’m about to come right here and we’re...oh shit, we’re not even undressed yet. Doesn’t sound like a whole lot of fun for you, now does it?”
“I can’t think of anything I’d like better than to see you lose it.” But at his words another thought hit hard. If he saw her completely naked, he’d see she still had his name on her body. She might as well show him her Achilles’ heel and invite him to slash at it with all he had.
No.
By now, she’d accepted she hadn’t meant anything to him back in the day. That was old news. But something strange had happened. From the moment she saw that he’d covered her tattoo, the imprint of his name across the small of her back burned, almost as if she’d just been marked. No matter how deep his kisses were or how good his body felt on top of hers, that burning hadn’t gone away.
Maybe this was her punishment for being so unbearably stupid.
She’d held onto Coe’s brand. There. She’d admitted it, if only to herself. She hadn’t forgotten about it and she hadn’t left it there to teach her some kind of life lesson. The fact was something in her hadn’t wanted to let him go. Now, in light of seeing how easily he’d eradicated her from his arm—and his thoughts and his life—she saw all too clearly what a sentimental fool she’d been. As soon as possible she’d get rid of that mortifying reminder of the idiot she’d been. If she could make it magically vanish now, she would. But for now, there was nothing she could do.
Except make sure he never saw it.
A light went on in her head, and she found herself smiling before she could stop herself. Going out of her way to snap Coe’s control might be on the childish side, but at this point she’d take what she could get in order to salvage a tatter or two of her pride. In fact it sounded like so much fun she couldn’t catch her breath as she imagined all the delicious ways she could push him into mindlessness.
And if she did it right, she’d be right there with him. Win-win situation as far as she saw it.
She caught his mouth with hers, biting on his lower lip while edging her hands past the open waistband of his jeans. She tasted his quick intake of breath when she shoved all the barriers down past the swell of his well-rounded bum.
No time like the present to get the party started.
“Hey.” His chest heaved like he’d just run a mile while she kicked off the clothes covering her lower body. “Since when did you develop an aggressive side?”
“Don’t you think you can take it?” To keep him occupied—and because she’d imagined touching his ass since she’d come back into his life—she palmed his butt cheeks and gave them a good, solid squeeze. Oh, yes. He felt even better than she remembered. “Or do your tastes still run to the annoyingly untutored and awkwardly stuttering late teen who doesn’t have a clue how to make your eyes roll back in your head? Because if they do, you’re officially a pervy old man who needs to be schooled on how to handle a real woman.”
“Holy shit.” His low laugh was filled with an even mix of shock and wonder. “What have I gotten myself into?”
“To be fair, you haven’t gotten into anything...yet. But I have high hopes for you.” With her gaze locking his into place, she reached between them for the stiffened flesh now straining to the point where his was almost against his abdomen. Her fingers wrapped around his fullness, her heart skittering at the scorching heat of him. His body jerked as if jabbed with something sharp as she stroked him. “Yes, indeed. Very high hopes.”
“Don’t.” His teeth were so tightly clenched she could hardly make out what he was saying. “Miranda, I’m so fucking close...don’t.”
“This is the ultimate in safe sex.” Her lips traveled over the knotted muscle in his jaw down to his corded neck, while her fingers squeezed his length and her thumb rubbed the super sensitive ridge. “Which is all we’re going to do unless you’ve got something to put on this.”
“I will be inside you.” It was nothing short of a vow before he fumbled around with the jeans he still partially wore. Moments later a wallet and condom appeared, and the memory of a fateful night under the bleachers flashed through her. That had been the beginning of the end. She’d just been too starry-eyed to see it.
Was this the beginning of the end as well? Or simply a beginning?
Ruthlessly she squashed that errant thought before it gained any traction. This was neither a beginning nor an end. It was sex. Nothing more. “Need some help?”
“You give me any more help, and there won’t be a need for this.” Once the protection was in place, he reached for the hem of her sweater.
“Ah. I’m a little cold.” It was probably ridiculous to think she needed an extra veil to hide her tattoo—she was lying on the damn thing, after all. But she was still too raw with the discovery that she’d been erased to take any chances. “Why don’t you worry about warming me up?”
“Because I love your boobs. But, if you insist.” He kissed her once, twice, as he positioned himself between her knees. He abandoned her sweater to stroke a path down her stomach to probe the innermost cleft. The corners of his mouth curled wickedly when her body jerked in response.
“Funny, you don’t feel cold. At all.” His invading touch explored her slickness between her thighs, and his knowing smile told her that her arousal thrilled him. She tingled where he touched, so intensely and with such need it almost hurt. The way he circled around the nub of her desire made her teeth grit and grind against him. He knew exactly what he was doing, tormenting her with the promise of fulfillment but not quite delivering. It wasn’t until a rough growl raked her throat raw that he gave her what every nerve in her body screamed for, by at last thrusting into her while abrading her most sensitive point.
“No. Not cold at all,” he whispered and closed his eyes as if to savor the moment.
Her universe turned inside out at the sensory overload. God, he felt so right. Her interior walls stretched to accommodate him, and the sensation was heavenly. Tentatively at first and then with more insistence, she pumped her hips, needing to seek more pleasure in how perfectly he filled her. The emptiness that had become part of her over the years evaporated under a staggering sense of being put back together. It was almost as though her body insisted they belonged like this, and that having him joined with her now fixed a part of her that had been badly broken.
For the first time since she’d returned to Bitterthorn, she finally felt like she’d come home.
“Miranda.” He said her name reverently while cruising his mouth over her face. His hips undulated in smooth, powerful strokes that grew in demand each and every time. She wanted him deeper, harder...an intrinsic part of her. Her heels came up to dig into the flexing muscles of his butt and pushed at him, wanting to be impaled, devastated. Ravished. It was like magic with him inside her, their bodies merged so deeply it triggered a tidal wave of ecstasy she couldn’t hold back. She didn’t want to. Yet even as she gave herself over to it and harsh sounds escaped the cage of her teeth, she sensed his release rising inside him. The hard flesh buried in the tight embrace of her body pulsed with increasing wildness before he plunged into her in an explosion of movement. His head flung back, his whole body bowing into hers, and for endless moments her entire being focused on milking him until every last drop of pleasure was wrung from them both.
After such a ferocious release, Miranda wasn’t surprised when they could do nothing more than simply lie together, his shaft still planted deep inside her, in a silence that was marked only by their disturbed breathing. She shoved away the dismay that he could still render her helpless and instead did the only thing she could do—
focus on the business at hand and ignore the possibility that they’d just knotted up an already complicated situation.
“About the loft,” she said between calming breaths. “I need to think about it.”
Chapter Twelve
“...hand it to me, please?”
One by one, the words dribbled into Coe’s brain at the speed of molasses in January. Distracted, he turned to find Lucy staring at him. He’d almost forgotten where he was, standing at the stainless-steel workstation dominating the center of the kitchen at the back of Pauline’s shop. Usually he loved being in the homey, always fragrant kitchen, but at the moment it was the last place he wanted to be. Thanksgiving was fast approaching, and it was the final day for preordering a dessert for the holiday meal. The usually courteous citizens of Bitterthorn had become wild-eyed scavengers desperate to place their orders before closing time today. That desperation had kicked off a grabby-hands buying frenzy, and it became clear around midmorning that the shop wasn’t going to have a crumb left by noon if the inventory wasn’t restocked ASAP.
Sugar-fueled madness was gearing up big-time, but that wasn’t why he didn’t want to be there. The source of his preoccupation was blonde, beautiful...
And nowhere near where he wanted her to be.
Beyond the kitchen, Pauline handled the front room like a warrior general, while Celia Villarreal—the high school senior who painted epic works of art on Pauline’s front windows—was engaged in what seemed to be a life-and-death struggle with the register. Sully had been forced to his father’s house when he got wind the elderly man was up on the roof stringing holiday lights all by himself, leaving Lucy shorthanded. In a panic she’d sent up a flare, so Coe had closed up the garage to take pink cardboard flats and fold them into the sweet shop’s signature boxes while freeing up Lucy to do what she did best—bake.
He’d hoped the task would distract him from thinking about Miranda, but the menial work only freed his brain to obsess on the woman who fucked up his life as easily as she breathed.
The hell of it was, she wasn’t even trying to mess with him. If anything, she was doing the exact opposite by giving him a wide berth. She had left almost immediately after she’d blown his circuits with the best sex he’d ever known, on the excuse of clearing her belongings out of that death trap of a trailer. He’d wanted to go with her to make sure she didn’t suffocate, but she’d insisted she didn’t need him getting in the way. That had stung, even though she’d said it lightly. But what really had him in a twist was that she’d called the garage’s business line an hour later to report she was safely gone from Garden Court and would be in touch about the loft.
That had been yesterday morning. Now here he was, half buried in dessert boxes and worrying like a mother hen over Miranda’s whereabouts. The delectable scents of spicy pumpkin, tart cherry and sweet Dutch apple pie didn’t begin to stifle the low, incessant thrum of hunger to get her where he could see her. That she hadn’t even bothered to call his personal number bugged the hell out of him...until he realized he’d never given her his cell number.
Conclusion: he was losing his frigging mind.
Lucy’s brows executed a slow upward creep. “Hello? Anyone home?”
“Sorry.” He looked down at the pink cardboard origami creation he’d just put together and held it out. “Here you go.”
She didn’t move. “Thanks, but I asked for the nice big bag of flour beside you. I’ve got more pie crusts to roll out.”
He grabbed up something yellow and offered it.
“That’s a box. A tiny box. Of cornstarch.”
Coe stared at her. It was like she was speaking another language that had nothing to do with Miranda. Why did she expect him to understand?
With a sigh that blew out her cheeks, Lucy rounded the workstation, snagged up the bag and headed back to her original position. “Coe, if you want to go, just go. Yes, things might suddenly go all Hunger Games out there. But I’d prefer dodging arrows and machete-wielding people all by myself than deal with your passive-aggressive behavior.”
This time, enough of her words made it through, and he held up the yellow box once more. “So, you’re saying you don’t want this now?”
“What the hell.” She paused in rolling out dough long enough to shoot him a lethal glare. “I didn’t want it in the first place.”
“Then why did you ask for it?”
“I didn’t, dumbass.” Again she paused, this time with a frown of growing concern. “Are you okay?”
“I don’t know. I feel...” At loose ends. Lost. Insanely fretful for no apparent reason. And did I just use the word fretful? Wow. “Out of sorts.”
“Okay, that settles it. If you’re just going to stand there being nothing but a gross germ factory, I don’t want you around.”
So much for sympathy. “That’s not it.”
“Then what?”
“Do you remember when you had sex with Sully?”
That brought Lucy to a full stop. “Er. What?”
“I remember it like it was yesterday.”
“That’s incredibly disturbing.”
“You were so determined to avoid him, remember? You were going to let Sully have his space, give him time to heal so he could start a fresh new life without you, blah blah blah. And suddenly like, four seconds later you’re wigging out because apparently you tripped, lost all your clothes while falling down and landed on his—”
“Finish that sentence and I’ll Sweeney Todd you right into this pie.”
“The thing is, you were still in love with Sully,” he went on, waving her words aside. “That’s basically how you’re built—you wouldn’t sleep with anyone you didn’t love. My question is, are all women like you?”
“First off, I’d like to think no one’s exactly like me, because I’m all sorts of awesome. And secondly, no. Just like men, fingerprints and snowflakes, each woman is unique in her own special way.”
He sighed. “Well, that sucks. How the hell are guys supposed to figure you females out if you each come with your own individual instruction booklet?”
“An instruction booklet might be helpful, actually. Too bad you men never read those things.”
There were times when ignoring Lucy was the only way to go. “So having sex doesn’t necessarily mean there’s anything else going on, right? Anything like, you know...messier emotions.”
“Messier...emotions.” She pursed her lips as she expertly wrapped a pie crust over her roller and deposited it in a waiting pie tin. “You’re not talking about the L word, are you?”
He sneered. “What are you, five?”
“Hey, you’re the one using pathetic euphemisms like ‘messier emotions.’ I’m just trying to play by your rules.”
“Fine.” Like a faithful hound, his brain retrieved the long-ago memory of a younger Miranda telling him with such trust how much she loved him, her voice soft, her eyes softer... Life—and the role he’d played in it—had taken all of Miranda’s sweet softness by the neck and throttled the shit out of it. “Yes. I’m talking about the L word.”
“Figured.” Lucy transferred another pie crust into a tin before moving on to the next one. “I guess it depends. If there’s lots of cuddling and touchy-feely stuff and sweet-talking before, during and after sexy times, then...I don’t know. Maybe. But if it’s a matter of wham-bam-thank-you-ma’am, then the ‘messier emotions’ probably aren’t a factor.” The look she gave him was leery. “This doesn’t have anything to do with Miranda, does it?”
His internal well of words abruptly ran dry. Probably because too many answers rushed in to create a mental logjam.
When the silence began to scream his answer, Lucy rolled her eyes to the ceiling. “Holy freaking crap. You had sex with Miranda.”
“Maybe we both just tripped, and as we were f
alling—”
“Yeah, yeah. All your clothes flew off, I get it.”
His mouth tightened as he recalled how Miranda had insisted on keeping barriers in place. “Not all. I don’t think my jeans ever made it past the backs of my knees.”
“Way to keep it classy. And by the way, I now need brain bleach. Thanks for that.”
“I’m hoping she’ll move into the loft,” he said after a moment, barely hearing her. “The manager at Garden Court tried to kill her with a carbon-monoxide leak, which I reported to Sheriff Berry earlier.” Miranda had already done so that morning, and that had him obsessively circling back to where the hell she’d spent the night. He’d called the number that his landline at the garage had captured via caller ID, but she hadn’t answered. He’d then texted her to let her know he was trying to reach her, but other than a brief comment that she was turning her phone off to save the battery, she hadn’t given him a clue to go on.
Nor had she mentioned anything about enjoying their time together.
Or that she might like to do it again.
Or that she even wanted to see him again.
All of which was fine, of course. Great, even. The last thing he wanted was for her to be all over him like a cheap suit.
But...
It would have been nice if she’d at least mentioned she’d had a good time.
I’m losing it. Totally fucking losing it.
Lucy made a sound of concern as she measured rich pumpkin-pie filling into the prepared tins, the hunger-inducing scents of cinnamon, ginger and nutmeg perfuming the air. “I guess even I have to admit Miranda hasn’t had an easy time of it since she came back to clean up her dad’s ginormous mess. How’s that coming along?”
He seesawed his hand. “It’s...coming.”
