by Pippa Grant
“I’d rather stay here and get you out of that dress,” he says. “But yeah. We should probably go. Clint texted and it sounds like everyone else is already there, getting their pre-game on. He’s trying to save us a couple of his signature carne asada tacos, but isn’t making any promises at this point.”
I take the hand he holds out, but instead of starting for the door he squeezes my palm. “You okay with this? I was thinking in the shower and started worrying a party celebrating our marriage might be more than you’re up for after last night and this morning.”
I shake my head. “Maybe it should be. But I’m excited to see everyone. And when the time comes to tell them the whole story, I truly think they’ll understand. Is that naïve of me?”
“And what if the time never comes?” he asks, drawing me into his arms, making my pulse spike hard enough that I cast a worried glance overhead.
But the kitchen lights don’t so much as flicker. Despite the drama of the morning and the pleasant stress of having twelve little ones to keep safe in my often-chaotic animal environment, today’s been one of the calmest energy-field days in recent memory, making me think Olivia was right about sex working wonders for releasing excess electro-magnetic whatever.
Of course, fewer broken toasters isn’t a reason to make a man promises you’re not sure you can keep, but there’s so much more to Blake than that.
More to us.
So I say, “Can we take it one day at a time? At least for a little while? I hear that’s a thing that works for a lot of people.”
He beams, like I’ve given him so much more than the sliver of a promise. “Sounds good. Especially if one day at a time leads to one night at a time.” He steps closer, gathering me against him as he tips his head closer. “No pressure at all, but I would really love to make you come for me again when we get home.”
I lift my chin, my lips prickling as they move closer to his. “I have zero objections to that plan. And I’d like to return the favor. I’m pretty good with my mouth too, if you remember from our first wedding night.”
“Oh, I remember,” he says, his voice going husky as his hands cup my ass, pulling me closer to where he’s getting girthy again.
I sigh into him as his lips cover mine. “Don’t ever put your cock on a diet.”
He laughs softly. “That’s not the way cocks work, snickerdoodle.”
“I figured, but good to get confirmation. ’Cause I love him just the way he is.”
“Chubby and ridiculously eager?” he asks, backing me toward the sink.
“Don’t talk that way about him,” I say, breath catching as Blake’s hands circle my waist, lifting me onto the kitchen counter with an ease that makes me feel like one of those delicate women who don’t spend all day every day hauling bags of feed and showing bossy billy goats who’s in charge. “What are you doing?” I ask as his hands smooth up my thighs beneath my dress.
“Taking it one night at a time,” he says, his fingers hooking in the sides of my panties.
“But we have to—” My words end in a moan as he kisses me, sweet and sexy and oh-so-steamy, pushing me from hungry to starved for him in ten seconds flat.
Before I fully realize what I’m doing, my shaking hands are working open the buttons on his shirt and he’s ripping my panties down my legs. I just want him so badly.
His touch, his kiss. His body.
All of him.
He kisses a trail down my neck, while I fumble at the close of his shorts, and then he parts the crisscrossed fabric covering my breasts, drawing one already tight nipple into his mouth, and I ignite.
I am fire and he’s gasoline and if ever I was going to blow up every appliance in my kitchen, this is it. But as he does magical things to my breasts with that talented mouth of his, and I thread my fingers into his hair and hang on for dear life, the only sparks are coming from the two of us.
From the way we make each other ache and need so much that by the time he finally slides the condom on and pushes inside me, I’m wild with wanting him.
Just him.
No past. No future. No baggage
Just two people who create magic every time we touch.
“Yes, please, Blake, don’t stop,” I beg as he takes me hard, his fingers digging into my hips as he drives between my legs and the tension building between us twists tighter. I can feel him trying to hold back, to be gentle, but I don’t want gentle.
“Give it to me,” I breathe, clinging tighter to his shoulders. “I want to feel how much you want me.”
He groans. “I want you so much, but I don’t want to hurt you.”
“You’re not hurting me,” I say, nipping at his neck. “You’re making me so hot and wet and—” I suck in a breath as he fucks me deeper, faster, until I’m so tangled up inside I know it’s only a matter of time before I rip through the stitches still holding me together. “God, yes, please. More. Yes, yes! Oh, please, Blake, please. You feel so good.”
“So good,” he echoes, gripping my bottom in his hands and stepping away from the counter.
A sound of surprise and protest escapes my lips—we can’t take a break now or I might spontaneously combust from despair—but then he shows me there’s something even better than getting it on with my husband on the kitchen cabinets.
“Hold tight to my neck,” he orders. As soon as I obey he uses his grip on my ass to rock us into each other, getting even deeper than he could before, slamming our bodies together with just enough of a naughty factor to make me feel deliciously wicked.
I come crying out his name and he joins me a moment later, his cock jerking inside me, drawing out my release until I’m punch-drunk and clinging to him like a spider monkey who’s gobbled up one too many fermented cassava melons.
“Damn, woman,” he says, collapsing on the chair behind him, with me still straddling his legs and his softening cock still buried inside me.
I fight to catch my breath with what I’m sure is a goofy grin. “Wow.”
“Double wow,” he echoes.
“That was so good,” I murmur, stroking his hair. “Good Blake. Good alpha alpaca.”
He chuckles softly. “Is it wrong I kind of like being petted like a good boy after sex?”
“No, that’s normal,” I say, continuing to smooth the silky strands from his face. “Because you are a very good boy.”
He kisses my neck, rumbling against my skin. “Do I get a hubby treat?”
“You get all the hubby treats,” I say. “You do that every time I come into the kitchen and I’ll be making you gourmet meals in no time. Three courses. And dessert.”
“Fatten me up?” he asks.
“Well, then your body would match my favorite part of you,” I tease, grinning at him as he pulls back to shoot me a narrow-eyed look. “I’m just kidding,” I say, patting his cheek gently. “It’s not my favorite part.”
“It’s not?” he asks.
I shake my head, moving my hand from his face to the middle of his chest as I whisper the scariest thing I’ve said in a long time. “This is.”
“My heart?”
I nod and he leans in, kissing me with so much love I know it will make me cry if he doesn’t stop soon. But just as the waterworks are about to erupt, he pulls back and announces, “Time to go feed our bellies. Newlyweds can’t survive on sex alone,” almost as if he knows.
Knows that we’re going to have to get there with baby steps.
But that he also has no doubt that we’ll get there, one day and steamy night at a time.
Twenty
Blake
* * *
You know those nights when you beg the universe to cut you some slack?
To ease up and let everything go smoothly for once in the history of your lovably insane family so you can impress the woman of your dreams?
And then you show up to your belated bachelor party to find a woman stranded atop her cupcake car, surrounded by a family of raccoons and sobbing into the cake boxes in he
r arms?
“Looks like tonight’s going to be another one of those nights,” I mumble beneath my breath as I drop the gate on the trailer and Hope hitches a lead onto Chewy’s harness.
She follows the direction of my gaze, her eyes narrowing. “Oh, no. Poor thing. I’m beginning to think she and her cakes really are cursed.” She sighs. “She must not know they’re pet raccoons.” She hands me the rope. “Take Chewy out back to meet everyone. I’ll rescue the dessert delivery girl.”
But before Hope can start down the line of cars parked in front of my parents’ five-acre ranch, Clint jogs up the path from the house, shouting, “George Cooney, get your fluffy ass inside before Ryan kennels your entire family.”
George’s main squeeze, Sticky Fingers, stands on her hind legs and blinks her bright eyes at Clint, bringing her front paws together in an impressive begging display, but my brother’s having none of it.
“Go on, get,” he says, shooing the would-be cake bandits back toward the gate enclosing the backyard. “I’m serious. Mom and Dad used to raise show wieners. They’ve got a kennel plenty big enough for all of you.”
“Show wieners?” Hope whispers, laughter in the voice.
“Miniature dachshunds,” I confirm. “But growing up we called them the showeenies. One of Dad’s many get-rich-with-a-side-gig ideas that turned out to be way more work than he bargained for. The vet bills alone almost broke him.”
She hums beneath her breath as George chitters something serious-sounding. A moment later he and his entire family—Sticky Fingers and their three babies, who are plump adolescents by now—make a break for the back yard.
Atop the cake-mobile, the spiky-haired pixie lets out a shaky breath as she turns to Clint. “So they’re not rabid?”
“Nope. Just a bunch of poorly behaved pets.” He crosses to stand beside her passenger’s side, reaching his arms up. “Here, let me help you down.”
The woman visibly recoils, like she’s encountered a rotted corpse instead of a buff Marine with green eyes nearly as pretty as mine. My mother told me I have the best eyes way too many times for me to believe it’s anything less than the truth, which means his must be second best.
“No, I’ll get down on my own,” she says in a tight voice. Adding, “But thanks,” as a none-too-friendly afterthought.
“All right,” he replies, still amiable and welcoming. “Then how about the boxes? Want me to take those? Make it easier for you to climb off the roof?’
The woman shakes her head harder, backing still farther from his outstretched hands. “Oh, no. No way, I can’t—” Her words end in a gasp of surprise as she pitches backward off the roof of her car.
Hope sucks in a breath, hand flying to cover her mouth, but exhales in relief a moment later as Clint lunges and saves her, catching her in the nick of time. Sadly, her boxes don’t fare nearly as well. The tops of the white dessert containers fly open, spilling cupcakes all over the pavement as he draws the woman closer.
After an initial curse, she goes limp, allowing herself to relax into his arms. He sets her on her feet and curls a gentle hand around her shoulder, leaning down to say something I can’t make out from this far away.
I angle closer to listen in, but Hope grabs the sleeve of my shirt. “She’s already mortified enough, I’m sure, without knowing she had an even bigger audience. Leave them alone.”
She winks, and I nod. “Fair enough.”
I follow her to the shortcut to the back gate where Sticky Fingers and the teen raccoons are perched atop of the trashcans, peering over the edge of the fence at the scene unfolding by the street.
“You too,” Hope says to the mama. “Leave them alone. And that goes for the people as well as the cupcakes. You don’t need all that sugar. Remember what happened to George?”
At the word “cupcakes” Sticky Fingers bares her teeth in something a little too devious to be a smile, but that makes Hope laugh anyway. “Speaking of, where’s George? He’s not going after the cupcakes, is he?”
Sticky Fingers chirps at her.
“What did she say?” I ask Hope.
“She’s a raccoon. I have no idea.” She looks back over her shoulder. “But it doesn’t look like he’s near the cupcakes.”
“He’s probably going after the tacos,” I point out, and she laughs.
Farther into the backyard, the party is in full swing. Mom and Dad are in the Jacuzzi, surrounded by tiki torches and clearly on the verge of making out post glasses of champagne. Up on the deck, the rest of the crew—Ryan and Cassie, Jace and Olivia and Clover, napping in a baby swing swaying softly back and forth at the urging of Olivia’s bare toes—are talking and laughing and eating.
At least, until Ryan spots us. “Hey! It’s the newlyweds! And only…seventeen minutes late.”
Jace grins over his daughter’s swing. “Pay up, old man.”
“You were betting on how late we’d be?” Hope asks with a smile.
“Yeah, and frankly, I’m sorry for you that you weren’t later.” Jace shakes his head in faux disapproval. “Blake. Man. Falling down on those newlywed responsibilities.”
“Judging by Hope’s pink cheeks, I think he’s doing just fine,” Cassie says.
“Her electrical aura does seem significantly calmer,” Olivia agrees, winking at Hope. “Guess I was right about the soothing power of a little love?”
Hope goes pinker. “I—you—maybe?”
“Wait, what?” I ask.
“It’s simple,” Olivia replies. “Lovemaking calms Hope’s wiper tendencies. It puts her in balance.”
“Yay! More babies!” Mom cries from the hot tub, lifting her champagne flute. She and Pop both get the giggles.
Hope laughs nervously and presses closer to my side.
And I decide I definitely need to kiss her more.
It’s for her own good. Olivia said so.
“Hey, can we not embarrass my wife?” I ask my family.
They all exchange glances, then bust up laughing. “No,” Ryan says. “Sorry, pal. Bachelor party rules dictate embarrassing you, and that means her by proximity.”
“It’s okay.” She squeezes my hand, her eyes bright. “I like your family. They’re…”
“Obnoxious?” I suggest.
“Entertaining?” Ryan says.
“Brilliant?” Cassie offers.
“Kind,” Olivia interjects as she pets Chewy, who’s pushed past us to get to her because the alpaca would carve Chewpaca + Olivia 4ever into the side of a tree if he could.
“Hilarious,” Jace says over everyone else.
“Real,” Hope concludes with a smile. “And all those other things too.”
Clint opens the back door and steps onto the porch with a box full of smashed cupcakes balanced in one hand and a plate of tacos in the other, making me wonder how he opened the door at all, except he’s a Marine, so I guess that’s probably how.
“Eat ’em and like ’em,” he says, putting the cupcakes on the table before handing me the plate of tacos.
“Ladies first.” I lift a taco to Hope’s lips, holding her gaze while she takes a bite.
“Oh, yum,” she moans, and I’m suddenly wildly jealous of a taco. Only I get to make her moan like that, Mr. Taco. In fact, I want to take her home and make her moan for me all over again, even though it’s barely been an hour since we made love in the kitchen.
“More?” I ask.
“God, yes. I’m so hungry.”
While the other couples snicker—and Mom and Dad toast to more babies again—Hope takes another bite, and my cock insists that we take these tacos behind the barn and kick their asses before whisking Hope away to a place where we can be alone.
Before I can talk down my anatomy, a giant black and gray blur leaps from the roof to land smack-dab in the middle of the cupcake box, sending frosting and cake splattering everywhere as George touches down.
With matching cries of surprise, Jace and Olivia push away from the table, Jace grabbing Clover’s
swing in one hand and shifting it farther from the scene of the crime.
Chewpaca hums angrily at the trash panda, but he, too, backs away as George turns in a gleeful circle, greedy fingers clenching and releasing as he swims in his own private pool of cupcakes.
“George!” Ryan barks. “Get out of there!”
George defiantly shovels a paw full of icing into his mouth with one hand while he tosses Ryan half an uneaten taco with the other, a peace offering that ends up on the ground and that my brother clearly doesn’t find appealing.
Or cute.
“Enough,” Ryan rumbles.
“Cut it out, George!” Cassie adds as they both close in on him. “Remember the peanut butter? This will be ten times worse. Out! Out!”
Hope’s gaze darts between the raccoon—she’s helped him out of many a scrape before—and Chewpaca, who’s sniffing at the taco George chucked on the ground.
“No, Chewy,” I say, shifting the taco plate to one hand as I wrap my free arm around the alpaca’s chest, drawing him closer as Clint gets down in George’s face.
“Your superior said no cupcakes,” he says, low and menacing. “Last time I checked, no means no, Private Masked Bandit.”
At that, I swear the trash panda goes pale.
He drops the glob of icing in his fingers, trips over his own tail turning around, and though it takes him three tries to get his backside over the edge of the cake box, when he does, he takes off like a shot.
“Uh, thanks?” Ryan says to Clint, who straightens like he didn’t just put the fear of god into our eldest brother’s pet raccoon.
“He needs boot camp.” Clint points at the destroyed cupcakes. “And this disaster stays in the family. No one needs to know the sins committed against dessert here tonight. Especially Cupcake.”
Ryan arches a brow. “Cupcake?”
“The cupcake girl. Woman.” Clint stammers, a rare crack appearing in his infamous composure before he insists in a firmer voice, “So we’ll eat what’s left of these, and no one breathes a word.”
