Delectable

by R. L. Mathewson

  “You bought enough food to feed an army,” she said, chuckling as she placed the bottles of juice and water on the nightstand, the junk food that he’d bought for the movie right next to them and then organized the burgers and fries between them.

  “I normally do,” he said, smiling as he waited for her to finish setting everything up.

  When she sat back against the headboard and picked up the remote, he decided that it was time to dig in. She’d apparently already eaten from this place before, because she wasn’t sampling everything or pulling out her notebook. While she looked for something to watch, he unwrapped a burger for her and squirted some ketchup on her fries and placed it by her side.

  With a smile and a murmured, “Thank you,” she picked up her burger and took a bite. He didn’t say anything as he waited for her to pick a movie, content with sitting here with her. He didn’t even mind when she put on a chick flick minutes later or when she helped herself to his ketchup and stole a bite of his burger.

  It was then that he realized for the first time in his life that he was truly happy and it was all because of the woman stealing the last fry.

  Chapter 31

  “You…bastard!” she gasped, biting back a laugh as ice-cold fruit punch soaked the front of her shirt.

  “Shit!” Reese hissed as he quickly plucked the bottle off her lap that he’d accidentally dropped on her before it could spill over onto the comforter. “I’m sorry, sweetheart,” he said, shooting her a sheepish grin while he quickly worked to clean up the mess as she pinched her shirt and pulled it away from her chest to keep the juice from coating her.

  “It’s fine,” she said with a shrug as she checked to make sure that none of the juice had spilled onto the bed. Once that was done, she looked from her ruined shirt to the pristine “Bradford Construction” tee shirt that Reese was wearing, which just happened to be the one that she’d had her eye on for a while.

  “Shit!” Reese repeated as he climbed off the bed and made sure the bed wasn’t ruined before going to the bathroom and dumping the rest of the juice out before returning with a damp facecloth that wouldn’t be needed.

  “The shirt, Yummy,” she said and thankfully, she didn’t need to explain, because he knew the way things worked now.

  With a glare, he reached back and pulled it off, revealing all that delicious yumminess that she liked so much and tossed her the shirt. “Am I going to get this one back?”

  Sighing with a sad shake of her head, she gestured for him to turn around. “Have you gotten any of the other ones back?” she asked, wondering why he would torture himself with false hope like that.

  She pulled off her ruined shirt, tossed it aside, and pulled on her lovely new shirt that was going to go along nicely with the other ones that she’d helped herself to. Once she had it pulled on and it fell to her knees, she shut the lights off, climbed back onto the bed, stole one of the pillows from his side of the bed, and added it to her collection before she sat back, grabbed the remote, and hit “Play.”

  Without a word, he joined her on the bed, shoved his pillow closer to join her pile and sat back, throwing his arm around her as he leaned back and settled in to watch the movie that she’d been meaning to watch for a while now. Shifting onto her side, she curled up against him, and settled in for the long haul.

  “You know that I could probably get you shirts in your size, right?” he asked, wrapping his arm more tightly around her so that she could settle in comfortably by his side.

  “You really don’t get this, do you, Yummy?” she asked, snuggling in closer to him, still amazed that she was comfortable enough to do this with him.

  She didn’t even do this with Eric. She was close with Eric, loved him like a little brother and he was one of her best friends, but she’d never felt comfortable enough to snuggle him, sit on his lap, or demand that he carry her fireman style just to see if he could do it. With Reese…

  She didn’t question it or overanalyze everything. It just felt right, she thought as she shifted closer so that she could lay her head on his shoulder and place her hand on his chest where his heart beat, strong and steady just like him.

  “I’m running out of shirts, sweetheart,” he said, sighing heavily as though this somehow pained him when he should feel honored that she was willing to wear his shirts.

  “Then you should probably get more,” she informed him, absently noting that he was more comfortable than the mattress.

  Chuckling, he started tracing a path over her arm with his fingertips as he held her. He was honestly the sweetest man that she’d ever met and that thought should have made her feel disloyal, made her feel like she was betraying Michael, but it didn’t.

  When Michael passed away he’d been a seventeen-year-old kid who’d never had the chance to become the man that he was meant to be. He’d been kind and funny, but in a different way than Reese. Reese was a grown man and he was settled into the man that he was meant to be, kind, funny, sweet, and incredibly sexy and Michael…Michael had been the love of her life.

  He’d saved her from herself, gave her hope, made her want more, more than the life that she’d been given and the one that she’d been destined to live, he’d given her Mikey and then-

  He’d broken her heart, destroyed her entire world, and she wasn’t sure that she would survive going through something like that again. She’d never wanted to try again.

  Not until she’d met Reese, she thought, worrying her bottom lip as she tilted her head back and found Reese watching her with those amazing green eyes that she liked so much. He was an incredibly handsome man, she thought as she reached up and gently traced the small scar that Mikey had given him. He was also an incredibly kind man.

  He’d never once said an unkind word to Mikey, made her feel bad about what happened, or treated her like a nuisance any time she begged him to play catch with her. Instead, he’d smile, gently pull one of her braids, promise that he’d play with her when he was done, and he kept that promise every time he made it. It didn’t matter if he was tired, and she knew that he was always tired, he played catch with Mikey, listened to her, laughed at her jokes, and always smiled when he saw her.

  “Does this hurt?” she asked, tracing the pink scar with her fingertip.

  “No,” he said softly as he reached over and cupped her face in his hand, gently caressing her cheek with a stroke of his thumb. “You’re so damn beautiful.”

  She leaned into his touch as she traced a path along his jaw and down to his chin and back up again, losing herself in the motion until she found herself leaning forward and brushing her lips against his. The first brush of her lips against his had her breath catching. The second had her reaching up to cup his face with her trembling hands as she shifted to move closer to him, desperate to get closer. By the third, she couldn’t get enough of him.

  *-*-*-*

  “Kasey,” he said, only to end with a moan as she took advantage and deepened the kiss as she wrapped her arms around him and pulled herself closer until her breasts were pressed up against his chest and he was on the verge of losing his fucking mind.

  “Baby, please,” he said, the word ripped out of his mouth as he grabbed hold of the comforter to stop himself from grabbing her and pinning her to the bed so that he could do all those things that he’d been fantasizing about doing to her.

  He wanted to devour every fucking inch of her.

  He wanted to rip her shirt off and touch, lick, and suck her breasts as she squirmed on his lap and ground herself against his cock, teasing and caressing it until he couldn’t take it any longer and ripped off those boxers that had better not belong to Eric. Once he had her naked and writhing on his lap, he would run his hands up her thighs and tease her slit until she was dripping wet and begging for his touch.

  Then he’d lay her down, part her with his fingers so that he could flick his tongue over her swollen clit, tease it to make her wetter before he ran his tongue down to her core where he would run the tip of his to
ngue around it before sliding it deep inside her. He’d rub his thumb over her clit, praying like hell that it would make her squirm so that she rode his tongue and gave him a reason to reach down and release his cock.

  He’d wrap his hand around his cock as he fucked her with his tongue, imagining how good it would feel to slide inside her and he already knew that he would. He was done waiting, done making excuses, and he was done trying to play this role. He wanted her so fucking much that he hurt, which made what he had to do all the more painful.

  Shifting to relieve some of the pressure, he kissed her one last time and leaned back, knowing that they needed to go slow, to give her a chance to get used to the idea. For her sake, they needed to go slow, he needed to give her a chance to get used to his touch, because he needed to do this right.

  He wanted to make this absolutely fucking perfect for her. She deserved perfect, deserved to be swept off her feet, a romantic dinner, a midnight walk on the beach, roses, a five-star hotel room that was going to put a dent in his credit card, chocolates, candles and everything that would make this absolutely perfect for her.

  She deserved perfect and god knows that she wasn’t going to get that with a twenty-nine year old virgin. For the first time since he’d made the decision to wait until he’d found “the one,” he regretted his decision. He wanted this to be good for her and he was absolutely terrified that he wasn’t going to be-

  Losing his fucking mind when she took him by surprise and sat back on his lap with a moan as she slid her tongue against his, ripping a groan from his throat and caused him to seriously fuck everything up.

  Chapter 32

  “Kasey-”

  “I’m fine,” she said, feeling her face burn with humiliation as she shoved his hand away and scooted back on her bruised ass, wishing the floor would just open up and swallow her whole.

  “Kasey, I’m sor-” he started to apologize, again, but she didn’t want to hear it and honestly wasn’t sure how she was going to manage to keep it together if he did.

  “It’s fine,” she said, shifting her gaze as far away from him as she could as she somehow managed to get up without wincing, but god, did her ass hurt.

  Maybe not as much as her pride did.

  “No, it’s not,” Reese said, coming around the bed to help her, but she’d had enough of his help to last her a lifetime.

  “I’m fine,” she said, scurrying over the bed to get away from him, hoping that he would take pity on her and just leave before she…before she…

  She had no idea what she was going to do, but she didn’t want to do whatever it was in front of him, not after what just happened.

  “Kasey, please-” the determined bastard said, as she tried to do her best to hold onto what was left of her pride, but right now it was a quickly losing battle.

  “It’s fine, Reese. Just go,” she said, wishing like hell that she could go back in her closet and hide, but he’d probably just stand outside the door, apologizing again as he tried to come up with a way to spare her feelings, something that he should have done instead of shoving her off his lap.

  Yeah…

  She definitely would have appreciated a different reaction, maybe one that didn’t leave her ass bruised? she thought, biting back another pained groan as she headed for the front door, needing to get away from him before she did something incredibly stupid like cry or babble, or god only knows what else she could do to make this day extra memorable.

  “Kasey, wait. I need to explain,” he said, following her, because of course he couldn’t just let her walk away, now could he?

  Nope.

  Not Reese.

  No, he would never let her walk off with her feelings hurt, because Reese wasn’t the type of guy to do that, she thought dryly. Then again, she’d never thought that he’d be the type of guy to play with her like this. It just figured that the first guy that she could actually see herself falling for turned out to be a jerk.

  “Kasey, I-” he started again, but she was done.

  She was just done with everything.

  “You know what?” she asked, whirling on him and cutting him off before he could apologize or joke his way out of this one. “You’re an asshole.”

  “What?” he asked, having the nerve to look confused as she was doing her best not to kick him or find something to throw at him.

  “You’re an asshole. What part of that did you not understand? Because if you want I can annunciate it more clearly for you, but you would think that it would be pretty easy to understand.”

  He opened his mouth to cut her off, but she wasn’t done, not yet.

  “Was this a joke for you? A fun way to pass the summer? Or was I a charity case?”

  “No, Kasey. I-”

  “Seriously? Just stop!” she snapped, holding her hands up and taking a step back when he reached out for her.

  “I get it. You didn’t want to kiss me and you don’t have to worry about it happening again. I got the point the first time that you knocked me on my ass,” she snapped, shaking her head in disgust as she turned around only to end up being pressed up against the wall and Reese kissing her in a way that didn’t feel like pity.

  “I wanted to kiss you, Kasey,” he whispered against her lips as he slowly teased her bottom lip between his teeth. “You have no idea how badly I wanted to kiss you.”

  Trembling, she licked her lips in an attempt to clear her head only to end with a whimper and a moan as the devious bastard that was making her head spin took advantage and deepened the kiss. It had been a very long time since she’d been kissed and her memory was a little shaky, but she was pretty sure that she’d never been kissed like this before.

  Breaking off the kiss suddenly, he shifted so that his mouth was next to her ear, which was probably for the best since she could really use a moment to catch her breath and try to wrap her mind around that kiss.

  “Don’t ever think that I don’t want to kiss you,” he said, deciding to punctuate his words with a soft kiss against her neck that had her licking her lips as a shiver rocked her.

  She opened her mouth to ask him why he’d ended the first kiss the way that he had when he took advantage and kissed her again. Okay, devoured might be a better description, she amended a moment later as she was forced to grab onto him when her legs threatened to give out.

  “Kissing you is the only thing that I think about most days,” he said softly as he gentled the kiss so that he was barely brushing his lips against hers, which should have given her a chance to think straight, but for some reason, those barely-there kisses that he was teasing her with had her trembling harder.

  “Then why-” she started to ask, but that’s when he decided to swoop back in and steal her breath away with another one of those devastating kisses that she could easily become addicted to if-

  “I’m a virgin.”

  -he wasn’t such a freaking liar.

  *-*-*-*

  “You son of a bitch!”

  “Baby, I-” he started to say only to wince when it became obvious that he’d made another tactical error.

  “Are you freaking kidding me?” she demanded, wiggling wildly beneath him in an attempt to break free and find something else to throw at him.

  Thank god she didn’t have Mikey’s arm otherwise that baseball that she’d chucked at his head probably would have split his other eyebrow open instead of bouncing uselessly down the hallway. He really hadn’t been worried until he’d caught her eying that hammer. That’s when he’d decided that perhaps it would be for the best if they continued this conversation in the safety of her bedroom.

  Kasey had disagreed and had chosen to express her displeasure by going for that hammer, leaving him with a choice, run and come back another day or deal with it now. Since he knew that leaving would only end up being a mistake, he’d opted to stay.

  Which had ended with him carrying the woman screaming at him and trying to beat the shit out of him with everything she could get her hands on to her
room. It had also resulted in him somehow pinning the wiggling woman on the bed and wrestling the pillow that she’d tried to beat the shit out of him with out of her hands.

  “You lying son of a bitch!” she bit out as she squirmed to get out from under him so that she could grab something off the nightstand and beat the shit out of him with it, which unfortunately had her incredibly well shaped ass rubbing up against him and-

  “Are you freaking kidding me?” she asked, going completely still beneath him while he laid on top of her, hoping like hell that she hadn’t noticed-

  “Oh, is this part of the game, Officer Bradford?” she asked, punctuating her angry words with a little wiggle of her ass that had him biting back a groan that would probably piss her off even more.

  “It’s not a game,” he said roughly, licking his lips as pleasure shot through his eager cock as she continued to wiggle against him, making it hard to focus.

  She snorted at that, but at least she’d stopped wiggling. “Let me guess, I’m special and you think that you might be falling for me,” she guessed correctly in a mocking tone that told him that he should probably keep his agreement to himself.

  “You’ve waited all these years for someone like me and now that