He committed to finishing the second bathroom that his parents had begun. She promised to ship her extra laptops and extensive collection of young adult novels from Connecticut for the boys—especially Petey, who loved to read. He agreed to ease up on the chore board. She informed him that she would continue to attend the AA meetings that meant so much to her. He promised to keep plenty of pistachios on hand. She offered to make smoothies in the mornings.
“What if we need our own space?” From her serious expression, he knew this issue was a big one for her. “We might get sick of each other.”
Hard for him to imagine, but he knew that was a risk.
“We have a second-story loft that we don’t use in the winter. I can open it up for you and haul some furniture up there. It already has a daybed and a bean bag chair, maybe a few other things.” Truthfully, he hadn’t been up there in a while. He considered it the boys’ playroom, a place they didn’t have to keep tidy.
But they rarely used it, so why not offer it to Gretel?
Her eyes lit up. “That sounds perfect. I’ll have space for all my stitch-and-bitch projects. Can I decorate it however I want?”
“It’s fine with me. But Gretel, the entire house will be yours. Including my,” he hesitated, feeling awkward, “the bedroom. I don’t want you to feel like a guest stuck up in the attic.”
Looking touched, she set her hand over his. “That’s really thoughtful, Zander. You really want to do this, don’t you?”
Yeah. Damn, he really did. He turned his hand over and interlaced his fingers with hers. “Yup.”
She leaned over the table and brushed her lips against his in a brief but stirring kiss. “Look, this situation is going to be unique. We have to make it work for us. Zander and Gretel. And all of our little flaws and eccentricities.”
That made complete sense, when she put it that way. Lord knew he had his share of both. “Then let’s put in a kind of catchall fail-safe.”
“How do you mean?”
“There’s no way we can predict all the things that are going to come up. When I first moved back home, I hadn’t lived with my brothers since they were little. I didn’t know what they liked or needed. I didn’t know that Petey loved watching YouTube makeup tutorials or that Jason gets a rash every time he eats pickles.”
“I’ve seen him eat pickles.”
“Oh yeah, he eats them anyway, he doesn’t care. The point is, there’s probably a billion things I don’t know about you, and you don’t know about me. We can’t plan for all of them, I don’t have that much paper.” Already, the stack of notepaper had diminished quite a bit. “So let’s establish a kind of safe word.”
Her eyelashes fluttered. “Oh my. This is going in a direction I didn’t really expect.”
“Not that kind. We can talk about that later, ” he added in a sexy growl. “Right now, I’m talking about if something comes up that’s not written down here, we say, “whipped cream” or something. And then we discuss whatever it is.”
She tilted her head quizzically as she bounced a Sharpie off her thigh. “Why can’t we just say, ‘can I speak to you in private’? You’ve said it plenty of times already.”
He gave a burst of laughter. “But that could mean anything. It could mean I just want to be alone with you.”
“Hmm, is that what it meant all those other times?” The smile hovering on her delicious lips made his mouth water.
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Maybe.” He didn’t want to think too deeply about that now. “I still think we need code words, like military operations.”
“Oooh, secret code words!” She clapped her hands. “I love that idea. I mean, this whole marriage-with-an-asterisk is kind of a secret code word. So ‘whipped cream’ means…what again?”
“It doesn’t have to be that. That just came to mind because…”
“Because?”
Because he’d love to lick it off her body. “I’ll show you later.”
She went a little pink. “That’s sounds naughty. I like it. Let’s go with it.”
He drew in a steadying breath. These negotiations sure were hard. “I’m writing it down. ’Whipped cream’ means there’s something important we need to agree on about the household.”
“Great. Okay, what else?”
“How about if there’s something going on with one of the boys?”
“Yes. Very important. I nominate my favorite word, ‘pistachio.’ Rhymes with ‘mustachio,’ which is very masculine. Easy to remember.”
Zander chuckled as he wrote it down in green Sharpie. He couldn’t remember a conversation that had entertained him quite so much. “I like our ice cream sundae theme. Is it time for dessert yet? And when I say ‘dessert’ I really mean—”
She held up a hand to stop that line of thought. “Later. We have work to do. After this we have to print out the paperwork and round up some witnesses and a minister.”
“Can the boys be witnesses?”
She glanced up and his heart twisted at her vulnerable expression. “You want the boys to be the witnesses? That makes it so … real.”
“It is real. Remember, we can’t do it unless it’s real. I’m taking this seriously, in case you hadn’t noticed.” He gathered her hands between his. She still held the Sharpie, but he ignored it. “Gretel Morrison, will you marry me? With an asterisk but still real?”
A wide smile spread across her face. “I think so. But have we put everything we can possibly think of into the prenup? What about a time frame? Like until Jason turns sixteen?”
“I don’t want a time frame. All we have to do is say it’s not working and we want out. I don’t want you to feel stuck. If that brings down the wrath of Susan Baker, I don’t care. We’ll deal with that if it happens.”
She bent over the paper and wrote, “Escape hatch.”
“Is that the secret code word?”
“No, because what if we happen to be in a submarine at the time?”
He laughed. Had anyone ever had so much fun writing a prenup? “What then? Hot fudge? Butterscotch? Sprinkles?”
“Maybe we shouldn’t use a code word because it would make ordering dessert a nightmare. Besides, we should only invoke the escape hatch if we’re really serious about it and truly believe it’s the best thing for us and especially for the boys.”
“Damn, Gretel Morrison. So mature. Wanna get married?”
“Let’s do it.” She help up her hand for a high five. But just as he brought his palm against hers, she pulled it away at the last second, the way she’d done outside the Noonans’ woodshed.
“I take back the ‘mature’ part,” he grumbled. “What now?”
“We never decided on the right code word for sex.”
“You want a code word for sex? We don’t need one. All you have to do is look at me. That’s really all it takes.”
“Like this?” She gave him an exaggerated under-the-lashes glance loaded with sexual insinuation. A look like that could turn the oxygen in the air into straight fire.
“That works.”
She rolled her eyes.
“That works too.”
She burst out laughing. “Apparently it doesn’t.”
“What do you mean?”
Another glance from her dazzling eyes sent a bolt of heat straight to his dick. “I’m getting an eye ache from giving you these looks. And you’re just sitting there like a lump.”
“A lump, huh?” He stood and came around to the other side of the table. Taking her hand, he guided it to the lump in his pants. “That kind of lump?”
She fluttered her eyelashes and aimed another of her scorching looks at him.
This time he got the message. Loud and clear.
Chapter Twenty-Two
When Gretel printed out the paperwork, she also discovered that the boys couldn’t be witnesses, because they weren’t of legal age. Instead, they took a four-wheeler over to Zander’s dog team buddy’s house. He had an online minister’s license and wa
s happy to do the honors. Two of his friends who were there for what looked like a drinking weekend acted as witnesses.
Gretel and Zander filled out the paperwork and signed it. And that was it. They were married. With an asterisk.
As soon as it was official, they told the boys. They chose game night as the best moment for a Ross family announcement.
“Big news, guys,” said Zander. “You guys know Gretel and I have been hanging out a lot. We decided to take the next step.”
The boys looked at him blankly.
“We got married,” Gretel elaborated. “Meet your new sister-in-law. Me.”
“Yay,” yelled Petey, scattering some of the pieces of the game.
“Petey!” Jason grumbled. “You just ruined the game.”
Petey was on his feet, performed a funny dance in which he punched the air and moved his legs like pistons.
Gretel busied herself with putting the Pandemic viruses back in their proper cities.
“You seem pretty happy about this,” Zander said as he watched his youngest brother’s wild gyrations.
“Gretel lets Eli have ice cream after school.”
Gretel made a mental note to explain to Abby why sometimes kids needed extra ice cream.
“This doesn’t mean you’re going to get ice cream.” Trust Zander to be the voice of reason. If ice cream sweetened the sister-in-law deal, why not?
“It won’t?” Petey stopped dancing and glared at Gretel. “Why not?”
She put her hand up to block Zander’s line of sight and gave Petey an exaggerated wink.
“I can see that, you know. What are you telling him?” Zander glowered at the two of them.
She dropped her hand. “Um, I was telling him that he really ought to try pistachio ice cream.”
“Don’t encourage him—Oh. Oh. Now?”
“Maybe in a few minutes.”
“What are you guys talking about?” grumbled Jason. He always seemed to be in a bad mood lately.
“Married people stuff,” Gretel told him lightly. “So Jason, are you okay with this?”
He shrugged in that morose thirteen-year-old way. “Makes no difference to me. It’s not like you’re my stepmother.”
“That’s true. But I do know how it feels to have to get used to a new person. When I was your age, I had to deal with my second stepfather. It didn’t really go well because he wanted me to go to boarding school and I refused to wear a uniform.”
“Fascinating. Can we finish the game now?”
Gretel bit her lip, trying to decide if the exuberance of Petey’s welcome balanced out the hostility of Jason’s. She couldn’t tell if his attitude was personal to her or more general and aimed at the entire world.
“Jason,” Zander said sharply. “Is there something you want to say?”
“Yes. If we’re done with this game can I go do some deadlifts?”
Zander held his gaze. Reluctantly, Jason swung his head to meet Gretel’s gaze. “Welcome to the family, Gretel. Don’t know what you want with Z, though, he’s a pain in the ass.”
“Jason.”
Before Zander got too mad at his brother, Gretel intervened. “Aren’t we all, Jason, aren’t we all. Zander, I forgot to mention that I have no problem with salty language because that would be pretty hypocritical. You should have heard me when I was a pissed-off teenager being told I had to wear a navy blue neck tie and a black pleated skirt.”
Slowly, Zander relaxed and jerked his head at Jason in a “go ahead” gesture. Jason ambled in the direction of the weight room, after a quick glance at Gretel. Was that appreciation in his eyes? Could she be so lucky?
“I’d really love some of that pistachio right about now,” she told Zander.
They both glanced over at Petey, who’d flopped himself onto a beanbag chair and was playing a game on his iPad. “Petey, you good?”
He waved a hand at them, not even looking up from his game.
The two of them went into Zander’s bedroom, passing the weight room, where the sound of thrash rock was bleeding from Jason’s earbuds. As soon as the door was securely shut, Gretel confronted Zander.
“You never had stepparents, did you?”
“Nope.”
“Well, I consider myself an expert. And I know I’m not their stepmother, but it’s the same idea. Do not force them to act a certain way with me. We’ll work out our own relationships, me and the boys. Darn it, we should have put this in the agreement.”
That telltale muscle in his jaw was flexing. “I don’t like Jason being rude to you.”
“Honestly, I don’t think it’s about me. It didn’t feel personal. I think it’s something else.”
“He’s supposed to tell me if something’s wrong.” He sounded like a commander irritated by an unruly soldier.
“Maybe you should put that on the chore chart, Boss Ross.”
“Cute. Maybe I should.” He ran a hand through his hair, leaving it messy and sexy. “I wish he understood that you’re doing this for us.”
“Not entirely.” She grinned at him. “The butterfly sanctuary was over the moon when I transferred the funds—with interest. It was amazing. And you should have heard my father on the phone when I told him. He actually offered me a brand new Tesla to call the whole thing off.”
Shock rippled across Zander’s face. “Fuck.”
“Don’t worry, I didn’t take it.”
“But do you want to?”
She stared at him for a long moment. She could see why he would ask that, but still, it hurt. “Haven’t you paid attention to anything I’ve been saying? I don’t want to depend on his money anymore. He uses it to control people and I’m done being a puppet.”
He groaned. “I know. I know. Sorry. I just—I don’t want to see you lose out on something because of me.”
“Escape hatch, remember? If I want out, I’ll say so.” She took his hand in hers, feeling the strength in those long fingers. “So far, I think it’s going pretty well. What do you think?”
He ran his thumb up her wrist, under her sleeve. Her pulse responded by speeding up.
“I thought there would be more … whipped cream.” His voice was a purr sliding along her nerve endings. “And not the code word kind.”
“Hmm, well, I think we can fix that.” She glanced at the door, through which either of the brothers could pop in at any moment. “Come here.” She led him to the big walk-in closet, where his clothes hung on orderly hangers and hers were piled on a bureau until she could put them away.
He slid the door closed behind them, shutting out the light from the bedroom, except for a narrow band along the floor. She couldn’t really see him anymore, but she could feel his presence, that strong, vital aura that was pure Zander Ross. Reaching for him, she bumped her face against his chest and felt his knee jab her thigh.
“Oops,” she said, at the same time that he said, “Sorry.”
“Don’t move,” he said. “And no one will get hurt.”
“Ha ha.” But she obliged and stayed still, while he fumbled his way around her body until his hands were firmly clamped around her shoulders. As always, something inside her relaxed under his touch. He turned her around so her back was towards him. Then he bent her over, nestling her upper body onto the pile of her clothes. The soft velvets and cashmeres of her sweaters and leggings embraced her in comfort and luxury. She sighed and wriggled as if preparing for a nap.
Except the heat rising inside her was not exactly compatible with a snooze.
As his hands shaped her ass, she felt her nipples go hard. Pressed against her velour hoodie, cushioned by cashmere, those sensitive peaks sent an electric current straight to her clit
He lightly swatted her ass and a rush of liquid gathered in her sex.
“What…why…”
“Just testing,” he said. He drew her leggings down to expose her rear to the stifling air of the closet.
“Just testing?”
“Yeah.” He swatted her again, t
his time touching bare skin. She reacted again, her nipples surging against the cloth below her. He followed that touch by caressing the tender skin, which tingled and pulsed.
“And?” she gasped. “Are you done testing?”
“Not quite.” He slid his hand between her legs, found her clit and flicked his thumbnail against it. She moaned deeply into the pile of cashmere. Fondling the pulsing nub between his fingers, he worked that moan into a cry that wrenched from her throat.
Another finger came inside her, hooking deep to find a spot toward the front of her body, a spot that sent piercing pleasure through her system. She bucked as he stroked and caressed, squeezing her clit until she wanted to scream, until juice flowed across his fingers, until her inner thighs trembled with need, until her back arched and her ass pushed against him.
Then the finger inside left her, to be replaced with the thick length of his cock. As part of the marriage agreement, they’d both gotten tested. Without the need for that kind of protection, and with Gretel already on birth control, they’d chosen to do without condoms.
Great decision, she decided as her inner channel embraced his arousal. She was so wet and slippery that he slid inside easily, like a water slide. When he was fully seated inside her, he pressed a hand on her lower back and somehow that changed the angle in a way that sent hot fire exploding through her.
She let fly a string of babbling words, burying them in the pile of clothing, as he slowly fucked her from behind.
The darkness added to the experience, since all her other senses filled the gap. Zander’s panting breath, the smell of mothballs and cashmere, the light swirl of air against her exposed skin. And most of all, the sensations igniting in her clit and deep in her core with every move he made.
He didn’t draw it out this time. From the urgency of his strokes she knew that he couldn’t. He was barely hanging onto his control, and every deep thrust put him closer to losing it.
She was right there with him on that edge, quivering like a ripe berry about to fall off the bush. She wanted to fall, needed to fall, but the orgasm was just out of reach. His magic fingers, that was what she needed, the way he stroked her clit, his body rough against hers, that friction…
Wicked in Winter Page 17
