by Jill Shalvis
asleep in his arms had probably been a mistake because that had felt even more intimate than the lovemaking.
In the hallway, Oreo nudged her toward the stairs. He wanted food. She crouched low and hugged the dog. “Listen,” she whispered into Oreo’s fur, “I know he’s super sexy and he smells good and his smile makes us stupid, but he’s leaving. We need to remember that and be strong. No falling for him, okay? Promise?”
Oreo didn’t promise, and she sighed. Then she headed to the kitchen in desperate need of caffeine. She intended to wake up fully and get herself to work. She didn’t have any flights scheduled, but there was a staff meeting she had to attend. Joe, annoyed by the exorbitant maintenance cost of the aging Caravan, wanted to sell it and get something newer and bigger, and she wanted in on that discussion.
But mostly she wanted to keep busy so she could think about something other than Parker. His moan of appreciation when he’d tasted her French toast. The sound of her name on his lips when he’d been buried deep inside her. The look on his face whenever he touched her, a look that conveyed something his words never did, that he was every bit as into her as she was him . . .
Damn. She had it bad.
Hey, it’s not all doom and gloom, her little voice said. You learned to bake kick-ass blueberry muffins last night. Somehow, in spite of herself, she’d opened her life a little and was having some fun.
Actually, if she factored in all the sex, she was having lots of fun. After Wyatt and Darcy had moved out, she’d really thought all her fun was behind her, but she was happy to be wrong about that.
And there was a lot more fun out there to be had, she told herself. When Parker was gone and the glow of all the orgasms wore off, she’d still be going for life, one hundred percent.
Or at least seventy-five percent.
Determined to be fine, she decided it was a blueberry muffin sort of morning. While waiting for the coffee to brew, she carefully re-created a batch from the recipe Manda had written down for her, doing everything from the night before—except drink a bottle of wine—and stuck them in the oven.
Waiting was not a strong suit of hers, so she ran upstairs to shower and dress for the day, and then, because she’d forgotten last night, she started to switch her laundry from the washer to the dryer. But she got distracted by the kittens, whom she’d let run free while she was in the shower.
Massive mistake.
Wild woman was hanging from the curtains in the living room, swaying back and forth like Tarzan. The tabby had vanished completely. It took Zoe fifteen minutes to find the thing. Eventually she found him in the dryer she’d left open—snoozing on her fresh, clean whites. She scooped him up in her hands and he lifted his little fuzzy head to give her a sleepy “mew,” looking so adorable she couldn’t find her mad.
That was when she remembered the muffins.
A few minutes later she’d tossed out the burned muffins, run across the driveway to get a bag of muffins from Manda, and then corralled the heathens in the kitchen with her, and was opening the bag of muffins that Manda had given her. It took only a minute to decide that last night’s muffins would be better warmed.
Five minutes later, the room no longer smelled like burned muffins but instead like perfectly baked and warming muffins, and Zoe nodded in satisfaction. This was more like it.
She needed a Manda.
She looked up when Parker came into the room, dressed in jeans and a button-down, keys in hand. His hair was still damp from a shower. As she took a deep breath, her nose filled with the essence of Parker: soap, deodorant, and delicious, sexy man. Her body practically vibrated with unbidden memories: Parker in his bed, inside her body, his mouth hot at her throat, his hands positioning her as he wanted as he’d moved within her, driving her wild.
“Hey,” she said.
“Hey.” He smiled and her heart hurt. “I thought I’d wake up with you.”
She ignored the way her heart squished at that.
“What smells so good?” he asked.
She looked at the oven, where the muffins were warming. Manda’s muffins. But hey, Zoe had helped make them, so technically that meant they were half hers, right? Maybe more than half since she’d done the reheating all on her own. And if she’d decided to make breakfast casserole or breakfast burritos or something like that, she would have rocked it because she could so totally cook, dammit. “Blueberry muffins,” she said, and nonchalantly pulled the pan of perfectly made blueberry muffins from the oven.
Both man and dog locked eyes on them and licked their lips.
“Did you make ’em?” Parker asked, not making a move any closer.
His wariness was more than mildly annoying. “Why?” she asked. “Are you afraid?”
He looked pained now, like he was in a quandary.
“Guess you are,” she said, taking a muffin from the tray and slowly peeling back the paper, breaking the muffin in half, watching as the steam rose. Mouth watering, she took a bite and closed her eyes. “Mmmm,” she moaned.
When she opened her eyes, Parker had moved into her personal space, his eyes dark with heat and more than a little bit of trouble. He’d skipped a shave this morning and his jaw had just the right amount of scruff on it so that if he rubbed it against her she’d probably orgasm on the spot.
Her inner thighs trembled.
“Good?” he murmured, his gaze locked in on her mouth.
“Very.” She stared up at him, out of breath. Why was she out of breath? Because you want him. Just one more time . . . “Parker?”
“Yeah?”
Deciding to show, not tell, she ran a finger down his chest to the button on his jeans.
His eyes heated, but he remained still.
So she let her finger slip beneath the waistband of his jeans.
He caught her wrist. “You chilly again?” he asked, amusement in his voice.
“Don’t play hard to get now,” she whispered, and he laughed.
“Zoe,” he said in that early-morning sexy guy voice, “with you, I’m never hard to get. I’m just hard.”
She snorted and pulled him down to kiss him.
He kissed her back and then looked deep into her eyes.
She did her best to look like something he couldn’t live without. At least for the duration.
“When you sneaked out of my bed this morning, I figured you’d come to your senses,” he said.
“If I’d come to my senses, I’d have kicked you out days ago.” To soften the words, she once again pulled his head down to hers.
“Be sure,” he said, voice low, calm, even though the hunger and desire in his eyes gave him away. “No regrets.”
“Of course not,” she said. “The three W’s, remember? No wondering, no worrying, no wishing for things I can’t have.” Okay, so she’d added on those last few words, but it sounded like a good policy.
“I don’t want to hurt you—”
“You can’t.” She put her finger over his sexy lips when he didn’t cave. “I get it now,” she promised. “I want to enjoy this, enjoy you, while I can. I need this, Parker. I need you.”
She waited a beat for him to deny her, to be stoic and strong and hold her off because that was what he thought was best for her. But doing what perhaps was the most incredible thing any man had ever done for her, he assumed she was an adult and capable of making her own decisions. His hands settled on her hips and he pulled her in. “Zoe?”
“Yeah?”
He slid the pad of his thumb over her lower lip and then let his fingers sink into her hair so that he could tilt her face up to his. “I’m going to kiss you,” he said in that sexy, gravelly morning voice.
She nodded eagerly, her breathing already shallow and rapid. “Yes—”
Before the word was all the way out of her mouth, he lowered his head and kissed her hard, pinning her to the counter. She sucked his tongue into her mouth, greedily savoring the taste of him while he appeared to do the same. “Here,” she said.
<
br /> Demanded.
And he made it so. He stripped her quickly, murmuring hot praises in between kissing and stroking everything he exposed, and when she was naked, he set her on the counter.
“Hold on,” he said.
And she did. She held on, feeling his muscles bunch and release as he slid into her and began to move, pushing in and out in a rhythm that took her from zero to sixty in a heartbeat. She held on, her ankles linked at his backside, moving with him, sensation after sensation pummeling her until she was so close to coming she could hardly breathe.
And then Parker gripped her hips hard and yanked her in so that their torsos were plastered together, so that she could feel the weight of him leaning into her, the carved muscles of his chest and arms working. And in the sensual haze of her preorgasmic state, she looked up. His face was an erotic mask of pleasure and that was all it took. She came with his name a mantra on her lips, came so hard she was barely cognizant of him burying his face in the crook of her neck and doing the same.
When he pulled back, Zoe realized she had a two-fisted grip on his shirt and was still letting out helpless little whimpers as she came down. “Sorry.”
He eased her to the floor and held her still when she tried to turn away. “Don’t ever be sorry for your passion. It’s beautiful. I love it.”
“I . . . got a little wild.”
He tightened his grip and kissed her until she forgot what they’d been talking about. “I love it,” he repeated against her mouth, and finally let her go.
Flushed, she resisted the urge to stick her heated face into the freezer. Instead she dressed—again—and poured them both a coffee and tried to act like this, having a man in her kitchen in the morning, one she’d slept with, was an everyday occurrence.
Except that until he’d shown up, it was a never occurrence.
He’d inhaled three of the muffins and praised her baking after each one before her conscience got the best of her. “Parker?”
“Yeah?” He was eyeing yet another muffin and she realized that when he left here, she wanted to leave her mark on him the same way he’d left his mark on her.
She wanted him to remember her as great in bed—or in this case, great on her kitchen counter, the couch, and the floor, and his bed . . . She wanted him to remember her house and her damn amazing blueberry muffins. “Nothing,” she said.
He smiled and popped another muffin into his mouth, and she had to close her eyes because the sight of him eating with such pleasure made her ache. Dammit. “Ididn’tmakethem,” she said.
“What?”
She kept her eyes closed because if she didn’t look at him, he couldn’t turn her upside down.
Then she felt his warm, large hand along her jaw. “Look at me.”
She grimaced because her body had a serious problem with ignoring a command from him, but she opened her eyes.
“I know,” he said, and flashed her the sexiest of all his smiles. Holding her gaze, he went for his fifth muffin, breaking it in half to share with Oreo, who was sitting on Parker’s foot.
Both man and dog ate with pleasure, Oreo nudging Parker’s hand with his nose for more.
“You know?” Zoe repeated.
“Yep.” Parker licked crumbs off his thumb and then sucked his forefinger into his mouth to get that one clean, too.
The sound made her nipples hard.
Damn misbehaving nipples!
“How did you know?” she demanded.
He shrugged his broad shoulders and captured the naughty gray kitten before she could tumble headfirst into Oreo’s empty bowl.
“Parker.”
He glanced up at Zoe. “When you say my name like that, I want to make you say it again. While I’m inside you.”
Her legs quivered, but she put her hands on her hips.
“Yeah,” he said, nodding. “I think it’s the ’tude combined with the tone. And the way you’re dressed, too. Like you’re a pissed-off teacher. Want to play teacher and deviant principal?”
“No!” she said indignantly, for women everywhere, even as a part of her—a shockingly big part—wanted to say YES!
He was watching her face and laughed. “You’re a pretty liar, Zoe. Maybe I should be the teacher and you the naughty student.”
She felt ground zero twitch and get damp at the thought. “Both of those things put you in charge,” she noted.
“Yeah. So?”
“So maybe I want to be in charge,” she said.
His eyes darkened. “Say the word.”
She took a big step back. Damn, she should know better than to play with him. “We just did it,” she said with a low laugh. “On the counter! And then like a hundred times last night! Aren’t you tired?”
With another laugh, he hauled her into him and nuzzled his face into the crook of her neck. “You smell so fuckin’ good,” he murmured. “Like blueberry muffins. I want to eat you up.”
“I have to go.”
With a sigh, he released her. “Be safe today.”
She met his gaze. “I will if you will.”
Zoe ended up with an unscheduled late flight. By the time she got home, it was past midnight. Parker wasn’t there. She checked.
Or rather, her hormones checked.
She fell into bed after setting her alarm, which went off what felt like only a few minutes later. She showered in a bit of a fog and hit the kitchen, desperate for caffeine.
Parker was there with the kittens and Oreo, looking like he belonged in her life, the four of them having a breakfast party. His sharp eyes met hers and he wordlessly got up and poured her some coffee.
“Thanks,” she said gratefully, refraining from mentioning how good he looked in her life—oops, her kitchen.
Her heart hitched, a little warning that she was in over her head. Big-time. She ignored it and when Parker pulled her in, she wrapped herself up in him willingly.
He held her for a moment, his arms comforting and warm. She wasn’t exactly sure when the embrace changed, heating up, but she welcomed it, clutching at him as his mouth forged a hot path along her jaw and down her throat.
With a helpless moan, her head fell back to give him more room and she clutched at him. “This can’t happen right now,” she said weakly. “I’ve only got ten minutes to get out of here.”
“Ten minutes works for me.” His hands ran along her hips, down her thighs, and back up again, beneath her skirt to cup her ass.
“It doesn’t work for me,” she managed to say. “I need at least twenty.”
“Hmm,” he murmured, kissing his way down her throat like a man on a mission. “A challenge.” He flashed his badass grin and slid her blazer off her shoulders, laying it across the back of a chair. “Accepted.”
“No, I didn’t mean—”
Her cami was no match for him. In two seconds he’d nudged the straps off her shoulders and down her arms, where he left them so that her hands were bound at her sides. “Um—”
Her bra, a front clasp, came undone with a flick of his wrist and her breasts spilled into his hands.
He let out a low, appreciative breath and bent his head, using his tongue to flick one nipple, and then the other before pulling it into his mouth and sucking hard.
Her knees wobbled and he picked her up, setting her down on the kitchen table between his laptop and her coffee and some flight files she’d planned to go over. “The computer—” she whispered. “My files—”
“They’ll be fine if you stay still. Can you stay still, Zoe?” he asked between nibbles, and when she didn’t answer, he gently closed his teeth around a nipple.
“I don’t know,” she managed. Panting now, she spread her legs and wrapped them around him, pulling him in close, needing him right up against her. Her coffee nearly sloshed but he caught it, steadied it, all without taking his eyes off her.
“Hold still,” he reminded her.
She had no idea what it was about his soft commands that turned her on so much, but there was n
o denying that she was very, very turned on.
Her skirt was snug and a stretchy material that Parker had no trouble sliding up to her hips. He took in her plain black bikini panties and smiled. “I like.”
“You like everything.”