by Lucy Gilmore
“Who says we can’t do both?” she retorted. “They say sex burns just as many calories as a thirty-minute jog. That’s three miles we could lop off our final tally.”
He stared at her with a look so staggered she almost feared she’d gone too far. Pushing Harrison a little bit outside his comfort zone was fine—in fact, it was the only way she was going to get through to him—but she didn’t want to push him away.
Then he dropped his mouth to hers, and she realized that he wasn’t going anywhere. There was no time to revel in that searing heat of his or the way his body felt against hers. There was no time to do anything, really, besides accept the demands he made, one after another.
One hand was in her hair, his fingers tugging at the short strands. His other hand wound toward her lower back, pulling her flush against him. His lips bypassed the playful nuzzling stage and pressed her own open, allowing him to sweep his tongue into her mouth until her head swam with possibilities.
In other words, he kissed her—not just a sample or a nibble, but a hot, throbbing, full-body demand that left her weak in the knees. It was also tender in ways she hadn’t been expecting.
She would have had difficulty pinpointing exactly how that tenderness was taking shape. It was the way he cradled her in his arms, his body making a nest for her to burrow into, her limbs coiling into the warmth of him. It was the way his kiss moved away from her lips and along her jawline, soft pecks and light nibbles giving over to what she could have sworn was an actual bite on the curve of her neck. That was what really gave the show away.
He was tasting her, sampling her, devouring her.
Sophie had been kissed plenty of times before. In fact, she’d started young. The teenage cancer ward was a breeding ground of exploratory vice, so many of the kids unsure how much time they had left that they weren’t leaving anything—including sex—up to chance.
But this? Wow. She wasn’t sure she’d ever been devoured before.
“Holy crap, you’re good at this,” she said, and turned her head to give him better access to her neck. She also buried her hands in his hair, holding his head in place in case he got any funny ideas about stopping before things got really interesting. “Amazing, actually. Do you practice on your pillow at night or something?”
It was a good thing she’d had the foresight to hold on to him, because he tried lifting his head at that. “Yes. I routinely make out with my pillow. That’s what we Sleeping Beauties do.”
She moaned, letting him know she wasn’t about to let him put a wall up against what had to be one of the hottest make-out sessions she’d had in a long time—or, you know, ever. She also pressed her hips against his, doing a lot more than moan when the hard line of his groin hit her right in the sweet spot. Would it be awful if she gyrated against him a few times? Just a little?
“Lucky pillow,” she said, and this time, she was the one doing the kissing. She had to hitch a leg around the back of his thigh and tug on his hair to reach his lips, but it was well worth the effort when his mouth opened to let her in.
Harrison’s hand naturally found its way to her leg, his wide palm searing her skin through the see-through panel. The sensation of tingling, liquid heat didn’t abate any as his hand began moving in a determinedly upward direction, skimming along the rounded curve of her thigh until he was almost in derriere territory.
“Why, Harrison Parks,” she chided—as much as a woman could chide when she was climbing a man like a tree. “Do you also feel your pillow up like that?”
“Every chance I get. Fortunately, it’s not made of memory foam.”
Oh dear. Harrison had just made a joke. He’d made a joke while his body burned against hers. She wasn’t sure she could take this much novelty at once. The only solution, she decided, was to make a mad grab for the bottom of his T-shirt. As long as she was being shocked with revelations, she might as well get a glimpse of his abs too.
But he stopped her just as she managed to snake a hand against the flat, muscular plane of his abdomen. She caught a glimpse of the patch on his stomach where his pump attached, but that was all before his free hand pressed over the top of hers.
“I’m not some sad, solitary charity case, Sophie.”
She knew, in a second, that she’d pushed too far. Instinct told her to say something playful and light, anything to get him back to the serious business of kissing her, but she took a deep breath and met his gaze instead. His eyes were still steely, still gray, but they weren’t nearly as hard.
Swallowing heavily, she said, “Of course you’re not.”
His fingers tightened around hers, their hands near enough his waistband that there was no mistaking how much sexual urgency pulsated between them. “I’m serious. I know I’m not good at people, and I can come across all wrong sometimes, but I don’t want you to think I’m…” He frowned, struggling to find the right word.
“Desperate?” she ventured.
He halted. “I’m not desperate.”
“Alone?”
“I am alone most of the time, but I’ve always been that way.”
“Human, then,” she said, refusing to let him close back up. “Human and fallible and in need of a little comfort from time to time. Just like the rest of us.”
It took him a long time to answer. Too long, making her fear that she’d made yet another misstep, forcing him to withdraw once more into his hard shell. But he drew a deep, shuddering breath and said the words she’d been waiting her whole life to hear.
Well, almost.
“No one is like you, Sophie,” he said. “Thank God for us all.”
Instead of backing away, he lifted his wide palm to her cheek. She readied herself for another kiss. Half of her hoped it would be one of those hard, fierce ones. The other half yearned for something tender and slow. But as they stood there together, Sophie’s head cradled in Harrison’s hand, all she got was a long, lingering stare.
Strangely enough, it was as powerful as the feel of Harrison’s tongue sliding along hers. There was magnetism in those stony eyes of his, the lure of a powerful man drawing her in.
“How’s the heart rate now?” she asked.
The question was mostly an excuse to place her hand against the hard swell of his chest, but it also served as a reminder that she had an actual job to do out here. As much fun as it would have been to have Harrison lift her against the rough side of this barn and ravish her until both of them were shaking and weak, she doubted even Dawn would approve of that methodology.
He remained silent.
“We should probably get running again,” she continued with real reluctance. His heart was steady and strong, just like the rest of him, but it wouldn’t remain that way indefinitely. Nothing could. “If we don’t pop out of the forest soon, your dad’s going to wonder what happened to us.”
“I’m pretty sure he already knows,” Harrison said, but he released his grip on her and stepped back. The physical separation was disquieting, like someone yanked a pile of warm blankets away. “He’s the one who warned me in the first place.”
“Warned you?” Sophie echoed. “About what?”
Harrison shook his head and turned to take off running once again. “I told you already. Tablecloths.”
Chapter 9
“Wool is going to be your warmest option, obviously, and it’s good for beginners because it’s so forgiving.” Sophie took a few steps forward and started jabbing her finger at the colorful bundles lining the wall.
The whole wall. As in, a hundred feet of storefront, all of it lined with shelves and so tightly packed with yarn you could probably knit a scarf from here to the moon. Harrison couldn’t decide if he was impressed or alarmed.
“Acrylic is lighter, so you might want to consider it for summer wear or if you plan to make Bubbles something purely decorative. It’s also easier to work with if you’re a beginner. If you care about sustainability, of course, you could always go for something organic and cotton. Now, me? I’m obsesse
d with this alpaca stuff right here. It can smell a little funny when you get it damp, but you get used to it after a while. It reminds me of wet dog—which, to be honest, is my standard eau du cologne.” She turned to him with an expectant look on her face, eyes wide and her lips slightly parted. “Well? What’ll it be? The pink wool? I feel like you’ve been eyeing the pink wool.”
Harrison sighed. As far as he could tell, there were twelve identical pink wools, each one looking more like bubblegum than yarn. “You’re loving this, aren’t you?”
“The yarn store? Um, yes. This is my happy place.”
He paused, waiting for the rest of whatever Sophie had to throw at him, but she just kept watching him with that same earnest expectation. And joy—that’s what that was on her face, what made her look so much like an angel atop a Christmas tree.
She wasn’t kidding. She really loved yarn that much.
Since Sophie had decided that knitting was the only way—short of regularly making out in front of his barn—of breaking down his barriers and integrating Bubbles into his life, he turned his attention to the task at hand.
What other choice did he have? Yarn was a much safer activity than kissing.
“It’s all the same to me, to be honest,” he said. “Maybe I should let Bubbles pick, since she’s the one who’s going to have to wear it.”
He didn’t wait for an answer or look at Sophie, since he could guess how she looked right now.
Smiling. At him.
Laughing. At him.
“As much as you love your sock, Bubbles, Sophie said you don’t look up to snuff. She thinks you need to be dressed up in handmade finery.” He ignored the choking sound of Sophie’s laughter behind him and picked up the puppy, who had been sitting patiently at his feet. Holding her up to the wall of yarn, he asked, “Which one do you like?”
Bubbles gave a Pomeranian squirm—a movement he was rapidly coming to realize was her standard expression of joy. Since he had no other way to interpret her mysterious canine desires, he decided to go with it, passing her over the wall and seeing which wooly bundle caused her to wriggle the most.
“White?” he asked as she worked her way toward a pearly, bridal-looking thing in one corner. “Are you kidding? After Labor Day?” That was a thing, right? He vaguely remembered that being a thing.
The choking sound became strangled.
“Pick something more practical, please,” he admonished the puppy. “Black is what I recommend. The color of soot and ashes. You have no idea how hard those are to get out of clothes after a few weeks of nonstop exposure.”
“Maybe fire engine red? That seems appropriate.” Sophie stepped forward to stand next to him. As he expected, her voice and her shoulders were shaking with laughter. “A lady always looks striking in red. They say women who wear it are more attractive to members of the opposite sex.”
As Sophie had chosen to wear a deeply vibrant pair of red pants that day, Harrison could only assume she was pushing him again. The pants themselves weren’t overwhelming—other than the color, which drew the eye inevitably toward the rounded curves of her ass, they were like any other pair of pants. Except, for some godforsaken reason, they stopped just above Sophie’s ankles. Capri pants, he’d heard them called. In no way, shape, or form an item of clothing to be sexualized—especially since she’d paired them with a simple black T-shirt.
But damn. Every time she walked into his line of vision, his gaze was drawn inexorably down to where the flash of her ankles peeked above a pair of shiny, black heels. Like the rest of her body parts, those ankles looked sleek and delicate, and he wanted to explore them at his leisure.
Ankles of all fucking things. A few more weeks in this woman’s company, and he was going to have to start asking people to cover their piano legs like some scandalized Victorian maiden.
“It’s biological,” Sophie added, continuing the conversation as though Harrison were taking part in it instead of growing hard while staring at a wall of yarn. He was beginning to realize what she saw in this place. “I read this study once that said women who are ovulating wear red without even realizing it. It’s like an advertisement for fertility.”
“I am not putting Bubbles in a walking fertility advertisement.”
She giggled. “Dogs are mostly color-blind, so I think she’ll be safe from all those unwanted male advances.”
He turned on her with a glare. “Then what the devil are we doing in a yarn store picking out colors? You’re telling me she can’t tell the difference between any of these?”
“I mean, she might like the texture of some better than others. This one is awfully soft. It’s like running your fingers through cotton candy. Here. Feel it.”
Sophie grabbed his free hand and pulled it toward a bundle of yarn the exact same color as her pants. He knew she was doing it on purpose—this slow brush of her palm against his, this fingering of textiles that made his heart pound—but it didn’t seem to matter. Whether playing or pushing, the results were always the same.
“See?” she said, casting a shy look up at him. Her fingers slipped through his. “Who wouldn’t want that against their bare skin?”
Harrison wanted to snatch his hand away, but he was stuck, transfixed by desire and his inability to withstand the power she had over him. He also wanted to tell her exactly what he was thinking: that cotton candy wasn’t his vice. Pulled taffy—that was his poison, and that was exactly what Sophie felt like. Taut muscles and soft skin, the endless tugging and straining that happened whenever she drew near.
Naturally, he could say no such thing. Even if he were a master of oratory prowess, he had no way of knowing what that kind of reaction a declaration like that would elicit. Wide-eyed shock seemed a likely possibility. Revulsion was definitely a contender. Or Sophie might, as she was doing much more often these days, laugh.
Which was why the only thing that eventually left his lips was something gruff and inadequate to capture his feelings.
“Is all that why you’re wearing red today?” he asked with a whirl of his finger in the direction of her legs.
Her hand twitched in his and her cheeks broke out in twin pink circles, but she didn’t let go. It was as good a metaphor for this woman as anything. Tenacious, that was what she was. She had to be, to have stuck this thing out with him for this long.
“It was Dawn’s idea,” she said. “Which, since you’ve met her, I’m sure you can understand.”
He didn’t. Sophie’s sisters hadn’t seemed to be overly fond of red to him. In fact, the only thing he’d been able to glean during that painful session in their kitchen was that they were terrifying. “She seemed okay,” he said, hedging.
Her mouth fell open in a slight part. “Okay? Dawn? The one with the wavy hair and killer smile?”
He nodded.
She stared at him for a moment, her eyes narrowing in disbelief. “That was your takeaway? After forty-five minutes in her company? That she’s okay?”
He shrugged uncomfortably. “Why? Isn’t she?”
The stare only intensified. “She’s more than okay, Harrison. She’s gorgeous and she’s fun and everyone loves her. I mean that literally. Everyone. Wait—what did you think of Lila?”
“If I say she’s okay, are you going to go off on me again?”
A light giggle escaped her lips. “I’m sorry. I’m just not used to anyone—any man, that is—meeting Dawn and not instantly falling in love with her. Lila too. She’s the most beautiful person I know, both inside and out.”
Harrison could have easily corrected her on this score. The Vasquezes were a well-formed lot, it was true, but he didn’t see how anyone who’d spent five minutes in Sophie’s company could prefer her sisters. Sophie’s beauty was more subtle and delicate, yes, but it was all the more powerful because of it. Her feelings weren’t a maze or a puzzle that a man had to figure out—they were right there on the surface, easy to interpret and free for anyone who cared to pick them up.
Most imp
ortant, she was kind. To him and to animals, to his father and to everyone who crossed her path. Maybe that was a commonplace thing where she came from, but to him, it was like reaching an oasis after twenty years of dry, desert living.
“I hate to disillusion you when we’re making such good headway, but this isn’t my normal way of progressing through life,” Sophie said. She tugged her lower lip between her teeth and fixed her gaze out the storefront window. “With you, I don’t seem to have a problem asserting myself. With them, however… I don’t know. It’s like I’m powerless. Poor little Sophie Vasquez, always last choice, always third place.”
Of all the harsh things Sophie had said to him in the course of this puppy training, none of them caused his insides to roil quite like that one. He’d willingly withstood everything she had to throw at him in the name of progress—Pomeranians and candles and bare fucking ankles—but this was where he drew the line.
“Sophie, I—” he began, but the words were difficult to get out. His tongue stuck to the roof of his mouth, all moisture sucked dry.
By the time he managed to figure out what came next—Sophie, I want you; Sophie, I need you—she’d dropped his hand and gasped at the sight of a flash moving across the street.
“Is that your dad?” she asked.
“What? Where?” His thoughts successfully diverted, Harrison craned his neck to get a better look. “That guy crossing the street? But he’s…”
“Yeah, I know. Wearing normal human clothes.”
The figure, who wore a checked shirt that looked freshly ironed, paused and turned. Only a fraction of a second passed before he turned again and trotted the rest of the way across the street, but it was enough for Harrison to confirm that it was, in fact, his father. Not only was his shirt ironed, but he had a clean pair of Dickies on and his hair had been combed back with what looked like a whole can of styling product.
“I think he looks nice,” Sophie said. “Maybe he has a date.”
Harrison stared at her. Sophie was, without question, one of the most starry-eyed and optimistic souls he’d ever met, but even she couldn’t take things that far. “Are you kidding? My father hasn’t had a date since the eighties. He’s a confirmed misogynist.”