A Time to Fall (Love by the Seasons Book 1)

by Jess Vonn

  “Mmm, so you’re a brief man,” she murmured, nipping at his bicep while her hands squeezed and explored. “Very nice.”

  “Except when I sleep,” he clarified. “Then I’m a nothing man.”

  Winnie swallowed.

  “Well, it’s a shame I’ll never get to see that in action.”

  He tilted his head in confusion.

  “No sleepovers. We agreed.”

  “Mmm,” he said, his mind lingering for a moment on the thought of his body sleeping next to hers, his mouth breathing deeply as it rested near the warm cushion of her breasts. Both of them content and barely conscious from screwing the hell out of each other.

  “That’s true. But you never said no naps. Maybe I’ll have to crash one of your weekend rituals.”

  “Now that doesn’t sound very restful.”

  “Not at first, anyway. But once I was through with you, I bet we would sleep like babies.”

  She pulled his strong frame fully against her while she backed up against the refrigerator.

  “You’re making it very hard for me to prepare for your cooking lesson, Briggs.”

  “I can feel that,” she said, rubbing her core against the evidence.

  “Patience,” he said, nominally to her, but damn if he didn’t need the reminder just as much. He hadn’t anticipated Winnie coming on to him this strong. Now that the floodgates were open, the woman seemed surprisingly eager to explore what was zinging between them.

  She pouted, but finally removed her hands from his pants in an attempt to behave.

  “I think you’ll like this lesson.”

  “I told you I can’t cook. This is futile. I don’t want to burn down your gorgeous kitchen.”

  “If you can read, you can cook. I’ll be supervising you every step of the way.”

  Winnie sighed, looking adorable in her helplessness. “So what’s the lesson?”

  “Chocolate layer cake with buttercream frosting. Sound good?”

  He watched her face light up.

  “Sounds heavenly. Chocolate is probably my biggest non-Cal Spencer pleasure.”

  “Well, it should be a nice evening then, huh?”

  “Mmm,” she confirmed, pressing a kiss to the side of his neck, and then fully onto his lips. He returned the gesture, deepening the kiss. Feeling the warm connection of their caressing tongues. Feeling his cock harden against the cradle of her sex where it pressed.

  “Patience,” he repeated, prying himself from her tempting lips. How strange that the gesture could feel so natural and yet so unexpected. Cooking with Winnie could become habit forming.

  “So where do we start?”

  “Here.”

  He held up a large index card with the recipe and instructions, which he knew by heart, written in dark ink with his own masculine scrawl. He watched Winnie smile as she brushed her fingers ever so gently over his handwriting on the page with a smile. The gesture felt unnervingly tender, causing another uncomfortable ache in the vicinity of his heart.

  Over the next half hour, Cal explained every step of the cake making process. Ever the investigator, Winnie asked question after question, and Cal enjoyed answering each one with confidence, from the purpose of a flour sifter, to the reasoning behind letting the eggs warm to room temperature, to the advantage of greasing and flouring the layer cake pans.

  Eventually, with only a few spills and a few egg shell extractions, the two-layer cake pans full of shiny chocolate batter made their way into Cal’s oven to bake. In the meantime, they started the learning process over again, this time with all of Winnie’s questions related to frosting. Along the way, Cal learned something too: watching Winnie Briggs lick chocolate buttercream off her fingers was now officially one of his favorite pastimes.

  The time with Winnie in his kitchen flew by. Cooking, drinking the red wine he opened, chatting idly about their days, about the town, their favorite movies.

  Sheer pleasure.

  And the night was still young.

  Before he knew it, the timer beeped, the cakes were out and cool, and Winnie held the icing spatula in her hand, gingerly spreading the soft buttercream around the cake. He guided her hand at times, showing her how to flick her wrist ever so gently in order to create waves and peaks in the frosting, and by the time she had finished, the cake, sitting on a simple glass cake stand in the middle of Cal’s kitchen table, looked stunning and delicious.

  “You did it,” Cal said, drying his hands. He’d washed the last of the dishes while Winnie finished decorating the cake.

  Her mouth hung open, seemingly stunned at what her hands had created.

  “I’ve never made anything so beautiful,” she whispered in awe.

  “I told you that you could cook,” he said.

  “I cannot believe I just did that. Thank you so much!” She bounced over and threw her arms around him in a tight squeeze. The affection in the gesture unsteadied him.

  “And now’s the best part,” he said.

  “What do you mean?”

  He looked at her to see if she was messing with him, given how obvious the answer was.

  “We eat it.”

  Her face fell.

  “Oh, no,” she said, putting her body protectively between Cal and the cake. “We can’t eat it. It’s too perfect. I’ll never make anything so perfect again.”

  “We can make another one. This doesn’t have to be the end. Maybe the next one will be even better than this one.”

  “Impossible. The first is always the best.”

  He grinned. There wasn’t a first with Winnie yet that had left him filled with anything but pure satisfaction.

  “What if we—” he started, but she interrupted.

  “Wait, just let me get my phone. I have to take some pictures of it.” Winnie scurried out of the kitchen, back to the bench by his door where she’d left her purse.

  It only occurred to him then just how in-the-moment he’d been, cooking with Winnie. For almost two hours, they talked, laughed, tasted, worked side by side, and not once did he think of a single care outside of his kitchen. Not even one of his knee-jerk, workaholic impulses to check his email or texts. He chose not to dwell on the significance of the way the woman could hold his full, undivided attention.

  She slid back onto the wood floor of his kitchen in her polka dot socks, her donut-printed phone in hand.

  “Can I adjust the lighting?” she asked. “I want to capture our cake at its most magnificent.”

  Cal laughed then nodded, pointing to the switch on the back side of the room. He tried not to overthink how much he liked the sound of Winnie describing something as theirs.

  She slowly turned the knob that controlled the lighting over the dining area until it was just right, then proceeded to take photos of her first cake from a half-dozen angles.

  He stood back and enjoyed the bond between Winnie and her creation, while also savoring the image of Winnie, bent over his kitchen table in her attempt to capture the perfect angle for a photo.

  Now that was an image that could stick with a man.

  “Think you got its best side?”

  “They’re all its best side. That’s the problem!” she said, coming back over by his side and flipping through the series of photos she just took.

  “I’m sure photographers have the same problem with you.”

  “Oh, please,” she scoffed. “I don’t hold a candle to this cake. Though we probably should get one shot of me with it, don’t you think?

  “Absolutely.” He watched as she went over to the table and crouched toward her cake, gesturing with her hands toward the chocolatey creation like a game show beauty might showcase a big prize.

  Taking a few shots and passing the phone back to Winnie, Cal couldn’t help but observe that the woman outshined the cake by miles, but he didn’t dare tell her that. She might storm right out, and he wasn’t anywhere near done with his lessons in pleasure for the night. In fact, he was damn tired of not tasting her. In two ste
ps, his hands were back home where they belonged—on Winnie Briggs’ luscious body.

  Chapter 14

  One minute Winnie had been snapping photos of the most stunning baked good she’d ever laid claim to, and the next she felt Cal’s hot and hungry hands all over her. She’d long thought that nothing could come between her and chocolate, but Cal shot that theory straight to hell.

  In an impossibly smooth motion his hands grasped the backs of Winnie’s thighs and hoisted her onto the kitchen table, planting his body firmly between her spread legs.

  Cal caught her tiny yelp of surprise in his mouth as he devoured her. The sudden nearness of him, the hardness of his body pressed against hers, made Winnie feel as if a flood gate had lifted in her body. Desire and need and hunger rushed through her veins, drowning out any propriety or insecurity or doubt.

  Her mind scrambled to process the sensations overwhelming her—not only what she wanted to do to Cal, but also what he was doing to her—his lips on her mouth. Her neck. His hands in her hair. The heat and hunger that radiated from every inch of him.

  An overwhelming sense of urgency fueled her as fear and desire comingled into desperation. They commanded every part of her body to experience as much of him as possible. Her hands squeezed at his waist. Grabbed his shirt. Her legs wrapped around his ass and pulled his hardness even tighter against her sex. She needed all of him at once, right now, on her, in her.

  “Christ,” she heard him groan at her hungry gasps. His own loss of composure only stoked her desire.

  “Cal, please,” she cried out between frantic kisses. “Please. I’m sorry. I lied.”

  His head cocked up in concern and his busy hands paused.

  “You lied about what?”

  Shoot. She was accidentally cock blocking herself.

  “I can’t take it slow,” she panted, wondering why there never seemed to be enough oxygen when Cal touched her body. Her voice shook but the words flew out all the same. “I don’t want to take it slow. I want everything you could possibly offer right now, on this kitchen table. Tonight.”

  Relief washed over his face and a wicked grin twisted his lips.

  “That wasn’t the deal, Briggs.”

  “I want a new deal.”

  He shook his head no, his face serious. “You set the ground rules for a reason.”

  Winnie growled. “I was younger then. Stupider.”

  He laughed. “Sometimes waiting makes the pleasure that much better.”

  “I don’t have time for more roller coaster analogies, Cal. Just fuck me.”

  His eyes flashed with shock and hunger as his mind processed her uncharacteristic vulgarity, but as always, his stubbornness trumped all.

  “No.”

  She whimpered.

  “You’re a woman to be savored,” he explained.

  Damn the man for trying to flatter her into not having sex. But surely his dick would be on her side, if only she could directly communicate with it. Her shaky hands reached down to fumble with the buckle of his jeans.

  “Cal, I can’t wait. It’ll destroy me. I want all of you. Now.”

  His hands grasped at her wrists and easily pushed them behind her, firmly onto the table so that she reclined before him.

  “We made a deal, and we’re sticking with it,” he said through gritted teeth. “You’re not getting in these pants tonight, Briggs.”

  She sighed in resignation, suddenly wondering if self-control was Cal’s greatest superpower.

  His gaze grew darker. “Now keep your hands on the table unless I tell you otherwise,” Cal ordered.

  Pleasure pulsed between her legs at his sudden display of dominance.

  “If you think I don’t want to rip your clothes off and take you this second, Briggs, you’re dead wrong. If I let my body have its way, I’d have been inside you before you even stepped foot past my entryway.” His eyes met hers with devastating intensity. “But I said I’d bring you pleasure one inch at a time, and that’s what I’ll do, even if it literally pains me.”

  To prove his point, he inched closer, pressing the erection straining his jeans against the cradle of her legs. Her hips bucked instinctively, wanting to increase the pressure and heat between them. She groaned at the sweet, tormenting contact and the singing pleasure it foretold.

  “Are we clear?” he asked, that sexy firmness holding steady in his voice.

  She nodded reluctantly.

  His hands returned to her body, filling her with relief and desire. His strong fingers rubbed along the tops of her thighs, then up over her hips, which squirmed with need. His hands swept under her shirt and she gasped at their warmth on the delicate skin of her stomach.

  “You feel so good, Briggs,” he said as he feasted on the new parts of her being exposed. She couldn’t form words as his hands rose higher and higher until her top bunched up over her cleavage and her lace-covered breasts were in full view. She might have felt self-conscious if his hungry green eyes weren’t so worshipful.

  “Jesus, Briggs,” he whispered as he scanned over her. He slid his hands onto the small of her back and lifted her to a seated position so that he could pull her shirt off over her head.

  His hands moved down to her hips and he grabbed them greedily.

  “Take off the bra,” he demanded. With shaky fingertips, she complied, and she watched his eyes grow wider. She felt wanton, spread open to him like that, topless on his kitchen table and straddling him while he remained fully clothed. He was issuing the orders but she was unraveling him and it felt unbelievable. The power of it brought out a side of her she’d never known.

  Winnie leaned back on her hands once more, presenting her bare, reclined body for his consideration. He bent over her and his mouth met hers in a deep kiss. Every inch of Winnie’s body hummed as his mouth moved slowly, torturously, down to her neck. Over to her ear. His lips brushed the line of her collarbone and no matter how sensual each connection was, she feared that he’d never arrive at where she needed him most.

  “Cal, please,” she begged, arching her back, offering her breasts up closer to his face. His hands rubbed up her waist until they cupped her breasts, and a groan ripped from his throat.

  “You’re even more beautiful than I imagined,” he offered before his mouth kissed the taut tip of her rosy nipple. “And trust me, I imagined it.”

  That she could capture the sexual imagination of a man like Cal Spencer was too much to consider now, especially with his mouth opening wider, sucking her nipple into the hot, silky warmth of his mouth.

  Right now she couldn’t dwell on anything except the sensations this man created in her body. She moaned as bolts of pleasure shot through her body and set her sex throbbing.

  His mouth moved to her other breast and her hands involuntarily clutched at his shirt, desperate for it to get out of her way. She wanted his skin. She wanted to feel the warm expanse of his body pressed up against hers and despite his cruel restrictions regarding his lower half, he hadn’t said a damn thing about her having to keep out of his shirt.

  He leaned back and, in that distinctly male way, whipped off his cotton tee in a fraction of a second. She wished she had the composure to play it cool and not gasp, but gasp she did when his lean, toned body was suddenly revealed to her.

  “My goodness,” she muttered. Never before had she imagined a man of this sheer physical flawlessness, beneath her fingers. But he was here and she’d enjoy every inch of him while she could. For the first time in her life, Winnie swore she wouldn’t overthink it. She’d just appreciate the opportunity literally at her fingertips.

  She caressed her hands across the strength of his chest, through the sparse patch of soft hair that covered his pounding heart, the narrowing plain of his torso, across the abs slightly scored into his golden skin and the faint trail of hair that inched down, down, down toward a land of forbidden pleasure.

  “Cal, you’re too perfect,” she whispered, her mouth kissing his chest. The hot skin. The soft patches
of hair. The hard tautness of his nipple. She breathed him in, those woody undertones of his cologne mixed with something distinctly male. His skin felt warm and salty beneath her lips, a taste that could quickly grow addictive.

  “How are you real?” she whispered into his ribs as her hands stroked the strong contours of his back. He groaned as her lips pressed into his solar plexus, tasting him for her own satisfaction. Her mouth moved hungrily, up, up, toward his collarbone, his neck. She pulled down on his shoulders, needing to bring every inch of him within tasting distance. He leaned into her until their bare chests pressed together, melding in a symphony of sharp desire and fiery heat. The warmth of their bodies, the sweat and the pheromones, overtook her. She’d never before pressed her bare flesh against this man, yet somehow it felt like a reconnection. Like a coming home.

  He kissed her like that, long and slow, syphoning off from her mouth the pleasure that percolated up from between her legs. The weight of him pressing into her made her sex throb. It seemed impossible how she could be at once flooded with pleasure and desire from this man, yet still starved for him. She wanted him everywhere at once. There could never be too much of him. Enough of him.

  He pressed harder against her, gently grinding his hips so that the hardness of his erection tormented the cradle of her legs. When his mouth took in her breast once more, she cried out his name, the only word her mind could conjure.

  Without moving from his sexy perch between her legs, Cal’s torso twisted as he reached toward the table, revealing the outline of side muscles Winnie never even knew existed. Luckily she didn’t need to name them, she only had to run her fingers along them. His hand reached out toward their tempting cake, which patiently waited a foot away. He dipped his thumb into a wave of buttercream frosting.

  Turning back toward Winnie, his hand slowly reached toward her face and she parted her lips as his thumb, covered in sweet softness, entered her mouth. She moaned around it, sucked it, entranced by the hotness of the gesture and the sweet, indulgent satisfaction of the thick cream on her tongue. It was her first taste of being filled by him and she didn’t want it to end. He groaned as her tongue and lips stroked him long after the frosting was gone.