by Kati Wilde
My chest tight, I tell him, “If you don’t like it, we can buy a different house.”
“Not like it?” he echoes before dragging his hand through his hair, shaking his head. “Audrey, this place is fucking beautiful. I mean, these windows. You only have a view of some trees, but it’s just…like nothing I’ve ever seen. Like we’re not even in a house, but outside in the forest, and there just happens to be some”—he waves around us—“really comfortable furniture and stuff around.”
The tension in my chest eases. “So you like it?”
“Yeah. Yeah, baby, I do.” His voice deepens and his brows draw together as he looks at me—as if suddenly realizing how nervous I am. “Did you think I wouldn’t?”
“I didn’t know. You sounded…something. When you found out where I lived. And what the house looked like.”
Nodding abashedly, he rubs the back of his neck, looking around again. “I’m still adjusting to the reality of what a whole lot of money can do. And…I didn’t expect this. In any way.”
“It’s an unusual house,” I agree.
“Not the house. Though, yeah, it’s unusual. But I pictured something like the Bennet place. Up on a hill—or maybe one of those giant mansions on the lake. And this is a big place, relatively speaking, but still a lot smaller than I expected. How many bedrooms does this have?”
“Four. But only because the architect pointed out that I might want a family someday. I originally asked for one.”
“So you must want a family someday?” Gaze suddenly intense, he doesn’t wait for an answer before continuing, “I also thought it might be like your office. Empty and sterile. But this isn’t at all.”
“Oh. That’s just because the office is where I work—so I minimize distractions as much as possible. I don’t ever work here at home, though. And I don’t guard against becoming hyperfocused here. If it happens, it happens. But the spaces are similar.”
“Because of the giant windows?”
“Yes. Because nature is the one thing that’s never wrong. Or too cluttered. Or unbalanced. Or out of order. It just is what it is. And that’s very soothing to me.”
“So when I move in, I shouldn’t go shifting stuff around and unbalancing everything?”
When I move in. Relief pours through me. “You can change anything you want to. But if it bothers me, I might move it back.”
He grins and comes closer. “You don’t need to worry that I’ll change much of anything. I don’t own much stuff, and what I’ve seen of this house seems perfect as it is. Especially if you’ve got a kitchen. Are you hungry?”
“Very.” My stomach has been growling since we got here.
“Then I’ll get you fed before getting you into bed,” he says and a shiver of anticipation races over my skin.
I lead him to the kitchen, which has its own wall of windows, though part of the view is blocked by my Christmas tree. I head for the refrigerator. “My housekeeper always leaves a dinner for me. Looks like we have…peanut chicken skewers and a chopped salad.” I read the label she left on the container, then consider the size of the portion, then Caleb’s massive size. “Do you want this? I’ll eat one of these yogurt and granola things.”
“Just a yogurt? Let me see how much is in here.” Frowning, he takes the container from me. “Ah, yeah. Okay, how about we split the chicken, but I’ll cook up something else to go with it.” Opening the refrigerator door wider, he scans the contents. “We can work with this. Do you have any rice noodles?”
“I have no idea.”
“Can I look through your cupboards?”
“They’re your cupboards now, too,” I point out, and that seems to stop him for a long second, his gaze arrested on my face. Then he gives me a brief, fierce kiss before beginning a search for the noodles.
Remembering that he ordered a beer at the party yesterday, I find one in the beverage cooler and pour him a glass. It doesn’t take long before he’s got a small collection of ingredients on the counter.
“Do you need me to cut anything?” I ask, moving in to examine the bottles and spices. “I can cut. And peel.”
“I’ve got it covered. But you can keep me company. And you should eat some of this salad to hold you over until it’s ready.” With thrilling ease, he hefts me up onto the counter. My sweater’s long enough to cover my bottom, but the granite’s cold under my bare thighs—yet it quickly begins to warm from the heat of my skin. “Those fuzzy socks are adorable.”
“And comfy.” Which is more important.
“Your bare legs are gonna kill me, baby.” He skims his hands down my thighs before bracing his hands on the counter on either side of my legs. “In the very best way. Is this the kind of thing you usually wear around the house? Just a long top and some fuzzy socks?”
“Yes. Though I usually wear underwear, too.”
His eyes close and he groans as if tortured, his head hanging low. Then my stomach growls and he abruptly backs away, shaking his head. “Feed you first. After that…”
Anticipation heats my blood. Because he doesn’t finish that thought now, but he already told me. I’ll get you fed before getting you into bed. I don’t see why we can’t just do the rest in the kitchen, but I can wait for the bed, too.
And enjoy myself here. I especially like looking at his hands. His fingers are long, the tips blunt and his movements deft as he begins preparing the noodles. He rolls up the cuffs of his flannel shirt before filling a pot beneath the tap, his forearms like sinewy steel.
“Do you cook often?” I ask him, taking a bite from the chopped salad.
“Most nights. So tell your housekeeper she doesn’t need to keep making dinners for you.”
Because he would cook for me? Warmth fills my chest. “Or I can ask her to make two, if you don’t want to take the time.”
“I enjoy it. But you don’t?”
I shrug. “Hot stoves and I don’t make a safe combination. I learned that fairly early. So I don’t cook. But I can cut and chop and peel.”
“Can you stir?”
“Like a three-star Michelin chef.”
He grins, opens a few bottles and pours a measure of their contents into a small bowl. A dollop of reddish-brown paste goes in before he hands me the bowl and a whisk. “Get to work.”
It only takes a minute before it all smooths together, the scent of the sauce slightly sour and slightly fishy. “When did you learn to do this?”
“Cook? When I was twelve. Though when I first started, it was usually mac-and-cheese or spaghetti. Sure as hell wasn’t pad thai.”
“Only twelve?” I assumed it was when he began living alone—learning out of necessity.
“Yeah. I remember it pretty clearly.” He pauses to take a swallow of his beer, then cracks a few eggs into a bowl. “My mom worked most nights until pretty late. It just made sense for me to cook something for myself and have enough left over for her, so she’d have something ready when she got home. Once I got the hang of it, I started reading recipes so I could surprise her now and then with something new. As long as the ingredients weren’t too expensive.”
Oh. On a soft sigh, I tell him, “You are all marshmallow-y inside.”
He barks out a short laugh. “Yeah, no.” His jaw tightens briefly before he shakes his head. “The reason I started? Is because I was a lazy little dick. Because one night she came home late, just fucking exhausted. And the first thing I said to her was that I’m hungry and where’s my dinner. So she went into the kitchen and started heating up a can of soup. Then she hid in the bathroom and began bawling, because she was so damn tired, but her work still wasn’t done. And all that work she did for me. But it was no effort for me to learn and have it ready on those late nights for her, to make her life a little easier. So I stopped being such a dick and gave something back.”
“Ooey-gooey S’mores,” I tell Caleb quietly, my heart swollen with all the sweet emotion I feel toward him. “You didn’t start cooking because you were a lazy little dick. You started because you
loved her.”
“Yeah, I did,” he says gruffly.
Of course he did. And being loved by Caleb sounds completely, utterly wonderful.
Not being loved by him is completely, utterly wonderful, too. Simply being with him makes me so happy. When I accepted his proposal, I believed that I’d be marrying a forthright man I liked and was attracted to. But Caleb is so much more. He’s a man who apologized when he hurt me. Who makes me catch fire with his kisses. Who so easily accepts my tendencies and doesn’t demand typical responses.
I didn’t expect that I might start falling in love with him. But I think that I am.
I don’t expect Caleb to fall in love with me, though. That’s no more likely than being loved by my own mother. But I’ll take what he gives. I’ll take this desire, this closeness, this happiness—and give him everything I can in return.
I know it won’t be enough to keep him forever. His marriage proposal stipulated that the marriage would be temporary. I was reminded of that today when I saw the first draft of the marriage contract based on his business plan. He only wants to be married until he receives his inheritance.
It was so difficult not to take that stipulation out of the contract. To demand that our marriage should last forever. But I know all too well that demanding more than someone wants to give can destroy a relationship. So I need to accept that I’ll only have a little while with him.
I can be content with a little while. It’s far better than no time at all.
“So what’s your story?” he suddenly asks.
I look at him in confusion. “My story?”
“You asked when I started cooking. I told you the story. So what’s the story of you building a house in the forest? Because I understand that it’s soothing—but how do you end up knowing something like that? Did you grow up in the woods or go camping a lot as a kid?”
“Neither of those. It was at my boarding school. They had extensive grounds, including some woodlands. So I used to go out hiking alone and…” I don’t think there’s anything else to this story. “I liked it.”
“So why didn’t you become a forest ranger or something similar, instead of working in an office?”
“I wouldn’t have been a good forest ranger. But I am good at business, and the money I make allows me to establish nature reserves and hire forest rangers.”
“So you’re like someone who enjoys art but can’t paint. You’re a patron, instead.”
That analogy is literally accurate, too. I support many artists. But instead of confusing the issue, I simply nod and scoop up another bite of salad. “Unlike you.”
“Me?”
“Fixing vehicles and restoring them,” I say, then try to use his analogy. “You work in the art museum but you are also a sculptor.”
“Yeah, I guess so.” A smile quirks his mouth before he flicks a glance at me. “Is that forest story also the story of this camp project of yours?”
Essentially. I nod while chewing.
“So what kind of camp is it?”
“It’ll be a summer camp for neurodivergent teens. During the rest of the year, it’ll offer outdoor school programs and science education for local underfunded school districts.”
“So you’re trying to give a bunch of kids the same experience that you got at your boarding school?”
I shake my head. “Just a different experience from what they usually have. Whatever they get out of it will depend on them.”
“Speaking as one of the kids who came from an underfunded school district, I’d have loved an opportunity like that.” Admiration fills his voice. “That’s a fucking fantastic project.”
“It makes me happy.” And hearing him say that makes me even happier.
“It should. And if you still want the Wyndham property for that project, I’ll just give it to you. You don’t have to buy it.”
Touched by that generosity, I smile up at him. “The property I have is enough.”
“All right.” He reaches for a colander hanging on the pot rack and I take another bite of salad. “So what’s the story with your parents?”
It suddenly becomes hard to swallow. “My parents?”
“You told Jessica not to invite them to the wedding.”
“Because I don’t want them there,” I say woodenly.
His gaze fixed on my face, Caleb comes closer, bracing his hands on either side of my legs. “Why?”
I don’t talk about why. “I shut them out of my life.”
My voice is icy. And I know how it comes off. The billionaire who cut off her family and refuses to reconcile. I’ve heard the whispers. My parents are vocal about my rejection of them, telling anyone who listens that I’m a cold ungrateful bitch who cares more about money than I care about family and human connections. Maybe Caleb is thinking the same.
I only wish that I could truly shut them out. That the mention of them wouldn’t affect me at all. That I could sit here without a lump in my throat and a dark ragged hole in my chest.
His eyes search mine before nodding. “All right.”
It’s with relief and regret that I watch him move away from me again. He busies himself at the stove, scrambling the eggs. His profile is a beautiful arrangement of hard angles and surprising softness in the shape of his mouth, which feels firmer than it looks. But there’s no softness in his jaw, shadowed by a heavy growth of stubble. And with his collar looser than it was yesterday, I can see a little more of the tattoo peeking up along the muscled column of his neck. Still not enough to determine what it is, but I try to mentally extend the shape, searching for a design that seems right.
“Audrey.” Caleb’s directly in front of me, his big hands gripping my thighs just above my knees. “Audrey, baby.”
I blink up at him.
“There you are. You weren’t kidding about spacing out.” A slow grin widens his mouth. “Dinner is ready.”
“Okay,” I say and reach for his collar.
He goes still as I unfasten the first button, then the next. His rough hands begin a slow slide up my legs, and my name is a low groan. “Audrey…”
“I want to see your tattoo.” I smooth the left side of his shirt back, revealing part of the design, but need to unfasten more to expose it all. The tension in his body increases with each button I undo, until his shirt is hanging open and I can push the flannel completely over his left shoulder and halfway down his arm.
“Do you have a tattoo under your sweater that I can look at?” Despite his clear amusement, hunger deepens his voice.
“No tattoos. I don’t handle pain well.”
“The needle’s not as bad as you think it’ll be.”
“It doesn’t matter if it’s really bad or not. I still don’t handle pain well.” As if in reaction to my touch, his heavy pectoral flexes beneath my fingers when I trace a stylized wing. “It’s a bird?”
“A phoenix.”
“Why?”
“I like the idea of second chances. Or rising from the ashes.” His short laugh reverberates beneath my fingertips. “Or fucking up a first date, but still ending up at a woman’s house the next night after making her come in your truck.”
I like all of those ideas, too. My hands range down over his stomach, gliding over the ridged muscles that harden to corrugated steel beneath my touch. My fingers hook beneath his belt.
He catches my wrists. Voice raw, he tells me, “There aren’t any tattoos down there.”
I’m not looking for tattoos. Instead it’s the thick bulge behind his zipper that interests me. I glance up into his face. His eyes are a fevered gleam of arousal.
Need sparks across my skin. “I’ll race you to the bed.”
That’s all the warning I give before shoving him aside and taking off. His bark of laughter comes from behind me, then the sound of his pursuit. I sprint up the first flight of stairs, giggling and already breathless, then nearly wipe out as I turn the corner in my socks and start up the next flight. That slip allows him to gain on m
e, his hands snagging my hips, just enough to make me stumble before I catch myself on the steps, still trying to climb but forced to use both my hands and feet on the risers. Abruptly he curses and his grip tightens, bringing me to a sudden halt.
His deep groan sounds from behind me. “Fucking hell, baby. You think you can tease me with a glimpse of this pink pussy and get away easy?”
I hear the muffled thunk of his knees hitting a step below, then he pushes my sweater up over my ass. My heart thunders as a ragged exhalation passes over my exposed flesh.
Time stops as I feel Caleb’s mouth against me—and his hot tongue. Oh god. Licking through the seam of my pussy. Pushing into me. My head swims from the sheer stunning pleasure, then I cry out when his firm lips close around my clit and he sucks on that aching bud, just like he did to the tip of my tongue when we kissed, but the kiss didn’t feel like this.
“Goddamn, you’ve got a delicious little cunt.” His harsh voice penetrates the silky haze of ecstasy he just wrapped around me. “Now you keep running. And we’ll see what happens when I catch you again.”
My knees wobble unsteadily as I start off. I’m still reeling from the pleasure of his mouth, the flesh between my legs slick and hot—but I like to win, so I push past the lust and run. I hear Caleb following, taking the steps two at a time.
But I’ve got a head start and the advantage of knowing exactly where I’m going. I burst onto the fourth level and sprint for the bed, leaping the last few feet to secure my victory, letting loose a triumphant laugh when I safely land before he closes in. From my perch atop the mattress, I spin to see how far ahead I was.
And…oh. He’s not far behind me, but he’s not running. Instead he’s prowling closer, his hot gaze fixed on my face, his thumb wiping a glistening smear from his chin. His shirt is still unbuttoned, his hard chest framed by soft flannel, but he’s only a step away when he drags the shirt the rest of the way off.
“You beat me here,” he says in a gravelly voice, then licks my arousal from his thumb. “But I’ll still catch you.”
So easily. Because I don’t even try to get away, sinking down on the mattress as his hands grip the hem of my sweater and pull it over my head.