Heart Signs

by Cari Quinn

  “All right. I’ll tell you about all of those things.” A pause, then he murmured, “I don’t want to let you go either.”

  She closed her eyes and let out a trembling breath as she squeezed Snowdrop a bit too hard. “So…how do you feel about sushi?”

  “Hate it. You?”

  “Me too.” She grinned in the dark. “You know, maybe I should get a beer hat.”

  Chapter Eight

  Dani,

  It’s been so long that if you came back to me now I don’t know who we’d be anymore. Couples eventually grow to have a sort of united personality, their own footprint almost. Ours has changed. Neither of us is the same as we were. Even if we tried, even if we fought like hell to get back where we were, what if we can’t? What if love is a moment and once you step away from it, it’s gone? You can’t get it back just like you can’t rewind time. And if that’s true, then letting you go is the kindest thing I can do for you. It’s the truest love we have left.

  ~ Sam

  If he’d expected things to get easier with Rory’s agreement to go slow, he’d been wrong.

  They spoke every night, more often than not talking until the wee hours. Falling asleep together wasn’t uncommon. Nor was waking up to hear her giggling as she whispered, “We did it again.”

  His ability to concentrate disappeared but he didn’t care. For the first time in years he actually smiled at random people he passed on the street. He picked up his cell already grinning when he knew it was Rory.

  Instead of counting off the passing days with the billboards he needed to write, he filled them with work and Rory. Hell, they even had dinner a couple times like normal people. Nothing fancy, just relaxed meals at the diner near her place. Always around lots of other people to reduce temptation.

  Not that it mattered. He wanted her when he was in a crowd just as much as when they were alone.

  After each dinner he walked her home, holding her close to his side as if he expected her to disappear. But every night she was waiting on the other end of the line. She couldn’t know how much she gave him just by being there.

  A couple weeks into their “thing”, whatever it was, he decided to try to express his growing feelings the way he did best. Nothing too over the top or schmaltzy. Just honest.

  I dream of holding you at night. You’re so beautiful, so full of the laughter I’ve denied myself for so long. You make me realize everything I’ve been missing.

  I intend to go slow with you, and make love to you the way you deserve. All night long. The best part will be feeling your breaths on my cheek rather than hearing them through the phone that makes you seem so far away.

  Longing for you is the sweetest anticipation I’ve ever known.

  Hitting send on his email made his chest tighten until he had to suck in a lungful of air. Christ, would she think he was a sap?

  “She already knows you are, pal,” he said under his breath, pushing himself to his feet.

  He got dressed and checked to make sure Junior had plenty of food and a clean litter box. Once the little purr machine had gotten his morning complement of kisses, he set the kitten back in his bed and left his apartment in a hurry, not wanting to stand around waiting for Rory’s reply. She was at work, like he should be. Reading his love-starved—ahem, lust-starved—notes wasn’t her number-one priority.

  On the way he grabbed a cup of coffee and a blueberry bagel from the shop on the corner, eating both as he walked. He needed a little movement to take his mind off what he’d just done.

  He’d never written something for someone other than his wife. Never wanted to. Yet every word he’d put down for Rory had made him smile, imagining her reaction as she read them.

  “Nice of you to show up to work,” Billy called from the front lot of the shop, his blue-tipped mohawk glinting wetly in the morning sun. He never skimped on his gel, that was for sure.

  “I wasn’t nice enough to grab you breakfast though.” Grinning, Sam tossed aside the last of his bagel for the birds and patted his brother on the arm as he continued inside.

  The first thing he did, as always, was check the cash register. His shop was old school and had an old school cash register to go with it. He had the credit card scanner and sleek computer but the register with its faded smiley face stickers would always stay.

  “I didn’t steal your dough, so chill.” Billy leaned his beefy forearms across the counter. “So what’s the deal, bro? You have something going on I don’t know about?”

  Sam unzipped the bag of receipts and checked to see what business they’d done that morning so far. “Going on?”

  “You’re smiling all the time. It’s sort of creepy. But the bags under your eyes have their own zip code.” Billy scratched his goatee. “You, ah, don’t have a woman, do ya?”

  Sam managed not to snap his head up at the question. “Can’t a guy smile without getting the third degree?”

  “You? No. Well, at least not after the past couple years. Before then, yeah. You used to smile a lot.” Billy grabbed Sam’s coffee and tipped back the lid to take a swig. “It’d be great if you did, you know. Because you deserve one.”

  “Do I?” He kept sorting through receipts, thankful that his brother couldn’t hear the incessant throb in his chest.

  “Hell, yeah. You’re a good guy, Sam. Wish you’d realize it one of these days.”

  The pain between his shoulder blades came swiftly but left just as fast. He lifted his head and met Billy’s concerned brown gaze. “Workin’ on it,” he said softly, taking back his coffee.

  Billy smiled, revealing the front tooth he’d chipped freshman year when he’d rammed into a stop sign on his bike. “Glad to hear it.”

  Without saying anything more, Billy went back out front to polish the vintage El Camino he’d been stroking like a back-alley mistress before he’d come inside to hassle his older brother. Sam dove headfirst into the piles of paperwork that had accumulated, after turning off his cell phone. If he didn’t, he’d be looking for her call all damn day.

  They broke for a lunch of subs and soda at two-thirty. Sprawled out around the table in the back, he, Billy and Shep, the college kid who worked afternoons, swapped stories about that morning’s customers. Business had been brisk, thank God, which meant the money would keep flowing in.

  Money he would funnel a large portion of toward paying for billboards dedicated to a dead woman.

  Sam frowned and set down the last of his sub, the chicken salad that had tasted so good a moment before now clogging his throat. He could save a lot of money if he stopped doing them. Or even cut back the frequency. But he wasn’t going to do that.

  Was he?

  The voices around him dimmed, fading into a buzz of white noise as Rory strolled into the shop, looking as lovely as a beam of captured sunlight. She glanced around, not seeing them in the room in the back. “Hello?” she called.

  “Hello to you too,” Shep murmured, lurching to his feet while Billy threw down his napkin and laughed.

  “Hang on,” Sam said, rising. “I’ve got her.”

  Both Billy and Shep glanced his way. “Aha,” Billy muttered, jerking his chin as if to say told you so.

  Sam didn’t respond. He walked out to Rory, each footstep echoing on the concrete floor. She wore slacks and a fluffy pale-pink sweater that curled up around her face. Her eyes widened as he approached, almost as if she hadn’t expected to find him. Or maybe the same stab of heat he felt was now thrusting through her belly too.

  He’d used the wrong word. Longing didn’t come close. This was why seeing each other in person was so dangerous. One look, one gulp of her with his starved eyes, and she filled so many of the hollows he’d carried for so many months. If he let her, she’d fill the rest. He could be that greedy. Just take, take, take. Why should he have to give when he’d waited so long?

  But then her gloss-slickened lips parted and the jolt of need spread, turning into a warmth that didn’t merely singe. The memory of her sexy laugh
ter exploded in his mind. Air bubbles from champagne. A poem only she knew the words to.

  She was whole and real, not someone he held in his mind and heart but whom he couldn’t touch. God, she was so alive.

  “Rory,” he managed, lifting his hands to frame her flushed cheeks. Her startled gasp became a moan that flowed between his lips when their mouths fused. She opened for him at once, her dark lashes falling down to hide her eyes. It didn’t matter. He tasted what she felt when her tongue tentatively curled around his.

  Excitement. Anticipation. Fear. And above them all, strawberry lip gloss, sweet and sticky.

  Somehow getting stuck didn’t seem nearly so scary anymore.

  He didn’t settle for her hesitant exploration. Couldn’t. He pushed his hands into her hair, holding her head back so he could plunge the way the ferocious need inside him demanded. She reached up to grip his shirt and held on, swaying against him. Grinding her soft curves over where he was so hard.

  She responded as if she’d been waiting for his mouth, angling open for him to do exactly as he wished. Her moans of encouragement drew him down deeper, offering him the permission he hadn’t realized he still needed.

  He dropped his arms to her waist, as much for support as to crush her closer. At the meeting of their bodies, the gears in his head shut off. Everything chugged to a halt.

  Control…he’d had it once. Not anymore. Not with her.

  She shifted her head to breathe and he dragged her right back, sucking her swollen lower lip between his teeth roughly enough that he tasted blood. Then and only then did the fever riding his back begin to subside.

  When he finally looked down at her, her gray eyes were huge and hazed with pleasure. His breath whistled through his teeth at the sight—Christ, at the feeling—of her body clinging to his from her breasts to her thighs. Her small fists were still lodged around his shirt.

  As petite as she was, she didn’t feel tiny in his arms. On the contrary. She was big enough to take him out with a single blow.

  “Weren’t lying about the longing,” she whispered. “There’s a tree trunk against my belly.”

  For a moment he stared at her. Then her composure cracked with a giggle and a quick thump against his chest. He laughed, pulling her with him as he turned toward the guys who’d come out of the back room.

  “This is Rory,” he said, using her as a human shield for the “tree trunk” he wasn’t about to show off. “Rory, this is Shep, my part-time clerk. And—”

  “Billy, the man with the mohawk.” She gave a little wave and curled tighter against Sam’s chest. Not exactly the best move to chop down that wood but he appreciated her attempt to hide it.

  “Nice to meet you, Rory,” Shep said when Billy didn’t reply.

  “You too.” She glanced at Billy, who was clearly sizing her up. “Did someone forget to tell me there was a quiz?” she asked sweetly. “Since you seem like you’re looking for answers.”

  “You’re a smart-ass.”

  She shrugged. “Guilty as charged.”

  “Then I think we’ll get along just fine.” Billy gave her his trademark half-grin and held up his hand, offering Sam a very obvious thumbs-up behind his spread fingers. Sam rolled his eyes but he didn’t miss how the thread of tension in Rory’s body disappeared.

  She disguised her nerves so well that touching her was the only way he knew for sure what she was feeling. A hardship he was more than willing to shoulder.

  “So, wanna eat lunch with us?” Billy asked. “Or would you rather keep eating my brother’s face?”

  Her indelicate sniff cut off Sam’s retort. “Depends what you have.”

  “Half a roast beef and grape soda, going once.”

  “Sold.” She grinned and shifted toward Sam. “It’ll work up my appetite to eat more of you later,” she said in a stage whisper. Her face blanched as the guys hooted with laughter. “Ah, erm, I meant—”

  “We’ll just leave it that,” Sam said, closing her smiling lips with his finger.

  While they ate, she regaled them with stories about her job and the weird requests she’d dealt with over the years. The funniest one was the billboard for the woman looking to be kept by a rich sugar daddy who’d had to pull her ad after a week because she got too many offers. Last Rory had heard from the woman she was moving to Venezuela with a guy old enough to be her great-grandfather.

  She never mentioned that she’d met Sam through the billboards he wrote for Dani, instead making it seem as if they’d discussed possibly doing one for the shop. Billy narrowed his eyes at that but he didn’t say anything. Better than anyone, his brother knew how he squeezed his pennies, especially when it came to advertising. In this case, an implausible lie was better than explaining the truth. He couldn’t handle the questions that would come after.

  You’re writing billboards to a dead woman who didn’t want you even when she was alive? Now you’re falling for the woman who took the orders?

  Yeah, so it sounded pretty fucked up.

  After Billy had shared his daughters’ latest victories on their training bikes, Rory glanced at her watch and sighed. “Duty calls.”

  “We’ll just go do…something,” Billy decided, tugging Shep with him though the younger man protested. “And we’ll just shut this door,” he added with a grin, pulling it closed behind them.

  Rory shook her head and set down her soda. “They’re such boys. Assuming we’re going to use every opportunity to—”

  He grabbed the back of her chair, grateful for the casters that made it easy to yank her closer. His mouth was on hers before she’d finished the statement. Except this time they were both laughing before his tongue even made it between her lips.

  “I believe strongly in saving the trees,” she said soberly, drawing back so that her breath whispered over his raw mouth. They’d attacked each other like savages before—okay, that was more him than her—and his lips felt abused in the best way. She closed her nimble fingers around his length and made that seductive purring noise he couldn’t get enough of. “Though this one’s been pruned substantially since the last time I…”

  “Rubbed all over it?” He grinned and flipped her hair back from her forehead.

  “Don’t insult the tree huggers.” Her alluring pout so completely took his focus he almost didn’t realize she was inching down his zipper. “Or tree lickers,” she continued, dropping to the floor between his knees.

  He tried to speak as she drew his waking cock free of his boxers and kissed the tip, her pursed lips blowing a light, teasing stream of air over his aroused flesh. He should stop her. He needed to stop her. “Ah, fuck. Slow. We’re going slow.”

  “I will,” she promised, flicking her tongue over the crown. She gripped his length in both hands like a microphone, her vised fists working in tandem with the serpentine licks that destroyed the pathetic protests he hadn’t managed to voice.

  It shouldn’t be like this. Her crouching in pristine gray trousers in the dingy backroom of his shop, her cheeks red with arousal and her swollen lips so ripe as they slid up and down his erection. He had one now, no doubt about it. She’d prodded him awake in an instant, her knowing hands and mouth giving him a gift that didn’t require repayment. She was sharing something perfect with him even while the guys shouted and made a hell of a lot of noise on the other side of the door. Then they cranked up “Start Me Up” by the Stones and he choked out a laugh while he gripped the edge of the table.

  “Nice touch,” she murmured, drawing back to chase the string of pre-cum slipping down his dick.

  Her breasts swelled against her sweater when she moved, their rounded tips a cotton-candy distraction. He wanted to see them bare. Pressed flush against his chest while she bounced on him, those wicked eyes spurring him to new heights. And shit, just thinking that caused another thin stream of fluid to trickle toward her waiting tongue.

  “Mmm, I’m started too,” she said, cocking her head as the guys turned the music up. Before he could question
her further, she rocked backward and fumbled her hand into the gap between her pants and her smooth, white belly. The fabric rippled while she dove down, coming up victorious with shiny fingers.

  “Fuck,” he muttered, snatching her wrist and taking them between his lips. He sucked on her and closed his eyes against the expression of bliss that flittered over her face. Watching her and not coming wasn’t possible. So he absorbed her warm, sugary taste and breathed in the scent of their mingled arousal while she took him back inside her mouth.

  “Jesus!” He yelped and bolted upright in his chair as bubbles exploded over the head of his cock and dripped down the sides, setting off mini-flares of heat.

  “Shouldn’t ever close your eyes on a woman,” she said, her voice husky with amusement and sex.

  Taking her at her word, he watched as she reached for her soda again and swallowed, letting him see her throat move before she came back and dribbled some over his cock. Even prepared, the flutters from the carbonation still elicited more curses. Especially when she carefully cleaned up every streak of purple until he gleamed in the light from the single bulb on the ceiling.

  “Just one,” she murmured, her hands moving faster. His cock was harder than the table he held in a rigid grasp. His balls clenched and full, his stomach taut with the groans he wasn’t about to let out while his crew worked a few feet away, music or no music. “Make one sound so I know if it’s good for you.”

  “Good?” He grated, hating to waste even a single breath on speaking when he needed all of them to keep from losing his load all over her swollen mouth. “Try fan-fucking-tastic. Try incred-amazing.” He leaned forward and buried his free hand in her hair, guiding her back to his twitching erection. He ached without her on him. Surrounding him in her wet heat. “Try—Jesus, Rory, much more and I’m gonna come.”

  Her eyes blazing with excitement, she swallowed him again. Her cheeks hollowed with the force of her pulls as she took as much of him inside her throat as she could manage. That he didn’t fit all the way only turned him on more. There was something so erotic about such a small, feminine woman bringing a man to his knees while she was on hers. So primitive and primal.