by Noelle Adams
“I know that, but it’s not what I asked. Wouldn’t you rather just be doing carpentry?”
He’d finished his sandwich, but he still looked down at his empty plate. Finally, his eyes lifted to hers again. “We all grow up.”
She understood him. She understood him perfectly. She’d gone through the same experience. In the real world, you couldn’t always do what made you most happy. You made do. You adjusted. You let go.
She’d held his gaze for too long, and she felt her cheeks warming as she glanced down, flustered and confused.
She finished her soup without talking.
When they’d washed up, she picked up a flashlight and said, “I guess I’ll find something to read. Or something.”
David nodded. “I’m going to check outside and make sure everything’s okay with the house.”
It was pitch black outside and sounded awful, but she didn’t object. He was a grown man. If he wanted to go outside in this weather and be idiotic, then he was allowed to do so.
She went to the bathroom and then decided she might as well get ready for bed. She changed into a pair of fitted fleece pajamas—the warmest she had—and pulled the sweatshirt on over them. She found a book, poured herself another glass of wine, and got the ice pack for her ankle. She was stretched out on the big couch in front of the fire when David came back in.
Ice was falling off him in little clicks as he moved.
“How is everything?”
“Looks okay. You’ve lost a few branches but none of the trees. And the roof is holding up well.”
“Good.”
Since she’d brought the bottle and his empty glass into the living room, he poured himself the last of the bottle.
She was trying to occupy herself with her book, but she couldn’t help but look over at him.
He was as scrumptiously masculine as always, his five-o’clock shadow even darker and his skin flushed slightly from the wind and cold. But he also looked uncomfortable in his boots and jeans.
“You can check Brad’s old room for something to change into for the night, if you want. He’s still got tons of sweats and stuff up there. You might find something that fits. You might as well be comfortable.”
He hesitated slightly. Then nodded.
She was doing no better about focusing on the book when he returned about ten minutes later.
He wore an old pair of black sweats—just slightly too short—and a gray sweatshirt that matched the one she was wearing—also from their high school football team but with a different year’s logo.
“Don’t laugh,” he said, catching her scrutiny. “I didn’t realize Brad was so short.”
She did laugh, finding the little twitch at the corner of his mouth irresistible. “Don’t tell him that or you’ll hurt his poor feelings.”
Brad wasn’t particularly short, four inches taller than she was, but he was two inches shorter than David.
David looked different than normal. More relaxed. Less protected. Just as sexy.
It gave her a painful twist in her stomach.
He sat down at the end of the couch and put her feet in his lap. When she gave him a questioning look, he just said, “You should keep the ankle elevated.”
This sounded reasonable enough, and she could hardly banish him to one of the two wing chairs—which weren’t comfortable to sit in for very long—or the window seat, which was much farther from the fireplace.
He’d found a book too, so they both read for a while by the light of the fire and the lantern. David would occasionally get up to return the icepack to the freezer, tend the fire, or get another icepack for her ankle.
After a couple of hours, Rachel had to put down her book, since she was too sleepy to concentrate on the words.
She was getting chilly, despite the fire. The temperature must be dropping even more in the house.
She got up to go to the bathroom and find flannel sheets and a heavy blanket. She was on her way back when she stepped on her ankle wrong. She went down, wrenching her ankle even more in the process.
She cursed and bit her lip and tried to stifle involuntary whimpers at the pain.
It took her a minute to get her breath back and then another minute to get herself back to her feet. She was in the middle of the hall, and there was nothing except the wall to pull herself up by.
She was finally up and shuffling back to the living room with her arms full of sheets and blanket, her teeth chattering from cold and her ankle throbbing brutally, when David appeared in front of her.
He was the last person she wanted to see.
With an impatient look, he moved quickly to put an arm around her to support some of her weight. He also took the blankets out of her hands. “What happened?”
“Nothing.” She was cold, hurt, and frustrated—and now she was embarrassed. “I just fell down. I’m fine.”
“Why the hell didn’t you call out for help?” he demanded, sounding as bad-tempered as he’d been that afternoon.
“Because I didn’t need help.” She gritted out the words through a clenched jaw and eyed him resentfully. She should have known he couldn’t stay un-obnoxious for long.
“You did need my help. You can barely walk now and you’re freezing.”
She tried desperately to keep her teeth from chattering but she couldn’t seem to do it.
“I’ve never seen anyone as stubborn as you.”
“Have you looked in a mirror?” she snapped, with what she thought was impressive acuity.
“If I had a sprained ankle, I would damned well let someone help me.”
“You would not. You would hide away until it got better. You have no right to reproach me for being stubborn. Remember when you were fifteen? You wouldn’t let the church help your mom when her basement was flooded. You insisted on doing the whole thing yourself. You built your whole damned house by yourself, even though Brad tried to help almost every weekend. You haven’t accepted any gift or gesture of charity for the last fifteen years. How dare you try to tell me that I’m too stubborn?”
He was stewing and glowering as she lashed out, but at least he was also being proactive. He’d gotten her back to the couch, helped her spread the flannel sheet on the couch, and covered her up with a blanket when she’d sat down and then stretched out.
Now he just walked out of the room, leaving her so surprised she couldn’t even be outraged.
She’d never known him to walk out so rudely on an argument.
He returned almost immediately with a fresh icepack. He tried to put it on her ankle, but she jerked away as soon as she felt it.
“It’s too cold.” She huddled under the blanket, trying to suppress her helpless shivering. The fire helped, but not fast enough.
“You need it,” he said mildly, “Or your ankle will swell up even more.”
She knew he was right, so she didn’t argue any further, but the icepack made her whole body even colder.
He looked down at her for a long moment, and she didn’t understand the look in his eyes. Then he gestured with his hand. “Can you scoot up a minute?”
She did as he said, although she had no idea why he was asking.
She found out soon enough when he lowered himself to the couch beside her. Before she knew what was going on, he’d rearranged them both so she was in his arms, leaning back against his chest.
It was wrong. It was utterly wrong. She was so cold, though, and his body was deliciously warm. She really liked how it felt to be held by him.
They’d sat that way for hours that one summer, talking, watching television, just being together.
He was rearranging the blanket over them both, and the tension was so palpable that Rachel thought she would drown in it. In an attempt to break it, she said lightly, “This is just a sneaky way to share my blanket, since you’re too lazy to get your own.”
He laughed, soft and low. She loved how it sounded and how it felt. “Guilty.”
She huddled against him and s
oon she stopped shivering.
They were both staring at the fire when David returned to their previous conversation. “The things you call stubbornness in me are not really that. It’s self-sufficiency. It’s important to me. And it’s a different thing.”
“Why is it so important to be self-sufficient?” It was a genuine question, since her previous anger had almost entirely vanished.
He didn’t answer.
She turned her body slightly to look up at him. His face was just a few inches from hers. “David?”
“I don’t know,” he admitted, sounding uncomfortable and not looking her in the eye. “Just a way to prove myself, I guess.”
“Prove yourself what?”
He didn’t answer directly this time. Instead, he said in a different tone, “You know how it was for my mom. This is a small town, and people are…judgmental.”
“People are judgmental in cities too. They’re just not in your face quite so much.” She exhaled. “I know people judged your mom. My grandpa did, and he was…terrible about it. But not everyone here did. And no one has ever judged you.”
“Haven’t they?”
His body felt tenser than it had been before. She knew he was feeling something deeply, and her heart ached for him. “Who judged you? You were always popular at school, and everyone in town thinks you walk on water now.”
“I had a long way to climb.” The words were soft, uninflected, not bitter, just resigned.
“David,” she said, feeling strangely urgent and emotional. She turned over so she was facing him—and also practically lying on top of him. She wanted to see his face, though. “Who judged you? What are you talking about? We never did. Me and Brad and Mom. I swear we never did.”
“I know you didn’t.” His eyes were strange—somehow soft and urgent all at once.
“We all thought you were…we thought you were great.” Her voice wobbled at the end, since the past tense was so crushing.
She would have still thought he was great—the best man she knew other than Brad—had he not treated her so heartlessly eight years ago.
She still didn’t understand. It just didn’t seem to fit.
“I knew that. You have no idea what it meant to me.” His arms were still around her, and one of them tightened deliciously. The other hand slid down her spine until it pressed against the small of her back.
It felt like they were embracing, and Rachel wanted to feel it even more.
Her mind a befuddled tangle, she managed to recover the thread of their earlier conversation.
“So if it’s so important for you to be self-sufficient, why do you call my self-sufficiency stubborn? Why can’t I be self-sufficient too?” Her voice got strangely hoarse on the last words, and it wasn’t because she wanted to cry.
He lifted the hand that had been caressing her back and cupped her cheek with it instead. “Because I’m here,” he murmured. “Because I’m here, and I want to help you.”
Her lips parted unconsciously at the tenderness of the words, and maybe he took it as an invitation.
He drew her head down toward his until their lips met. It wasn’t demanding or intrusive—just gentle and almost needy.
She couldn’t help but respond as feeling and sensation swelled up inside her with the brush of his lips.
She shifted enough to bring one hand up so she could stroke his face, loving the texture of his bristles against her palm.
He deepened the kiss slowly, sliding his tongue along the contour of her lips and slipping one hand down to rub the small of her back and then lower to her bottom.
She shifted in pleasure, opening her mouth to feel him more deeply and rubbing her breasts against his chest.
“Rachel,” he said thickly, when he finally pulled away but just to press soft little kisses on the corners of her mouth. “Rachel, how’s your ankle?”
The laughter hit her so suddenly she giggled helplessly against his mouth.
He smiled into one last brief kiss as his arms tightened around her. “Despite how that sounded, I wasn’t intending to change the subject. I just meant I don’t want you to do anything to hurt your ankle.”
“My ankle isn’t acutely involved in this process.”
With a huff of amusement, he turned them both over so she was on her back and he was on top of her. “Good.” He leaned down into another kiss.
Rachel shifted beneath him as their embrace intensified, and, when she’d freed one of her legs, she wrapped it around his hip, needing to feel his hard body against the delicious ache between her legs.
She heard him make a rough noise low in his throat, and he broke from her mouth to bury his face in the crook of her neck. “Rachel,” he murmured, mouthing the throbbing pulse at her throat. “Rachel, if you’re going to stop, please let me know now.”
Her head spun and her body pulsed and David was the only thing in the world that she wanted.
She knew it was wrong. It was foolish. It would make everything so much harder.
At the moment, she couldn’t bring herself to care.
She adjusted until she found the bulge at his groin and rubbed herself against it shamelessly. “I’m not going to stop.”
Four
Rachel still had all her clothes on, but she couldn’t remember ever being so aroused in her life.
She’d been completely into it when she and David had sex the first time, responding easily to his touch and his kisses, but she’d also been really inexperienced and nervous—both things distracting her a little from pure enjoyment of her physical responses. She’d had sex since then. Not with a huge number of men, since she’d only ever had sex with men she was dating seriously. She’d had plenty of decent sex, though. Even really good sex.
It had never felt like this—like if she didn’t have David right now she would actually implode.
He seemed to feel the same way, since his mouth and his hands became immediately more demanding. She loved how strong he was, how much tension she could feel in his lean body. She squirmed against it, seeking stimulation wherever she could.
With a hoarse gasp, he broke out of the kiss and edged his body up away from hers slightly. “Hold on a second,” he rasped.
She made an impatient sound and pressed against his erection again. “I don’t want to hold on a second.”
He groaned almost helplessly as she ground herself against him. “Me either. But we need a condom, don’t we?”
She cursed under her breath and controlled herself enough to relax her body and lower the leg that had been wrapped around him. “Yeah. We better.”
“I don’t have any with me. Are there any in the house?”
She doubted it, since Brad didn’t live here anymore, unless he’d hidden some away in a dark corner back in high school. She kind of liked that David didn’t habitually carry condoms around with him, since it seemed to indicate he wasn’t in the habit of having sex at the drop of a hat. Plus, his lack of preparation didn’t matter since she already had it covered. “I have one in my purse. In the mud room.”
Her ankle hurt, she was really turned on, and she didn’t want to leave the cozy couch next to the fire, so she was relieved when David eased himself off her and stood up.
She snickered, however, when she saw how stiffly he moved.
He slanted her an aggrieved look.
“Self-sufficient, remember?” she teased. “You have to go get your own condom, hard-on or not.”
He laughed breathily as he disappeared into the kitchen, which connected to the mudroom, and he was still smiling when he returned a few seconds later.
He handed her the black designer purse, and she found a foil condom packet in a side zipper pocket.
“Do you always carry condoms around?” he asked.
She felt herself blushing, although she was sure he couldn’t tell because she was already so flushed from the fire and from excitement. “A lady is always prepared,” she said primly.
She’d never once used a condo
m she had stashed away, but he didn’t have to know that.
“An excellent philosophy.”
She leaned over to put her purse on the coffee table before she was uprooted from her position by David.
He lowered himself back onto the couch and pulled her in his arms once more, rolling her onto her back so he was above her again.
“Damn, Rachel,” he said thickly, his lips just above hers. “I want you so much.”
His tone and the words made her chest hurt. Her pulse fluttering, she tried to sustain their light banter, since it felt so much safer than this growing intensity. “I know that. Sweatpants don’t hide much, you know.”
He was giving her little kisses—pressing his mouth onto her lips, the corner of her mouth, and her cheeks. But he chuckled at her words, causing his breath to blow against her skin. “Sadly, I know that all too well.”
“But the good thing is there’s no sense in hiding what is so very impressive.” She squeezed her hand between their bodies so she could wrap it around his erection through the fabric.
He grunted in response.
She was so pleased with his reaction—the idea of having that kind of power over such a strong, controlled man—that she squeezed him again and then started to stroke him through his pants.
He closed his eyes, but she tried to take note of what he seemed to like the most—what made his breath hitch or his body jerk.
Finally, he opened his eyes. “Okay. Not that I’m not appreciative of the kindness, but any more kindness of this kind and I’m going to lose it.”
He readjusted above her as she giggled, and then he pulled her sweatshirt off over her head.
He frowned at the long-sleeve fleece top she wore under it. “Are you warm enough for me to—”
“Yeah. I’m not really cold anymore.”
She helped him get the top off and laughed delightedly at his aggrieved expression when he saw she was wearing a ribbed t-shirt beneath it. “How many tops do you wear?”
“I was cold,” she explained. The laughter had relaxed her and made her less aware of the significance of what was happening. Her breath caught in her throat, however, as he pulled her last shirt off and stared hungrily down at her bare breasts.