He snorted. “You’ve got that right.”
When Angelica had started dating Noah, she’d confessed once that it had seemed like the entire town had taken pains to pointedly remind her that he’d once been seen leaving Naomi’s house early in the morning. Since the two women were close friends, Angelica had been well aware of her fiancé’s prior relationship—if you could call it that—with the artist and hadn’t particularly minded. What she hadn’t enjoyed was having the bulk of the town council asking her intrusive questions about it during a meeting of the tourism board.
“So. We have privacy to get to know each other?” She grinned. “What’s your favorite color?”
“Blue. You?”
“Red. Most of the time.”
“Most of the time? You’re a fickle favoriter?” He tsked. “I thought better of you.”
She laughed. “Sometimes I’m just not in a red mood!”
He shook his head in mock sadness as their entrees arrived, barely noticing the waiter who placed them on the table and whisked silently away. Their conversation flowed smoothly through dinner—like they’d known each other for years but still had so much to discover about one another. He was holding back, though. He couldn’t bring himself to tell her about Cal’s death. It was in the past; it was over. That said, he owed it to her to tell her about the drinking. If he wanted this relationship to continue—if he wanted to have more dinner dates where she didn’t ask him if he wanted the wine list—he needed to say something, and soon. Hell, if nothing else, she deserved to know she was starting something up with a man who had alcoholic tendencies.
Inwardly, Sean shuddered. He’d skated around the word for months now, but as he considered how to talk to Jess about his problem, he was forced to acknowledge the truth: he was very likely an alcoholic.
He didn’t get up the nerve to broach the subject until they were nearly back to River Hill. As Bessie Blue crested one of the gently rolling hills that led into town from the river, he slowed the truck and pulled off onto a gravel road. It was one of the back entrances to Noah’s vineyard, and there was a small parking area set back from the main road that his workers sometimes used when they were in this section of vines. He parked Bessie close to the edge of the cleared area, letting the vines drape over truck like a curtain of privacy.
“What’s up?” Jess asked, her brow furrowed slightly. She masked her obvious concern by going for a light joke. “I feel fairly confident you’re not going to murder me in a vineyard. I could be wrong, though.”
“No murder agenda tonight,” he said. “I just wanted to tell you something.” Her eyes widened, and he held up a hand. “Don’t freak out! I’m not declaring my undying love!” Not yet, a tiny voice in his head whispered. “I just wanted to talk to you about, um, my drinking.”
She blinked. “I haven’t seen you drink anything but water.”
“Yeah. I guess I’m, uh, recovering? I used to drink a lot. Too much.” It was the first time he’d admitted out loud that he’d had a problem. It felt like exhaling for too long. Strange, breathless.
Her mouth formed an O, and her eyes flicked up and down his body. He felt himself flush. “I’d just stopped drinking when you and I first met. It hasn’t been long.”
“You look … better,” she said quietly.
“I feel better. But it’s still pretty hard.”
Her hand flew to her mouth. “Oh, no, and I asked you about the wine list! Sean, I’m so sorry!” She looked so genuinely distressed that he wanted to hug her.
“It’s okay.” He reached out to take her hand, tugging it away from her face and twining his fingers into hers. “It’s my own fault for not telling you. I should have said something.”
Her eyes were troubled, and he didn’t know what else he could say. So he gave in to what he’d wanted to do since she’d opened her front door. He leaned forward and kissed her.
Chapter 12
Jess hadn’t seen Sean’s kiss coming. One minute they were talking about his drinking problem, and the next he was moving toward her, his eyes dark and hungry in the reflective glow of the dash. And then his mouth was on hers, and it was the most heartbreakingly sweet kiss she’d ever experienced. Slow and careful, his lips caressing hers hesitantly but thoroughly—as if he wasn’t sure what he was doing, but wild horses couldn’t have kept him away.
Jess knew they needed to have a good long talk about … well, everything. But she also needed her toes to keep on curling the way they were in her heels. It’d been so long since she’d felt such overwhelming desire, and she was afraid that if she put the brakes on for a lengthy discussion about his sobriety, the spell would be broken.
And right now that wasn’t an option, because there were life-altering kisses to be had.
Jess parted her lips, and her tongue snaked out, clueing him into the fact that she was right there with him. She wanted this. Wanted him.
When their tongues met, Sean hummed low in the back of his throat, and all of his quiet restraint slipped away. With a groan, he cupped the back of her neck, angled her face, and took the kiss deeper.
Jess had been kissed before, but no kiss in the history of all the world’s kisses could ever compare to the sinful way Sean was kissing her at that moment. The longer it went on—one large, work-roughened hand cupping her nape, the other spread over her ribs at her side—the more turned on she became, her body growing warm and tingly in places she’d thought numb from disuse. And just when she thought she couldn’t take it anymore—that she was going to self-immolate from the heat coursing through her—his lips slowed and then stopped.
He rested his forehead against hers, their breaths mingling in the small space between them. “I’m sorry. I should have asked first.”
“No, you didn’t need to.”
He pulled back a fraction of an inch, and when their eyes met, his gaze was probing. “When I kissed you unsolicited before, you reminded me that I should have asked first.”
“I did.” She nodded. “But that was before I knew you. Before I knew how badly I wanted you.”
Sean’s lips hitched to the side in a sexy smirk. “You want me?”
Jess let out a small laugh and flicked her eyes down toward her chest and back up to indicate the nipples that had pebbled to tight little buds. Currently, they threatened to poke their way through the soft knit jersey that clung to her like a second skin. “These seem to confirm it.”
Sean’s tongue darted out of his mouth, and he licked a quick path over his bottom lip, his face ravenous as he ogled her curves. “Yeah, but it’s good to get confirmation,” he said. After a few more seconds lingering over her décolletage, he shook his head— as if to shake away his lustful stupor—and raised his eyes back up to hers. “For what it’s worth, I’m trying to be a good man, Jess. A gentleman.”
She set her palm to his cheek. “You are a good man. I wouldn’t be here with you if I didn’t believe that.”
“Are you sure?” There was something she didn’t quite recognize in his voice, a hesitation that seemed like he didn’t know himself.
To assure him that she was one hundred percent on board with this plan, she did something completely out of character—something she’d heard other girls talk about but had never had the opportunity to experience for herself. Until now.
“Oh, I’m sure.” With a grin, Jess bunched the fabric of her dress up around the tops of her thighs and tossed one toned, tan leg over his lap, straddling him in the front seat of his beloved Bessie Blue. Her grin stretched into a smile as she began plucking at the buttons of his dress shirt.
“I feel like a teenager again,” he teased.
Jess fumbled with the second button from the top, and when it finally slipped through its hole, she raised her eyes to his. “I never did this as a teenager,” she admitted, popping the next button and then the next until only one remained.
He stilled her hand. “Hey, look at me.”
When she did, she expected to see pity there, b
ut instead, all she saw was interest. And a challenging gleam in his eyes.
“I want this—I want you—but if you’re at all unsure about getting it on in the front seat of my truck, we can stop right now. I have no problem moving this to a more traditional location. Like your couch. That was pretty comfortable.” His eyes sparkled, and Jess knew he remembered the last time they’d spent time there.
While they’d started that evening baking pies, they’d finished it with Jess lying flat on her back, Sean resting atop her, as they’d kissed and rubbed against one another like horny teenagers. Eventually, his hands had ventured under her shirt, but he’d had enough restraint not to take things any further. It was likely the tamest evening he’d ever spent in a woman’s arms, but for her, it had been the single hottest night of her life.
The fact that he was smiling so broadly now went a long way toward easing some of the uncertainty she’d felt about whether or not she might be too innocent for him. It wasn’t like she was a virgin or anything, but Jess was pretty darn certain that if she wanted to hop on that whole born-again virginity train she’d once heard about, they’d welcome her with open arms.
But the thing about Sean, she was coming to realize, was that unlike other men she’d dated, he never made her feel wrong or foolish for who she was. In fact, he seemed to enjoy her all the more for it. Because at his core, he was a good, kind person. Flawed, sure, but they all were.
His words from earlier about trying to be a gentlemen came back to her. Well, as far as she was concerned, there was no trying about it. He simply was.
And she adored him all the more for it.
Jess tugged her hand free and unclasped the final button on his shirt as he watched her from hooded, lust-filled eyes. “I don’t want to be anywhere else right now,” she told him. “This, right here, is perfect.” Before her new-found confidence could disappear, she parted the crisp white cotton of his dress shirt, leaned forward, and flicked her tongue out.
Sean hissed, and he gripped her thighs. She wasn’t sure if that reaction was a good thing or a bad thing until he said, “Again,” his voice low and husky.
Jess flicked her eyes up and watched for his reaction as she licked a slow, meandering path over his nipple, so different from her own.
Sean’s grip on her loosened, and then his hands slid up and around her waist where they came to rest at the small of her back. In the cleft between her thighs, she felt him grow impossibly hard.
As if by instinct—almost as if her body had a mind of its own, and it knew what to do even if Jess herself was uncertain—her hips rocked against the bulge in his dress slacks and they groaned at the same time.
One of Sean’s hands slid up the length of her back to cup her neck and guide her to his lips, nothing at all hesitant about the way he kissed her now. He was a man consumed with passion for the woman in his arms, and as his pelvis rolled against her most intimate part and his tongue made love to her mouth, he told her without words how good she made him feel.
Meanwhile, Jess was using her words. All the words, it seemed. In fact, when their lips weren’t tangled, she couldn’t seem to keep her mouth shut. “Oh my god,” was quickly followed by, “Please, more,” which preceded, “You feel so good.” And now, as Sean pushed aside the fabric of her dress to suck her lace-clad nipple into his wet, warm mouth, Jess kept repeating the same thing over and over and over again as she undulated over him, the crest of her passion rising higher and higher. “Yes, yes, yes.”
“That’s it, baby,” he said, guiding her hips with one strong, sure hand as he pushed up against her, creating the most deliciously decadent friction. “Take what you need.”
Jess screwed her eyes shut as a brief flash of embarrassment took hold. She was a twenty-six-year-old woman with very little sexual experience to speak of, riding her crush in the front seat of his truck in the middle of a vineyard. It was too ridiculous for words.
“Open your eyes, sweetheart. I want to see them when you make yourself come.”
Jess’s eyes fluttered open and their gazes locked as her orgasm barreled forth. One moment she was suspended, her body in a state of neither here nor there, and then all at once she fell, her passion crashing over her in exquisite waves that left her misty-eyed and breathless.
“Oh my,” she whispered, as her body trembled. Sean brushed the hair back from her face, and his eyes flicked between hers for several long seconds. “You are one of the sexiest women I’ve ever laid eyes on,” he said, gazing at her with wonder—as if he was as surprised by the realization as Jess was.
The truth was, she’d never been called sexy before. She’d quit the pageant circuit before she’d aged into the categories that required a lot of time parading in front of people wearing barely-there bikinis, so she didn’t have much in the way of experience trying to vamp it up. Cute. Sweet. Shy. Naive. Those were words past boyfriends had used to describe her. Sean was the only man who’d ever looked at her like he wanted to eat her up with a spoon. Given how many times Jess had stared at a bowl of chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream, it was a look she knew well.
“No one’s ever called me sexy before,” she admitted, breaking eye contact to stare out the back window at the full, lush vines that gently swayed in the breeze in the golden glow of a harvest moon. Jess let her gaze linger for a moment on the tableau outside, memorizing the perfection of the moment so she could hold it close to her heart.
“You’ve gotta be kidding me. The moment I saw you jogging past the bakery that first morning, I couldn’t believe my eyes. I’d never seen anything sexier than your curves glistening with sweat from your run.”
She made a face. “Ugh, I don’t know if I trust your idea of sexy. I was all sweaty and gross.”
“I don’t know about that,” he said, his eyes gleaming. “Seems there are worse things I can imagine than working up a sweat with a beautiful woman.”
Hmm, when he put it that way.
Suddenly, Jess was conscious of the fact that while she’d come, he hadn’t. His bulge was pressed against her. A fact she wanted to rectify—immediately. And if she made him sweat while that happened, she’d concede that he was onto something with this whole glistening thing.
Jess swallowed her nervousness and gave herself a quick, inward pep talk. This was Sean, the man she was quickly falling for. The man who’d just let her get herself off on him. The man who hadn’t pressed her to return the favor because he was a gentleman. If there was ever anyone she could say these words to, it was him.
“Do you have a condom?”
His eyes flashed with surprise—and perhaps a bit of wariness—before he nodded slowly. “I do.”
“Want to help me work up a sweat now?” she asked playfully, her voice coming out on a squeak that wasn’t the sexy vixen she’d been going for.
Sean cradled her cheeks in his big, warm palms. “Trust me when I say that I want nothing more than to work up a sweat with you, my sweet, sexy girl—” Jess’s hope plummeted when she heard the “but” coming “—but when I do, I plan to take my time savoring every delectable inch of you. Unfortunately, the front seat of Bessie Blue isn’t exactly conducive to the type of workout I’m imagining.”
All at once that dashed hope sparked, rose, and went off like a firework. Or was that her ovaries?
“The first time I come with you,” he continued, “is going to be in a bed, where I can fuck you properly.” Sean’s eyes were dark and molten as he continued whispering all the “proper” ways he planned to worship her.
And with each word that passed from his sexy, sinful lips, Jess knew that he was right. They needed a bed, they needed to be naked, and they needed all night long to turn those fantasies into reality. Alas, it was growing late, and Sean had to be at the bakery at four o’clock in the morning, while Jess had a run-through for her segment at the station that started at six. Tonight was not the night for long, leisurely lovemaking.
“What are you doing tomorrow?” she asked, her eyebrow
raised high as she threw down the gauntlet.
Sean chuckled and claimed her lips in a quick, passionate kiss. “Spending the night at your place, it sounds like.”
“Good, that’s settled then.”
“Mmm-hmm,” he agreed, pulling her in for a kiss that somehow lasted another twenty minutes.
It was after midnight by the time she walked through her front door, kicking off her heels and stretching her arms high over her head.
And just like that, tomorrow had become today.
Chapter 13
Sean barely made it through his shift at the bakery the next morning. He came close to burning a batch of danishes when he thought about Jess’s thighs closing around him. The points of Italian meringue on a cake he piped for a custom order reminded him far too much of her pebbling nipples. He was half hard all morning, staring at baked goods. Lord, he had a problem.
He had to slow down. He was trying to do the right thing. Jess wanted him, and he wanted her, desperately, but she had freely admitted that she was nervous. She deserved to be treated with respect. He had every intention of spending hours tonight making her come, on a bed, hot and sweaty and naked. But he could at least take her out to dinner first.
After he sold the last of the morning’s almond croissants, he pulled out his phone.
Sean: Dinner at Frankie’s tonight?
There was a long pause, and he glanced at his watch. Her TV segment was at seven. He’d meant to try to stream it on his phone, but he’d gotten caught up in shaping a batch of baguettes. Surely it was over by now. It was nearing ten.
Jess: Are you still coming over afterward?
He let a broad grin slide across his face.
Sean: I’m coming over. You’ll be coming, too.
Her only response was the eggplant emoji, and his grin turned into outright laughter.
Sean: Pick you up at six.
Jess: See you then.
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