Snow Angel (The Hope Falls Chronicles)

by Shawn, Melanie

  Lowering his head, he sucked her nipple in his mouth through the thin satin material of the bra still covering it. He licked and nipped at her hardened nub, and the sensation was multiplied with the fabric rubbing against her sensitized nipple. She whimpered as he moved to the other breast, lavishing the same attention on it with his hot, wet, open-mouthed kisses.

  “Eric,” she pleaded as she rubbed her hands up and down the smooth, muscular lines of his back, kneading his firm skin with her slender fingers.

  Pulling back slightly, he stared down at her chest with a hot, hungry look in his eye. Her gaze flicked down to where his attention was focused, and she saw that her nipples and areolas were completely visible through the dampened silk. She looked like she’d been in a wet t-shirt contest.

  Forming his lips in the shape of an O, he blew softly on her distended peaks, causing a shiver of pleasure to run down the length of her body. Wanting, needing his mouth on her again, she thrust her chest up as she gripped him tighter. Responding to her body’s needs, Eric once again covered her breast with his mouth.

  A ringing sound shrilled through the air as Eric cursed under his breath and set her down, reaching into his pocket.

  “Yeah?” he answered in a much friendlier tone than she’d been expecting. He usually sounded mad when he answered a call that interrupted them while they were ‘not dating.’

  She heard a female voice on the other line. Feeling a little exposed, Lily reached down to pick up her sweater, but Eric grabbed her wrists and shook his head. The way his eyes raked over her body caused goose bumps to form on her skin. Now, instead of feeling exposed while standing there in front of him only partially dressed with her see-through wet bra, she was majorly turned on. His stare was a potent aphrodisiac.

  Until his eyes flickered and his face tensed with concern. “Are you okay?” he asked, releasing Lily’s hand and stepping away. “You had surgery and didn’t tell me?”

  Now he sounds mad.

  “All right, I’ll go get him.” He raked his hand through his hair. “No, it’s fine, Amy. Stay there. I’ll go get him.”

  “Is everything okay?” Lily asked as Eric pushed the phone back in his pants and picked up his rumpled shirt that had been tossed on the floor.

  “No.” Frustration filled his words. “I mean, yes, everything is okay. It’s just… I have to go.”

  And the thrilling rush was once again replaced with disappointment. Lily pulled her sweater over her head as she asked, “Do you need me to do anything?”

  “No, I just have to go and get Amy’s dog Scooby. He decided to take a trip downtown again.”

  “Is he a Great Dane?” Lily asked, wondering if it was the same dog she’d seen walking down Main Street the day she’d arrived.

  “Yes.” Eric pulled his shirt back on hastily as irritation rolled off of him in waves.

  “Is Amy feeling okay?” Lily didn’t want to pry, but she’d overheard him say surgery and hoped it wasn’t anything serious.

  His hands flew up in the air as he explained. “She had laser eye surgery and didn’t tell anyone. She took a cab home. But now she can’t get out of bed to go get her dog.”

  Wow. When Lily’s appendix had burst four years ago, she’d had to be rushed to the hospital. She’d had surgery, stayed for two days, and then took a taxi home. She didn’t understand why anyone would do that when they had family. If she would have had someone, anyone to call, there was no way she would have gone through that alone.

  A loud sigh brought her attention back to Eric. “Tonight didn’t turn out the way I planned. I’m sorry.”

  Stepping up and putting her arms around his waist, she laid her head on his wide, solid chest. “Tonight was perfect. Thank you for the best ‘not date’ ever.”

  Eric wrapped his arms tightly around her as he took in a deep breath through his nostrils. “I’ll miss you tonight.” His voice came out as a whisper in her hair.

  “I’ll miss you too. But don’t worry. Shadow will keep your side of the bed warm,” she teased, knowing that Eric didn’t love the fact that she let Shadow sleep in bed with them.

  Eric looked down at her, and with a reluctant smile, shaking his head, he said, “Damn dogs.”

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Emergency Book Club Meeting! Nine p.m. My house.

  Lily checked the message she’d been sent an hour ago from Karina again to make sure she was reading it right. Yep, it definitely said “Emergency book club meeting.” Still trying to wrap her head around exactly what that was, she knocked on Karina’s door.

  She didn’t want to seem like a party pooper but she really hoped this wouldn’t take too long. Eric had had to pull a double today but had moved his shift to swing so he would be home by ten thirty. A small smile played on Lily’s lips as she thought about being able to spend the whole night with him.

  Since their ‘not date’ three days ago, Eric hadn’t had a night off because a few of his officers were ill. She’d barely seen him and had missed him so much that it had actually caused her pain in her chest.

  “Good, you’re here,” Sam smiled, pulling her into the foyer. “We weren’t sure you got the bat signal.”

  “The bat signal?” Lily asked, not any clearer on what was going on.

  “You know, the text,” Sam explained.

  “Oh, that.” Lilly nodded with understanding. Then, lifting her phone for evidence, she smiled. “Yeah, I got it.”

  Making her way to the front room, Lily saw that the gang was all there. She and Sam took seats next to Nikki and Lauren, and on the couch across from them sat Amanda, Karina, and Amy.

  Whoa!

  Lily did a double take. Amy not only wasn’t wearing her glasses, which caused her eyes to look at least double their previous size, she’d also done something different to her hair. Lily looked closer. She’d definitely cut it and maybe even highlighted it. She looked incredible.

  “Amy, you look amazing! I love your hair,” Lily exclaimed.

  “Thank you.” Amy reached up and touched the ends of her hair, seeming happy about the fact Lily had noticed.

  “Which brings us to the person who called all of us here tonight for an emergency book club meeting,” Karina announced. Then she waved her hand up and down like she was a Price is Right girl and Amy was the showcase. “Amy, you have the floor.”

  “Right. So I asked you all here for research purposes,” Amy began as she pulled out several notebooks from a book bag, flipping the one on top open. “I’ve decided that I want to embrace my femininity, and since you all have done so successfully in various ways, I thought I would go straight to the source to collect my data.”

  What?

  Lily tried to inconspicuously scan the room to see if anyone else knew what Amy was talking about. From what she could see on her covert sweep, everyone looked either totally blank-faced or confused.

  “She wants to be sexy and she’s asking for tips.” Nikki shook her head like she thought her sister’s actions were completely ridiculous.

  “Ohhhh,” the room said collectively in understanding.

  “Well, Amy. Although I appreciate research as much as the next gal, I’m not sure that we’ll be of much help,” Lauren stated. “Sexiness is a very individual and subjective thing.”

  “I understand that,” Amy nodded. “But I’ve prepared some questions, and if it’s all right, I would like to ask them just to get a baseline of information.”

  “Sure,” Karina agreed easily. “Ask away. I’m an open book.”

  “When do you feel sexy?” Amy asked, moving her hand to her nose but then quickly putting it down when she must have realized there were no glasses there.

  “Well that’s hard to say. I guess it depends. Before I met Ryan, I think the time I felt the sexiest was on stage. When I was performing and all of the energy from the crowds was focused on me. Or if I was at a photo shoot and I had a particularly good photographer, sometimes I would feel sexy.

  “But since I met R
yan, I have to say that it doesn’t matter where we are. It could be in a crowd of people, in the grocery store, or in line at the DMV. When he looks at me, I feel sexy. It’s almost like I feel what he sees, and since he thinks I’m sexy, that’s what I feel.”

  Amy was jotting down notes as fast as Karina could talk, nodding her head as she did.

  “What about you, Lily?” Amy asked as she flipped the next notebook.

  Well, she definitely was not going to say, “I feel sexy when your brother pushes me up against the wall, strips off my clothes, and kisses me so hard I think I’ll die if he doesn’t make love to me.”

  Instead, she went with another scenario that was equally as true. “I have always felt sexy when I dance.”

  “I feel sexy when you dance,” Karina teased.

  The girls all laughed and some voiced their agreement with Karina.

  “What about dance makes you feel sexy?” Amy asked as a follow-up question.

  Lily wasn’t sure she could explain it in words, but since Amy was obviously taking this very seriously, she thought she ought to try. “I think that it’s the fact that I lose myself in the music. Completely. Totally. I feel strong and in control. Like I’m in my own world. I don’t really know how else to describe it.”

  Amy nodded, still furiously taking notes. “What about you, Sam?” she asked as she pulled another notebook from her bag.

  “Wait. We all get our own notebooks?” Nikki asked.

  “Of course,” Amy said like that should have been be obvious.

  “What color is mine?” Nikki asked, scooting forward on the couch to see the options.

  “Blue.” Amy held up a navy blue notebook.

  “Oh,” Nikki sighed in disappointment, “I like the purple.”

  “The purple is Lauren’s,” Amy replied almost apologetically.

  “Nikki can have the purple.” Lauren barely looked up from her phone as she typed away.

  Amy moved the order of the notebooks to accommodate her sister’s request and looked back up at Sam expectantly.

  “Well, I guess mine is kind of a combination between Karina’s and Lily’s. I really never thought that I was sexy or that I felt sexy before I met Luke, and he definitely does make me feel sexy. But after I had identified what that felt like for me, I realized that I did actually feel sexy all the time. I felt sexy pushing myself to the limit on a really good run or when I’m going down the slopes and just owning it.” Sam’s face lit up as she talked about her snowboarding.

  Lily had seen her on the Olympics when she’d won the silver and had been in awe of the way she had moved down the mountain so gracefully, like she was one with it.

  “So, to clarify, you did feel sexy before Luke, you just didn’t recognize it?” Amy asked.

  “Yeah, I guess being around all the snow bunnies and just what I saw in ads and on TV I thought it was this ‘oh-la-la, look at me’ type of a thing. But after being with Luke, I realized for me it’s when I really just feel the most…me. At my best and the most confident.”

  The question moved on to Lauren, Nikki, and Amanda. All three girls gave different variations of basically the same thing—that although a man that you love can definitely bring out your inner sexy, it’s really inside of yourself all the time.

  Lily thought about that and realized that that was definitely true with her and Eric. All of Lily’s life, she’d received attention for her curves. Some of it she hadn’t minded, and most of it she ignored. But with Eric, she felt like he really saw her—not just her curves but her soul.

  “That would be awesome!” Amanda exclaimed, clapping her hands.

  Lily looked up and saw that all of the eyes in the room were looking at her. “What?” she asked hesitatingly, not sure of what she missed.

  “Would you consider teaching a class?” Amy asked.

  “What kind of class?” Lily was hoping she wasn’t asking her to teach a class on being sexy, because Lily was far from an expert where that was concerned.

  “A Burlesque class,” Amy said.

  “Oh!” Lily was so relieved. “Of course. Yes, I would love to. I actually used to teach Burlesque several times a week in Sacramento.”

  Teaching Burlesque was easy. Teaching sexy...not so much.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Two, three, four, Lily counted in her mind as she moved behind the chair and dipped down to the side, knees together. Hold. Six, seven, eight. Using the chair for balance, she slowly rolled up chest first, back arched, and stepped out. Right, left. Six, seven, eight. Legs straight. Two, three, four. Booty shake. Six, seven, eight.

  The routine wasn’t where she wanted it to be, but it was getting there. She’d had over a week to work on it, but between the choreography for Karina’s tour, Seniors Salsa, and her and Eric ‘not dating,’ she simply hadn’t had any time to devote to it. She looked at her watch. In exactly ten hours, she’d be up in front of a group of women leading this dance. She needed more practice.

  Turning the music down, she picked her gloves and boa up of the floor as she made mental notes of what to modify in the dance. She had to remember that these were beginners she was teaching. But since Amy had been the one to request the class—and she had a very specific purpose in mind—Lily did want to make sure that there was plenty of sexy in there. She could always use one of her old routines, but Lily wanted this to be special, and none of her old routines had the magic balance she was looking for of crazy, sexy, and beginner.

  Sliding her satin gloves up her arms, she rolled her neck from side to side and tried to tap into her inner sexy. Music always helped, but that was more in a freestyle context. For choreography, she needed to feel inspired.

  Barking sounded from outside mere seconds before there was a loud knock. Laughing to herself, she thought it was funny that inspiration was literally knocking at her door.

  She had a little bounce in her step as she crossed her front room. Even though she knew that Eric would only be dropping Shadow off on his way to work, she still got a thrill knowing she would see him, even if it was just for a few minutes.

  The second the door opened, she noticed that he was wearing sweats, not his uniform. Also, the normal sullen expression he wore on his face when he’d had to work a double had been replaced by a wicked smile full of promise.

  Shadow burst in and ran around her legs in a circle, barking at the top of his lungs. Bending down, she gave him a quick squeeze around his neck and told him there was a treat for him in the kitchen. He gave her one final bark as he ran, tail wagging, to go find his treat, which she knew would keep him occupied for hours.

  Lily had started picking up rawhides and toys for him at the store when she went grocery shopping. Eric kept telling her she didn’t have to, since Shadow had plenty of toys and bones at his house, but she wanted him to have some things here since this is where he was half of the time.

  She straightened and saw Eric’s appraising eyes hungrily rake her up and down. “Nice outfit. Am I interrupting something?”

  Her brow furrowed. As she looked down, she realized she’d forgotten she was wearing her Burlesque attire, complete with heels, booty shorts, a bustier, a boa, a garter, and gloves. She blushed a little. No guy had ever seen her dressed like this. She’d only taught the class to women, and she’d always waited to change until she arrived at the facility at which she was teaching. Then she’d change before leaving.

  “I thought you had to work tonight. I was practicing for a class I’m teaching tomorrow.” She decided to leave out the part about it being at his little sister’s request.

  His eyes shot up to hers. “I’m off, and a class in what? Stripping?”

  “No, Burlesque. But they do have pole classes, and I’ve thought about getting certified,” she said, crossing her arms and waiting to see if he would say anything about it. She hated when guys that she was dating—or in this case, ‘not dating’—got jealous and possessive. Eric was definitely dominant and alpha—which she really enjoyed—but
she hoped that was all.

  “If you do decide to get certified, can I watch?” he asked, closing the distance between them and lowering his lips to hers, claiming her mouth.

  His question had given her an idea, and before this kiss turned into more, which she knew would happen, she leaned her head back away from him and stepped out of his arms. Giving him her sweetest smile, she asked, “Want to help me?”

  “What? Get certified?” He looked a bit confused.

  “No. Help me with my Burlesque choreography.”

  “I’m not that great of a dancer… Plus, I think I would look terrible in a boa,” he joked as he once again reached out to pull her against him.

  She playfully moved just out of his reach as she said, “I think you’d look great in a boa, but I was actually asking if you would be my audience.”

  He froze and his eyes darted up to hers. “You’re going to dance?”

  “Yep.”

  “And I get to watch?”

  “Yep.”

  “And you’ll be wearing that?”

  “Yes and no. I take a lot of it off,” she teased as she looked up at him coyly.

  “Oh, hell yeah. Just call me Mr. Audience,” he agreed readily.

  She chuckled as she went and picked up her folding chair, patting the seat as she set it down. “Okay, Mr. Audience. Take a seat.”

  He immediately did as she instructed. As she walked over to turn the music on, she felt a little rush of adrenaline. She’d never danced for a man before. Sure, she’d danced with a man, but dancing for him was a totally different ballgame. She liked the feeling of power it gave her.

  After she pressed play, the smooth sounds of the song “Fever” began floating through the air.

  “Does this mean I get to call you my private dancer?” Eric asked as he leaned back in the chair, waiting for the show.

  “Sure,” Lily nodded as she moved in front the wall he was facing, which she was now going to think of as her stage.

  She turned so her back was to him and placed her hands flat on the wall. Glancing over her shoulder, she saw that his eyes were lit up with anticipation. First, she stepped her right and then left foot on the one and two before snapping her legs straight. Slowly, to the beat of the music, she started swaying her hips from right to left. Then, as the music slowed, she rolled them back, arching her lower back and putting her derriere on full display.