Whisper of Love

by Melanie Shawn

  She wasn’t so naïve as to think that he had any romantic feelings for her just because his body responded to her the way it had. His dick didn’t know that it was Ali in his arms, just that it was a woman’s body smashed against his wet, freshly-steamed skin.

  But she had to admit, it did kind of hurt when he’d reacted so abruptly to her teasing. Not so hurtful that it stopped her from checking out what he was working with, though. Her eyes had dropped down without a second’s hesitation. And, my oh my, had it been worth it. To say that seeing Kade chest bare, covered only by a towel riding dangerously low on his hips was impressive was like saying that Beyoncé was a singer. She was so much more than that. She was a legend. And so was Kade’s body. She wasn’t sure she’d ever be able to erase that sight from her mind. She wasn’t sure she even wanted to.

  She’d always had a crush on Kade. She’d been in love with him practically her entire life. But she’d honestly believed that her feelings for him were over for good after her brother had died and she’d suddenly become responsible for what could kindly be called ten peoples’ workload, but no. Here they were again, standing up and doing a jig. She’d thought that she’d at least be able to keep them at a low simmer for the duration of Kade’s visit, and up to that point she’d done pretty well.

  But she was only human. Running into Kade in the hallway had pushed her over the edge that she’d been teetering on since he’d shown up on her doorstep.

  It wasn’t just the way it had felt to be in his arms or how a lot he was that was driving her to the brink. It was the way his skin was still flushed from the heat of the water. The little beads of moisture that still clung to him looked so inviting. She’d literally had to stop herself from leaning forward and licking him like a dessert.

  She looked over at the clock and let out a frustrated sigh. Two o’clock in the morning. She had to be up in four hours. She couldn’t just lay there, sleepless and frustrated, all night long. She had a shit-ton of work waiting for her at the rental shop. Spring break was only six days away. And now, thanks to Mrs. D, she had a last minute budgeting meeting as well. She needed sleep.

  There was only one way she knew to shut her mind off. There was only one way to quench the inferno raging in her body so she could finally get some rest. She’d never been very good at manual manipulation, but she was pretty sure it was the only way she was going to get any shut-eye at all.

  The soft sheets rubbed against her bare thighs as she spread them open and slipped her hand down inside her panties. As soon as her fingertips found the hard little button of pleasure nestled between her wet folds, she knew that this wouldn’t take very long. Thanks to Kade, she was primed and ready to go.

  Pleasure bloomed from the first brush of her fingertip across her clit. She kept a steady pace rubbing her nub, the whole time imagining it was Kade’s finger touching her. She slid her other hand beneath her tank top and tweaked her nipple. The slight shock of pain shot directly to her core and she pictured Kade with her, touching her, whispering naughty things in her ear.

  Her breath came in shallow pants as he told her that he loved how wet she was for him and that he was going to make her come so hard she would see stars. He told her that he’d always known she was going to be his one day and that he was going to make sure she knew it too. He told her that no other man would ever make her feel the way he was going to make her feel tonight and that she belonged to him.

  As she lost herself in her fantasy, the telltale signs of her orgasm built with increasing pressure and she dug her heels into the worn mattress and pressed down while her back arched. An involuntary response to the electricity pulsing through her veins.

  Her hips rose to meet her middle finger as she pictured Kade between her legs. His mouth, not her hand, was covering her sex; his tongue flicked her tender folds. He told her how good she tasted, how hard she made him. He told her he was going to fuck her with his tongue and then he did just that.

  As she pictured Kade’s head moving over her and imagining that her hips were thrusting up into his waiting, hot, hungry mouth, she lost herself as she came with a power that she’d never been able to achieve before on a solo mission. It was so satisfying that she almost believed it was real for the precious, short seconds that the orgasm ripped through her body…

  But then it was over. Just like every beautiful thing in her life. Like every other short but blissful reprieve, it popped like a soap bubble, with no evidence that it had ever been real except for a tiny shimmer left in the air, and she was left exactly where she’d been when it started.

  Alone. Empty. Exhausted. And, most disheartening of all, with serious doubts that any of that was going to change anytime soon. If ever.

  Always one to try and see a silver lining she reasoned as she turned onto her side and pulled the covers up over her chin, at least all of that pent up sexual tension had dissipated. Now she could let the exhaustion she held at bay every minute of every day overtake her, and escape into a few blissful hours of sleep.

  She closed her eyes, then, and did exactly that.

  CHAPTER 13

  “Kade, good to see you, son.” Mr. Tanaka patted him on the back on his way out of the meeting in the American Legion hall.

  “You too.” Kade nodded, then lifted his cup of coffee to his mouth and took a sip as he glanced around the room. It was filled with people he’d known most of his life.

  AA was a lot different in Whisper Lake than it was in Los Angeles. In California, he sometimes recognized people in his meetings because they were celebrities. Here, he recognized people because he’d grown up with them. Or they’d been his high school principal, librarian, or they were his old mailman, as was the case with Mr. Tanaka. Both made it difficult for some to feel anonymous, both served godawful coffee.

  As people mingled, he checked his phone. He’d texted Ali earlier to see if he could take care of dinner but still hadn’t gotten a response.

  When he’d gotten back from his run this morning, which the boys had sat out since they had a friend spending the night, she’d already left for work. And she’d been gone all day. He’d thought about going down to the rental office but he figured he’d give her space after their run-in the night before.

  He hadn’t been able to stop thinking about what had happened. He’d had to consciously work at not thinking about the way her curves had felt against him. The way her nails felt digging into his skin. The way her skin flushed with a pink tinge. Because every time he didn’t, his mind would wander back to those things.

  And he felt shitty about it.

  Patrick had never been one of those brothers that thought no one was good enough for his sister or that he had to protect her from the entire male species. He’d always gotten along with her boyfriends and even joked that he felt sorry for any man she ended up with because his sister was a force of nature. Patrick had also joked that he felt sorry for whoever ended up with Kade but not because he was a force of nature. He knew why his friend felt that way. It wasn’t like Kade had the best track record when it came to relationships.

  Kade’s relationships usually ended in tears. An image that would haunt him forever was that of his first love, Kennedy, sobbing in her prom dress in the gazebo at Foster Pond. His only serious relationship didn’t end with a promise to always be friends, either. Last he heard, his ex-fiancée was selling her four-carat, princess-cut engagement ring on eBay. It was clear that he wasn’t the guy that a brother would want their sister to end up with. He was the guy that they hoped their sister never brought home.

  He’d kept his feelings for Ali under wraps for seven years out of respect for both Patrick and Ali and he planned on continuing doing just that. It would’ve been bad enough when Patrick was alive for him to find out that Kade was in love with his sister, but now that he was gone…it felt like a betrayal of the lowest kind.

  His best friend, the man that had been like a brother to him was gone and Kade couldn’t stop thinking about his sister. His mind
flooded with memories of how right she’d felt in his arms the night before. How close he came to kissing her. Fuck. He was supposed to be here to take care of Ali, not fuck her. He needed to remember that.

  He ran his fingers through his hair in frustration as his phone buzzed. A goofy grin spread across his face when he saw it was a message from Ali.

  Running to a meeting. There’s leftover pizza in the fridge.

  He stared at the text.

  A meeting?

  It was seven o’clock on a Sunday night. What meeting could she be going to? Although to be fair, he’d just finished a meeting on a Sunday night so maybe he wasn’t one to talk.

  Since Ali was going to be out, he figured he better get back to the twins. They were old enough to be alone, he just wasn’t sure he trusted KJ unsupervised this long. He tossed his coffee and started toward the door when he heard his name.

  “Kade!”

  He turned and saw Nancy Peterson motioning for him to wait for her as she hustled his way. Nancy held a very special distinction in his life.

  The momentous day occurred on the Fourth of July and he’d been on the banks of the lake waiting for the fireworks to start when two real-life boobs magically appeared a few inches from his face. She’d flashed the entire south side of the shore, whooping and hooting as she did. He was nine at the time and he remembered thinking it was the greatest thing ever. Now, looking back through the lens of an adult and an addict, he saw that she wasn’t just having a good time. She’d probably been plastered and didn’t even remember it.

  She was a little out of breath by the time she made it over to him. “Hey, I was just wondering if you’d seen your dad since you’ve been back in town.”

  It wasn’t the first time he’d been asked that question since coming back. George McKnight was far from a pillar in the community, but he was a part of it anyway. And Whisper Lake took care of their own, even if their own were drunks.

  “Yeah.” Kade felt a familiar tension build in his shoulders.

  “Good.” She nodded and pursed her lips. “How did he seem?”

  “Sick,” Kade stated flatly.

  “But he wasn’t…was he drinking?”

  He opened his mouth to say that of course he was, his dad was always drinking, but then he stopped himself. He searched his memory of that day. There’d been a lot of pills on the tray beside him, but no bottles. Some empty soda cans on the coffee table, but no bottles. A dried up, half-eaten peanut butter and jelly sandwich on the counter, but no bottles. A couple two liters of distilled water beside his recliner, but no alcohol bottles.

  Now that he thought about it, he realized that the trailer had smelled like cat piss and stale cigarettes but he hadn’t caught a whiff of dragon breath. That’s what he’d called it when his dad’s breath wreaked of alcohol because when he was a kid one of his dad’s friends told him that if his dad put a lighter in front of his mouth he could spit fire.

  Nancy explained, “I’m only asking because I’m his sponsor. I was supposed to go out there last week, but Stan got the flu and…”

  She continued talking but Kade heard nothing after the word sponsor.

  “You’re my dad’s sponsor?”

  “Yeah. And since he’s been too sick to come to meetings I go out there a couple of times a week. I’ve never missed a week and I was worried when I didn’t hear from him that he might have…”

  His dad was sober? George McKnight was sober?

  All of Kade’s life, his dad had made promises of stopping. He’d been in and out of rehab, which was usually court ordered, but nothing ever stuck.

  “When did he get sober?” Kade interrupted her.

  “About three years ago.”

  Three years? That’s when the doctors had given him six months to live.

  “He was coming to meetings a few times a week up until the incident at The Snack Shack. Since then, it’s just too hard for him.”

  Kade half-listened as she talked about the dinners she brings his dad and how she makes sure he’s taking his medication until she got called away. They said a quick goodbye and he left in a fog of confusion.

  His dad was sober? The simple explanation, considering the timeline, was that getting sick had been the catalyst. But that wasn’t tracking with Kade. The man he knew would’ve just doubled down. He would’ve drank himself into his grave. It didn’t make any sense.

  A breeze swayed the trees, causing the leaves to rustle above his head as he stepped into the cool spring evening. He stood on the steps of the hall and took a deep breath as he looked out over the lake and took a moment to regroup. The moon shimmered across the surface of the water and a sense of peace came over him as he watched people go about their evening in the downtown district that lined the north end of the lake.

  Coming home had not gone as expected. Some of it had gone better than expected, like how fast Ali had forgiven him. But some of it had gone worse than he’d expected, too. Like the intense build of his feelings for her. He wasn’t sure how he would classify this new information about his dad, but it certainly wouldn’t be “as expected.” He’d written the man off years ago. Did it matter that he was sober now?

  He was lost in thought when a flash of color caught his attention across the street. It was Ali. She was wearing a long, orange dress that reminded him of his favorite ice cream treat when he was a kid. An Orange Creamsicle. Just like when he was younger, his mouth watered and his tongue longed to lick it.

  His fantasy of doing just that was cut short when he saw her hugging a man: Keaton Mills. Jealousy sucker-punched Kade in the gut as he watched the two of them greet each other. He hated not being the man that was on the receiving end of Ali’s smile. She looked so happy to see him. They turned and walked into Santino’s, out of sight.

  A meeting?

  Now Mills’ stolen glances at Ali during KJ’s class and at the barbeque made a lot more sense. They must be secretly dating. Or semi-secretly, he guessed, since they did seem to be out in public. But he hadn’t picked up on it at the barbeque nor had he heard anyone around town gossiping about it, which struck him as odd.

  He stared at the double doors the two had entered as they closed and a sinking feeling settled in the pit of his stomach. They were together. Laughing. Talking. Probably doing things other than laughing and talking.

  Kade was tempted to go in and order take-out just to spy, but he knew that was crossing a line.

  This is for the best, he told himself.

  Ali deserved someone that was worthy of her. A good guy. And from what Kade knew of him, Keaton Mills was a good guy. He saw them being seated through the floor to ceiling windows and watched as the waitress walked away. They both stared at one another for a beat before Keaton said something and they both cracked up. Ali was laughing so hard her head fell back and her hands covered her stomach. They looked like a couple. A happy couple.

  Kade’s heart felt like it was a piñata being pummeled by major league hitters as he headed down the steps two at a time and threw his leg over his bike. As the engine roared to life, he clicked his helmet into place and couldn’t help but glance once more at the woman he loved. The woman he could never have.

  It’s for the best.

  CHAPTER 14

  “Would you like to order or did you need still a few more minutes?” Stacy Timmons, the twins’ former babysitter, asked for the third time.

  Ali glanced down at her phone. Mrs. D was a no show. She and Keaton had been at the restaurant for over twenty minutes now and there was still no sign of the woman who had called the meeting. Ali was starting to worry.

  “I think we need a couple of minutes,” Keaton told her once again.

  “Oh, okay, just let me know if you need anything,” She smiled at him and then turned and sashayed toward the kitchen.

  Ali noticed that there was an extra twinkle in Stacy’s eyes every time she spoke to Keaton. At first, she thought it was cute that “little Stacy” had a crush. But then she remembered tha
t “little Stacy” had just graduated from Penn State. They weren’t that far apart in age but for some reason Ali perpetually saw the boys’ old babysitter as a brace-faced teenager.

  But the reality was the twins were teenagers now. Before too long they would be in high school. The world had kept going but Ali had been in a holding pattern.

  It felt like she’d been sleepwalking through the past year and half of her life and was only now waking up.

  “Are you okay?” Concern colored Keaton’s expression.

  “Oh, yeah.” Ali was a pro at wiping away any trace of sadness from her face. KJ might be loud, rebellious, and inconsiderate but he could also be extremely sensitive and if he thought she was upset, he would get upset. “I was just wondering where Mrs. D was. I’m going to call her.”

  Ali picked up her phone and saw a text from the woman in question.

  I won’t be able to make it. You two go on without me. I expect a full report on Tuesday.

  Ali’s brow furrowed and she turned her phone so Keaton could see it.

  After reading it, his eyes met hers. “What’s Tuesday?”

  “Knitting club.” She stared at the text again and then looked up at him. “Do you have any idea what we are supposed to go on with? She said something about the budget and the upcoming season but no specifics.”

  Keaton leaned forward, his eyes narrowing as he read the text again. “I have no idea. Mrs. D cornered me yesterday and asked me about an email I never got then told me to be here at seven for a budgeting meeting. She said ‘look spiffy.’” He made air quotes to emphasize her last direction.

  “Same here. Except instead of spiffy she said to wear my Sunday best.” She glanced down at the peach maxi dress she’d chosen. It was looser on her than it used to be so instead of hugging her curves it just kind of flowed over them, but it was the nicest thing in her wardrobe.

  “Well, you look really nice.”

  Ali noticed Keaton blinked slowly when he said really. It was a small, nearly imperceptible motion, but it was kind of sexy.