by Emma Hart
“I pulled out both the jars and even tasted it, then got distracted by my mom’s cat being up on the counter. Long story short, I forgot which one was which, and accidentally put the sugar away.”
“You didn’t think to check again?”
“Hey—I was sixteen and was trying to stop a cat sitting in my bowl of flour. I had some priorities. Like not baking cat hair.”
He waved his hand. “So, you didn’t know until you ate it?”
I grimaced. “Nope. The worst part is that this was when my parents weren’t together. I never got along with my stepmom, and it was her birthday cake.”
Dex shook as he held back laughter.
“I’d been a bit horrible to her when I’d stayed at my dad’s, so the birthday cake was my way of trying to build a bridge and…”
“You burned it down.”
I nodded. “She thought I’d done it deliberately and wouldn’t listen to reason that it was a mistake.”
“Oh man. That’s horrible.”
“Not really. My mom knew I was a terrible baker, and later admitted to coming into the kitchen while I was chasing the cat out and switching the jars.” I smirked. “Technically, I didn’t get it wrong. She made a habit of trolling my stepmother, and that was the day she’d won.”
He let the laughter go. “That’s fucking amazing. Holy shit. How didn’t you know?”
“I have a love-hate relationship with the cat. Sometimes she won’t leave me alone, other times, she won’t go near me and will hiss at the sound of my voice.”
“That sounds like my sister.”
I nudged him in the shoulder and rolled over onto my back. “She’s not that bad.”
“Nah, she’s not. But she did hiss at me once. I slipped a naked baby photo of her in her boyfriend’s pocket. It didn’t matter, but he was the asshole who knocked her up.”
“Am I nosy if I say I wondered about that?”
He shook his head. “She’s the first person to tell the story. She’s not ashamed of the fact she’s a single parent. She said she’d rather it than have to fight with a total jackass all the time. She did that for a year before she realized she was giving him energy that she could have spent on Charley.”
“He never sees her?”
“He’s met her about three times. It doesn’t really matter. Charley doesn’t need him, and neither does Roxy.”
Despite the arguing, he softened when he spoke about them. It was plain to see they were as close as siblings could be.
“She’s got you.” I smiled, turning my face toward him.
He shrugged, brushing it off. “I’m not that great.”
“Oh, sure. Everything else, you brag about, but being a great uncle and brother? No, you’re a terrible person.”
He laughed, pushing hair from my face. “It’s so nice when we agree.”
I batted his hand away. “I’m not agreeing with you. That was called sarcasm, you nut.”
“I know. It’s been a while since I fucked with you, that’s all.”
I glared at him. “Stop, or I’ll call your sister and make her tell me more about how you used to play with your penis in the bath tub.”
“No.” He covered his eyes with his forearm. “Don’t do that. She’ll take out a column in the local newspaper if she thinks enough people care about it.”
“Hm. That’s tempting.” I set up and reached for my purse.
“Don’t you dare.”
I leaned right over and grabbed it.
Dex jumped on top of me. I squealed and gripped hold of the straps, but he was stronger than me, and he easily wrestled the straps from my grip and tossed it to the side.
“Nooo!” I laughed, stretching my arm out, but he was straddling me now, and he grasped my wrists and pinned them to the ground above my head. I wriggled against his hold, eventually giving up to pout at him.
He grinned like the cat who had the cream. “Yes. You’re not calling her.”
I pouted harder. “I was messing. And now you’re squashing me. Can I have my hands back?”
His eyes searched mine. “I don’t know. I’m still deciding.”
“Deciding? What is there to decide? If I can have back the use of my own hands?”
“No. Deciding if I should kiss you or not.”
My heart skipped a beat. “Do I have a say in that?”
“Do you care either way?”
“I—I mean, maybe. I don’t—”
“That’s a no, then.”
I nodded.
He stared at me a little longer, his fingers twitching as they held my wrists together. The grass tickled against my skin, but all I could really focus on was the way his eyes pierced mine—on the battle that waged in his eyes.
I wanted to reach up and grab him, to pull his mouth to mine. But I couldn’t.
Thankfully, I didn’t need to try.
Dex moved, lowering his mouth to mine. I leaned my face up until our lips met, and as his descended down onto mine, my head sank back into the grass. I drew a deep breath when he pulled back briefly, and our eyes met for a flash before he kissed me again.
It was warm and soft, the gentlest kiss he’d ever given me, and heat twirled slowly through my body. It was dark and there was a light chill to the fall air, but I could barely tell. Whether it was just the heat of his body over mine or the kiss or both, I didn’t know, but it felt good.
So damn good.
Until I remembered something.
We were in the middle of the park.
In the middle of town.
In public.
I jerked my face away from Dex’s, gasping. “Oh my God, get off me.”
“What? What did I do?” He released my hands and moved.
My cheeks burned red-hot, and I sat up, clapping my hands to my face. “Oh my God, you just kissed me in public.”
“No,” he deadpanned. “I thought it was in your bedroom.”
“Oh my God, if anyone saw me, they’ll be texting my mother right this second.”
“And there goes my erection.” Dex sighed and, bending one knee, hugged his leg to his chest. “Thanks for that.”
“Oh God, oh God, oh God.” I rocked a little. “Do you not understand how much she’s going to be on my back about this? She’s going to bug me all the time.”
He stared at me. “You’re a grown woman. You can kiss a man in public if you want.”
“That was half-porn!”
“You think that was half-porn? Darlin’, if you want me to show you what that is, I’d be more than happy to climb back on top of you and demonstrate.”
“No. No.” I stood and grabbed the empty coffee cups, then threw them in the trashcan just a few feet from us. My purse was next. “Oh God.”
I looked around the park. There were tons of people. Nobody was looking at us, of course. And we were in a darker area, after all. But still.
Shit. All it took was one person. One nosy asshole walking their dog and…boom. I was in trouble with my mother.
Dexter Ryne would surely be the death of me.
Chapter Twenty-Five – Dex
She looked like a deer in headlights. Like she’d been caught fucking me in broad daylight, not kissing me in the darkness.
I recognized it for what it was.
She didn’t care if her mom knew.
She cared that, yet again, she’d liked it. That this date she wouldn’t refer to as a date, one she stressed she did under duress, was more than what she would admit to.
That she liked it when I kissed her.
I knew. I’d felt it. I’d tasted it.
And I wasn’t done with her. Not tonight.
“All right. We’re done here.” I stood up. “I’ll take you home.”
She drew in a deep breath, turning around to look at me. “Oh.”
“Let’s go.” I approached her, and before she could move, grabbed her. I wrapped one arm around her back and bent to hook my other arm beneath her knees.
I pick
ed her up.
She screamed.
“Dex! What the—what the hell are you doing?” She wrapped one arm around my neck and gripped my shirt with her other hand. She clung to me like I’d drop her any second.
“Shit! I’m dropping you!” I moved as if I was going to let her go.
She screamed again, louder, and almost strangled me with the tightness of her grip.
“I’m taking you home, and finishing what I almost started before your freak-out.” I stalked toward where we were parked.
“You are not carrying me all the way to your car!”
“Oh, darlin’, I am.”
“You are not!”
“Yet here you are, in my arms, being carried.” I grinned and caught the eye of a familiar, older man, clutching a leash with a Jack Russell on the other end. “Mr. Daniels.” I nodded to him.
He nodded back silently, staring as I carried Jamie right past him.
“Oh God,” she moaned, resting her head on her arm and turning her face into my shoulder. “This is so humiliating.”
“You wouldn’t come if I didn’t make you.”
“Is that a double entendre?”
“It’ll be reality in about thirty minutes when I get my hands on you…somewhere you won’t be worried about your mother finding out.”
“Oh God. If I don’t go home…”
“Darlin’, you’re going home. And I’m not leaving until you’re too tired to make me.”
“Oh God.”
***
When I drove past her parents’ house, no cars were outside. Jamie visibly relaxed, and I smirked as I turned off their driveway onto her extended one. I didn’t understand this set-up, but boy, was I glad I didn’t have to worry about parents.
Or making her be quiet.
When we’d fucked in the garage, it’d been raw. Rushed and desperate. Pure, hard passion that overtook everything else.
Tonight, it’d be different.
I knew her as a person now. I knew what she liked and what she hated. I knew fears and quirks, crazy stories from her childhood, just as she knew mine.
Now, I wanted to know more.
Wanted to know what she looked like without clothes on. Wanted to know if she was a sheet-grabber, or if she was a born scratcher. I wanted to explore her body properly, to know her outer shell as intimately as I was starting to know her inner one.
I pulled up next to her Mustang and put the truck in park. We both got out, and I walked her to the front door. “Do you need help to unlock your door this time?”
“I’ve got it, thank you,” she said sharply, but her lips twitched into a smile as she put the key in the door and twisted it. She bit the inside of her cheek as she looked over at me. “I guess you’re coming in?”
“Do you want me to go?” I met her eyes.
She looked at me for the longest moment, hand clutching the door handle. Her tongue flicked out over her lower lip, and the battle shone in her eyes.
She did, but she didn’t.
She wanted me, but she was scared.
I opened my mouth to tell her I’d go, to do the opposite of the very thing I wanted. The opposite of the need that was burning through my veins right in that moment.
But she beat me to it.
She took a step closer to me, cupped the back of my neck, and lifted her lips to meet mine. The kiss was hard and full-on, one touch that I felt down to my fucking bones as she answered my question without words.
She pulled back and shoved open the door. “Okay!” Her voice was a little too high-pitched. “Come in.”
I choked back a laugh, locked my car, and then closed the door behind me.
She discarded her shoes, keys, and purse on the floor and coffee table. “Do you want a drink? Something to eat? Should we turn on the—”
I grabbed her hand and pulled her against me. “I want you.”
“Oh. Okay. I just—”
My fingers dove into her hair as I kissed her. She’d talk for hours if I’d let her, but I wasn’t going to. I only had hours for one thing, and that thing was exploring her body. That thing was making her come, over and over, enjoying every inch of her until she begged me for sleep.
She gasped and pulled back. “Upstairs to the left.”
I scooped her up again, this time over my shoulder. She squealed once more as I clamped my arm around her thighs and moved toward the stairs.
“Will you stop manhandling me?”
“Maybe, but we move quicker when I make you move, and I don’t have a lot of time to waste.”
“Why?” she asked, pulling my t-shirt up my back. “Are you on curfew?”
“Ha ha. No. But we both have to be up early for work, and given your late appearance today, you owe me hours. Hours I’ll happy forget about if you shut your smart mouth and do as I say.”
“Do as you say? Are you into that kinky “sir” shit? Oh hell, do I have to call you “sir?” You can shove that up your—”
I pushed open the first door on your left. “Jamie, this is your towel closet.”
“Um. I meant on the right.”
“And you say I’m bad with directions,” I muttered, swinging the door shut and walking the few paces to her bedroom door.
Her supposed bedroom door.
Thankfully, it was, and I carried her through the door into the room. I paid no attention to it except for the huge bed in the middle of the room.
“You are terrible at directions. You never listen,” she said, pushing the door shut over my shoulder.
I dropped her unceremoniously onto her bed. She landed with an “oomph,” bounced, and looked up at me. “Then it’s your lucky day. The one thing I won’t need directions for is your clit.”
“That’s a bold promise.” She propped herself up and looked me up and down. “All right. If we’re doing this again, get naked.”
“If? There’s no if about it.”
“You’re still wearing clothes.”
I unbuttoned my shirt slowly. “So are you.”
“I didn’t tell myself to get naked. I told you.”
“You’re awfully bossy. Do you know that?”
She blinked those wide, blue eyes at me. “Actually, yes, I do. In about ten minutes, I’ll be putty in your hands, so I’m all about telling you what to do while I still have my wits about me.”
“That’s the hottest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“Shut up and finish taking your clothes off.”
“Take off your pants,” I shot back.
She lifted her ass and shoved the jeans down her legs. That left her in that black leather jacket I loved and her lace shirt. It was a strangely sexy look—probably because there was something about the combination of her red lips, her white shirt, the black jacket, and her black underwear.
Deliberate? Maybe.
I was going to rip her out of all of it anyway.
I tossed my shirt to the side, then finished getting undressed until I was in nothing but my boxers. “Now the jacket,” I told her.
She grazed her teeth over her lower lip as she shrugged it off and threw it to the side. That left her sitting in nothing but her shirt and her black thong, but that was still one item too many.
I stared pointedly at her shirt until she got the hint and pulled it off with a grin.
I approached her, but she was quicker. She literally yanked me down over her and kissed me, curling her arms around my neck as her teeth grazed my lower lip. Her body melded against mine as she deepened the kiss.
For someone so reluctant to have dinner with me…
I pushed the thought from my mind and kissed her back. My fingers wound in her hot mess hair, and I ran my other hand up the side of her nearly-naked body. She was perfection, all curves and temptation, and my fingers probed her skin as I explored her.
She wrapped her legs around my waist, pulling my cock to press against her pussy. I wanted to slide those panties aside and push inside her. Just the thought of being insi
de her again made my cock rock-hard, and it pushed against my boxers—and her.
She wriggled beneath me. I nipped at her lower lip before I dragged my mouth from hers. I kissed along her jaw, down the curve of her neck, over the dip of her collarbone to her chest. Her white bra pushed her tits together, and I reached between them to unclasp it.
She gasped as I circled her nipple with my tongue. I grinned as she arched her back, pushing it harder against the tip of my tongue.
She was right.
She was already putty in my hands.
I wasted no time moving down her body and taking hold of her underwear. I slid the thong down her legs and she kicked it off to the side.
I met her eyes and grinned, parting her legs. She blushed, but lifted her head to mine so I could kiss her again. I kissed her until my cock throbbed and once again, slid down her body to the apex of her thighs.
“Oh God,” she whispered, throwing her forearm over her eyes.
I kissed the top of her thigh. “I’ve barely touched you and you’re already saying my name.”
She laughed, but I cut it short when I ran my tongue along her wet pussy. Instead she gasped, and I grinned, grasping her thighs to hold her legs apart. She wriggled, but she didn’t move away as I took her pussy in my mouth and explored her with my tongue.
The tiny moans that left her mouth as I focused on her clit made my heart thump. I wanted her so fucking bad, I could barely focus. I wanted this pussy around my cock. I wanted her moans in my mouth or my ear, not into the thin air. I wanted these legs around my waist while I fucked her blind, not pinned to the bed while I licked her.
Her moans grew louder. Higher. The sheet tightened under me, and when I glanced up, her knuckles were white as she grabbed hold of it.
I slid my hands under her ass and pushed her clit into my mouth. I sucked, circled, licked, teased until her entire body went tense and she cried out. It was something fucking else, hearing her moan like that. Being totally focused on nothing but her pleasure. Nothing else mattering other than the way she tensed and tightened and moved against my tongue as she rode it out.
I wiped my mouth with my hand and kissed her. She groaned, but she fisted her fingers in my hair. Pure desire thundered through my veins as she flicked her tongue against my lips. I knew she was tasting herself, and for some reason, her insistence to kiss me deeper and harder turned me the fuck on.