by Amy Andrews
His nod cut her off. “You don’t want to be seen with me, do you?”
Viv sighed. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to. It just seemed wiser from a business stance to not actively antagonize her potential customer base. She felt like every person who had passed them as they’d been standing here were judging them—or her anyway—and clearly not approving.
“You know pretty much everyone thinks we’re sleeping together anyway, right? Whether we’re seen together or not.”
Well…that hardly seemed fair. Viv did not like feeling that she was damned if she did and damned if she didn’t where Reuben was concerned. And hell if that didn’t suddenly make her mad as hell. “Actually, you know what? Screw it. We know the truth and who I choose to share a meal with in the privacy of my rental has nothing to do with anyone else and should not have any damn thing at all to do with Delish.”
He smiled. “You’re singing to the choir, baby.”
“And I do love pasta.” Just ask her thighs. And her hips.
“Mine will make you weep.”
Viv laughed. “I was thinking that would be more likely the foot massage.”
“Oh no, that won’t make you weep…”
He let the sentence trail off deliberately and, as had clearly been his intention, her head filled with thoughts of what else it might do. Viv waggled her finger. “Hey, no strings. We took the pledge, remember?”
“Yeah. I remember.” He sounded like he regretted it but held up his hands in surrender. “You have my word.”
*
Half an hour later, Viv followed her nose down the hallway of the small, two-bedroom cottage, her empty wineglass in hand. She was in a designer pair of sweatpants, which were lose and comfortable but classy as fuck, and a cashmere sweater she’d bought in Macy’s on sale last year that was soft as down on her skin. Her hair was still piled on top of her head where she’d twisted it before getting into the bath. Her face was framed by numerous flyaways that had escaped the hasty updo.
Maybe she should have made more of an effort given that she was entertaining a gentleman caller but Viv was so warm and relaxed she couldn’t muster one fuck. And it wasn’t like Reuben was her boyfriend.
They were friends who happened to be members of the opposite sex. Hell, Reuben was probably her only friend in Marietta at the moment.
The aroma of pinecones tickled her nostrils as she drew closer and she could hear the crackle of the fire. The chill that had greeted them as they’d walked through the door of the cottage had given way to delicious warmth. Reuben had obviously been busy.
She padded her way to the kitchen and pulled up in the doorway, settling her shoulder into the jamb as she watched Reuben bend at the waist, pull a dish out of the oven then set it down on a wooden board on the countertop adjacent to the oven. He’d removed his utility belt and his shoes and socks. He’d also untucked his shirt, the tails hanging loose. It hid his very fine ass from view but there was something causally sexy about it, about the way he’d made himself at home.
Reaching for the nearby stick of butter he sliced off a chunk into the steaming dish and stirred it in with a spoon. She didn’t know what he was making but the man clearly wasn’t counting calories. Who knew a guy could be just as virile in the kitchen cooking a meal as when he was out and about being Mr. Law and Order?
Plunging a fork into the dish he twisted it, loading it up with spaghetti before shunting it into his mouth for a taste test. He nodded, obviously pleased with the end result. “Perfecto,” he muttered under his breath.
“It certainly smells good.”
He turned, a smile on his face that slowly morphed to an expression of mild surprise. “You wear glasses.”
“Oh…” She touched the rim self-consciously. They were large with a funky horn-rimmed frame but she owned a half dozen pairs with different fashion frames so she could mix it up. “Yes. Usually only at nighttime when I’m watching TV or reading. I wear contacts at work but my eyes need a break by the end of the day.”
His gaze roved over her face and hair, lingering on the loose tendrils hanging down. “I like them,” he declared.
“You’re picturing me pulling out my hair and shaking it while I bite sexily into my bottom lip?”
He grinned. “Something like that.”
“You do have an active imagination.”
He didn’t agree or disagree, just grabbed the bottle of red off the counter. “Would you like another?”
“Yes.” She thrust her glass toward him as he crossed the distance between them. “Thank you.”
He stopped a socially acceptable distance from her—close enough to pour, not close enough to be indecent—but he might as well have smooshed his body up against hers for the way it lit up. It was as if he’d been imprinted on her DNA and her body had been programmed to respond the second he was within reach.
“Where do you want to eat?” he asked, his eyes fixed on the job of pouring.
“I usually just eat on the couch in front of the TV.” That was one of the many joys of living by herself. Being able to do what she wanted, when she wanted and not being accountable to anyone else. “But it’s fine by me if you’d rather sit at the table?”
His eyes lifted as the wine level on her glass reached the three-quarter mark and he stopped pouring. Their eyes locked. “Couch is good.” His gaze seemed to be very much in favor of furniture that allowed people to get horizontal. “Go sit down; I’ll bring it out.”
*
Twenty minutes later, after Reuben had taken their plates away, he ushered Viv into a reclining position on the couch and grabbed her feet, setting them down in his lap. Her belly was full of spaghetti, the fire was casting a golden glow over the darkened room and Netflix was on the TV. They’d gone with a Die Hard movie rather than her current binge Outlander given it was a little too heavy on the sex for two people who’d taken a pledge.
They really didn’t need any extra stimulus.
“You have very cute toes,” he murmured.
Goose bumps marched in waves up Viv’s legs to the backs of her knees as Reuben ran the tip of his index finger over her toenails. It wasn’t a remotely sexual touch but every cell in her body burgeoned like tiny flower petals opening to the sun.
“What’s this color called?” he asked, rubbing his finger over the nail of her big toe.
“Shimmering Marigold.”
He nodded. “Very apt.”
Then he slid the pad of his thumb along the arch of her foot and it took all Viv’s willpower not to moan out loud as a pulse of electricity swept from her toes to the top of her head. A strange kind of sizzle was left in its wake, prickling at her nipples and tingling between her legs.
Holy guacamole.
She was pretty sure she was already wet and if this was how she was after one touch, she was going to be a puddle on the couch in a few minutes.
If he noticed her reaction, he didn’t say. In fact, he didn’t really look at her at all. Delivering a very thorough, impersonal massage, his fingers working their magic on her feet as he steadfastly watched the television. He laughed from time to time, keeping up a light commentary filling the void of her silence but the fact was, he could recite chapter and verse from the John McClane lexicon, and her body was in happy-ending territory.
The long, languid stroke of his thumbs might as well have been the brush of his mouth, the slide of his tongue. Hell, the man was nudging her closer to orgasm just from touching her feet.
His words from earlier came back to her. Oh no, that won’t make you weep. That’s what he’d said out on Main Street and she’d known then what he’d been alluding to but experiencing it was something else. The ache in her arches and her heels had ebbed quickly beneath his ministrations and the massage had morphed into something far different.
Something sensual. Something decadent. Like warm chocolate and expensive body oil and satiny lingerie.
It had become a seduction.
And it didn’t matte
r that John McClane was being all larger than life, bringing the testosterone as he blew shit up in the background, Reuben was the only man in the room.
“How are your calves?”
Viv dragged her eyes open, lifted her head up a little to find him watching her, his gaze lingering on her mouth and her throat. She sucked in a breath, which sounded loud and ragged despite the background noise of explosions, and Reuben’s gaze dropped to her breasts, to the uneven rise and fall of her chest and she thanked God for the camouflage of cashmere hiding her impossibly tight nipples.
Her calves were fine. Absolutely fine. Not that she thought for a moment this was about her calves. He was asking for permission to stray from the original plan. To touch her more. To move his hands higher.
A brief thought about their pledge flitted through her mind and out the other side. “They could do with some attention.”
Chapter Four
It was possible Viv whimpered when his fingers breached the hem of her loose sweats. For damn sure she lost all ability to hold her head upright as his thumb pushed from one end of her calf to the other in a long, languid stroke.
“How’s that?” he asked as he repeated the stroke, increasing the pressure a little, going deeper into the tissue. “Not too hard?”
Viv gave a quiet moan as the sensations caused by his touch rolled through her body like the low roll of thunder heralding a summer storm. Every part of her throbbed in the aftermath. Her heart beat hard and slow, her breathing was hot and heavy, her limbs felt leaden, weighed down by sticky fingers of desire.
He chuckled. “I take it that means okay?”
Okay? She was pretty damn sure there was some kind of weird chakra meridian voodoo thing that was running in a direct line from her calf to her clitoris. “Uh-huh,” she agreed because she couldn’t really word right now.
There was more chuckling as if he knew exactly the kind of storm going on inside her as he worked one calf then the other. Viv tried really hard not to gasp and moan and arch her back and demand he go even higher.
Or strip all her damn clothes off.
It was getting mighty hot in here what with the fire and the heat in his hands and the roaring freaking inferno of her libido. Viv felt like she was being cooked alive inside her cashmere and sweats and she squirmed a little as her body temperature kicked up a notch.
“You okay?”
She pried her eyes open to find him, once again, watching her intently. “Hot.”
“Maybe you should lose some of your clothes?”
Viv was pretty sure he said it as a tease but he seemed suddenly serious and, the truth was, she was not only fast approaching flash point as far as body temp went but also the point of no return with him. There’d be no turning back from here if she decided to tear down all those boundaries she’d put up to keep this thing between them in a straitjacket because of how it was affecting the business.
And because she was only here for six months.
But the way she saw it, there were only two choices, here. She either got her ass off the couch, reminded him of their pledge again and sent him on his way or she peeled off her cashmere sweater and invited him to come closer.
And she wasn’t sure she was strong enough for the former.
What Reuben said earlier came back to her. “Does everybody really think we’re sleeping together?”
He nodded. “Pretty much.”
And that was the clincher. If she was really going to be damned for the continual debauchment of one of the sons of Marietta, then she might as well be reaping the benefit from this apparent liaison.
“Well…if you can’t beat them…”
Viv performed the quickest sit-up she’d probably ever performed in her life. She hadn’t even done one in years and, had she been pressed to do one by someone else or for some other reason, like imminent attack by a grizzly, she probably would have failed. But this craving beating like a drum through her belly and her breasts was a powerful motivator. Once upright enough, she grabbed the hem of the sweater and pulled it off over her head, tossing it on the floor.
She had a bra and a cotton tank on underneath but Reuben was looking at her as if she was naked. Collapsing back against the couch she lifted her hips a little and said, “You want to do the honors?”
The words seemed to snap Reuben out of his trance. “So the pledge…?”
Viv shrugged. “What pledge?”
The words had barely left her lips and he was reaching for the waistband of her sweats, pulling them down her legs, dragging them off her feet. And then he was looking at her again, at the plain navy boy leg underwear hiding her from his full view.
The fact Viv had put this particular pair on after her bath gave her some kind of comfort that what was happening now hadn’t been premeditated. Nobody wore three-year-old plain cotton panties to a seduction which meant, even subconsciously, she hadn’t planned on breaking their pledge.
Then his hand slid onto her thigh and all thoughts of culpability fled.
“God,” he whispered. “I’ve been fantasizing about you ever since that night in Bozeman and my memory does not do you justice.”
Viv’s heart tripped. She knew how he felt. Reuben had been in her dreams a lot of nights but nothing beat the reality of him filling up her vision only a hand reach away. “Oh yeah?” She lifted her foot and planted it flat against his chest, her knee bent. Then she deliberately let her knee flop out so he could see right down the inside of her thigh to those nothing-special cotton panties. “What have you been fantasizing about?”
He smiled, his hand sliding onto her foot, lifting it to his mouth and dropping a kiss on her instep. It was light and wispy but it snaked like electricity down her inner thigh, puckering her skin and earthing at her clitoris, causing her to suck in a breath. Then he lowered her foot to his lap, reached for the band of her underwear with two hands and pulled.
Within five seconds those panties were on the floor and within a few more, Reuben was kissing his way up her inner thigh. “God…” He lifted his head. His eyes, which were all kinds of lust-glazed, met hers. “You smelled like lemon drops in Bozeman and now you smell like honeycomb.”
Viv lifted her fingers to his face, stroked them across his mouth. “Chocolate Honeycomb fizz bath bomb.”
Delish had a range of luxury pamper items including soaps and bath bombs. Thankfully Sage did not…
“Christ.” He kissed her fingertips without taking his eyes off her. “I can’t wait to taste it on your pussy.”
And then he went back to his ministrations, his tongue getting in on the action now as he zeroed in on his target. She was about to stop him because what she wanted most—what she’d fantasized about most—was to have him filling her up, pounding himself inside her but Jesus, this felt so damn good the suggestion of him stopping drifted away and then dissolved in a flash of heat as his tongue touched down and swiped right up the middle of her sex.
She cried out as the whole world shifted beneath her and her hand came down automatically on top of his head, plowing into his hair and hanging on for dear life while everything tilted crazily. He grunted and she realized she had her fingers all twisted up in his hair but damn if it didn’t look good, her hand on his head like that as he licked and sucked between her legs.
And he hadn’t lifted away, hadn’t shaken her off, just muttered, “Delicious,” and kept going so she held him there and surrendered to the magic of his mouth.
It didn’t take long. The tip of his tongue was some kind of secret weapon, soft and coaxing one moment as it explored the slickness between her folds then hard and pointy the next, finding the engorged bud of her clitoris and working it with perfect precision as two fingers pushed into the tight wet heart of her and crooking, working the engorged bud inside.
Her heart hammered frantically at the double whammy and her fingers twisted a little harder in his hair. He grunted but he did not stop.
“Reuben!”
Viv arched her back
and panted as her orgasm rose from the depths of her pelvis like an avenging angel, spreading heat and light and pleasure that was shattering and energizing all at once. And she rode it to the end, her heels drumming on his back right between his shoulder blades as the sensation peaked and plateaued for long moments, wringing the very breath from her lungs before spiraling away.
She was left gasping and limp in its aftermath, her knees flopping to the side, her fingers unfurling from Reuben’s hair as he nuzzled her belly while she slowly came back to herself. “I thought I’d embellished how good you were at giving head but…obviously not.”
He chuckled, puffing air across skin damp from his lips, which in turn caused a prickle of gooseflesh. He raised his face, propping his chin against her belly, looking up her body.
“I aim to please.”
Viv pushed her hand to his hair—it looked a little worse for wear thanks to her almost reefing it out by the roots as she’d come. “You’re just good at this whole thing, aren’t you?”
“You make that sound like it’s a bad thing.”
“Nope.” She smiled. “Not at all. No complaints from me.”
Lightly he rubbed his chin back and forth, the delicious prickle of his whiskers causing more goose bumps. “I like sex and I’ve paid attention over the years.”
Viv grinned. “You have.” She’d had great sex before but great usually took familiarity and practice and, as she tended to steer clear of long-term attachments, it wasn’t something she’d experienced often.
But Reuben had hit it out of the park. Every. Single. Time.
“Why don’t you lose your clothes and remind me how good you are at penetration?”
He chuckled again. “I love how you can make the most clinical word sound dirty.”
“Oh yeah? You like that, huh?” Viv’s hand slid from his hair, her thumb tracing over his bottom lip. Her heart did a funny flop as he turned his face and nuzzled her palm. “How about I need coitus in the worst possible way so get your penis in my vagina stat?”