She swallowed the last thread of fear, closed her eyes as his mouth took hers, and drifted away in the kiss. She didn’t look at him when he broke the kiss and began licking and nibbling his way back down her torso. Nor did she look when he moved the spray back to her clit and slipped his hand under her butt, positioning her so the water hit more directly.
Her heart raced with fear and excitement, and she kept her eyes squeezed tightly shut as his mouth replaced the shower. And when his tongue ran through the center of her sex and circled over her clit, she cried out and nearly fainted from the overwhelming sensations rushing through her system.
The only thing keeping her conscious was her determination to not pass out and miss a thing, because he’d been right—this was the best part.
The way he handled her, respecting her fear while also easing her into the situation, made the act more intimate than sex and not at all dirty. She felt herself opening and blossoming for him, and she arched her back and cried out again as his tongue pushed inside her.
Heavy panting became her natural breathing rhythm, and even though she believed she should be self-conscious and trying to somehow contain herself, she refused to revert to her old patterns. Instead of trying to crawl back into her old emotional shell, she gave herself to him completely and fell into lust’s clutches.
His fingers sank into her butt cheeks, and she thrust her hips to meet his tongue. He hummed his approval, and the vibration skittered along her nerve endings and scrambled her brain. She thrashed and panted and… God, heard herself begging him to make her come. The spray hit her clit, his tongue raked her vaginal walls, her stomach tightened and coiled, and then she erupted.
He dropped the showerhead and wrapped his other hand over her hip, holding her in place as he continued to love her with his mouth and tongue, drawing the orgasm out until she couldn’t take any more.
She gasped and scratched at the intricate scrollwork tattoo that stretched across his back, over his shoulder, and down his arm. “Please stop. No more. No more.”
He tilted his head enough and looked at her, allowing her to see the satisfied smile lighting his features. “Just a little more.”
“No. No, I can’t take it.” She swallowed and half laughed, half cried. “At least… not right now.”
His grin glowed in the dimly lit shower, and he eased back on his haunches as he ran his hand up the center of her stomach, to gently cup her breast. After a soft, tender kiss that had her considering the possibility of a repeat performance, he drew back and said, “Let me get a towel and get you out of here.”
Chapter Twelve
Callie was as relaxed and limp as a half-cooked noodle, so Wade adjusted the spray to fall on and around her to keep her warm, then went in search of a towel. He didn’t need to go far since she’d had the forethought to hang two on the heated towel bar next to the shower door. He used one to give himself a few quick swipes to knock off most of the water, then wrapped it around his waist, killed the water, and carried the second in to Callie.
Normally at this point in the game, he’d be trying to decide if he should get her settled into bed and make a quick exit or consider this halftime with an amazing second half ahead of them. But this wasn’t a game. Callie wasn’t one of his usual playmates who understood the rules of what to and not to expect. And when she rolled her head to the side and smiled dreamily, his heart brought him to a screeching halt. Apparently, the chilled chunk in his chest liked her and wanted to make sure he handled her with care so she didn’t get hurt.
But dammit… what about him getting hurt?
After drying her off to the best of his ability, he scooped her up and carried her to the bedroom. “Thanks for trusting me to take care of you.”
Her dimple winked at him as she gave him a quick smile, then wrapped her arms around his neck and rested her head on his shoulder. He would be happy standing here, just like this, with her in his arms for the rest of the night. But when she yawned for the second time, he scratched that plan in favor of something more comfortable for her.
He flipped back the pale-green cover and paisley-patterned top sheet, then gently laid her down. “Crawl under the covers so you stay warm and hand me your towel.”
Her brow wrinkled with confusion. “Aren’t you joining me?”
God help me.
She didn’t play games or try to be coy, but her guilelessness was the most potent aphrodisiac he’d ever encountered. She was sweet seduction wrapped in a firecracker package, and she didn’t even realize her power.
He used his thumb and middle finger to rub his eyes while the mental haranguing erupted. He’d known if he set foot inside her apartment and closed the door behind him, things would get out of hand. They hadn’t gotten so carried away Callie would have regrets come morning—at least he didn’t think she would since they hadn’t gone any further than high school kids did in the back of a truck on Friday and Saturday night. But if he crawled into bed with her, he wouldn’t get out again until he’d taken her half a dozen times in a dozen different ways—some of which she probably didn’t even know were possible. If he had his way, they’d both be calling off work tomorrow, too sore and exhausted to report.
But that was a terrible idea for several reasons. He believed, in order for Callie to enjoy sex to the fullest, she needed to be emotionally engaged, and they hadn’t reached that point yet. Also, in all fairness, she had a right to know the kind of man she was getting involved with.
He’d managed to gloss over his recent past fairly well, and he’d never had unprotected sex, but in the past year, he’d given Gene Simmons a run for his money in body count. Even though in most instances he hadn’t bothered to learn details about the women—like names or phone numbers—he thought most were locals. And Myrtle Beach wasn’t that big. He didn’t want to take a chance on any skeletons falling out of his closets, especially when they might land on an unsuspecting Callie.
He couldn’t think of anyone who would intentionally try to hurt him or someone involved with him, but the women of his past would probably believe Callie meant as much to him as them—nothing. Out of ignorance, things might be said to turn Callie into an innocent victim of his whorish past.
When he dropped his hand from his eyes to tell her he couldn’t stay, he found her sitting on her bed, knees drawn to her chest, the blanket tucked securely under her chin, the towel on top of the covers at the foot of the bed.
Shit on a stick. He couldn’t walk away and leave her with this confusion and uncertainty wrapped around her like a sticky, inescapable spider web. He wouldn’t allow his problems to become her insecurities, so he said, “I’ll be right back,” then snatched her towel from the foot of the bed and hustled to the relative safety of her bathroom.
Curling up with her while they were both naked was an absolute no-go. He scooped his jeans off the floor, crammed his feet into the legs, and carefully drew up the zipper, making sure not to damage anything in the process.
Callie hadn’t moved a muscle and didn’t even appear to be breathing when he returned to the bedroom. “Which side do you normally sleep on?”
The question confused her even more, but after a moment, she patted the bed next to her hip and said, “This side.” She giggled and tucked her hair behind her ear. “At least I start out on this side. I normally end up all over the place.”
He walked around the end of the bed and mentally prepared himself for the physical onslaught of crawling between the warm covers with a soft Callie. “Duly noted. Thanks for the warning.”
“Wh—what are you doing? I thought you were leaving me.”
He scooted to the center of the bed and shifted her around so she was tucked up next to his side. “I want to snuggle, but”—he brushed a piece of hair away from the corner of her mouth and outlined her bottom lip with his finger—“I can’t lie in bed with you and not take things too far.”
She scraped her teeth over her bottom lip, like he’d tickled her, then asked, “What wo
uld be too far?”
“You pinned to the mattress, me on top of you, buried balls deep.” Her mouth parted and she drew in a long, shuddering breath as a deep flush reddened her face, proving he’d made the right decision to not push things any further. “You’re a good girl, Callie. You don’t know what you’re getting into with me.”
“Tell me, then, so I can make my own decision about whether or not to continue, rather than you deciding for me.”
The way she shrank back and chewed her lip, like she feared an explosion, might stem from her previous fear of him, but he didn’t think so. She wasn’t used to speaking her mind in such a forthright way, and pride at her willingness to stand up to him punched at his chest.
It also gave him one hell of a hard-on.
When he continued to admire her but didn’t answer, she grabbed his upper arm just below the edge of his tattoo and shook him. “I’ve shared my ugly past with you, but other than how you ended up in Myrtle Beach, you’ve told me nothing.”
He sighed. “Your ugly past isn’t your doing. Your dad did some lousy things and you got caught in the fallout, but you didn’t make the bad choices.”
Through the filtered light from the bathroom, he could tell the sleepy, starry-eyed expression she wore in the shower had been replaced with sharp, focused determination. She wasn’t letting the subject drop until she’d gathered more intel.
He sighed and settled in, trying to get more comfortable. “Thanks to Kevin’s cockamamie plan, you know I went through an ugly breakup. Did he give you the gruesome details?”
Her eyes softened and her lips turned down. “No. He just told me to work you so you didn’t have time to think. But you had the look of someone who’d recently experienced a devastating loss.”
He’d rather suffer through another apple pie moonshine hangover than discuss his past, but he’d already decided if he was going to move forward with her—despite the risks involved and all the people it might piss off—she had a right to know.
He rolled onto his back and slung his arm over his eyes, hiding his lingering hurt and humiliation. “A week before our wedding, I started noticing things about my fiancé that didn’t add up. She quit answering my calls and texts. It would take her hours to call me back, even when I knew she wasn’t supposed to be in any appointments or meetings. Sometimes she’d tell me she was going one place, but when I talked to her, she’d say she was somewhere else.”
His chest tightened and sweat broke out on the back of his neck. Christ, he didn’t want Callie to know what a fool he’d been, but she was right. She’d shared her story with him, and she had the right to hear his.
“I’d tried and tried to reach her one night, without any luck, and spent the whole night up worrying about her. When I finally got in touch with her the next morning, she told me she was fine and then broke off the engagement. I was completely blindsided and thought she’d just gotten cold feet and needed some reassurances everything would be okay. I drove to Riverside that night, and that’s when I found out she’d been cheating on me for months.”
Callie wrapped her arm over his waist and squeezed while shifting closer to him, like she instinctively knew how cold he’d gotten and she was trying to warm him. Still unwilling to look at her but grateful for her touch, he flexed the arm tucked under her and drew her as close as they could get without him crawling inside her.
“In addition to our disastrous first encounter, thanks to Kevin’s infinite wisdom”—gee, no bitterness there—“I also avoided you because you reminded me of her. Every time I saw you, I was reminded of what an idiot I’d been.”
Callie stiffened and sucked in a sharp breath. Shit. Now she probably thought he was using her as a surrogate for his long-lost ex. Cutting off the thought before it rolled downhill and gathered speed, he quickly added, “You used to remind me of her, but not anymore.”
“In what ways am I like her?”
Lowering his arm, he dipped his head and cut his eyes to the side so he could look at her without directly facing her. Smiling for added reassurance, he said, “Now that I’ve gotten to know you, I hardly notice the resemblance anymore.”
She licked her lips and swallowed roughly while holding his gaze steadfast. “In what way did I resemble her?”
He barked out a laugh. “You’re like a damned pit bull with a bone, aren’t you?”
She giggled but still didn’t let go of her tasty morsel. “Is that one of the ways I resemble her?”
“Jesus.” He sighed with exasperation. “Aside from the strong physical resemblance, you both come from money. It’s like it’s part of your DNA or something. It comes across in your mannerisms and the way you walk and carry yourself. It’s something that’s obvious to those of us who don’t come from money. But she’s a spoiled brat who had everything handed to her. She never had to work for anything, was never told no, and is a selfish, cold-hearted snake.”
Callie gnawed on the corner of her lip, then pressed them together and rubbed them back and forth across each other. “If she’s so awful, why would you marry her?”
A sharp, ugly laugh burst from his tight lungs. “Because I’m an idiot. She played me, and I took the bait. Big time. I met her one weekend while in Riverside with Kevin and Lizbeth—Kevin’s ex, Miranda’s sister. I fell hard and fast. Six hours after meeting her, I was in love, and a year later I was engaged. I was so wrapped up in my feelings, I didn’t realize I was nothing more than a diversionary plaything… Her idea of slumming it for a while.”
Callie rubbed her hand back and forth across his chest in a slow, soothing motion, and he couldn’t resist closing his eyes and losing himself to the soft, rhythmic sweep of her delicate fingers over his skin.
“She had to care about you too, or she wouldn’t have agreed to marry you.” Callie’s voice was soft and tender and a little desperate, like she wanted to find a reasonable explanation to spare him the hurt and humiliation.
He tightened his grip on her as another chunk fell off his glacial heart. “I used to tell myself that too, but I don’t think that’s the case. She got caught up in the idea of getting married, mostly being the center of attention as the blushing bride and the fun of planning a big fairytale wedding. If I hadn’t figured out what was going on, I’m not sure what she would’ve done. Gone through with the wedding and then refused to move to Myrtle Beach? Or moved here, then traveled back and forth to Riverside to see the other guy?”
He shrugged. The answers didn’t matter, but it had taken him months to stop the unnecessary madness of the continual “what-ifs” running through his mind. “It pisses me off that I didn’t see the cold, calculating, manipulative side of her sooner. Like from the beginning.”
Callie stiffened and her hand stopped moving. Then she sighed and resumed the slow, steady sweeps. “My dad is the same way, but I didn’t see it, either. It only took you a year.” She laughed bitterly. “I was almost twenty-four before I saw the truth about my dad.”
He wrapped his free arm over her and squeezed, pulling her into the tight embrace of his arms, trying to ward off her chill the way she had his. “I guess that’s why they say ‘love is blind.’”
Lost to their thoughts, they fell into a surprisingly comfortable silence. After a moment, she said, “Have you dated much since then?”
His quiet comfort turned choppy with tension and his stomach churned. She was so damned inquisitive he’d expected her line of questioning to end up here, but he still stiffened in response. “I haven’t dated anyone since Miranda.”
Her fingers stilled, and after a moment, when he didn’t volunteer more information, she quietly said, “I pretty much already know, so you might as well go ahead and tell me.”
His breath seized in his chest and he blinked hard a couple of times, trying to clear the thick, black cloud descending over their serenity. “What do you mean?”
“I’ve overheard conversations between Marianne and Sam. They don’t spend all day talking about you, but I’ve pic
ked up on things here and there. They care about you and are worried.”
What the fuck? Should he be pissed that his sex life was a hot topic of conversation, or feel all warm and fuzzy because Sam and Marianne cared enough to worry?
And if Callie already knew…
Is that why she’s with me?
She’d admitted to wanting to expand her boundaries and experience new things… Fuck, was she Miranda all over again?
Anger, hurt, and fresh humiliation burst to the surface with a thundering punch. He pushed her arm off him and scooted away like he was trying to escape a dangerous animal. “Is that why you’re with me, Callie? You looking to do a little slumming with a bad boy who can show you a good time on the wrong side of the tracks before you settle down with a nice, respectable man?”
*
“What?” Callie gasped with shock at Wade’s accusation, and she shot to a sitting position, not even caring as the sheet tumbled to her waist, leaving her exposed. “God, no. How can you think that?”
He lifted an eyebrow and continued to glare. “Are you not looking for someone to”—he dropped his gaze to her bare breasts—“expand your boundaries? Sounds like you’d heard enough from Sam and Marianne to know I could get the job done.”
Anger gathered in the pit of her stomach and crawled up her throat. “That isn’t fair. If anything, I found your…” the word sordid was on the tip of her tongue, but she refused to sink to his level and hurl insults just to be hurtful, “…recent affairs intimidating. So much so I feared you’d reject me because I’m not up to your usual standards.” In an attempt to cover her exposure—and not just physically—she gathered the sheet in her fist and tucked it under her chin.
Confusion and doubt swirled with the anger clouding his hard brown eyes. His forehead creased and she could tell he wanted to believe her, but his past hurts wouldn’t let him accept her explanation.
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