by Reina Torres
She felt Gerri’s hand on her shoulder and looked up at the other woman. “Well, from where I’m standing, you’re glowing from the inside out like a painted lantern. Seriously, the two of you didn’t…”
“We kissed.” The words almost stole her breath. “And Boone… he knows how to kiss.”
“Should I take it that the first date went well enough that you’re planning to see him again?”
Willa’s smile only deepened as she poured the egg mixture onto the flat top. “You would be right. We’re going out tonight.” Setting the bowl aside, she gave Gerri and impromptu hug. “Thank you, Gerri.” She released her soon enough and stepped back. “I started the evening feeling like a basket case and ended it believing that there just might be a happy ending for me after all.”
Taking up her spatula, Willa deftly finished the omelet and slid it onto the plate and then added a generous portion of country fried potatoes. “You, Gerri Wilder, are always welcome at my table.”
Gerri took the plate from Willa’s hands and brought it up to her nose. She drew in a breath and smiled. “Coming from you, my dear,” she smiled, “that is a priceless offer.”
That evening, Boone picked Willa up in his rental and brought her back to his hotel. When they stepped off the elevator, Boone stopped and lifted her hand to his lips, brushing a kiss over the back of her hand. “Are you sure you’re comfortable coming back to my room?”
She grinned at him and lifted her free hand to his cheek, enjoying the soft scratch of his beard against her palm. “I’m not comfortable,” she felt him tense and start to pull away, but she slid her fingers around the back of his neck. He was so tall she had to get up on her tip-toes. “It’s just because we’re going to be alone and while I know you won’t ‘try’ anything that I won’t want to happen. I can’t guarantee that I won’t try something with you.”
“If you’re not ready-”
“That’s the thing, Boone,” she felt her heart pounding in her chest, “I barely slept last night. Once I was home, all I could do was play everything over and over again in my head. My dreams, when I managed to sleep, were about you.” She blew out a breath. “About us.”
“So it wasn’t just me?” His chuckle felt like a touch, making her shiver.
“And tonight,” she smiled at him, “tonight, I don’t want to worry about what I’m leaving behind. I want to concentrate on what could be.”
“I’d like that.”
She stepped from him and tugged on his hand. “Let’s get inside and see what kind of trouble we can get into with room service.”
Boone couldn’t help smiling. At work, he was always worried. Time cards, profit margins, ordering to stay ahead of need and making sure that his employees had all the training they needed to provide his customers with what they needed to do their home projects.
At home, he worried about the boys.
But here, sitting with Willa on the floor of his hotel room, their backs against the bed, the large screen TV tuned to some movie that he didn’t even remember the title of, he was truly enjoying himself.
“So how did you find the boys?” Willa took a fry from Boone’s plate and gave him a sly smile as she bit off the end.
“Well, Bolt was the first one that I met, and he found me.” He nudged the plate of fries toward her. “I went back to the store late one night, I forgot to take out the trash and leave it in the dumpster. I heard some noise outside in the alley.”
Boone felt a hand on his arm and looked down. Willa’s hand was holding onto his arm, not a painful grip, but a reassuring one. When he followed the length of her arm to her face he saw the worry in her eyes. The raw emotion he saw there pleased him and his bear. The grumpy old bear inside of him was quickly becoming a cuddly teddy where Willa was concerned.
“I found him in the dumpster,” he felt her fingers tightening on his forearm and gave her a smile. “He wasn’t looking for food.”
Her shoulders relaxed the littlest bit.
“He was looking for cast off building supplies. He was using what he could find to build shelters for a few of the homeless teens that he knew. It took a few days for him to trust me enough to let me accompany him back to where they were living, but I was impressed by what he had done. He’d managed to take so little and make structures that were neat and tidy. Mostly waterproof.”
“Did you give him a job at the hardware store?”
Just hearing her talk about his hardware store made his chest puff up with pride, and deep inside of him his bear rolled over on his back and presented his belly. Boone scoffed at him, but he understood the feeling. He wouldn’t mind having her hands on his belly too.
“He didn’t want to work selling the pieces. He liked the building part of it.” He smiled at the spark he saw in her eyes. “So, you want to see pictures of the buildings?”
She grabbed up a napkin and swept it over her lips.
Boone’s eyes followed the path of the napkin, wondering what she’d think if he offered to lick her lips clean next time.
“I can’t wait to see them.”
He heard the pang of excitement in her voice and it fed his hunger… for her. “Then come over here, Willa.”
Boone nudged a few of the plates that sat between them and heard his bear growling from his throat as Willa crawled through the impromptu picnic on her knees.
He enjoyed the view too much and patience lost out to need as he reached out and picked her up by her hips, and pulled her onto his lap.
Her gentle peel of laughter sent heat coursing through his veins as he set her down on his thighs.
Willa leaned back against his chest and he felt her wiggle against him, trying to find a comfortable seat.
He wasn’t so sure she understood exactly what she was doing to him. Her search for comfort was only making him more un-comfortable.
Wrapping his arms around her he held his phone in his large hands and pulled up a photo album. “This is Bolt’s cabin. The boys decided to go with his cabin first, since he was the one who designed them.”
He paged through the images, showing her the features of the cabin.
“It’s like those little houses,” she pointed out the features she liked the most. “You’re planning for the boys to have their own places, but they also have the main house with you. They must love it!”
“The idea was to give them some space of their own, but I think of them as my boys in all the important ways.”
“Anyone that hears you talking about them can tell how much you care about the boys. Did you have a big family growing up?”
He paused for a moment and he felt Willa start to tense in his arms. She was only asking a question that anyone would ask, especially trying to get to know someone that they might marry or consider being in a long-term relationship with. Releasing the tension in his jaw, Boone gently gathered her closer in his arms.
“I had a large family,” he began, “but like any family, we had our problems. My father was what most would call the Alpha.”
She nodded slightly. “That’s the person… the shifter leader, right?”
“Some species have different names for their leaders, but Alpha works in this case. He had a strict idea of what it meant to be a leader and a father.
“Weakness was dealt with, eradicated like disease. I watched him destroy my family. He sent my eldest brother into exile and nearly turned my sister into a shell of who she could have become.
“When I left it wasn’t just freedom I wanted, but I wanted to save my soul. I was on my own when I was barely old enough to know how stupid I was.” His laughter felt like glass in his throat.
He felt Willa shift on his lap, but the movement didn’t stoke his passion. She leaned her head on his chest, rubbed her hand over his chest, her fingers feathering over the flat plane of muscle.
Willa Barnes replaced the pain with her warmth, her kindness… her heart.
“And then…?” She drew in a breath and sighed, and it only made he
r gentle curves fit against the hard wall of his chest even more.
“Then?” The sound vibrated through his skin into her. He heard her soft gasp and it stirred him from deep down inside.
“You didn’t stop there,” she sounded like she knew him, “you wanted more.”
“More?” The smile he felt on his lips felt foreign to him, new, and perfect.
“Once you saved yourself… you wanted to save others. You took in the boys.”
“I don’t think of it like that.” He huffed out a breath. “I’m not-”
“Generous? Helpful? Amazing?” She gave him a playful nudge on his shoulder. “I guess I need to add humble to the long list of your positive traits.”
“You think you have me all figured out?” He couldn’t help but smooth his hand up her back, feeling the ends of her hair tickle the back of his hand. It felt like silk threads, tying themselves around his heart.
Willa straightened herself a little, and even though she was quite a bit shorter, he managed to reach her lips when her hand looped around the back of his neck and drew him closer.
“Boone?” she whispered the question against his lips.
“Hmm?”
“Anyone who meets you knows you in a heartbeat.” She pressed a kiss to his lips and a growl escaped his lips, one that she drank in with another kiss. It took another three of four kisses before he could manage to mutter his next question.
“Do you like what you ‘figured out’ about me?”
As close as they were he couldn’t help but see the look in her eyes, feel the way she trembled against him.
“Do you have to ask?” She pulled in a breath and sighed. “You can’t tell?”
He felt her fingers against his neck, dancing over his pulse. A pulse that went wild when her perfectly rounded backside shifted just enough to cradle the rock-hard length of his erection. “I’m having a bit of trouble thinking at the moment.”
“Then maybe,” she took hold of the collar of his shirt and tugged him closer, “you could stop thinking for a little while.”
She met his lips in a kiss that stripped him of the ability to think for the rest of the night.
Chapter Five
The time that Willa had spent with Boone had been head turning… no, head spinning..., okay, so there wasn’t a description that really fit. What it did to her was easier to define. It made her hungry. Now if she’d said that to Charlie, he would have made a joke about her size. He thought it was funny to poke at her weight and that was likely her fault.
Ever since she’d been a little kid, people made jokes about her weight.
And Willa learned to laugh so that people wouldn’t know how much it hurt.
The problem with learning to laugh, was that the more she laughed, the more people thought they could keep it going, take it further.
Boone didn’t joke about her body. He didn’t even try to avoid looking at her like some men seemed to do.
Instead, she knew that Boone appreciated her curves. Better yet, he really liked getting hands on with her curves.
And those hands, knew exactly what to do with her curves.
They hadn’t quite gotten to the point where they’d stripped each other bare in anything but their dreams, but Boone knew how to kiss, and he certainly knew how to mold his hands to her body and make her breathless in his arms.
After he left to go back to Sylvan City, it had taken her less than a day to decide she wanted to go and see him. When she called Gerri to see what options she had, the Matchmaker with the Mostest giggled and broke the news that Willa wouldn’t have to arrange her own transportation because Boone had left a prepaid ticket, first class, whenever she wanted to see him.
A quick call to Boone and Willa was packing her bags to leave, they were a little over the weight restriction, but she had things she just had to bring. She wanted to impress Boone, but she also wanted to impress a bunch of other people in his life… hoping she would be a part of theirs as well.
The plane landed at the closest airport to Sylvan City, just under an hour away and Willa managed to hold it together until she made her way to baggage claim and saw Boone waiting for her with a sign.
WELCOME, WILLA
By the lettering on the sign, the random assortment of colors used, she had a feeling he hadn’t made the sign. The general shape of the text looked a lot like graffiti and that seemed to make sense. Boone had told her about how he’d met the boys and how he’d taken them in as fosters. A few of the boys had been in trouble before for misusing their more artistic skills.
In the days that they’d been apart, they’d spoken on the phone a handful of times, but nothing of real consequence. She’d come up with a list of questions about him and the boys and his life, but they all faded to the back of her mind as she stepped up to him and that amazing sign. Overwhelmed by his height, his size, the sheer delicious scent of him, she wondered if this was really going to work. She leaned in closer and drew in another breath and barely managed to keep her hands to herself.
Pulling her bottom lip between her teeth she struggled for control as she felt Boone leaning over her, his cheek brushing against her temple. “Willa?”
Blowing out a trembling breath she pried her lips open. “Yeah?”
Her eyes were almost closed, but she swore she could almost hear him smile. “What are you thinking about?”
No way was she going to answer that question. She’d had enough of being the one to lower her guard first. Not anymore. Never again. Nope. Not happening.
And then he spoke again, silencing the nervous voices in her head.
“I was thinking of kissing you.”
An indrawn breath was all she could manage.
“But I’m not sure I can keep it appropriate for a public place, so how about we go and get your luggage.”
His words weren’t any help in calming her nerves, but they certainly called to a part of her that had worried about her reception after their time apart. “I was hoping you didn’t change your mind,” she explained. “A week, well it’s enough time for you to realize that I’m not… what I mean is that you’d see that you’re not…” Her shoulders sagged as she struggled to find the right words, “that we’re not-”
“Hungry for each other?” His laugh was a deep-throated chuckle. “I know I want to taste you all over if you’ll let me.”
Oh wow, his words, the very tone of his voice had her weak in the knees and aching in all the right places.
“If I let you?” Touching her hand to his chest she felt the rushing pulse of his heart beneath her fingers. Leaning lightly against him she rose up on her toes and brought her lips close enough to brush against his ear, but she barely held back. “Thinking about you as much as I have been,” she confided with him, “I might be willing to beg for it.”
There was a moment of silence between the two of them and Willa worried that she’d gone and messed up… again. That she’d taken a precious moment between them and showed just how inexperienced she was.
Then she felt something warm against her hand. His hand engulfed hers, pressing her palm against his chest. The speed of his heartbeat left her breathless.
He wrapped his other arm around her and she felt the poster board bump against her backside with a soft thump a moment before his lips pressed a slow and tender kiss against her cheek. “You never have to beg me for anything, Willa. However you want to be touched. However you want to be loved. It will be my pleasure to give it to you. To give you pleasure.”
She was glad he had his arm around her, she wasn’t at all sure she would remain standing if left on her own.
“Boone?”
She almost felt him vibrate against her, under her hand. “Yes, Willa?”
She blew out a breath and asked for exactly what she wanted. “Take me home.”
He growled, deep and low in his throat. She heard the sound, felt the flutter through every inch of her that touched him. “Let’s get your bags, now.”
; In the car, Willa kept to her seat, her hands fiddling with the straps of her bag as they headed toward Sylvan City, trying to keep her hands off Boone.
“The boys didn’t want to come to the airport?” She tried to keep her voice even, but she knew she let her disappointment bleed through her voice. “I was looking forward to meeting them.”
He lifted his hand from the wheel and reached over to wrap it around hers.
She felt his thumb brush against her thigh and she melted a little into the passenger seat. It was a heavenly heat that she felt through his touch.
“They wanted to come along, but I wanted a little time to ourselves.” He slid her a look across the front seat of his truck. “I wasn’t sure I’d be able to keep my hands off of you. Having them around might have been… difficult.” His touched stilled on her skin. “This is so different.”
“Different?”
He was hesitant. She heard it in his voice and it confused her.
“We spoke on the phone,” he explained, “but it’s just not the same. I can touch you now.” He gave her hand another squeeze. “But holding hands with you is only making everything else, more difficult.”
“Okay.” She wondered if he could feel the way she trembled beside him.
“Hearing your voice over the phone, remembering our kisses,” his thumb stroked over the inside of her wrist and then into the center of her palm, “I couldn’t help but imagine you with me, every night.” He slowed for a red light up ahead and came to a stop. Turning slightly, he met her gaze across the interior of the cab. “And I’m not going to pressure you to stay with me tonight, Willa. Nor any night. Just know that I mean it when I say I want you with me… when you’re ready.”
“When I’m ready.” She lifted her free hand and set it on top of his. “You said I could ask for what I want.”
“You just have to ask, Willa.” The light turned green and he waited for the other cars before them to move before he pressed the pedal down. “And I’m yours.”