by Cindy Kirk
With a sexy sway to her hips, Cassidy sashayed up to the crumbling front stoop and rang the bell. After several minutes a gray-haired woman opened the door, leaning heavily on a walker.
Cassidy smiled and chatted for a minute, waved away the woman’s effusive thanks before returning to Tim.
“Time to get the hell out of Dodge.” Though the night air was warm, she shivered. “This neighborhood holds too many bad memories. And, no, I don’t want to talk about any of them.”
“Okay,” he said agreeably. “We’ll go back to our game discussion.”
“That works for me.” She angled her head. “What other games did you play?”
“Good try. It’s your turn.”
Her smile vanished. “Pass.”
“Your turn,” he repeated.
“Hide-and-seek,” she said after a lengthy silence.
The game had been a favorite of his younger sisters. “That can be fun.”
“Maybe in your house,” she muttered.
“What did you say?”
“Yes, loads of fun.” She picked up the pace, taking long strides down the walk as if trying to distance herself from something. The area? Or memories?
He caught up with her and took her hand, surprised at how cold it felt. “Tell me about your games of hide-and-seek.”
“In my house it wasn’t a game—it was life-and-death.” She gave a halfhearted laugh. “That’s how it felt, anyway.”
The darkness that surrounded them created an aura of intimacy. “Tell me.”
Tim listened as she spoke haltingly of her mother’s boyfriends and how they’d want her to sit on their laps. How they’d stroke her blond hair and tell her how pretty she was...
His heart slammed against his ribs. “Did they ever—”
Cassidy shook her head. “I got really good at hiding.”
“Thank God.” He exhaled a breath. “Where was your mother while this was going on?”
“High. Drunk. Both.”
The words were said so matter-of-factly, as if such occurrences were nothing unusual. Sympathy for the young girl who’d had to endure so much rose inside him as well as a healthy dose of anger directed at her worthless mother.
“That’s why I’m excited to lead this task force.” Cassidy’s expression changed from pensive to determined. “I understand how challenges at home affect school success. I’m excited to come up with concrete recommendations on what the community and the school district can do to help.”
“Tripp is lucky to have you,” he said. “You’re an amazing woman, Cassidy Kaye.”
She gazed at him through lowered lashes. “Why did it take you this long to realize something so obvious?”
Chapter Eight
On the walk back to her apartment, Tim took Cassidy’s hand as they continued to discuss everything from mutual friends to movies that would be coming out in the next few weeks. Why couldn’t it be like this with other men?
With Tim, everything was easy. She could talk to him about anything and know he would never betray her confidence. She could be herself and feel accepted. And then there was the sizzle.
None of the guys she’d dated had elicited such lust. Simply holding his hand sent shivers of desire sliding up and down her spine.
But Tim had made it perfectly clear—both in actions and words—that while he was sexually attracted to her, he wasn’t looking for anything long-term.
The fact that she was considering sleeping with him despite these stipulations made her wonder if she was turning into her mother, a woman men used but never loved. The instant the thought struck, she tossed it. This wasn’t the same at all. Unlike her mother, she was self-aware.
No. She shook her head. It wasn’t the same at all.
“No?” Tim angled his head. “You really wouldn’t have tried it?”
With sex on the brain, Cassidy had listened with only half an ear to Tim’s experience eating octopus at a medical convention last year.
She flushed, grateful only one word of her scattered thoughts had slipped past her lips. Cassidy wrinkled her nose. “Okay, yes. It sounds gross but honestly, I’d have tried it, too. Just to see if a creature with eight arms really does taste like Colonel Sanders.”
The comment made Tim laugh.
Casually, Cassidy wrapped her fingers around his arm as they climbed the stairs to her unit. Once she unlocked the door, her heart began to pound.
From the question in his eyes, she saw he’d also done some thinking on their stroll to her apartment. He wouldn’t ask to come in, but he wouldn’t refuse an invitation.
Getting naked with him would be playing with fire. But really, what was wrong with a little heat every now and then?
With her pulse now a swift, tripping beat, Cassidy crooked her finger and beckoned in a high, tinny voice, “Step into my parlor, said the spider to the fly.”
He laughed aloud. “Stop, already, with the fly references.”
Tim was still chuckling as he followed her into the small living space, pulling the door shut behind him. The spark in his hazel eyes gave her a pleasurable jolt and reaffirmed that she wasn’t the only one eager to get singed.
“It’s been a long time.” The huskiness in his voice made her heart lurch.
“For me, too,” Cassidy admitted.
He cocked his head questioningly.
“Darn job,” she said and they both laughed.
Then he slipped his fingers into her hair and the laughter died in her throat.
The kiss he placed on her mouth was warm and sweet. “I like you, Cassidy.”
She twined her hands around his neck. They now stood so close she could feel the hard length of him against her belly. “I like you, too.”
“Is that enough?” His voice was soft, reaching inside to a raw, tender place.
Cassidy knew what Tim was asking, what he wanted her to confirm. There would be no words of love. No promises of forever. What they would share tonight would simply be sex.
She wondered why she still hesitated. What could possibly be wrong with spending several pleasurable hours with a sexy man she liked and desired who liked and desired her?
“Of course it’s enough.” Cassidy took his hand and gave it a tug. “Let’s get naked.”
When they reached the doorway to her bedroom, he gave her a long, hard kiss, then stepped back, smug satisfaction in his eyes. “I’ve wanted to do that all evening.”
“And I wanted to do this.” She planted an openmouthed kiss at the base of his throat, tasting the salt of his skin. “Yep. You really do taste as good as you smell.”
Tim gave a self-conscious-sounding laugh even as his hands settled on her backside and he began trailing kisses up her neck.
“I’m serious.” She tried to remember how to breathe as he nibbled on her ear. “Did I mention I find you incredibly sexy?”
“You’re the sexy one,” he murmured. “Beautiful face. Gorgeous legs. And the hair—”
“—That can be any color,” she managed to sputter as desire flamed, “on any given day.”
“All part of the appeal,” Tim asserted. “You’re unique, one of a kind. Like no one else.”
She smiled, touched by the sentiment.
“And then there are your other, ah, rather impressive attributes.” He cleared his throat as his gaze dropped to her chest.
Under his heated stare, her breasts began to tingle, already anticipating the feel of his warm lips.
“They’re even more impressive with nothing covering them,” Cassidy confided in a throaty whisper.
Though still filled with heat, his hazel eyes twinkled. “I’ve always been the kind of guy who likes to check out such things firsthand.”
“I’m the same way.” Cass
idy’s eyes, which seemed to suddenly develop a mind of their own, zeroed in on the area directly below his waist. “What say we both take a little look-see?”
The sound of ragged breaths and laughter filled the air as they raced to see who could undress the fastest.
Out of the corner of her eye, Cassidy saw Tim’s shirt hit the floor. She paused in the midst of her own undressing to admire his bare chest. The man had an athlete’s build.
She was seized with an overpowering urge to run her hands over his body, to feel the coiled strength of skin and muscle sliding under her fingers. She wanted him to touch her in the same way, wanted to feel the weight of his body on hers. Wanted to feel him inside her.
When he caught her looking, he responded with a long stare that fried every brain cell she possessed. She worked on her stuck zipper with renewed determination. Cassidy gave a hard tug. Then another. It wouldn’t budge. She let out a hiss of frustration.
“Allow me.” Tim spun her around and kissed the part of her bare back already exposed. His warm, moist breath against her skin had her inhaling sharply.
“You’re the one who tastes as good as you smell,” he said in a husky whisper. He struggled with the zipper for several seconds before it finally slid down.
Cool air flooded her back as the dress parted. In a deft move Tim unclasped her bra then eased the scrap of lace and the dress off her shoulders. The garments dropped to pool at her feet.
Now down to cowboy boots and purple lace panties, Cassidy impetuously struck a centerfold pose, offering Tim an enticing view of her voluptuous body.
“Wow.” His eyes widened as his gaze traveled all the way down before moving back up to linger on her magnificent breasts. “Double wow.”
Cassidy hefted the objects of his admiration into her hands and jiggled them slightly. “Like what you see?”
Playing with fire, she decided, could be quite fun.
“I like what I see very much.” His voice was a husky caress.
Her stomach performed another series of flutters. Cassidy had spent most of her young adult life alternately embracing or discounting her sensuality. When she’d been very young, her ample breasts had been a curse. But seeing the look of admiration in Tim’s eyes made her glad for her size Ds.
“You don’t have to only look,” she told him when he simply continued to stare. “You can touch.”
He gave a strangled laugh. “Trust me. I intend to do a lot more than touch.”
Without another word, he stepped close and gently tugged her to him. Leaning his forehead against hers, he spoke in a hoarse whisper. “I will make this good for you.”
“Promises. Promises.” Cassidy kept her tone teasing in a futile attempt to stanch the emotion swelling in her chest.
“So you’re saying it’s put-up-or-shut-up time?”
The laughter in his voice made her smile. She twined her arms around his neck. “Something like that.”
His hand flattened against her lower back, drawing her up against the length of his body. Cassidy pressed herself fully against him. Then his lips were on hers and he was kissing her, long, passionate kisses that rocked her world and left her shaky and off balance. Seconds later the rest of their clothes found a place on the floor.
He continued to kiss her while maneuvering her backward. When her knees came into contact with the mattress, he gave her a slight push.
Cassidy tumbled back, taking him with her. She quickly found herself flat on her back with his hands bracketing her body. A position that suited her just fine.
With eyes the color of Kentucky whiskey, Tim gazed at her. “Now I have you just where I want you.”
A smoldering heat flared through Cassidy, a sensation she didn’t bother to fight. She gazed up at him through her heavily mascara-coated lashes. “What a coincidence. I was thinking the same thing.”
Tim chuckled. Lowering his head, he nuzzled her neck before his mouth began a downward descent. His tongue traced her collarbone even as his smattering of chest hair teased her nipples with every movement.
With deliberate slowness, he brushed his lips across the tip of her breast, the barest hint of friction sending shivers and tingles through her body. Heat flowed through Cassidy’s veins like molten lava. His tongue began circling the tip then backing off.
“Please,” she moaned.
With a wicked laugh, he finally drew her right nipple into his mouth and suckled while rolling the left tip between his thumb and forefinger.
Fiery arrows of heat shot straight to her core. Cassidy closed her eyes and arched back, moaning softly.
“Look at me,” Tim urged in a voice so deep and gravelly it didn’t sound like him at all.
She did as he asked, her lashes fluttering open just in time to see him heft her breasts into his hands. They were so big they spilled from his large palms.
“Your skin is like alabaster, so smooth and unmarred. This—” his tongue flicked over the tip as she watched “—reminds me of a sweet peach. I can’t help wanting to taste.”
Seeing his head lower and his mouth fasten over one tip was incredibly erotic...and a dream come true. He took his time, feasting on one before moving to the other.
Her legs were spread wide beneath him and she felt his hardness against her belly. She bucked upward. “I want you inside me.”
“Soon,” he promised then his mouth began moving downward again.
He planted openmouthed kisses across her belly, circled her navel with his tongue and made her shiver with desire.
It wasn’t until his head dipped again that she realized where he was headed. In her life Cassidy had only been with two men. While they’d been eager to have her satisfy them, neither had given much thought to pleasuring her.
She squirmed. “You don’t need to—”
But when his hot breath fanned her most intimate of areas, Cassidy forgot what she’d been about to say.
Tim suckled gently on the warm, moist folds of skin, then his tongue took over. The sensations he drew from her were like nothing she’d experienced before and her body responded with breathtaking speed.
She tried to hold on, to make the pleasure last, but it had been too long and the storm raging inside her was too powerful. Her entire body constricted and released. She cried out as the orgasm ripped through her.
A moment later she lay panting. Aftershocks rippled through her, making her tremble. “I didn’t know,” she babbled. “I never thought—”
“We’re not done yet.” Tim caught her mouth and kissed her with a slow thoroughness that soon turned urgent and fevered.
The heat in her lower belly once again became a pulsing need. His fingers stroked and teased, and when he placed one finger inside her, then two, she moaned and pushed upward against his palm.
Sweat beaded Tim’s brow and his hair was a rumpled mass. Through the haze of mounting desire, Cassidy heard the tear of foil. Then the hard length was at her entrance, teasing her, moving an inch or two in and then out, as if making sure that she was ready for him.
Ready? Her blood was a river of fire in her veins. Her pulse throbbed hard and thick. If he didn’t give her more soon, she was going to perish from desire.
Her breath came out in a rush as she found the word she’d been searching for through the fog. She strained upward. “More.”
Tim smiled and pushed deeper, filling her completely. In a rhythm as old as time, he began to move in and out. In and out.
“Wrap your legs around me,” he ordered, his voice low and guttural.
The second she did, he began to thrust with an almost primal need. Heat radiated from him, urgent and hungry.
Her body vibrated as Tim raced with her, beat for crazed beat. Just when she thought the bliss couldn’t be any more intense, he shifted slightly and hit her sweet spot.
>
Cassidy arched back and came, crying out his name.
Not until he seemed certain that he’d wrung every last ounce of pleasure from her did he take his own release. He plunged deep in one final thrust, a savage sound of triumph bursting from his lips.
Then he collapsed on her, a well-muscled mass of male. They lay like that for a long moment, bodies slick with sweat, just listening to each other’s ragged breathing.
Why had she not known, she thought hazily, that this much satisfaction existed in the world?
Tim drew air slowly into his lungs. “That was...”
“Adequate?” Cassidy offered, determined to keep it light.
Tim lifted his head and smiled, a crooked, boyish grin that melted her heart. “Incredible.”
Still going for studied nonchalance, Cassidy gave him a swift kiss. “Yep. Incredible.”
After a second, he rolled off her. But instead of hopping out of bed as she expected, he pulled her close. It was almost as if he, too, was reluctant to give up the intimacy.
“Do you want to get up?” he asked when she shifted position slightly to accommodate him next to her.
She hesitated, hedged. “I’m liking where I am right now. What about you?”
He gathered her even closer and kissed her temple. “With the girls at a sleepover, I don’t have to rush home. And I don’t have any patients due to deliver.”
“A whole night off.”
“It happens so rarely I’m not sure how to act,” he said with a half laugh.
She thought of the pressures he faced every day, the struggle to balance his medical practice with family obligations. “Being a single parent can’t be easy.”
“Easier than being married,” Tim murmured, twining a strand of her hair loosely around his fingers.
He stopped, as if realizing what he’d just admitted.
Cassidy was certain he’d misspoke. Everyone in Jackson Hole knew Tim and Caro had been blissfully happy.
He expelled a breath and spoke into the silence. “I wasn’t a good husband.”
“What makes you think that?” She kept her tone conversational.