So Wrong It Must Be Right

by Nicole Helm

  He took one hand off the door, the strength of his other hand the only thing keeping him upright in the face of Dinah’s practically offering to blow him on his front porch.

  He was a man. He wasn’t going to refuse the insinuated offer. He pushed some of the stray strands of hair off her forehead and then raked his fingers through the top of her ponytail. Then he gave her a gentle nudge on the top of her head.

  Her smile spread, wide and gorgeous, and he wasn’t sure how long he would last with that sweet mouth on his cock, but he needed it like oxygen.

  Slowly, acting the tease she’d always claimed to be in her emails, she lowered herself farther and farther down until she was on her knees, on his porch, for him.

  They were angled so the porch light was behind him, keeping her in shadow. Not that he could muster up the brainpower to care if someone might walk by and see what was happening.

  She tugged his jeans down to midthigh and then pulled the waistband of his boxers away from his abdomen so that she could pull the thick length of him out. She curled her hand around him. Hot. Soft. Perfect. She looked up at him through dark lashes, the curve of a dangerous smile still lighting up her face. She stuck out her tongue and rubbed the tip across her top lip before starting at the very base of him. Lightly, all too lightly, she licked up to the head.

  His fingers tightened in her hair, and she groaned in approval, so he didn’t loosen his hold. He held her there, urging her face closer.

  “Open that hot little mouth for me.”

  She groaned again, all pleasure, all approval. It was insane this excitement between them. They could say things like that and not feel one jolt of embarrassment.

  Or maybe it was just that she did exactly as he said and opened her mouth. For him. Sucking him deep into all that wet, delicious heat. So deep he had to close his eyes just to keep upright, just to think, just to breathe.

  But he forced himself to open them after that, to watch her take him in, slow and deep, and then out again. Her gaze held his the entire time, as though she got something out of what he could only assume was an expression of pure, unadulterated pleasure on his face.

  Her tongue teased as she drove him further and further away from sanity. Which was exactly where he wanted to be. As far away from sanity and reality as he could get.

  He could feel the orgasm coiling around him, and he could try to fight it off, he could try to get her there first, but that wasn’t what they’d emailed that time.

  She’d wanted him to be so excited he couldn’t hold back. She’d written some truly filthy stuff about getting him off. Remembering that had him moving his hips with her.

  “I’m going to come, D.” A warning. A chance for her to back off or away. To go inside instead of bringing him to orgasm in the chilly night air.

  Her gaze met his and she didn’t stop. If anything she moved faster, harder. He couldn’t hold it off—the pleasure that overcame him, through him. The bursting, bright release and her taking it all, easily, maybe even enthusiastically.

  His ears were ringing by the time he slowly eased out of her mouth, and he wasn’t sure he would consider himself steady on his feet.

  There was a new need inside of him now. A need to give. To drive her just as crazy as she drove him. He jerked her to her feet and grabbed his keys out of his pocket.

  “The second we’re inside, your clothes better be off because I’m going to make you come all over my mouth.”

  She grinned at him, doing the tongue thing again where the tip of her tongue traced her upper lip. He jammed the key in the lock and shoved the door open, nudging her inside.

  As she stepped forward, she was already taking off her shirt. She was wearing a very serviceable white bra, nothing like all of the lacy, frilly lingerie she’d described to him over the past few months. But even simple underwear did nothing to lessen the punch that was D.

  She pulled off her boots, then shimmied out of her jeans, taking her underwear with it. Without hesitation, she unclasped her bra and dropped it so she was standing naked in front of him.

  Freckles and acres of pale skin, the rosy tips of her nipples gathered in a tight bud he wanted to bite. But first . . . first, he was going to make her scream.

  He advanced on her and she just stood there and smiled at him as he grabbed her. He devoured her mouth as though he were a drowning man. Because that’s what it felt like. Only this kind of drowning was perfect. Everything he needed.

  He managed to wrench his mouth away from hers and gestured toward the rug. “Get on the floor.” He didn’t soften the rough note in his voice, and she obeyed.

  He pulled off his shirt as she lay down. He kneeled at her feet, curling his fingers around her ankles and slowly spreading them apart before sliding his hands up her calves and thighs, his body following until his mouth was only inches from where he planned to devour her now.

  He could smell her arousal, sweet and earthy, and it was everything to have her here at his mercy, where he could taste her and drive her into screaming, writhing orgasm.

  And that’s just what he set out to do.

  Chapter 6

  Dinah had never had sex that wasn’t in a bed. It was an odd thought to have, lying on Carter’s floor, his hands sliding up her legs, his mouth devilishly close to where she wanted him most.

  Mouth, fingers, cock. She wanted all of him, all over her. She wanted all of him until she was nothing but a writhing mass of ecstasy. The thing was, she believed he could do that.

  On the floor. On the porch. She believed in his talents, and as his tongue licked up the center of her she couldn’t have spelled her last name if her life depended on it. More, she didn’t want to remember much of anything that had to do with Gallagher or Trask.

  He used his finger and tongue interchangeably in some kind of pattern she couldn’t find a rhythm to. It was that inability to find a rhythm that made it somehow more exciting and mind scrambling. She didn’t care that she was naked on his living room floor; all she cared about were the sensations shooting through her. She could feel the rough scrape of his whiskers against her inner thighs as he licked and sucked her toward some kind of oblivion. She scraped her fingernails through his hair and across his scalp and was rewarded by an exhale of breath against her.

  She pressed herself against his mouth in a way that should be embarrassing, but she couldn’t manage it when she was so close to tumbling over that peak. She’d already been close just from having her mouth on him, from feeling his pleasure when she took him deep inside of her mouth. She’d felt powerful and sexy and like she had given him something and taken something for herself at the same time.

  It was remembering kneeling on his rough porch with his cock in her mouth, and the final flick of his all too devastating tongue, that sent her over a keening, wild edge. One that she wildly and enthusiastically groaned her way through.

  He hooked his arms around her thighs, holding her almost impossibly still as he drove her over the last peak, teasing out those last waves of pleasure.

  She was breathing heavily and staring at the ceiling and not quite sure how to ever come down from the immeasurable high her body was currently feeling. He leaned over her, holding himself above her with those suitably impressive arms.

  She blinked up at him, completely and utterly relaxed and satisfied. She trailed her palm across his beard. There was something about the rough scrape against her skin that was oddly . . . comforting?

  No, that couldn’t be the right word. She was just sex muddled.

  “Come on now.” With an ease that shouldn’t have delighted her, but did anyway, he hefted her up off the floor and over his shoulder. But he didn’t take her into the bedroom as she’d expected; instead he stepped into his little kitchen.

  He plopped her on the counter as though she weighed less than nothing. “Did you eat any dinner?” he demanded in that gruff voice that sent a little shiver down her spine.

  “Dinner? Well, no.”

  He shoo
k his head and stalked over to the refrigerator. “You’re going to eat.”

  “Is that a metaphor?”

  He shook his head, though he smiled as he looked over his shoulder at her. “No. You’re going to eat some food. Then . . .” That smile widened into a full-blown grin, and her stomach flipped, a delicious swoop of...

  It was like sex, and not like it at all. Something warm and comforting in that pleasure. Something bigger.

  So not what she needed, or anything she should enjoy or nurture. She needed to get out of there. She needed to forget that this weird alternate reality actually existed. She needed to get off his counter, put on her clothes, and leave.

  But he was pulling food out of his refrigerator, shirtless and barefoot and gorgeous. How did someone walk away from that?

  When he was done puttering, he handed her a bowl and a fork.

  She wrinkled her nose at all that green. “Is that kale?” She squinted her eyes at him. “Are you trying to kill me?”

  “Very funny. Eat it.”

  “It’s just that I’m deathly allergic to green veg—ooh, is that bacon?”

  “Eat, princess.”

  She grinned, but complied. She might prefer a hamburger over a random conglomeration of greens and some kind of bacon dressing, but it wasn’t half bad, and more, she knew he’d grown almost everything in her bowl, and there was something kind of special about that.

  About him.

  She blinked at the salad, focusing on it instead of him, because she couldn’t have thoughts like that.

  He’d gotten himself an almost identical bowl of whatever this magical mix was that made greens not taste quite so green.

  The silence that settled over them wasn’t completely unwelcome, but the fact that she was on his counter, eating, naked, felt a little weird. Not necessarily because she wasn’t clothed, which was a surprise, but more because silence gave her time to think. About how he had come to her. About how he’d needed something from her.

  Thinking about that made her sad for him all over again. How he’d lost his grandmother and didn’t know how to come to grips with his grief.

  But unfortunately she didn’t feel quite right about saying Sorry about your dead grandma when she was sitting here naked on the counter. Yeah, that wasn’t going to work.

  “I don’t suppose you have any cake? Pie? I’d even settle for a muffin with chocolate in it.”

  “If it doesn’t grow from my garden, I don’t have it.”

  “How is that even possible? You need like . . . salt and flour and coffee! And—”

  “I don’t drink coffee.”

  “You don’t . . . You don’t drink coffee.”

  “No. Never have.”

  “I’m trying to understand how that’s physically possible. Are you an alien? That would make much more sense than a human who doesn’t drink coffee.”

  His mouth curved and she got no simple pleasure from the fact she could make him smile. Especially now. It was one of those things she wasn’t allowed to feel about him. Because he was the enemy. The man whose land she was supposed to buy.

  It was funny how they could justify it to themselves to have these two separate identities. C and D, Carter and Dinah. Was it so crazy to think that justification could continue . . . a little bit longer? Yes, she was still trying to buy his land, but she hadn’t been sexed out of that idea yet. Maybe this was simply something they could do. She studied him until he glared at her.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. Just trying to work out why you’ve been feeding me.”

  “You figure it out?”

  “You’re secretly the nicest guy on the face of the planet?”

  “Try again.”

  “The kale actually is poison and you’re going to kill me so I can’t buy your land?” It was something of a test to see if he would wince or cringe or lose that easy looseness about him that only seemed to come out after they’d had sex.

  “Not yet.” He stepped toward her, setting his bowl and then hers on the counter. He spread her legs wide with those big, rough hands, and then stepped between her legs. The height of the counter didn’t leave for easy matching of their bodies, but he could rub the rough edge of his denim against the wet heat of her pussy.

  She spread her legs wider, ready and willing for whatever he was offering. It should concern her how much she wanted him, how easy she was when he was this way, and yet even in the light of day she had trouble finding that shame. “So, why’d you feed me then?”

  “I wanted to make sure you wouldn’t wimp out on me. Get some energy before round two.”

  “Do you think I can’t handle round two?” she asked with an arched brow.

  He flashed her that sexy-as-sin grin that was in no way fair. “Oh, I have all the faith in the world in you there, D.” He lifted her and she wrapped her legs around his waist as he walked her to the bedroom.

  * * *

  Carter was not a stupid man, though he’d been told on occasion that he was. There were times people mistook his drive and his determination for an inability to see reason. He had never believed it.

  Until now.

  Carrying Dinah to his bedroom, and before that feeding her, talking to her, treating her like a woman he cared about, was idiotic and stupid and against everything he knew he had to do.

  But he didn’t stop. He carried her to his bed, and he laid her on the mattress with a care he shouldn’t afford her. He planned on fucking her for as long as he possibly could. No amount of argument from his brain seemed to stop this fire she unleashed in him. It was a feeling that had been so elusive in his life. Something like belonging.

  He knew it was as fleeting as those things he’d belonged to in his life—the farms, the people. There was no way in any universe this worked out. No way this went beyond a couple of stupid mistakes in the bedroom.

  But he couldn’t stop.

  He covered her body with his, absorbing the soft way her body gave in to his. Exulting in this feeling of connection that she gave him.

  Tonight, for this little period of time, he was just going to consider her his. His fantasy. His dream come to life. The rest of it didn’t matter, and he wasn’t going to let it matter. He was going to get through this suffocating grief by finding pleasure somewhere. In D.

  Without getting off of her, he reached over and found the box of condoms he’d purchased earlier knowing this was the only way . . . When even farming wouldn’t take the edge off of his grief, he knew that this was all he had. A million deleted emails, and the fact was, he needed the reality now. The reality of her.

  He shoved apart his still unbuttoned and unzipped jeans and tugged down his boxers. But before he could sheath himself, Dinah plucked the condom wrapper out of his hands and ripped the packet open, pulling the condom out. With her bottom lip between her teeth, slowly and agonizingly, she rolled the condom onto his erection.

  She was the sexiest woman he’d ever known, adventurous and mischievous, sweet and dirty, this perfect mix of a million things, and it was too much, really. She was, in her entirety, too damn much. Enough too much to pause, to question . . .

  “What was your favorite one?” she asked, her fingers delicately trailing up and down his arms.

  “My favorite one?” He knew what she meant. His favorite fantasy. His favorite of whatever scenarios they’d written to each other. But it was hard to choose for a lot of reasons. Each exchange between them had been a reaction to something going on in his life. A certain need, and it was a little embarrassing to admit that today he didn’t need anything dark or dirty particularly. He just needed someone, and in this case, that someone had to be her. Had to be.

  She reached out and pushed some hair off his forehead, a comforting and familiar gesture. A gesture of care they didn’t share. Couldn’t. Something that spoke of a deeper relationship than they had. All they had were fake words.

  “I always have a hard time picking a favorite,” she said when he never answered. “
It sort of depends on the situation, doesn’t it?”

  It wasn’t a shock she would echo his own thoughts. For whatever ways their whole thing was a fantasy built on randomly exchanged emails, there had been a truthfulness to some of their words. A truthfulness he hadn’t even admitted to himself at the time, but it was easy to confide in this person who wasn’t real. This person he’d never know.

  Except here she was. She was here and real and this was far more complicated than the fantasy had ever been.

  But he wasn’t walking away from that complication. No, he kept going headlong into it, no matter how often, during the daylight hours, he told himself to stay away.

  He didn’t want to think up one of his favorites, and he didn’t want to think about complications and hardships. All he wanted to do was lose himself in her. So instead of answering her question or responding to her statement, he dropped his mouth to hers.

  He didn’t say anything. Not as he kissed her, softly, languorously, exploring her mouth with no hurry or frenzy. He didn’t speak as his mouth drifted down her neck to the soft swell of her breasts. Not as he entered her and breathed in her sweet little sigh.

  There were no words and no fake memories. There was only the soft slide of his body against hers. Only the tender brush of her palms and fingertips up and down his back. They didn’t race. They didn’t play. It was something deeper, and more, and no matter how much he knew he couldn’t afford those things, it was exactly what he needed in this moment.

  When she came, it was soft and sweet and sighing. And when he came, it was the same.

  He kicked off his pants and moved next to her on the bed, more than a little bit reluctant to roll away from her and go to clean himself up.

  But it wasn’t like the other night when she’d scurried off his bed and he’d gotten off of her immediately. Instead, they both lay there. Their shoulders touching, their legs brushing, but not exactly cuddling or curling into each other.

  Carter stared at the ceiling, and when he dared to sneak a glance at her, she was doing the same.

  But she didn’t get up to move, and even though he shouldn’t—couldn’t—he pressed a kiss to her temple and whispered the last word he should ever utter in this situation.