Sunlight beamed across her bare back. She was lying on her stomach in a sinfully comfortable bed. She scanned her head and body to get a read on her condition this morning. She’d had a lot to drink—apparently, she was a drunk in France—and her head was hard at work reminding her of that fact, but she didn’t feel shaky or nauseated, at least not lying still.
She was sore—her crotch, her breasts…her neck. Oh, shit. One arm was bent at the elbow and resting near her face. She eased it over so that she could put her hand on her neck. The whole right side was tender to the touch. The right side, because Theo was a southpaw and tended to lean left. Jesus, did she have a hickey? She thought she did, and by the feel of it, a massive one. Oh, good lord. Really?
Embarrassment didn’t get a chance to take hold, though, not yet. It got washed away by the memories of how she’d ended up in such a state. That recall swept discomfort away, too, leaving heat behind, and a dizzy breathlessness that had nothing to do with the aftereffects of drink.
Never would she have expected sex with Theo Wilde to have been so…wild. The man who’d written that beautiful, poignant, loving memoir, who’d cared for a dying wife and had found a way to give her dignity and beauty when she died, who’d shepherded his sons through their grief. The man who’d approached her in such a ridiculous manner, who’d been nothing but steady and calm, patient and persuasive, in the short time she’d known him—this was not a man she’d expected to be fierce in bed. ‘Fierce’ was not an adjective she’d have thought could possibly apply to Theodore Wilde: widower, father, poet.
And one hell of an amazing fuck.
Carmen opened her eyes.
She rolled carefully to her back and looked around. The bedroom they were in was like something out of a period movie—huge, with insanely high ceilings, the ornate Venetian plaster walls deep grey with white trim, the dark parquet floors gleaming. Floor to ceiling casement windows lined one wall, in the middle of which was a set of double doors to the balcony. Brilliantly white sheers spanned the wavy glass from the ceiling and pooled on the floor. Two windows were open, and the sheers billowed gracefully inward and outward with a light summer breeze. The sounds of a Paris shaking off its night’s rest wafted into the room. Shit, she loved this city. If only her life had taken the route she’d planned to set off on, all those years ago. Maybe then she’d have had a life like Izzie’s…
She shut the thought down immediately. No use going there. She’d learned a long time ago that there was no way to win the ‘what if’ game.
Instead, she turned to her side and studied the man sleeping next to her. Here was where her path had led her, so far.
Theo lay on his back, his left arm thrown over his head, his right hand resting low on his belly. She’d made her own marks, she saw—there were scratches over his shoulders and bite marks on his chest. Seeing them brought the memory of making them, and Carmen smiled.
He really was gorgeous. She’d thought his looks had been Californian, but now she saw them as a different kind of western, like a matinee idol cowboy—square jaw, cleft chin, the kind of crinkly wrinkles around his eyes that came from squinting into the sun—or from smiling. And damn, those dimples. They were so deep and so often present in his smiling face that they’d left impressions that even rest could not smooth away.
He was broad-shouldered and muscular, but lean. Even in repose, the muscles over his belly and sides retained their definition. This was an active man. All they’d done together so far had been to eat and drink—and, now, fuck—but clearly he got out and moved his body. She liked that. She’d been active and outdoorsy her whole life, and she’d chosen a career that kept her moving, too. She couldn’t tolerate indolence.
And what did it matter what she could or could not tolerate? She needed to be careful not to think of him in ways that extended beyond the moment they were in. She’d meant to stay away, and she should have. But she hadn’t, and here they were. Perhaps she should slink out of the bed right now, dress, and make her way back to the flat on Rue de la Lavande, but she knew she would not.
He’d coaxed her into staying last night because he hadn’t wanted to be done yet. Well, now she didn’t want to be done, either. She’d worry about the consequences later. For now, for once in her life, she wanted simply to do the thing that felt good and not worry about whether it was right.
Reaching over, she picked up the pendants lying just below his throat, the hair on his chest lightly tickling her fingertips. She liked the hair, too, light but evenly distributed over his chest and down the center of his belly, the same golden tone as the hair on his head, with a few grey curls scattered in. Pure sex, pure man.
She focused on the pendants, tributes to Maggie, his dead wife. She was glad he wore them. They did not make her feel threatened. Instead, they would ground her, keep her safe, allow her the room to do the thing that felt good. They would remind her, especially when she and Theo were naked, intimate, bared to each other—as they dangled from his neck while he was inside her, they would remind her that he had already given his once-in-a-lifetime feelings to someone else.
And that would keep her own, unused feelings safely tucked away.
Theo took a deep breath, and his hand came up and encompassed hers on his chest. Warm and strong. “Do those bother you?” His naturally deep voice rumbled with the gruffness of sleep, and he asked the question without yet opening his eyes. Carmen wondered how long he’d been awake.
“No. I told you—I like them. They’re poignant.”
Then he opened his eyes, and blue sky stared right at her. “How old are you, beautiful girl?”
Carmen was coming to like those two silly words. They really were silly, like something crooned by Maurice Chevalier in a Leslie Caron movie, but they were growing on her nonetheless. His question surprised her, though, coming out of the blue like that. “Thirty-seven.”
He nodded, looking relieved, and Carmen wondered how old he’d thought she was. “And you?”
“Fifty in August.”
Older than she’d thought, but not surprisingly so.
When she said nothing, he asked, “Is that a problem for you?”
“No. I’m not surprised. You have two grown sons. I did the math.” She scooted closer and leaned over him, grinning. “You’re pretty spry for an old codger.”
He cocked an eyebrow at her and brought his hand down to smack her ass gently. “Careful, kiddo.” Then his eyes trailed over her face to her throat, and his other hand came up and grazed the tender right side. “Wow. I’m sorry. Does that hurt?”
She put her hand over his. “Not too much. It’s bad, huh?”
“It’s…yeah. It’s noticeable, put it that way. The bathroom’s over there if you want to see.”
With a shrug, she said, “I’m in no rush.” She really wasn’t. His cock was hard and pressing firmly into the thigh she’d thrown over him. She reached down and took hold of it. Damn, what a beautiful thing it was. She’d known it wasn’t small—she’d felt it through his clothes enough before last night to have an idea that it was more than adequate—but having an idea was different from experiencing the real thing. It was long—but better yet, it was thick, really thick, and oh God, the stretch it made in her was sublime. As she ran her hand over it now and watched his eyes flutter closed on his groan, she leaned down and kissed his lips lightly. “I’m really in no rush.”
He grabbed her and rolled over, pinning her beneath him. “Good. Neither am I.” She looked into his blue eyes and saw things there that made her heart quiver at pace with the rest of her thrumming body.
So she cast her eyes downward and focused on the pendants dangling between her and his heart.
~oOo~
A while later, as they were lying quietly, tangled together, recovering, there was a knock at the bedroom door. Before Theo could respond, Jordan called from the other side, “If anybody’s hungry, I’ve been to la pâtisserie! And I’m off to make coffee!”
He added two more
perky little raps, and then they heard him walk away.
“You hungry?” Theo combed his fingers through Carmen’s hair.
“I could eat. Not sure how I feel about a breakfast of shame, though.”
His hand stopped. “Don’t think of it like that. Are you ashamed?”
She raised up on her elbow and looked steadily at him. “No. But that’s your kid. And…it’s weird. Right?”
“Carmen. The only thing weird about how Jordan feels about you and me is his unbridled excitement. There’s no chance that he’ll be judging us.” He smiled. “I mean, he bought us baked goods.”
She laughed, mentally slapping herself for that moment of self-doubt, and slid out of bed. “Okay, then.” As Theo stood, too, she stared at last night’s clothes, wadded on a large damask wing chair. “God, the thought of putting that dress back on. Ugh.”
Theo walked over to her, holding out his white dress shirt from the night before. “It’s a brilliant dress. But wear this instead.”
Cocking her eyebrow at him, she turned and let him slide his shirt on. As it came up over her shoulders, she was enveloped in his scent, and she closed her eyes for a moment to savor. But as she began to button it, she noticed that the tail skimmed only a few inches below her ass. She turned back to him and found him staring hungrily at her, looking like it might be a while before she got coffee and pastry. She took a step back.
“Christ. You wear that a thousand times better than I do.”
“I’m glad you like it. But I can’t go out where anyone else can see me in this.”
Theo nodded and went to a tall antique chest. From a drawer, he pulled out a pair of black sweatpants and tossed them to her. “How’s that?”
She pulled them on and tightened the drawstring. “These’ll do fine. Thanks.” When she looked up, the fire in his eyes was even hotter. “What?”
“You’re wearing my clothes, and you’re not wearing underwear. If we’re done for the morning, I’m gonna need a minute.”
She could tell. Carmen laughed, feeling pleased and lighthearted. “You are a lech. Okay, well, I’m going to use the bathroom. Take your minute.” As she walked past him, she lifted onto her toes and kissed his cheek. She liked that he was tall enough that she needed tiptoes. She tapped his erect cock. “Easy there, pardner.”
He swatted her ass when she moved on.
The bathroom, like the rest of the apartment, was opulent and huge. Shaking her head at the excesses of the extravagantly wealthy, she stood before the mirror over one of the sinks. The first thing she saw, to her horror and embarrassment, was that her eye makeup seemed to have melted all over her face. The term ‘raccoon eyes’ didn’t begin to cover it. She wore makeup rarely, and never to the extent that Rosa had done her up last night, and she had a tendency to forget and wipe at her eyes. Clearly, she’d done so repeatedly last night, or this morning. She had eyeliner on her damn cheeks. Just fuck.
But Theo had made no indication whatsoever that she’d looked like she’d just come off a football field. He’d seemed only dazzled with her. Maybe she’d bewitched him into blindness.
She turned the water on and scrubbed her face until there was no trace left of Rosa’s elaborate, and completely ruined, handiwork. She thought she might have lost a layer or two of skin in the bargain, but that was a fair price.
That crisis handled—note to her future self, she and makeup were a bad mix—her eyes finally moved to her neck. Well, wow. The entire right side of her neck, from her jaw to her collarbone, was red and purple. That wasn’t a hickey. That was a mauling. She unbuttoned his shirt and took a look at the other sore spots. Her breasts were similarly bruised. She slid his sweatpants down—her thighs, too.
She laughed. Well, she’d wanted a Rough Rider. Damn.
And she wouldn’t change anything—though she was now wondering exactly how she’d get around for the next several days without making a spectacle of herself. Maybe Rosa had some kind of magic concealer or something.
A knock on the door, and Theo’s voice: “Hey. You okay?”
She pulled the pants back up. “Yeah. Just assessing the damage. You can come in.”
He opened the door, wearing nothing but extremely well-fitting jeans. Yeah, she wouldn’t change a damn thing.
His shirt was still open, and he walked up to her now and spread it wide, his hands gripping the sides of the placket. “Oh, shit. Carmen, I’m sorry. I’ve never done anything like that before.”
What surprised her more than that statement was the power of the pleasure it gave her. Something that he’d never done before, something he shared only with her. The thrill of that scared her. Trouble. He was trouble. She turned that thought off—it didn’t matter if he was trouble. She was doing the thing that felt good, right or not. She’d deal with the consequences when they arrived.
She put her hands over his. “No? Well, you’re a natural, then. And it’s fine. I love the way you fuck.”
At that, he let go of the shirt, shook her hands away, and clutched her face. Then he kissed her so hard he stole her breath.
He broke away with a groan. “Christ. We should get out of here. You need to recover, and I’m about not to let you.”
~oOo~
Only Jordan was in the kitchen. He’d brewed coffee and laid out a pretty table, with linens and china, arranging the various lovely baked treats on a gold-edged platter.
“Where’s Eli?” Theo asked, as he and Carmen sat down at the table.
“Love was in the air last night. He and Rosa made the beast with two backs, too, I assume. He stayed over with her.” Jordan handed Carmen a dainty coffee cup on a saucer. He winked. “Morning, tiger. Cream?”
And that pretty much settled Carmen’s incipient wondering about when Jordan had gotten back and how much he’d heard. Oh, well. She grinned. She did like this kid. “Yes, please. Rawr.”
Jordan giggled maniacally and handed her the cream in a little pitcher.
Theo had apparently missed that exchange. As he plated some kind of fluffy, glazed confection, he asked, “They dumped you? You okay with that?”
Jordan sighed loudly. “Dad. I have been the matchmaker in all of this, have I not? We had a ball, and then when it was bedtime, they dropped me off here and went on their merry. Rosa danced with me more than Eli, since he is such a guy and afraid being smooth on the dance floor tarnishes his guyness. He only danced when it was a slow song and he could feel her up.” He glanced at Carmen. “Excuse my bluntness. Should I have been discreet there? I hate discreet.”
Carmen shrugged. “Hey, if Rosie wants to get felt up, who’m I to stop her?”
Jordan slid gracefully into the seat next to her. “I so agree.” He eyed her neck and then smirked with devilish delight. “Hey, Carm? You’ve got a little something…” He brushed a finger down the side of his neck and giggled again.
That one, Theo caught. “Jordan. Manners.”
But Carmen just grinned. No way she could hide it, so she might as well own it. “You think anyone will notice?”
“Absolutely not. Just a wee little thing it is. Like a beauty mark. Très petite. Très élégante.”
Yeah, she liked him.
~oOo~
“Rosie. Put the phone away. Seriously. I’m going to throw that damn thing in the Thames if I see it again.”
“God, Carm. Bitch alert! I’m a grownup. I’ll be on my phone if I want to!” But she’d put her phone in her bag as she ranted. “I can’t believe you wouldn’t let them come.”
They were spending just over a week in the UK, just the two of them. They’d done a few days in Ireland, another couple in Scotland, the weekend on the Devon coast, and now they had two days in London. They were leaving for Paris the next day.
After more than two weeks of near-constant companionship from the Wilde men, Carmen was starting to freak out. She and Rosa had already planned this trip—they had weeks in Italy and in and around Germany coming up, too—and she thought it was a damn fine thing
to get some distance between them and Theo and Eli.
Jordan had returned to the States not much more than a week after they’d all met, according to his original plan. Carmen and Rosa had both been sorry to see him go, but he had things he wanted to do at home this summer, with his friends. Eli had changed his plans and was staying through the summer.
Without Jordan, the couple-ness of the group had intensified markedly, and right away. During that week between Jordan leaving and Carmen and Rosa catching the train to Dublin, Eli had basically lived in the flat on Rue de la Lavande, and Carmen and Theo, staying in Hunter Anders’ apartment, had barely bothered to dress.
Rooted (The Pagano Family Book 3) Page 10