Talk about heat.
“Good grief, Jack,” she murmured again. “How long since you’ve done this? Years?”
She had him so, so wrong. She was the one broadcasting needs in silk whispers. She was the one who was speeding this up completely out of control. She suddenly loosed free from a kiss, tugged at his hand.
“Not here,” she said softly. “Charlene sleeps really deep, but I still don’t want to risk her waking up and finding us.”
“Your room,” he agreed. But his head was so thick he couldn’t remember where the master bedroom was, even though he’d been in the house tons of times when Charlie was alive.
“I sleep in the far spare room,” she murmured.
Thankfully she was coherent enough to offer that information, because he sure wasn’t. She was so hot, so ready. Any place would do, as far as he was concerned—as long as they could get there within the next ten seconds.
A phone rang somewhere. Hers. His mind registered that only emergencies tended to call this late, but the ringing stopped after a couple of peals. Wrong number maybe. Whatever. Wherever the spare room was, he didn’t know. He found a room with a door, got her behind the door, closed it, punched the latch, and then focused on what mattered, which sure as hell wasn’t doors and phones and life.
It was her.
Damned if he knew where they were. Some place with a floor instead of carpet and a ton of sweet darkness, not a hint of light, nothing to distract his concentration. His mouth leveled hers again, sweeping the texture of her, sailing on the taste of her, drinking her in every which way, his hands just as busy. Her breasts were so nubile, plump, not huge, not small, just so damned perfect. And she sucked in a hoarse breath as if no one had touched them the right way before.
It was hard to work up any performance anxiety when she was this easy to please, this readable. He had no problem understanding what needed to be done. Her body begged to be treated with tenderness and reverence.
Still it was hard to reach where he wanted, with both of them standing up, so he lifted her up. She let out a low squeal of laughter when her fanny plunked down. “You do know where we are, right? That’s cold,” she murmured, her whisper full of laughter.
He startled momentarily, trying to decipher what she was talking about, but she wound her arms around him and honed in for another kiss, the greedy woman. “Okay, you,” she said possessively. “Speed’s okay. Wild’s okay. We’ll get a little fancier another time.”
She made it easy for his mouth to reach her breasts, to find a way to nuzzle, snuzzle, lavish attention on both. Easy to glide his palms up her sides, up, until her hands reached high in the air, and then came down to him yet again, lassoing him softer than petals.
Fingers pulled off his sweatshirt.
He yanked free the snap and zipper of jeans himself, and then the height wasn’t right. He needed light to see, but the room was chimney-black and he had no idea where a light was. If he’d thought about it, he’d likely realize where they were, but he just didn’t need to think or care about irrelevant issues like that. There was a relevant crucial issue that mattered right then—getting inside her. Initially she was perched too high, so he eased her toward him, slid her down the length of him.
Agony tasted just like that, her earthy groan blending with his, at the sensation of her bare breasts against his bare chest, her tummy against his abdomen, her soft fluff of down against the rougher hair on his upper thighs. Oh, yeah, and Wilbur, weaving around like a thick, drunken pointer gone amok.
It was pretty rude, to be constantly pointing at what it wanted, but Wilbur, for damn sure, never had a problem with indecision. It wanted her. Now. Ten minutes ago. Forever. To be immersed tight inside her.
To do that, though, it seemed he had to lift her up against the wall. Thankfully, there was a wall. Right. There. Right where he could lift her, where she could wrap her legs and arms tight around him, where she could duck her head and let all that silky, lustrous hair sweep around his cheeks as he impaled her deep and slow and completely.
If he could just die this way, he’d never ask for another thing.
Ever.
This was it.
All he wanted.
This was as good as it ever had to get—the feeling of her surrounding him. Her whispered voice, her breath, her vulnerable mouth.
He didn’t want this to end, didn’t want his body to go into the piston thing, but Wilbur wasn’t into savoring frustration the same way he was. Jack had a tearing sensation the roof was coming off his mind altogether, no brain left, now or ever, and he didn’t miss it even remotely.
“So beautiful,” he said thickly. “So beyond beautiful. Love you, Merry. Love you, love you…”
As if he’d shot her an infusion of power, she tightened around him, her throat bared, a shudder of bliss erupting from her in a low, fierce moan. That was all he could hold back. He let loose in a torrent, pumping out gallons, holding her, owning her—and for damn sure, being owned by her the exact same way.
And then it was over, the rush, the frenzy, that wild climb and claim. He kissed her a dozen times, but could feel his legs start to give out…and awareness start to seep in.
He was too damn old to make love against a wall. Worse yet, he had a horrible feeling they were in a laundry room.
They couldn’t be, of course.
He’d never have done that to Merry. Hell, he’d had no finesse when he was nineteen, and he still wouldn’t have done that to her back then. At his youngest and brashest, he’d understood—and valued—that a woman needed time, subtlety, tenderness, and maybe even some plain old charm.
Wherever they were, though, he did have to release her, let her stand on her own feet. It was either that, or cave in a puddle somewhere around her ankles. So he freed her, yet still couldn’t let her go, holding her close, arms wrapped tight, his head against her head, eyes closed.
“Jack,” she whispered.
“I can’t talk. And I can’t open my eyes. Because if I do and find out I made love to you in a laundry room, I’m going to have to hit myself with a brick.”
A gurgle of laughter. “We could have picked a more comfortable place, couldn’t we?”
We? It was up to the guy to pick the place, for Pete’s sake. To make sure it was good for the woman. To take responsibility.
“Merry.” She was already swayed against him, but now he clutched her tighter than glue. “Tell me you’re on the pill.”
“I’m on the pill.”
“No. I don’t mean tell me what I want to hear. I mean tell me for real if you were protected.”
“Yes.”
Silence. It was still so hard to breathe, to catch his breath, when all he wanted was to be buried inside her for another few years. On a mattress. Not standing up. In a nice warm bed with a pillow. Not in a room with barely a window and no carpet and nothing but sharp, cold edges—except where she was. “Um, I’m trying to think if there’s anything else I could possibly have done wrong,” he said. “But as far as I can tell, I did everything as wrong as you could get.”
“No.” There. She reared back her head. All that mussed, tangled sleepy hair. The eyes dark as midnight, the skin white as moonlight. “You did everything perfect. Trust me on that.”
He touched her cheek. No matter what she said, he knew perfectly well they’d been on a runaway train and now they were in a crash. He couldn’t take her to bed. Couldn’t even stay much longer because of the child in her house—and for damn sure, he couldn’t take her to his place with the boys sprawled all over the living room. In the meantime they were freezing and naked—or mostly, he still had on socks—in her naked-windowed laundry room past midnight.
Oh, yeah. This could get worse. He just didn’t know how.
“I don’t want to go home,” he said fiercely.
“I know you have to. Just like I couldn’t have you waking up here with Charlene. It wouldn’t be right. It’s okay, Jack.”
No, it wasn�
��t. Nothing was right. Those vulnerable eyes suddenly communicated a little embarrassment, a little shyness. And a few moments before, she didn’t have an inhibition in sight, but now she seemed in a hurry to drape a towel around her—a natural enough instinct, with a chill draft shooting under the door—but that wouldn’t have been an issue, if he’d just had the prowess, the taste, the sensitivity to make love to her the right way to begin with.
“Thanks for chaperoning with me,” she said when he was finally at the door, wearing most of his clothes. He thought.
Chaperoning. Oh, yeah. They’d done such a good job…until they’d gotten home, and then there’d been no one to chaperone him.
THE NEXT MORNING, Merry didn’t sing in the shower, because Charlene was still sleeping. But she turned off the faucet, grabbed the towel, boogie-woogied herself dry, danced into the bedroom, and mimed some exceptionally fine moves as she chose what to wear. Life, dag-nabbit, was good.
Okay, beyond good.
No question that she’d been off her feed lately. Not depressed, exactly, but feeling regularly overwhelmed by the problems surrounding her. Charlene, not bonding. Charlene, still not really accepting her dad’s death. Herself, not easily finding a way to fit in this alien land of suburbia. Herself, still failing to convince June Innes she was a fit guardian—and not so sure she was besides. Herself, trying to become a sedate house owner and staid community participant and teenage-chaperone overnight.
But some of that stuff was always going to take time to sort out.
She picked out jeans with a heart on the right butt cheek, a pink ruched top, a major push-up bra, then—and just for the hell of it—jumped on the bed to do a few more dance steps as she put it all on. Goofy, yes. But what was wrong with being singing-irrepressible on a fine, fine, sunny morning like this?
He said he’d loved her.
In fact, he’d said it and said it. In the middle of sex, of course. And men, being men, were completely brain dead during sex. But all the same…he’d conveyed it—in how he’d made love. In how he’d touched her, in how upset he’d been that he’d failed to remember protection ahead of time, in how he’d failed to set them up in a more romantic environment than the laundry room—which still made her want to laugh.
Romantic wasn’t a place. Romantic was a man who came apart at the seams for you. A man who wanted you so much he forgot he was one of those fussy-engineering-mind types. A man who just seemed to get lost in being with you. A man who needed, so much, so sweetly, that he made you feel as if you were his whole world.
The phone rang—the land line. And though Charlie could usually sleep through anything—and did—Merry bounced off the bed and charged for it, just in case. She was overdue a call to her dad and sisters, although the time change usually meant it was easier to connect early evening than now.
She grabbed the line in the kitchen and said a breathless, “Hello?” just in time to hear the click of a hang up. What, this was surely the third time in the last two days?
Whatever. A crank caller wasn’t likely to spoil her dancing-on-air mood or morning. Whistling silently, she finger brushed her damp hair and debated breakfast choices. The living room was a wee bit trashed, ditto for the kitchen table and counters. Sometime today, she had to turn into Merry Maid again and do the cleaning thing, because June Innes was due for her weekly stop by tomorrow. But right now…
Pancakes.
Decadent pancakes with blueberries and whipped cream.
Yes.
Better served with Jack. In fact, better served on top of Jack and licked off. But that not being an immediate option, she hunted up a bowl and the stuff for a batter and dug in.
Just as she was measuring milk, she heard the knock on the door and yelled out, “Come on in.”
She would likely have smiled for anyone, but about the last person in the universe she expected to poke his head in was Jack’s son. “Hey,” Cooper said awkwardly. “Oh. I see you’re in the middle of making breakfast. I don’t want to bug you—”
“You’re not bugging me, silly. Come on in.” She took another careful look at him. She liked both Jack’s sons, but it wasn’t as if they regularly popped over to visit. The twin thing fascinated her, although there was certainly no challenge telling the two boys apart. As similar as their physical traits, their temperaments affected their expressions and actions. She didn’t have a favorite, but knew she had a tiny softer spot for Cooper. It wasn’t because she liked him more or less than his brother; Cooper just struck her as more vulnerable. Kicker was so easy in his own skin. Coop reminded her of how miserable it was to be an adolescent. And both boys were so great with Charlene that she’d have loved them to bits for that alone. “If you needed Charlie for something, I’m afraid it was a pretty late night for her, and she’s still konked out—”
“Didn’t come here to see Charlie. Dad and Kicker are both sleeping, too. And that’s why I thought I could maybe find you by yourself for a couple seconds. I just was hoping to talk to you about something.”
“Sure.” Again, she shot a look at him. Coop had never struck her as shy so much as contained, one of those deep-waters kids. Her dad would have said that he was the kind “who didn’t show his cards.” But right now he was sure playing a nervous hand.
He was rocking back and forth on his heels, edgy as a hedgehog, meeting her eyes, then shooting his gaze around the room, not coming in, not going out, the worried furrow between his brows deeper than a ditch. She couldn’t imagine what was on his mind. “Hey, you know me. At least you know me well enough to be sure I don’t bite,” she said gently.
“I know, I know. That’s why I wanted to talk to you.”
“Sometimes when you can’t get something out, the only way to do it is just spill.”
“I’m trying. Believe it. It’s just…”
“You want some coffee or juice or milk?”
“I need this to be between you and me.”
“Got it.” Or she got “it” enough to recognize swiftly that there was something serious going on for Coop. She glanced down, saw the first round of pancakes were already black-burned and started to smoke, and turned off the stove.
“I’ve got a real worry, that’s all. A private worry. Something I need to ask a female about.” He cleared his throat. “A woman-aged female.”
“Okay.”
“The thing is…how late is really late?”
“Huh? Oh.” Sometimes she needed a slap upside the head to get an innuendo, but this sure wasn’t one of them. He meant period-late. As in unprotected sex. As in he obviously had a girlfriend.
She splashed coffee in two mugs, turned off her cell phone and motioned him to the stool across the counter, thinking eek. She was honored Coop believed he could come to her with a confidence, but this was such an ohmygod. She’d just made love with Cooper’s dad, for heaven’s sake. Was barely, nominally coping with Charlene. So poking her nose in something as intensely serious as Jack’s son’s private sex life seemed like a major bad idea…but she couldn’t very well not help. So there it was.
“Well, flat out, Coop…girls your age,” she said tactfully, “aren’t always as regular as clocks. What that means is that a period is often not predictable. But it also means that there isn’t any totally safe time to have sex without protection.”
“It was just the one time.” Cooper could have bored holes in the counter, he was staring down so hard.
If he were just a little smaller, she’d have scooped him on her lap and given him a hug. Unfortunately this was a grown-up problem, even if he was still a boy. “I’m afraid it just takes one time.”
He lifted worried brown eyes. “We didn’t mean for it to happen. I swear. I’d have bought protection if I thought it was going that far. At least this fast. I mean, yeah I hoped. How was I not supposed to hope? I like her. She’s hot. It’s really going good with us. But I just thought…sometime. Not this fast. But it just seemed to…happen.”
Worse and worse, Merry t
hought. Not that he’d said it, but she was pretty sure this was likely his first time, and the girl’s, too. “How late is she, Coop?”
“Six days, four hours, three minutes.” He sighed. “She called, just before I came over here. I can’t eat. Can’t sleep.” He wiped a rough hand over his face. “I knew I could ask you. That you wouldn’t yell at me.”
He had that right. Merry didn’t know how Cooper sensed it, but she was incapable of abandoning anyone, come hell or high water. And for damn sure, not a vulnerable kid. “Okay, well, first things first. She needs to buy a pregnancy test. They’re about twenty bucks, give or take. She pees on a stick first thing in the morning. At least, that’s how I’ve heard most of them work. It turns color if she’s pregnant. Then you two would know what you’re dealing with.”
“Would she know this quick? Just a week late?”
“It’s not by how late. It’s by how pregnant. Or not.” He looked at her blankly. She tried again. “The test doesn’t measure how late her period is. It just measures whether she’s pregnant. And Cooper, she needs to do that test. Quickly. Don’t wait. No matter what you two decide after that, first you’ve got to know what’s what.”
“She isn’t as upset as me.” Those sick eyes looked at her. “Merry, don’t tell my dad.”
She could have smelled that coming. Cripes, he might as well have clamped her heart in a corkscrew and twisted. “If she’s not pregnant, you won’t have to tell your dad. Part of this isn’t about your dad, anyway. If you’re going to be sexually active, you need to get protection and use it. Every time.”
“But if she is pregnant…”
Merry squeezed her eyes closed, thinking man, this was not a fun conversation. “Then you’ll need to tell your dad yourself.”
“But you won’t say anything to him, right? Promise me?”
Her life had been so much easier when she quit any and everything every time she wanted at the drop of a hat. Hell’s bells, there was no way she could keep something this important from Jack. It was dead wrong, even if she hadn’t been sleeping with him, even if she hadn’t fallen exasperatingly, deeply in love with him. To not share something this important, affecting his son’s future? “You won’t have to worry about me telling him, because if it comes down to it, you’ll tell your dad,” she said to Cooper. “You know you can. You know he’ll be there for you—”
Blame it on Cupid Page 19