by Sage Domini
Matthew still blocked the doorway, glancing around. “Does he know I’m here?”
Claire looked at him knowingly. “What do you think?”
“Right. Being away, I forget.”
“Apparently.”
I felt as if I had walked into the middle of a rolling movie set and been denied a copy of the script. “You got any ketchup to go with that steak?”
Matthew and Claire seemed to find the idea of ketchup hilarious. They peered into one another’s eyes and guffawed like fools and I thought maybe country people didn’t use ketchup. Or else ketchup was some inside joke or sexual kink between these two. “Okay, so no ketchup. A1 sauce then?”
Later, I swore I felt him behind me before I heard his approach. The hair on the back of my neck seemed to stand on end and a finger of heat tickled my insides. “Matthew.” The low timbre of his voice was sensual and commanding. Matthew stiffened and I turned. He was a full head taller than me; dark-haired and with at least a day of beard shadow on his jaw. The simple flannel shirt he wore did nothing to mask an imposing physique. He had spoken Matthew’s name but looked only at me. His eyes traveled with slow purpose up and down my body and then rested on my face with a bemused expression.
Matthew cleared his throat. “Tatum Murphy, this is Cade Landon. My father.” If I didn’t gasp out loud, I sure as hell felt the internal jolt of learning this superb hunk of man flesh was old enough to father a grown son. Cade Landon leaned a hand against the wall and let his gaze wander unabashedly to my breasts. Matthew spoke quietly. “Tatum is a friend.”
Cade ran a hand through his black hair and grinned. “Pleased to meet you, Tatum. I’m glad Matt is making friends. They’re a rare breed.”
“It’s nice to meet you. I hope I’m not imposing, sir.”
“Sir,” he whispered the word to himself and looked me up and down again, smirking. “Sir. Well, I guess in your eyes that’s how I rate.”
Matthew was trying to move me out of the way and reach his father. “We should talk, Dad.”
Cade sighed. “If you say so.” He snapped his fingers. “Claire, be a sweetheart and get Miss Tatum here fed and comfortable. You girls can share the guest room.”
Matthew shot me a look of apology as he followed his father into the recesses of the house. I wondered if there was a point at which he would admit this had been a huge mistake. Perhaps Benji and Zane could drive me back to Phoenix.
Claire grabbed some two-pronged forks and skewered a pair of steaks. “We can hang out on the back patio. Then I’ll show you to the guest room.” She smiled feebly. “I am sorry. Matt wasn’t expecting me to be here.”
As I followed her outside into the blistering cold I wondered why she had neglected to bring plates. Did the Landon men keep plates out on the patio? And what kind of a lunch was a lonely slab of undercooked meat? Clair settled herself prettily on a wooden chair and handed me one dangling steak as she balanced the other. Then she did something astonishing. Her pearly little teeth ripped a gigantic hole in that piece of meat. She chewed and gazed dreamily toward the mountains. I looked at my own dripping meat slab and nibbled lightly on the top. There must be regional propriety differences I was unaware of. If I were a sociology major I would probably find the concept fascinating.
Claire consumed her steak in admirable time as I shivered, trying to choke down the sodden meat while keeping blood from dribbling down my chin and speculating about E Coli. She crossed her petite legs and regarded me curiously. “You’re probably wondering what the deal is with me and Matthew.”
A blast of arctic wind tore through my thin shirt and I felt numb. “A little,” I admitted.
She smiled. “It’s old news. Really. We were kids together. After high school I needed to get out of here so I enrolled in a small college in Virginia which is full of our sort.” She paused, a regretful look on her face. “Not Matt though. He thought he needed a mainstream university. My brothers still live in Luna Junction but I don’t usually come back for holidays. Cade paid for my plane ticket because he wants so badly for his eldest son to be settled and he thought I was the best chance.” Her gaze lowered. “We didn’t know about you.”
I swallowed. It would have been nice to have a drink to wash that half-cooked animal down. “Settled? He’s twenty. Is this Little House on the Prairie where people marry at fifteen and perish by age forty? Anyway, you don’t have to worry about me and Matthew. It’s not on my agenda to ‘settle’ with anyone at the moment.”
Claire seemed to pity me. “Gosh, that boy really didn’t tell you anything, did he?”
I sighed and put my steak down. “No, I’m beginning to think he didn’t.” I shifted my frozen rear end. “Know what? I need to find the little girls’ room.”
“Go down the hallway. First door on the right.” She turned back to the mountains and played with the ends of her golden hair. “I’ll be inside in a few minutes to get you moved into the guest room.”
I opened the patio door. The warmth of the interior beckoned like a cozy blanket. “Hey, aren’t you cold? I’m freaking freezing.”
She shook her head with a small laugh. “No, Tatum. I have thick skin.”
I followed Claire’s directions. In spite of her evident weirdness, I rather liked her. I was beginning to realize there would be no barn humping this week; at least none in which I participated. But that was okay. Somewhere between the desert and ponderosas, Matthew Landon had sort of lost his appeal.
Belatedly I realized I had found the wrong hallway. The door I opened led right to a man cave with a gigantic four poster bed. The room was neat and decorated with the same rustic austerity as the rest of the house. A long dresser stood on the far side of the wall but that wasn’t what caught my eye. On top of the dresser was a three foot high exquisite iron sculpture of a wolf. The artist was very talented; I felt as if the creature’s inanimate eyes were assessing me coolly and deciding whether to tear me limb from limb.
The bed was impeccably made up, covered with only a thin blanket, and I realized I had likely entered the personal den of Cade Landon. The thought brought a flush of heat as I recalled my body’s response to his earlier proximity. I also had not missed the way his eyes appraised every curve of my body. Suddenly I had brief flash of laying spread eagled on that great bed as the nude muscular form of Cade Landon hovered above me and prepared to plunge deep into my trembling center. I blushed and let out a shaky breath as the iron wolf regarded me accusingly. Was I nuts? Was I so desperate for action that I would even momentarily consider screwing…a dad??
I swiftly exited the bedroom and closed the door. I couldn’t believe what I’d been contemplating, brief though the flash of lust had been. Next thing you knew I’d be all Becca Blowjobbing it all over the place.
I backtracked and found the correct door with the bathroom on the other side. As I was washing my hands I heard the hiss of angry male voices. I switched off the sink and flicked the light off.
“You’ve been up my ass to mate since the day I turned eighteen.”
“And you thought you’d playing this human joke with that poor girl would force me to relent?”
“Aw come on. She ain’t got a clue. It was a dirty trick, pop. Bringing Claire here. Look, Tatum’s an okay chick but that’s all there is to it. Nothing is being jeopardized. ”
“Listen to me boy, that girl’s not as vacant as you think. And there’s something about her…”
“Why don’t you fucking mate with her then?”
“Watch your mouth. I’m-“
“What is it?”
“She’s listening. Shit, Matt.” Cade Landon let out a string of further obscenities and it sounded as if he punched the wall. I had virtually stopped breathing as I tried to puzzle through the odd father/son interaction.
“Tatum,” Cade called and the sound of his voice speaking my name lit another skip of my heart. “Come on out here, Tatum. The man of the house needs to have a chat with you.”
Chapter 3
There
was really nothing else I could do but open the door. Matthew looked at me worriedly as his father’s hooded dark eyes gave me that same undressed stare which caught me off balance earlier. I gazed back at him defiantly and his eyes flickered with surprise. I had the crazy idea he was able to read the wicked thoughts I’d been entertaining in his bedroom. “Go on, Matt,” Cade told his son. “I promised Tatum a talk.”
Matthew didn’t look at me again as he hurried away. The back door slammed a few seconds later. I clasped my hands behind my back and tried to appear cool and untroubled though my heart pounded like a drum. Cade Landon watched me for a long moment. I had no idea what to make of the conversation I had overheard. The Landon men seemed to own their own private terminology. Mate? I supposed I could chalk it up to the same regional and cultural differences which led petite Claire to rip through a bloody steak as if she were a zoo animal, but I felt a growing disquiet. Something was a little off about these folks.
Cade’s face had become inscrutable as he appeared to be silently wrestling which something I could only speculate on. I continued to meet his stare thought the nearness of his body and the subtle smoky scent which emanated from him left me a bit weak-kneed. Cade briefly rubbed the bearded stubble on his chin and then sighed, beckoning. “Follow me to the kitchen, Tatum.”
I was rewarded with a really long look at Cade Landon’s firm rear end as I trailed him like a puppy. The kitchen was empty. Cade flashed me a grin. “I’m sure you’re hungry. I hadn’t prepared lunch in consideration of a visitor such as yourself.” Cade removed his flannel shirt and tossed it onto a chair. His white t-shirt did nothing to hide the muscular swells of his chest and arms. My mouth watered. He began searching through cabinets and removing pots and pans. “Grab me the eggs from the fridge, would you?”
I obeyed and Cade began expertly cracking eggs into a bowl. He swiftly located a half dozen other ingredients and began tossing things into the bowl without measuring as a cast iron pan was heated with a thin coating of oil. He didn’t look up as he whisked everything together. “You want to ask some questions”
“How old are you?” It just popped out of my mouth. He still seemed awful youthful to be Matthew’s real father.
He laughed lightly. “That’s not a question I was expecting.” He let the whisk fall into the bowl and leaned on the counter with both hands, looking at me intently. “I was your age when Matthew was born.”
“So you’re, like, fortyish?”
“Close to it.”
“Oh, well that’s okay.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
I blushed. Forty seemed impossible eons away, as it probably did to all nineteen year olds. However, standing in Cade Landon’s kitchen and secretly yearning after his powerful body made it seem altogether reachable. Still, chronological age aside, Cade seemed to possess a raw youthful energy which eluded my own father despite his adolescent antics.
“Okay, for my next question. What’s your deal about Claire and Matthew?”
Cade shrugged. “She makes him happy. And he’s of the age where he needs to take a mate.”
Mate. There was that bizarrely feral word again. What did it mean? Screwing? Marrying? What?? “Look, I obviously walked into the middle of something. I feel kind of awkward.”
Cade resumed whisking the contents of the bowl. “Understandable. Would you like to leave?”
“I think maybe I should.”
He grinned at me rakishly. “I don’t want you to leave.”
And with that my libido lurched fiercely. I wanted to feather my fingers through his dark hair and press my nipples against his hard chest and then…and then…
“Tatum?” Cade was looking at me strangely.
“Yes,” I breathed.
“Would you do me a favor and stir the eggs?”
Red faced, I stepped over to the stove and began limply sifting the gooey egg mixture with a steel spatula. Typically I couldn’t cook my way out of a paper bag. Cade had moved over to the sink and was rinsing off a pile of spinach. Every nerve in my body was agonizingly aware of his proximity. This was nothing like the lukewarm effect Matthew had on me. The idea that I’d ever seriously entertained having sex with Matthew already seemed completely absurd. I’d been mildly attracted to him, in part because it seemed like I should be. But the feverish want my body suffered over the nearness of Cade Landon was incomparable. Even as I realized the terrible unlikelihood that he saw me as anything other than his son’s little college friend.
“No, like this.”
I nearly jumped out of my skin when his large hand suddenly covered mine. With his fingers firmly around my wrist he guided the movement of the spatula, scraping the sides of the pan. With his other hand he tossed in the additional ingredients and then paused, not moving but not taking away his hand either. I was terribly conscious of his broad chest at my back and wanted only to melt into his heat. As we watched the bubbling egg mixture his strong thumb began casually stroking the inside of my wrist. One did not think of the lower hand as a distinctly erogenous zone but the stroke of his fingers across that intensely sensitive skin threatened to render me delirious. As if that weren’t enough, I felt the warm press of his other hand around my waist. He squeezed the generous curve of my hip and inserted a thumb into the top of my waistband.
I couldn’t breathe. I was a hapless puddle of erotic mush. Nothing in my history of bland semi-sexual encounters had summoned this suffocating crush of heat. I had assumed such urgency was the stuff of fiction.
Cade squeezed my body against his more forcefully and I could feel him now. The hardened shaft of his need pressed into my backside. “Now flip,” he commanded and seized my wrist more tightly, guiding the movement of the spatula to catch the blanket of eggs and flipping the mass over to cook on the other side.
I could feel his breath on my neck. His hand dropped my wrist. The other hand left my waist. I was completely unprepared for what happened next. Cade’s hands reached across my front and then skated down, nestling in the warm V between my legs. Dimly I heard my own gasp as he caressed me, first softly and then with more pressure. His nimble fingers located that intense bundle of nerves which I’d played with once or twice and impatiently I clutched his hands, guiding his movement in the way I needed. I could feel his ready organ between the layers of clothing separating us and vaguely I realized we were in the Landon family kitchen in broad daylight and that a variety people could conceivably wander in. Somehow I didn’t care.
Suddenly, Cade’s hands left my body. He removed the pan from the heated burner and switched off the stove. I gripped the counter, unsure my jellylike legs would support me. Every inch of my skin which had shuddered under his touch still fizzed with electricity.
Cade opened the cabinet above the sink and removed a plain white plate and a wine glass. He scraped the contents of the pan onto the plate and placed it in front of me. Without a word he uncorked a bottle of wine and poured it into the glass. That too he placed before me.
“I’m not twenty one,” I managed to say. “It’s against the law.”
Cade Landon regarded me with amusement. “Tatum, there are many things which are against the law.” And with that he left me in the kitchen with my meal and my unsatisfied passions.
I took a bite of the egg dish. It was good. I had a dim memory of eating something similar when I was a kid, in the distant days when my mother cooked and my father came home every night.
Every last bite was finished in short order. I was sipping wine and puzzling through my thoughts, trying to make sense of the dry hump fest in front of the stove. Matthew’s younger brother, Zane, entered the kitchen. For a heart stopping second I saw only the dark hair I thought it was Cade. Zane seemed surprised to find me there.
I tried to sound like I hadn’t been on the precipice of orgasm moments before. “Your father was nice enough to cook especially for me.”
Zane nodded, looking vaguely troubled. “Did he say anything to you?”
&nb
sp; “About what?”
Zane shifted and appeared nervous. “About us.”
Now it was my turn to look troubled. What the hell had Matthew Landon gotten me into anyway? “Why does everyone seem to think I should be in on some big secret?”
Zane was thoughtful for a moment. “Well, if you’re staying I guess you’ll see everything at the party tomorrow.”
“Party? Like a Christmas party?”
He smiled. “Hmm, more or less.”
“You going to give me a hint about what it is I’m in for? I mean, do you all morph into zombies after dark?”
Zane found that funny. “No, not zombies.” He stuffed his hands into his pockets and, still laughing, left the kitchen. I stared after him for a moment and then finished the glass of wine.
Chapter 4
I still had no idea where to find my living quarters for the duration of my stay and I was unwilling at this point to begin opening doors willy nilly. Whether from the wine, from the mysterious manners I’d encountered or from the residual feel of Cade Landon’s hands, I felt very unsettled. I stepped into the hallway intending to head out the back and locate Claire. I jumped when I glimpsed my flushed face in a small wall mirror. My eyes were oddly bright and my cheeks red as apples. I needed a shower. I needed a nap. I needed Cade Landon’s persistent fingers fondling me again.
The only hint of Claire on the back patio was a few drops of steak blood which had dripped onto the flagstones. The weather had turned sharply colder yet and was imbued with a heaviness which was absent from the dry air of the southern part of the state. The distant gray clouds had moved closer, reinforcing Matthew’s predictions of a snow sky.
Matthew’s truck remained exactly where he’d parked it earlier. The Chevy which had been recklessly driven by the twins had been deposited at an angle about fifty yards away. Beyond the small clearing surrounding the house and barn were thick expansive woods. Standing there alone under the gray winter sky and hearing only the whistle of the frigid wind it was easy to imagine a thousand malevolent eyes staring at me from those woods. Julia From New York said I frightened too easily. None of her more cosmopolitan friends screamed like howler monkeys when that chick from Paranormal Activity morphed into a demon with rabies. I preferred to think I’m just imaginative.