She’s not wearing her shirt anymore.
Instead, she’s in this painfully thin camisole thing—maybe what she was wearing underneath her silk shirt to begin with. I can see the lace whorls of her bra through it. I can see the slight shadows where her nipples are.
I can barely breathe. Between the tight jeans and the hardly-even-there camisole, I can visually trace every three-dimensional curve of her. The places where she’s full and soft. The places that would give under my touch, under my body if I covered her frame with mine and slowly entered her.
When I was thirteen, we had to look at old paintings in art class, and lots of them had naked women. But not like the naked women you’d see in the dirty magazines a guy might steal from his old man. The women in these paintings were so womanly, with soft rolls of flesh around their bellies and dimpled asses and thighs. With the coy vees between their legs so plump and inviting. Some of the kids giggled when we looked at the pictures. But me, I couldn’t breathe right, couldn’t stop staring. After I raced home and did my chores for the day, I locked myself in my room and clumsily shoved my hand down my pants until I climaxed in a juvenile mess thinking of those plump pussies with their shyly pouting lips. Those navels buried deep in bellies you knew would be so soft, so giving, and those thighs and upper arms you could grab and grab and grab…
Ever since then, I knew. The way other boys had types—freckled or blond or dark-haired—I had a type too. Stretch marks are my freckles, and dimples and rolls are my hair color. I never worried so much about the why; it seems to me like men never have to defend liking blondes, after all. It’s just my type. It’s just what I like.
And fuck me, Ireland is it. Like every Rubens painting brought to life, with that plump shape between her legs, with her camisole revealing the places where her jeans can’t contain her.
“You okay?” she asks as she finishes descending the stairs, her eyebrows furrowed a little. “You look upset.”
Not upset, I want to growl. Fucking horny.
But I manage not to. I tilt my head toward the kitchen, where a back door leads to a screened-in porch and the spare pair of boots. After I find her some clean socks of mine—which bunch around the ankles they’re so big on her little feet—and we get her into the boots, we head outside. I was so distracted by Ireland’s body that I didn’t notice she brought down her camera with her, but it comes out now as we walk around, with her pointing it at various things and then fiddling with the settings and muttering to herself and pointing it at the same things again. It slows down the tour, but I don’t mind. I like watching her. I like how she looks in boots, silhouetted by distant hills and dark clouds, and I like how Greta plops down into the grass at her feet whenever she stops to mess with her camera. I like how the wind kisses the hair off her shoulders. I like everything about this moment, and if I had a fancy camera of my own, I’d take a picture too.
Finally we get to the old barn. Since I use the new, metal building farther out back for my big equipment, this one is mainly empty save for the tractor I use to mow and a single cow named Clementine. There’s also a makeshift office in the corner—just a desk and a lamp, really—that I use to work on administrative stuff when the weather’s nice. Or when Ben’s in one of his moods and needs space.
Ireland stops by Clementine’s stall. “This is your only cow?”
“This isn’t a dairy farm, peach. We do wheat and some alfalfa, and that’s about it.”
“But,” she says, peering into the stall where Clem is currently flicking flies off her back with her tail and staring at the wall, “I thought farms were supposed to have lots of animals.”
“Here, we’ve just got Greta-dog, Clem, and too many stray cats,” I say. Way too many. But I’ve never had the heart to do anything about them. Ben brings some up to the county vet when he has time to get them fixed, but it never seems to matter.
“Then why the one cow? For milk or something?”
“I get my milk from the SuperSaver.” I laugh. “No, Clem was my Four-H bucket calf.”
Ireland blinks at me as if I’ve just spoken in ancient Greek. “Four what?”
“Four-H—it’s like—” God, how to explain Four-H to someone who doesn’t know about it? Growing up, it had been just as much a part of life as church or the annual Holm parade. “It’s a youth program all over the country, and I know they got lots of things you can do, but most kids out here did their plant and animal programs. When I was a boy, I had to raise a bucket calf, which is Clem here. Fed her from a bottle and everything,” I say fondly, joining Ireland at the stall door. “She’s plenty old now—older than most cows live to be, so she probably won’t be here with us for much longer.”
Clem huffs at that, which makes Ireland smile.
The wind is strong enough to make the wood of the barn creak around us, and outside the open door, I can see the first streaks of scattered silver rain. Won’t be long before the storm’s really here, and I send a quick prayer up to heaven that it won’t tear up the fields or damage any of the equipment. Sometimes it feels like I can never get the weather going for me the right way—I need the sunshine but not the excessive heat that bakes the ground up drier than cornbread, and I need the rain but not the kind that comes with wind intent on flattening my barn.
Camera raised, Ireland snaps a picture of the scowling clouds framed by the door, and as she walks toward the opening, still snapping away, she becomes framed by it. Her curvy rear in those jeans, the dramatic inward dip of her waist, those bare arms…
I drift toward her without really knowing what I’m doing, my mind full of her and my body full of something hot and restless. She’s just outside the doorway now, taking a picture and then frowning at the camera screen, and the indecisive rain has left a few plump droplets along her collarbone.
I’m transfixed by those raindrops on her skin.
You should ask. You should ask. Ask, ask, ask.
But I don’t ask, and there’s no excuse for it, and I deserve whatever hell she heaps on my head afterward. I know I do.
I reach out and touch a raindrop on her collarbone.
A breath stabs into her, and her startled blue gaze meets mine as her body shivers under my touch. I know how she feels—my own breath is stabbing at me, and I can feel every part of me trembling to touch her. Every part of me except for the one part that’s rock hard and throbbing rather than trembling.
“Caleb?” She whispers the question and lets out a small puff of breath when I raise my rain-wet finger to my mouth.
“Yes, peach?” I swipe another raindrop off her collarbone, and another, enjoying the way the water then rolls down her chest and underneath her camisole.
Her nipples pucker into tight buds, and I think I forget my own name.
“I thought…” she says, all dazed and woozy sounding, “I thought that you—”
But she doesn’t finish her sentence because I kiss her.
I kiss her hard and fierce, giving in to the hunger swelling up inside me, and I do what I’ve been longing to do all day and slide my arms around her waist and pull her body flush to mine.
I groan into her mouth the moment our forms meet. She’s just as luscious and warm as I knew she would be, and my hard cock nestles right against her belly. Her full tits press hard against my chest, and I yank her even closer to feel more of them. More of her. Swallowing her kisses and moans all the while, demanding entrance to her mouth and then exploring inside the same way I want to tongue her cunt later—with flickers and licks and long, massaging strokes. And she opens to me so beautifully, arching her back into my hold and sliding her arms around my neck, kissing me back just as thoroughly as I kiss her.
My fingers twine through her hair, and I walk her back so she’s pressed against the outside of the barn, raising my other arm to protect her bare shoulders from the rough wood. And then I really kiss her, pressing her hard against the wall, making her feel how tall and strong I am, making her feel how hard I ache for her. I sli
p a thigh between her legs, and she shudders at the contact against her pussy, rocks against me, and gasps into my mouth.
I drop my mouth from hers to the point of her chin and then up her jawline to her ear.
“What was it, peach?” I ask her as I nibble on her earlobe.
“What…what was what?” she asks hazily, still rocking against my thigh.
“You said before that you thought something about me, but you didn’t say what.”
“Oh,” she breathes with a little laugh. “It seems silly now. Forget about it.”
I’ve got my face in her neck now, and shit, she smells so good. Like flowers and all sorts of expensive womanly things. The kind of smell that makes you think of stores that have pianos and chandeliers inside them. “Tell me, Ireland,” I say, nipping at her neck and then licking it until she shivers. “Say it.”
I don’t want her to censor herself around me. I don’t want to be a reason for that twisting, self-mocking smile, and I don’t want to be a reason for her to bite back what she really wants to say. Ever, and that means starting now.
She sighs happily at my attentions to her neck and then admits, “I thought you and Ben were a couple.”
I stop.
Freeze, really.
And pull away.
She lets out a wrecked exhale as I do, as if it pains her to be separated from my body. Which, same. My own body is pulsing and aching and screaming to be back against hers. My mouth is lonely, and my thigh is cold without the hot weight of her cunt on it.
But still I pull back and run a hand through my hair. “Shit,” I mumble.
She blinks at me. “I didn’t mean to offend you,” she says. “I just thought roommate might be some kind of euphemism, you know? And really, if you are offended, then I’m sorry because that’s really narrow-minded of you—”
“I’m not offended,” I interrupt. “Hell, Ben’s sister is gay. Of course I’m not offended. I just…”
You just what, Caleb? Were about to ignore years of loyalty to Ben so you could dry hump next to a barn like a teenager?
Ireland is looking at me carefully now, and that kind of scrutiny plus her kiss-swollen lips and mussed hair is enough to make my torso clench again. Fuck, I want to kiss her senseless. I want to press myself back against her, but I can’t.
Ben and I start things together. That means I need to wait for him.
“So you and Ben,” she says. “Just roommates?” There’s a hint of vulnerability in her voice as she asks, and I know what she really means.
She means: am I taken? Am I fucking around with her when I have no right to?
The problem is that I don’t know what the right word is for Ben and me. We’re not gay in the way Ben’s sister is, and we’re definitely not straight. But even bisexual feels incomplete to me, like it’s one note on a piano, and what Ben and I share is a complicated but quiet melody.
A melody that needs a third person.
Shit, I’m no good at metaphors either.
“We’re not just roommates,” I tell Ireland honestly. “But it’s not like… There’s more to it than that.” I run my hand over my hair again, feeling frustrated that I’m not better with words.
I’m a simple man. I like big girls, Kansas sunrises, and my dog, Greta. I like sharing those things with my best friend.
And as such a simple guy, I’m no good at explaining anything more complicated than a missing ball bearing.
“Oh,” Ireland says, clearly still confused. She bites her lip, and my eyes fix on that spot like it holds the answer to every question I’ve ever wanted to know. “So this kiss…is it a secret from Ben? Because I don’t like being a secret.”
A small flame of hurt shines in her eyes, and I realize she’s been someone’s secret before. I wish I could find whoever it is and wring their neck, but I set that aside for now. I touch her chin and lift her face to mine so I can look her in the eyes. “It’s not a secret, I promise. What I feel for you isn’t a secret either; Ben already knows. But he and I—well, maybe it’s just easier to explain when he gets here.”
“Try me now,” she says stubbornly, but at that moment a huge gust of wind catches the barn door on the other side, slamming it back against the wall with an ominous crack. More raindrops slice through the air, and I drop a kiss on her forehead.
“Gotta batten down the barn,” I say. “And bring some stuff inside from the office. I promise, Ben will be here soon and we’ll talk through everything, but until then, you should go inside the house and get you and your camera out of the rain.”
I think she wants to argue more, but the racing wind makes it near impossible to argue, and she looks like she knows it. And I can tell from the way her hand tightens around her camera that she has very little interest in discovering how waterproof it is. With a frustrated shake of her head, she heads back to the house, Greta following at her heels without so much as a goodbye tail wag for me.
And even through the rain, I can still see the hypnotic denim-covered sway of Ireland’s peach-shaped ass. God, what it would be like to peel those wet jeans off her.
Ben can’t get here soon enough.
Chapter Five
Ireland
I should be pissed, but when I get inside the storm-dark house, I only feel confused. Aroused. Achy in a way I never felt with Brian…or anyone else, for that matter. I stand there for a moment, unsure of what to do, simply watching the rain coming down in front of the porch. And then I turn back to the barn. I see Caleb outside, the mouthwateringly huge muscles in his shoulders and back straining as he struggles to close the barn door against the wind.
Jesus, everything about him. Those broad shoulders and sculpted arms, those flat abs and that thick erection I can still feel against my belly. It stretched all the way to his hip, a massive monster, and it wanted me.
I wanted it.
And then there’s the way he touched and looked at me—all lust and grabbing and possessive. I’ve never been touched like that, like someone couldn’t get enough of my body, and the parts of my body that Brian always avoided—hell, the parts I avoid touching myself—Caleb put his hands all over. He cupped my hips and slid his hands over the places where my waist turned into the soft convexity of my belly. He ran his hands over my ass and my thighs. His palm flexed against the parts of my back where my bra dug into my skin. And the whole time, I felt nothing from him but hot, throbbing desire.
This is bonkers, right? This whole thing. And yet it doesn’t feel crazy at all. It feels necessary. Natural. The kiss and this hot longing I have in the aftermath. I try to remind myself that I started the day wanting to be professional, that technically this is a work trip, that Caleb is my boss’s friend.
That it’s unseemly to need to fuck under these conditions.
But watching Caleb in his wet T-shirt as he wrestles against the wind… Well, I’m willing to set aside professional seemliness just this once. After all, isn’t it like a known fact that men fuck on business trips all the time? Why not me? If I’m single and Caleb and Ben are…well, whatever version of single exists for them?
Outside, the barn door is finally closed, and I watch Caleb go around the side to where I’m guessing the smaller door is, the one close to his rustic office setup. He said he had things to gather. He said Ben would be here soon.
I don’t want to wait. Not for explanations and not for fixing the coiling need at the apex of my thighs.
It’s more complicated than you think, Mrs. Parry said.
Well, it is certainly shaping up to be that.
I push open the door, and Greta looks up from her bed near the wood-burning stove, glances at the rain-soaked world outside, and lays her head back down, as if to say thanks, but no thanks. With a smile, I head out into the rain, cutting a breathless and wet jog across the short grass to the barn, having to circle around the long way to find the small door. It’s propped open, and the growing roar of the rain is enough to mask my footsteps as I come inside.
; And I thank God for that the minute my eyes adjust to the dim light inside the barn, because Caleb is standing slightly angled away from me with his jeans hanging open around his hips, the muscles in his arms bunching as he strokes and pumps at his straining cock.
Sweet merciful Jesus, the man is big. Long enough that the swollen head moves out of his giant hand as he fucks his fist back to the root and thick enough to make me swallow in a combination of lust and oh shit, because taking that part of him inside me would be a feat in itself.
The taut flex of his hips and the top of his ass where it peeks above his slackened belt is just the garnish on this masculine feast in front of me, and if I thought I was wet and aroused before, it’s nothing like now. Now, when my nipples actually hurt they’re so hard and I can feel the emptiness in my core like a living, keening thing.
I creep around the corner into an empty stall so I can stay hidden in case he turns—which is wrong. It’s so wrong. In real life I’d never watch someone without their consent. But I felt him as we kissed. I felt his hands and his erection and his insatiable hunger for my body. And he didn’t make it sound like he regretted our kiss, only that he wanted to wait for Ben…so maybe he wouldn’t mind that I’m watching?
Maybe he’d even like it?
Except then again, maybe he wouldn’t? Because he did lie to me, and he’s not in here waiting for Ben by shuffling stuff around his office—he’s in here jerking off his beautiful dick without me.
And okay, maybe it’s a little bananas that I’m hurt by that, given that we just met and it’s not exactly like I want him to go Clan of the Cave Bear on me and fuck me right in the wet grass…but also it’s not exactly like I don’t want it either? Sex with my ex-boyfriend was lights-out, missionary, and always came with this weird philanthropic vibe, like he was doing me a favor by fucking me. But with Caleb, it was like I made him wild, like I made him hungry for more of me, and seeing him do something as brutally primal as beat his cock the minute I’m not around him is rather exhilarating.
Misadventures of a Curvy Girl Page 4