by Nella Tyler
I broke away from the kiss just long enough for him to get the fabric over my head and then we were kissing again, touching each other all over, everything getting hotter and hotter the more and more turned on I became.
I felt out of practice, awkward, but so tuned into the moment that it almost didn’t matter as I struggled to get Cade undressed, as well, to reveal some of the skin I’d wanted so badly to see. Bit by bit, we stripped each other down, until we were standing there, both of us in nothing but underwear.
We both broke away from the kiss at the same moment, and I could see Cade’s hazel eyes darkening as he looked me over from head to toe. For just an instant, I felt a little bit self-conscious. I knew my tummy and hips had stretch marks on them, ever since I’d been pregnant with Addie, no matter how much cocoa butter I slathered on, but as Cade lifted his hands up to cup my breasts, he met my gaze.
“You are so fucking beautiful,” he told me, smiling slightly. “Even better than I thought you’d be.”
“You, too,” I said weakly, taking in the sight of his rippling muscles under the tanned skin, the dark hair flecked across his chest, the sharp, defined abs and thick arms.
He pulled me close to him, and I could feel the hard ridge of his cock straining at the fabric of his boxer briefs. He felt big—huge—in comparison to anyone I’d ever been with, including Titan.
Cade’s lips dragged along the line of my jaw, down to my throat, and he nipped and nibbled at my sensitive skin while he teased my nipples between his fingers, sending little crackling jolts of pleasure through my body, seemingly straight to my pussy.
I shivered against him, touching him everywhere, a little too shy to quite explore the bulge of his erection just yet, but kneading the muscles in his back, playing with his hair, trailing my fingers down along the line of his chest and abs. Cade gently led me the last few steps towards the bed, and I let him lay me down on the soft sheets.
“Anytime you want me to stop, or slow down, or anything, you let me know,” he murmured against my neck, just below my ear.
“O-okay,” I said, nodding. I twisted and writhed underneath him as Cade began to trail his lips down from my ear, along the column of my throat, past my collarbones. He covered every inch of my breasts with kisses, taking his time, even teasing the undersides with his lips, before claiming each one of my nipples in turn with his mouth.
I moaned out as he sucked and licked, worshipping me with his lips and tongue as pleasure crackled through every nerve of my body seeming straight to my already-wet pussy. I let my hands wander over Cade’s body as he continued down from my breasts, tickling my ribs with his hot breath, kissing and nipping at my abdomen, lingering at my hips to nuzzle against me with his stubble-rough face.
He spread my legs and shifted down between them, and I took a deep breath, shuddering with anticipation. I could feel his hot breath grazing my inner thighs, barely brushing along the front of my panties, and it was driving me crazy.
I grabbed at his head, at his shoulders, and my fingers tangled in his surprisingly soft hair even as he pressed a delicate kiss along my inner thigh. He hooked his fingers in the waistband of my panties and I lifted my hips up off of the bed as Cade tugged the fabric down, taking away the last barrier between my body and his.
I had no idea where my panties went, but a moment later, I didn’t care. Cade buried his face against my pussy, nuzzling, licking, and sucking, and I cried out at the overwhelming pleasure that rushed through me at the feeling of his lips and tongue.
“Oh-oh, oh…fuck! Fuck…yes…” my breath caught in my throat and my back arched as Cade deepened the contact, teasing me with the tip of his tongue.
He barely avoided my clit, swirling his tongue around the aching little bead, dipping down to my inner labia when I thought I couldn’t take any more teasing. I twisted and arched and tugged at his hair, feeling the tension building up deep down between my hips. It had been so long since anyone had done anything sexual with me—even Titan, before he left me, had barely had any real desire for sex with me—that I wanted to savor the moment as much as possible.
But it seemed like an eternity before Cade brought the tip of his tongue up against my throbbing clit. When he did, flickering the rough bit of muscle against the bead of nerves, I came almost immediately, thrashing, moaning, and crying out, grabbing at his head and shoulders, tangling my fingers hopelessly in his hair as wave after wave of pleasure washed through me. He kept up his attentions, sucking and licking, and it felt so good that I was almost overwhelmed, almost frightened by how intensely I was coming.
As the spasms of pleasure started to ease, Cade began to slow down, as if he knew exactly what was happening to me, as if he understood perfectly how I felt. He didn’t stop all at once, but just gradually pulled back, his tongue sliding up and down along my labia lazily.
I panted and gasped as I shivered in the aftermath of the climax, my whole body completely limp, and when Cade pulled back completely, pressing a kiss to my hip as he emerged from between my legs, I managed to open my eyes. “It’s been a while, huh?”
I giggled, unable to help myself. “Maybe,” I said, looking at him through my eyelashes. “Not that it’s any of your business.”
Cade laughed and covered my body with his. I could still feel the hard ridge of his cock, straining at the fabric of his boxer briefs. The heat and hardness of him pressing against my thigh, my hip, was almost enough to overcome the need I had to catch my breath, to let my heart slow down a bit before I did anything more.
“It is my business, if only because I need to know how slow to take it,” he murmured. “I don’t care who you slept with last, but if you need me to be gentle, I want to know.”
I blushed, burying my face against his neck. It was so unlike anything I’d had with Titan. I hadn’t let myself really think about that while Cade was between my legs before, but there was no real comparison: Cade was a million times better than Titan had been, even at his best.
Titan had never been all that enthusiastic about going down on me, although he’d wanted blow jobs almost every time we’d been together. There had been more than a few times during our relationship when I’d made myself fake an orgasm just so that he would finish up.
“You don’t have to be that gentle,” I told Cade. Feeling daring, I wrapped my legs around his waist and pushed my hips down, rubbing against the hard ridge of his erection. I was already starting to get turned on again—I almost couldn’t believe how quickly it had happened. “I’ve been waiting so long that I don’t even care anymore.”
Cade chuckled and rocked his hips against mine, pressing himself against me. I gasped at the feeling of his hot, hard cock, covered by fabric, rubbing up against my clit.
“You are such a little tease,” he told me. “Putting off the impression of this demure, sweet little thing, when you’ve been waiting all this time.” He kissed me on the lips hungrily, shifting and moving, and I felt the fabric of his boxer briefs slipping away. “You should have said something sooner.”
I laughed breathlessly. “I invited you into my house,” I pointed out. I shivered as I felt Cade’s cock rubbing against my soaking wet labia.
It was bigger than Titan’s had been—that much I was certain of—and in spite of how I tried to push any comparison to my ex out of my mind, a thrill of excitement and nervousness surged through me at the thought.
“You did,” Cade agreed. He kissed me again and his fingers brushed against my body as he guided his cock against my skin. “I am such an idiot for not agreeing.”
He thrust into me slowly, filling me up inch by inch, and for a moment, I couldn’t even move. Cade felt so good, so thick and hot inside of me. I wrapped my legs tighter around his waist and struggled to catch my breath, and he held still, buried deep inside of me. “You okay?” I nodded, looking up into his hazel eyes.
“Better than that,” I told him. “Okay—let’s…” I didn’t even know how to end the sentence, but he understood me
right away.
He began moving inside of me, rocking his hips. I twisted and writhed in counterpoint to his movements, pushing my hips down to meet his thrusts, taking him deeper and deeper. We fell into a rhythm that I couldn’t have resisted even if I had wanted to. The friction between us felt so good, and I wanted to hold back—I wanted to savor it, again—but Cade’s body pulled me into his tidal flow, and it seemed like only a few minutes before the tension was reaching the breaking point between my hips.
My second climax wasn’t quite as intense as the first, but as the waves of pleasure washed through me again, I held onto Cade as if for life itself, shaking and shuddering, barely even noticing when he came, too.
I had no idea how long we’d been going at it, but as soon as I caught my breath, I realized that I’d been away from home long enough; if I didn’t get back soon, Tuck or Dad would definitely notice. If it weren’t for Addie, though, I might have decided that I’d stay anyway.
Chapter Eighteen
Cade
“Are you fellas ready for a break?” The sound of Autumn’s voice sent a jolt through me. Ever since she’d gone home with me after the movies, every time I saw her or heard her, I felt the same rush of desire I’d had right before we’d started making out.
“I could use a breather,” I replied, setting aside the sprayer in my hands.
“Damn hot day,” Tuck observed. “What’d you bring us, dear sister?”
“I figured since it was hot, you probably wouldn’t want anything too hot to eat,” she explained, setting down a big picnic basket on a stepstool she’d brought with her. “So I fried up some chicken—it’s room temperature now—and made some German potato salad, and some macaroni salad.”
She looked at me, and I felt a jolt of heat again. I smiled at her as privately as I could. To the best of my knowledge, no one in her family—especially her father—knew about what had happened between us the day we’d gone into town together.
“I think it got a little hotter just now,” I said quietly. Autumn chuckled, biting her bottom lip and looking away.
“Are you sure it’s not just you?” she opened the basket and pulled out a big thermos. “Brought some strawberry lemonade, too—should cool you off.”
“Is it as sweet as you are?” I knew I probably shouldn’t be so direct—but I hoped that maybe it would pass by unnoticed by Bob or Tuck. Tucker seemed to be more interested in getting his hands rinsed off and digging into the food, so for the moment, I was pretty sure that I was safe.
Bob came over from a few rows away, and we settled in the shade of one of the trees at the end of the field to start eating. Autumn hung around, for which I was grateful.
She was as pretty as ever, in a loose cotton dress and a pair of boots, her hair pulled back from her face. She’d left Addie back at the house.
“What are you up to today, girl?” Bob Nelson helped himself to a fried chicken wing and looked at his daughter.
“Mom has decided in her infinite wisdom that we need to clear out the attic,” Autumn said tartly. “We spent the whole morning on it, just about.”
“And yet you still had time to fry up chicken and make salads,” I pointed out. “And, dress up for us.” Autumn rolled her eyes, blushing slightly.
“Well, I made the salads last night and hid them out in the outside fridge,” she said. “After I got out of the shower, I fried up the chicken and made the lemonade. Simple as pie.”
“I could use a shower,” I said, tugging at my sweat-soaked shirt. “Maybe I ought to just hose myself off right now, come to think of it.”
Autumn snorted. “It’d give you relief for all of ten minutes before the heat made the wet clothes unbearable,” she told me playfully. “Better by far to duck behind a tree and take a hose shower.”
I raised an eyebrow. “You’re a mother,” I said, playfully tart. “You shouldn’t be suggesting that strange men go get naked behind trees. People might think the worst of you.”
“I was just making a suggestion,” she said primly. “Since I didn’t want you to be wandering around my father’s fields in wet, stiff clothes.”
“Getting mighty flirtatious between the two of you,” Tuck said, looking at me sharply.
“Just normal banter,” I said with a shrug, eating a bite of potato salad.
“I’m not allowed to have a nice conversation with someone?” Autumn gave her brother a firm look, and then glanced at her father doubtfully.
“Depends on how nice,” Tuck said. Bob’s phone rang in his pocket, and I watched him gather up his paper plate and walk away to have his conversation.
“Something wrong with your lemonade, Tuck? It sounds like it’s made you sour,” Autumn asked her brother.
“Nothing wrong with the lemonade; just don’t exactly appreciate my sister distracting one of our employees.”
“I don’t feel distracted,” I said, shrugging off the idea of it. “We’re on a break, anyway, aren’t we?” Tuck held my gaze for a minute, and I was sure he was going to say something more, but then he looked down at his plate and picked up another piece of fried chicken to take a bite.
Autumn reminded us to gather our trash when we were done and to remember to bring the picnic basket back with us when we came back to the house for the day. I could tell that Tuck’s comments had rattled her—they weren’t like his usual jokes regarding her “crush” on me.
I felt more than a little uneasy, too, and as soon as Autumn headed back to the house, I finished off the food on my plate as quickly as possible, not saying anything at all to Tuck.
I had never quite figured out what his issue with me was. Even before he’d had any real reason to suspect there was something between his sister and me, he’d had that conversation with his father that I’d overheard. I wasn’t sure if he was just against the idea of a farmhand working for his father at all or of it was something specific to me.
But I knew I couldn’t afford to lose the job at this point. Into the summer, it was difficult to get another job if I got fired from this one, and I wasn’t about to give Tuck the satisfaction of getting his father to fire me for cause, anyway. Whatever it was that he had against me, I was determined not to let Tuck win.
I gathered up my trash and put it in the bag that Autumn had left with the picnic basket. “Not a bad meal, all things considered,” I said, setting the trash bag aside and making sure that everything else was back in the basket. I was pretty sure that it would more or less keep for a few hours yet—there were cold packs in the basket, and the choices Autumn had made wouldn’t turn as easily—and we might get hungry for more later.
“Pretty good meal,” Tuck agreed. I cleaned off my hands, found my sprayer, and got back to work as quickly as I could, remembering the look that had come over Bob Nelson’s face at Tuck’s pointed remarks.
I felt irritable towards Tuck for and I was sure that Autumn was no happier than I was, but I couldn’t do anything about it apart from showing that I wasn’t distracted, that I was working just as hard as ever.
I was pretty sure that no one other than me and Autumn knew for sure that we’d had sex, or that anything had happened between us more than the most innocent movie date possible. I doubted that she’d even told her mom, much less her brother or her dad; but if they started to suspect that there was more than flirtation between us, things could go downhill fast.
I got to work, spraying my allotted row with fertilizer, focusing intently on my work. I heard Tuck walking through one of the adjoining rows, though the corn was a bit too high to actually see him, and I assumed that at some point, Robert Nelson had finished his meal and gotten back to work, as well.
I thought about Autumn; she was vulnerable, and I knew it. She was living with her parents, and I could understand that they wanted to protect her, but she was a grown woman, and it wasn’t as though she should have to be single forever. She would need someone to help support her emotionally, beyond just her parents, while she raised Addie. And, Adelyn des
erved a father. Not that I was considering myself for the job, but it seemed like everyone wanted to protect Autumn so much that they weren’t willing to let her live her life.
As I came to the end of one of my rows, I looked up and saw that Bob Nelson was watching me intently. “How many rows have you gotten done?”
I shrugged. “About five, since lunch,” I replied. I wasn’t all that sure how long it had been since our break, but I knew it hadn’t been all that long. “Think I’ll get another ten or so done before we knock off for the day.”
Bob Nelson nodded curtly and started off towards his own corner of the field once more, without saying anything about why he’d been watching me. Even without a comment on it, though, I was pretty sure I knew the cause: Tuck’s stupid remarks.
I took a deep breath through the face-cover I wore to keep from inhaling fertilizer and turned my attention back onto the work in front of me. I couldn’t do anything better to testify on my own behalf than to do the best work possible, especially while Bob Nelson was watching me so intently. I couldn’t afford to screw up.
Chapter Nineteen
Autumn
It was just after six in the afternoon, and I was still more than a little unnerved by the lunch break I’d taken with Tuck, Cade, and Dad.
I had heard the guys coming back to the house at the end of the day and taken my dinner back to the guesthouse, telling Mom that since Addie seemed to be feeling a little off, I’d spare her the excitement of dinner at the table with so many people and feed her at my place. It wasn’t that I didn’t want to risk seeing Cade again, but that I didn’t want for Tuck to see me and Cade together for a while.
It was obvious to me that Tuck had some kind of issue with the possibility of Cade and me getting together, and I didn’t want to give him any kind of reason to get hostile.
I had to wonder what it was that was setting my brother off. It couldn’t just be a matter of Cade and me flirting, Tuck had never had an issue with me flirting with anyone before. I could almost wish he’d taken issue with me flirting with Titan when I’d first gotten together with my ex—but then, nobody had known any better than I had that Titan would end up cheating on me and abandoning me when I was in my second trimester of carrying his child.