But that would be just weird.
They turned onto Kady’s street and Sebastian slowed. “Which one?”
Kady sat up straighter. “Third from the right. The one that looks like it’s been dunked in pea soup.”
He pulled the Jeep into the driveway and set the parking break but left the engine running. “So…”
“So…”
“Can’t believe you’re leaving tomorrow.”
“Carkeek will always be home to me. I’ll be back.”
“Better write,” he mock-scolded.
“I’ve got your email.”
Sebastian didn’t seem able to tear his eyes away. Sat grinning at the girl like a lovesick dodo head. “So…”
“So…”
Now why couldn’t she fall in love with a great guy like Sebastian? Why did she give her heart away to someone who had no place in his life to keep it? Kady had always known the answer to that old adage, should you be with the one you love or the one who loves you? But she was beginning to wonder what it would be like to be on the receiving end.
She glanced up at the house. “You want to come in? My parents are at a movie.” Hoping it didn’t sound too suggestive she added, “We’ll have the whole house to ourselves.”
Sebastian gave Kady a speculative look but the decision was a no-brainer. He turned off the engine.
“So that was the grand tour in a nutshell,” Kady said as they returned to the living room. “Sure you don’t water something to drink? No trouble to make coffee.”
“Well, maybe a glass of water?”
“One water coming up. Have a seat on the couch. You can turn TV on if you want.”
A minute later Kady was handing him an Aquafina. “Oh, uh, thanks. Tap water would’ve been fine, though.”
She chuckled and flopped down beside him. “What do you think you’re drinking.”
After a quick sip, Sebastian held the bottle between his knees. With Kady sitting so close, he was feeling weirdly nervous and hyper-aware of her heat, her heady sweet scent, her shallow breathing. He could even hear the rapid thumping of her heart. Oh wait, that was his.
He glanced around the room. “So…”
“So…”
“Nice house.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Your folks lived here long?”
“Uh-huh.”
“How many years ha—”
Kady’s mouth ate his next word as she pounced on him.
Sebastian fell backward onto the overstuffed cushions, his dream girl stretched out on top of him, their mouths meeting in a frenzied, awkward mating of clashing teeth, flailing tongues and flying spittle. The feel of her breasts against his chest made him groan and his hands without thought grabbed her ass.
Positioning Kady so they were aligned groin to groin, he lifted his pelvis slightly and with a firm grip on her butt cheeks began moving her up and down the length of his bulge. “God, you feel as beautiful as you look,” he groaned, increasing the rhythm.
Kady was trying desperately to feel something. She’d always considered Sebastian attractive but now needed to find him arousing. To her disappointment, despite all the bumping and grinding her lady garden wasn’t getting watered. Where was that fevered need-inside-you-this-second feeling she got tumbling with Tristan? And why was she thinking of Tristan when she swore to herself she wouldn’t. Maybe she ought to concentrate on the man she was with instead of the man she wished she were with. Maybe she ought to try harder.
“Ah!” Sebastian jerked as Kady grabbed his package, squeezing it through his jeans like a stress ball.
“Sorry,” she mumbled against his lips.
For a woman so small she was surprisingly strong and had him pinned to the couch. Not that he was complaining. He just hadn’t expected her aggressive turn. Her hands were quick and everywhere all at once, and trying to keep up with her was like wrestling an octopus. Again, not that he was complaining. He liked that she seemed sexually excited and was acting all super horny for him.
Seemed? Acting? Now why the hell had he picked those words?
Kady was hoovering Sebastian’s mouth while the hand she’d wedged between them was rubbing his dick raw. “Wait,” he panted, jerking his head from side to side trying to escape her slithering tongue. He grabbed her wrist but she wouldn’t stop and he didn’t want to hurt her so gave up.
She was mumbling, chanting something incoherent that he couldn’t quite make out but if he had to guess would be, fuck me, fuck me, fuck me… But it didn’t sound even remotely sexy. More like desperate. Which would be just weird.
“Kady, wait… Ooh-ah, okay… no, not there.” This was getting out of hand. “Wait, Kady… Stop.” It felt like his crotch was on fire. “Stop it,” he yelled, and bucked her off.
Kady tumbled to the floor.
“Oh Shit.” Sebastian sprang off the couch. “God, Kady, I’m sorry.” She was sitting on her rear looking disheveled and dazed. He crouched beside her and helped her to her feet. “Come on, up you go, back on the couch.” He sat beside her and brushed the hair out of her face. That’s when he saw her eyes were brimming with tears. “Shit, Kady, what’s wrong? Oh God, did I hurt you? Are you okay? Are you all right?” He was trying to check her for damage but she pulled away and covered her face with both hands.
“God, I’m so embarrassed,” she half-groaned, half-sobbed. “What am I doing?”
Looping an arm around her back, he pulled Kady against his shoulder. “Hey, it’s all right. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”
“No, no you didn’t do anything. I’m sorry I hurt you. Is your, um…” Her eyes grazed his crotch. “Is your… you know okay?”
He cocked a brow at her. “My you know?” A smile snuck across his lips. “Yeah, it’s fine. I’ll be able to have kids still. I think.”
“God. I’m such a stupid idiot for thinking… thinking I could… I could… But I couldn’t. I just couldn’t!”
Sebastian had no idea what she was talking about but had a crazy suspicion it had something to do with that priest. Yeah, yeah, that would be just weird, he knew, he knew. But whatever it was, it was obvious Kady wasn’t ready to jump into a relationship with him. She was being pulled in another direction. Far away from him.
“I’m sorry,” she said, her voice now clear and steady. She straightened up and batted at her eyes. “You’re a great guy.”
“But…”
“No but.”
“There’s always a but.”
“It’s not yo—”
“Don’t say it.” He stopped her with a raised hand. “Please don’t say, it’s not you it’s me.”
“But it is me, Sebastian. I’m hung up on someone I can’t have.”
“I know the feeling,” he said under his breath.
“And as much as I want to move on, I think it’s too early. I need to give myself more time.”
Kady realized how ridiculous that sounded. She had almost eleven years to get over him. But it felt like she was starting from the beginning all over again. If only she hadn’t slept with him. If only she could’ve resisted temptation. The irony was astounding.
“Well, I still hope I get to meet your pug some day.”
“I hope you do, too.” And Kady realized she meant it.
“So…”
“So…”
She gazed at his face. Into his blue eyes that crinkled at the corners when he smiled. Noticed he didn’t have quotation marks between his brows from habitual frowning. He was good-looking, funny, kind. More importantly, uncomplicated. He loved an ornery cat named Beatrix and cheesy eighties movies. God, why couldn’t she feel something for this man besides friendship and brotherly love?
“I should get going.” Sebastian pushed to his feet.
“Yeah, I’ve more packing to do.” She walked him to the door. “Thanks for the ride.”
“Anytime, Kady,” he told her softly. “Have a safe trip. I’m looking forward to your next visit. Maybe we’ll finally get togethe
r for that coffee.” He leaned down and gave her an awkward hug and headed down the front steps. “Don’t forget to email.”
He was on the fourth and last step when Kady called out. “Sebastian? Name something you like about me.” He gave her a curious look. “I know, humor me.”
“With a wide grin he said, “You’re beautiful.” Then continued toward his Jeep.
Chapter
Tristan opened the door to find Kady standing on his stoop. His immediate reaction was to pull her into his arms but he caught himself, mostly because he wasn’t sure how it would be received.
“Where’ve you been? I’ve left texts, voice mails…” Though distraught and worried, it wasn’t apparent from his tone. To anyone who didn’t know him he just sounded pissed.
“I’m here, aren’t I? Against my better judgment I might add.”
“Come in before someone sees you.” He dragged her inside by the arm and glanced outside before shutting the door.
Kady would’ve been hurt by his clandestine behavior if she weren’t already used to it. “What’s so urgent you had to see me?”
“This afternoon.” He paced the room, looking like a big cat in a small cage. “I didn’t like how… What I did was…” Long fingers plowed tawny hair. “At the very least, it was conduct unbecoming a priest and a gentleman.”
“Is that supposed to be an apology?”
“Damnit, didn’t I just tell you—” Fucking hell, he was doing it again. Being a dick. His lungs shoved out air. “I’m sorry.”
“Accepted. Now if that’s all…” She turned toward the door.
In a flash Tristan was in front of her, grasping her upper arms in another one of his ironclad holds. “Don’t go.”
“I’ve got a million things left to do tonight.”
“I mean to Portland. I mean tomorrow.”
Wearily, “We’ve been through this already.”
He pulled her up against him until her toes skimmed the floor, her face inches from his. “I want you.” His voice was sandpaper abrading wood. “Can’t that be reason enough?”
His eyes began to water, from the intense eye contact or something else she couldn’t decipher. But his slight trembling and the death grip he had on her told Kady he was afraid. And she’d never known Tristan to be afraid of anything.
“I want you,” he said again as if repeating the words would produce the desired result.
“I’m not a thing to be wanted, Tristan. Like a car or a piece of jewelry.”
“I don’t want you like a thing.” His hands left her arms to cradle her face. “I want you, Kady Janacek, like I want the sun to come out on a rainy day… Like how I want it to snow on Christmas Eve… The way I want the night to go on forever when you’re in my arms.”
Kady had no idea what she was going to say next because Tristan beguiled her with a kiss so sweet, so tender and loving that she lost all thought for anything except how much she loved him. The kiss was unlike any of his others, even the gentle ones. It felt as though he were trying to put into that kiss everything he couldn’t express in words.
“Stay,” he murmured against her lips.
Her heart kicked. That damn word again.
“Stay with me.” He forged a trail of butterfly kisses along her jaw, across her cheeks, over her eyelids… “Please.”
The simple plea whispered with such desperation and heartache was Kady’s undoing. With a whimper of surrender she flung herself against him, locking her limbs around his body the way she had that time in the church. With a ferocity that matched hers, Tristan’s arms hugged her like laces on a corset pulled too tight as he carried her to his room.
He laid her down on his bed, on top of the rumpled sheets still fragrant with the musk of sweat and sex suffused with the sweet scent of orange and vanilla and what he now knew to be crystallized ginger. He couldn’t bring himself to wash them, and every night since he first made love to Kady on them had drifted off to sleep with the smell pervading his senses.
He stood by the bed, eyes glittering down at her, and began slowly removing his clothes without removing his gaze. Once he was naked, he peeled off Kady’s tee-shirt and jeans and made quick work of getting rid of her bra and panties. He stretched out beside her, his head propped in his hand as he brushed her face with the back of the other, looking at her as if he couldn’t believe she was real. Lightly he traced his fingers down her neck… over her collarbone… her chest… circling the full globes of her breasts without touching the nipples. They drew taut nevertheless at the indirect contact and he lowered his head to take one into his mouth. At the feel of warms lips and wet tongue, Kady’s back bowed like a languid stretch and she sighed a moan as he sucked it.
Cupping her other breast, his thumb stroked the pink bud with the same relentless attention his tongue was paying the one in his mouth. Caressing, licking, sucking until they both felt that exquisite over-sensitized sting. Kady reached up and tangled her fingers in his hair, pulling his head down in a demand for more. She groaned deep when he obliged by adding his teeth and nibbling it. His hand moved from her breast and skimmed down her waist to her hip, to her stomach, lingering there before closing over her mound. Now it was Tristan’s turn to groan as his palm glided effortlessly over Kady’s wet hot desire. He had to check himself or else get carried away and handle her too roughly. Getting rough wasn’t what tonight was about.
Tonight wasn’t about sex but about something much more than feeding a physical hunger. Though he loved making love to her, the way Tristan was feeling at this moment made him wonder if he ever really had before. The emotional investment for him tonight felt different, the stakes so much higher. It scared the hell out of him knowing that tonight he wasn’t going to just make love to Kady, he was going to show her.
Leisurely kissing her like he had all the time in the world, he gently rubbed her sex. With bent knees, her thighs were spread open like dove wings and she was rocking her pelvis against his hand. He chuckled into her mouth knowing what she sought yet deserted her slippery bare pussy to caress the insides of her creamy white thighs. Back and forth he moved his hand between the two zones, a deliberate torture meant to heighten her frustration and in turn her arousal.
Every so often he’d caress her precious little pearl, long enough to make her moan then leaving it to stroke along her slit. Hand and fingers worked in tandem drawing out Kady’s pleasure as well as his.
They both gasped as he entered her and
Ruined me for other men
“Name one thing you like about me.”
He teased her with a lopsided grin. “There are so many. How do I choose?”
Her unwavering stare look told him she was serious. And anxious. His smile faded.
“The way you look at me.”
Kady lowered her lashes, visibly disappointed in his answer.
Gently grasping her chin, Tristan looked deep into her eyes said in a voice raw with emotion, “Like I’m a better man than I am.”
Her lids came down to shutter her eyes. When she opened them a moment later they were sparkling with tears. How could her heart be filled with so much joy yet feel like it was xxx
Kady threw her arms around his neck… and hugged him like it was for the last time.
Tristan,
I know I’m a coward for leaving you this letter but I couldn’t bare to face you after last night, after the most beautiful, amazing experience we shared together. It makes me long for what I can never have with you, a lifetime of nights. A lifetime of mornings. A lifetime of anniversaries and birthdays and holidays.
Stolen moments aren’t enough anymore. I thought they could sustain me but I was naive. I believed in fairy tales. But life has a way of bringing us down to earth when we try to fly too close to the sun. It’s for our own protection that we not dream too big or wish too hard.
The last time I walked away was because I didn’t want you to have to make a choice between two things you love. How does a mother choose which child l
ives and which is to die? But even after everything,
I still don’t know if one chooses love or if love chooses you.
you gave me the most beautiful night of my life. and making me feel like
with a man who can never give me more
with the man I long to spend a lifetime of nights with but never will.
Fake dream
She didn’t look real.
That was his first thought as light from a full moon poured in through his bedroom window… bathing her body in its opalescent glow… making her bare skin look eerily white and her pale hair even more silver. Her long locks fell over her face like a bridal veil, screening her features. It hardly mattered, he knew who she was. There was only one woman who ever came to him like this, in the middle of the night while he was alone and defenseless. Only one who ever haunted his dreams.
But this wasn’t a dream. Tonight Kadence was as real as the sweat on his back, the breath in his lungs. The ache in his chest. This time when her milky-white thighs straddled him he didn’t fight it. The determined little vixen was going to have her way with him and he welcomed her with open arms, and if for a few moments with an open heart.
Reaching down between them, her hot little hand found his stiffening shaft, and as it continued to lengthen and thicken in her playful grasp he growled low in his throat. “Fucking hell.”
“You don’t like this?’ she taunted, smearing pre-cum over his swollen head. “What about this?” Her hand slid up and down his rod like it was a greased pole.
“Kady, Christ. You’re killing me.”
She giggled. “Payback’s a bitch.”
“This what this is?”
“Can’t always be your way.”
“Haven’t had any complaints so far.”
Guiding the broad tip into her weeping cunt, she sank her ass into his groin and took all of him in a single delicious glide. Though she was aroused and wet, he was substantial and rock-hard and she couldn’t help her small gasp.
FATHER: Men of the Cloth - Tristan (Forbidden Priest Romance 1) Page 23