Plus One (Pig & Barley Book 3)

by Mae Wood

  “Changed my mind about the Haunted Mansion. Way too creepy yet hip to be Disney. This is Tennessee Williams’s New Orleans.”

  “Glad you approve.” We drank and sampled well-crafted small plates—sushi to tapas to sliders. Indulging with another foodie was heavenly.

  With my third cocktail in hand, I sank back into the chaise, drifting off to the sultry sounds floating up from the main floor’s piano area. God, he’s hot. Bert had stripped off his jacket, and his concert T-shirt was thin with age, stretching across his broad shoulders. I peered at the faded white lettering in the dim light.

  “It’s Radiohead.”

  “Looks old.”

  He laughed. “Well, they opened for R.E.M. in Nashville my freshman year at Vandy, so I guess that does make this shirt old.”

  “Radiohead was the opening act?”

  “Now I feel even older. You’re in your twenties, right?”

  I nodded. “Yeah, twenty-six.”

  “I’m thirty-nine. My son is seventeen. Christ.” He scrubbed his hand across his face and through his close-cropped brown hair. He looked at me and blew out a deep breath, while I reminded myself to never trust his bluffing skills. His thoughts seemed to always show on his face. “I should get you back home.”

  “That’s stupid.”

  He downed the rest of his cocktail. “Ready when you are.”

  “We’re not leaving. We’re having a good time. No reason not to enjoy it. I’m not a naïve co-ed and you’re not elderly.” I leaned forward, resting my elbows on my knees, intentionally squeezing my cleavage together with my arms, and looked straight in his eyes. “I’m going home to California in a few months. Until then, I think we should keep hanging out.”

  “I’m not sure that’s a great idea.”

  “Three months of the occasional night out like this and more Mississippi not appealing?” Bert’s jaw dropped, his eyes widened, and he shook his head. Before he could form a sentence, I clarified. “You, me, more of the night in Mississippi. Don’t make me say it again.”

  Chapter Fifteen

  Bert

  Is she for real? What is in these cocktails?

  “Um . . .” I wasn’t sure what to say.

  She slipped off the chaise and walked toward me. “I’m going to the bar. I’ll be back.”

  I followed her with my eyes, checking her stride for a tipsy wobble. Nope. Not even a stutter. Nothing but her firm ass and long legs taking purposeful strides to the bar. I set my glass down on the table and stared at the ceiling. The piano music filtered up the stairs and I slumped back into the leather armchair. My dick said one thing while my head said another. Thirty-nine minus twenty-six—thirteen. Twenty-six minus seventeen—nine. Is that right? No one should have to do math after three drinks. I checked the numbers again, flicking out fingers on my hand to confirm what I already knew. She’s closer in age to Grady than she is to me. By a lot. Oh, Christ, that’s bad. At least I couldn’t be her dad. Well, maybe I could be her dad.

  As thoughts continued to spin in my mind, she reappeared with a drink in each hand. “So in the spirit of this place, I got us each a Temple of the Holy Ghost. I love how all the drinks are inspired from literature and clearly I’m not the only one who thinks this place is Southern Gothic.”

  “What’s in it?”

  “Oh, taste and see.” She smiled over the rim of her highball glass.

  “Bourbon, lavender, honey, and lemon?”

  My guess earned a wink from her. Those eyelashes seemed to graze the apples of her cheeks. “Nice palate,” she replied. We fell back into a comfortable silence and sipped our drinks. As she reached the end of her drink, she stood from the chaise and perched on the arm of my chair. “If they’re going to name a drink after Flannery O’Connor, I’d go with A Good Man is Hard to Find.”

  “And what would that taste like?”

  She leaned into me and ran her tongue up my neck before nipping on my earlobe. “Lickable,” she whispered. Oh, hell. Oh, hell yes. Numbers are meaningless.

  “Rye whiskey, St. Germain, splash of soda, orange peel,” she breathed onto my neck. “Old Fashioned with a bit of spice and a modern flair.”

  Our mouths found each other and I hauled her onto my lap. Reaching to place my glass on a side table, I heard it clatter to the floor, broken into a million pieces or intact, I couldn’t say.

  We ditched my car and cabbed our way to her place. After Grady’s incident with his mom, I wasn’t about to let him come home to discover his other parent getting it on. I’ve also worked in the restaurant business long enough to instinctively know that cabs are a minor annoyance compared with the pain of getting a DUI. The cab reeked of cigarettes and stomach acid, dampening my buzz and the sexy times mood. She settled into my arms and my fingers toyed with a few strands of her long honey hair.

  “What’d you think of the tapenade?”

  “Huh?” I replied, watching her gaze at the city lights as we drove.

  “The tapenade. With the figs. It was weird and not in a good way.”

  “Agreed. My bad. It looked unusual and I had to try it.”

  “Always up for adventure?” Her fingers traced lazy circles on my thigh, her nails scratching the denim and telegraphing exactly what was on her mind while her eyes continued to gaze out the open window.

  My response was instinctive. I leaned into her body, stretching myself against her lean frame. I swept her long hair back from her shoulder and brushed my lips along the graceful line of her neck. Her involuntary shudder brought a small smile to my face as I continued to caress her soft skin with my cheek.

  “You didn’t shave,” she whispered, running a hand across my face, capturing it at the curve where her shoulder met her neck. I nuzzled, gently scraping her skin with my scruff.

  Another shaky exhale was my reward. Blood pulsed to my dick and I rasped, “You seemed to like it so much on your thighs in Mississippi.”

  “Mississippi,” she mewled. “Yes.”

  Fuck it. I’m moving there. I’m renaming the restaurant. I’m changing my last name. Anything so I can hear those four syllables spill from her lips again. I continued to toy with her neck, shoulders and ear until we arrived back at her place. I paid the cabbie and pulled her out of the car and tucked her under my shoulder. As she unlocked the door of her apartment, I planted a kiss on the crown on her head.

  “You are a cuddly one,” she mused.

  “I am?”

  “Yes. Pegged you for rough and tumble, but you’re sweet.”

  “How’s this for sweet? Let’s get naked,” I said.

  The lock clicked open and I pushed us through the door before shucking our jackets from our shoulders. I toed off my sneakers and noticed she was doing the same as our knees and feet bumped. Her hands flew to my hips and she began tugging on my shirt. “Oh, legit vintage,” she said, pausing with the soft worn cotton clutched in her fists.

  “Asking for a show?” The low light from a sole lamp perched on a side table didn’t obscure her blush. “No shame.” I backed up, placing a short two feet between us. Her lush tits heaved beneath her own thin cotton top, but I focused on her big blue eyes. I learned a thing or two from my marriage—eyes off the prize and on a woman’s face guaranteed a big payoff.

  Training my eyes on hers, I grabbed the collar of my shirt and slowly dragged it over my head. Her fingers immediately swept across my bared torso and her breath passed across my heated skin. “Swimmers.”

  “I tri,” I replied.

  “You succeed,” she said with a lick across my pec that made my body tighten in response. My dick began to pound against my jeans.

  “No, I do triathlons.” She nipped my muscle with her teeth and all words and coherent thought flew from my brain.

  I was all sensation—her under me, on top of me, down on me, warm on my tongue. I came to as the morning light filtered through the blinds of her austere bedroom. Drennan was curled into me, my arm draped across her nude hip. A thin floral sheet c
overed us as the ceiling fan brought a chill to the air. I tucked her more closely to me, luxuriating in her warmth and softness. After a while she began to stir.

  “Hey,” I whispered, dropping a kiss on her shoulder.

  She rolled toward me and I pulled her snug, our bodies flush. “Hi. See, you are cuddly.”

  “Why didn’t you think I would be?”

  She shrugged. “Your ink, I guess?”

  I laughed. My ink was not a sign of toughness for me. They’re outward signs of memories and love.

  “Okay, my turn.” She turned my arm over and traced the numbers I’d had placed on the inside of my bicep. Our game from Mississippi was back. “What’s this?”

  “Latitude and longitude of where my son Grady was born and his birth date.”

  “And this?” She asked, her fingers grazing another string of numbers.

  I exhaled and settled on honesty. She’d told me about her mom. “Same for when I married my ex-wife.”

  Her fingers explored the third line, asking without saying a word. “When we divorced.”

  “That’s morbid.”

  “Not really. We were married for a long time and have Grady together. And this tattoo isn’t about her, so much is it is about me.” About me doing the right thing and marrying Amy and giving Grady the best life I could. But I left that part unsaid.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Drennan

  I wasn’t sure how to respond. The man has a tattoo commemorating his divorce? I know some people have parties when they get divorced, but a tattoo is a permanent reminder of the failure in a way. I guess my silence lingered because he continued, “I don’t still love her in that way, if that’s what you’re worrying about. With her it’s pragma and probably always was.”

  “Pragma?” That sounds like a car model, not any love I’ve ever been in.

  “Yeah, so you know how the Inuit language is supposed to have like a thousand words for snow? Well, Ancient Greece had at least six, some say eight, some say more, concepts that we English speakers all lump under the word ‘love.’ Pragma is the base of the word pragmatic. It’s love. A practical love. A reasoned love. An enduring love.”

  “That doesn’t sound like a lot of fun.” A note of teasing in my voice. In fact, it sounded like a downer. Like a forced morning hike at summer camp as punishment for sneaking out of the cabin to skinny dip. Not that I ever did anything like that at fifteen. It was sixteen and I was a counselor-in-training.

  “Definitely not all the time, but it’s married love.”

  And that’s precisely why that’s at least seven years off in the future for me. Married around thirty-five sounded fine. Any earlier just sounded painfully boring. Early nights in, being accountable to someone else, coordinating schedules . . . Ugh. I liked my life and my space and my freedom.

  After a beat he continued, “If you’re worried about me pining after her, don’t. She’ll always be a part of my life and I don’t regret marrying her and I don’t regret our divorce, but that part of my life is over.”

  “Life’s a journey, not a destination?”

  “Something like that.”

  “So how did you end up here?”

  “I think it had to do something with Flannery O’Connor and bourbon,” he said.

  I stuck my tongue out at him and ran my fingers through my tangled hair. “I’m hungry. Breakfast?” His stomach rumbled in response. “So, that’s a yes?”

  “What time is it?”

  I grabbed my phone. “Just before nine.”

  “I need to be at the restaurant before eleven.”

  “I can be fast.”

  “If you say things like that, we’ll never get food,” he said, his hand gesturing toward the tented sheet.

  “Quickie and then food?” I offered, praying that he wasn’t going to turn me down like in Mississippi.

  His brown eyes lit up in amazement and an honest smile tempered with a naughtiness at the corners spread across his face. He didn’t seem to believe that I was going to make the most out of this. Make the most out of my life. And I was going to focus on the beautiful parts.

  Bert threw back the covers and I sat up in surprise, the cool room of the air turning my skin into gooseflesh while my nipples puckered under his heated glaze. He took my hand in his and slung me over his shoulder. I hung upside down, my long hair flying everywhere and the rush of blood sending my thoughts spinning. A giggle tried to escape from me as I brushed my hair from my eyes and futilely tucked it behind my ears. The curve of his low back sloping into his ass. I couldn’t resist. I ran my tongue over his skin, feeling his flesh tense in appreciation, scooping up his cheeks in my hands, I licked and nipped the firm muscle.

  He pushed through the bathroom door and without setting me down I heard the shower curtain slide along the rod and the water crash to the floor. “You are a very dirty little girl.”

  And I spanked him. “Little girl?” I spanked him again. “No. And no d-a-double d- y talk either.”

  “Yes, ma’am,” he replied, climbing over the edge of the deep tub and sitting on the ledge. The shower spray stung my back—hard and hot—and drenched my hair.

  As I began to protest, he swung me around to lay across his lap. “I consider myself a feminist,” he mused, running a large hand across my flank, my ass, and down the back of my thighs. His rock hard dick pressing into my side as my breasts compressed on the tops his thigh. “And part of that means I’m paying you back in spades.”

  I heard the smack and my yelp echo off the tile walls before the touch actually registered. He spanked me! He really spanked me. Sure, I’d joked about it for years, about being naughty and being punished, but I’d never had anyone lay a hand on me without softness.

  This wasn’t soft. My skin ached and burned. I could feel heat expand across my ass. Then his hand returned to my skin and I tensed, waiting for another swift smack. But instead, he shifted his legs under me, sending me rocking, while pressing my cheeks apart and lazily trailing a finger from my clit upward to twist around my other opening. I shuddered, my shoulders jumping to my ears, and my mouth gaping open, water spilling down my hair, cheeks and into my mouth. “You are so naughty, Drennan. And so much fun.”

  “More,” I heaved out with a big breath. The room was filled with steam, our bodies sticking and sliding as I writhed on his lap. He lifted me once again, setting me on my feet. The water coursed down his body, forcing his short dark hair flat to his scalp.

  He looked vicious.

  Powerful.

  Lethal.

  I gulped. His eyes trained on me like I was his prey, praying my stillness hid me from view and kept me safe. But in a flash I was anything but. A long arm reached up and rotated the showerhead off of him and onto the shower wall. A few moments of stillness before his body inched toward mine, pressing his hard into my soft and my spine flattened against the tiles.

  Shower sex has never been my thing. Cold tiles against my back, or I’m in downward dog and drowning in the shower spray, not to mention the unforgiving tub floor makes my knees ache. But I got schooled.

  The water warmed the tile and sent a fine spray of droplets over our bodies. The steamy room allowed no chill to sink into my bones. Damn. Older men. Is this what I’ve been missing?

  “Damn. Condom.”

  “I told you I have an IUD and I’m clean, so if you’re clean—” I let my hands speak for me as I worked his hard length.

  “No.”

  I paused. A heart-stopping pause.

  “Oh, no. I’m clean.” My heart resumed its beat. “I don’t fuck without a condom.”

  “Okay,” I drew the word out. Weren’t all guys dying to go bareback? I had one college boyfriend I’d trusted enough and I hated the rubber buggers, but not enough to forget the scary pictures from high school health classes.

  “Grady.”

  “Oh.” And I understood. “Just reach out and dig through the back zippy pocket on my makeup case. I keep a spare in there.” />
  “A spare?”

  “Bert,” I scolded. “As I reminded you earlier, I’m not a little girl. I’m all woman. And this woman likes sex.”

  “Well, in that case,” he hedged, backing up a bit and reaching out of the shower curtain in search of his prize.

  With his ass toward me again, I couldn’t resist. I spanked him. Smacked him hard. The wet skin and hard surfaces resulted in a loud, satisfying thwack, even above the rush of water from the shower.

  “Ma’am,” he said, spinning to face me with the foil-wrapped prize suspended between his index and middle fingers. “Ma’am, you’re in trouble now.”

  Holy mother of God. Pray for this sinner now because I’m not stopping. And come hell or high water, don’t let him stop.

  After a quick bite and coffees at a diner Bert swore by, I dropped him at his car downtown, and headed back to my corporate apartment. Thursday was one of my “off” days. Restaurants gear up for the weekend madness and aside from an occasional frantic call, my customers are generally stocked. So, I telecommuted to my real life.

  First up was another call with Ryan about the numbers side of the new label I wanted to create. Kenzie didn’t set out to marry a guy in the wine industry, but she’d met Ryan when our family had bought a few small vineyards in Sonoma and he was the junior guy on the deal, assisting our family in putting together the financing. I paced around my apartment while I talked him through my vision of a mid-range non-estate blend under a new label. He thought it was feasible and was going to look into it to make sure Kenzie and I weren’t going to screw up our legacy. Though the winery was mine and Kenzie’s for now, it would one day be Leo’s.

  A preschooler with his life set out for him. At least he’d know from the get-go. My mom and aunt loved the wine business. The plan was that they’d run the winery while I got to do what I love for many years—food and wine writing—until they got ready to retire. After the accident my family insisted that I stay in New York and keep working at Food & Wine and building my professional network, while my dad and Ryan pitched in to hold down the fort and help Kenzie get her feet under her. My time living my dream had ended and my escape was coming to a quick close. I knew I’d been spoiled. Doted on, but that didn’t mean that change didn’t suck.