“Just talk this out with him,” Sophie went on. “Make sure you’re on the same page before you even kiss him. Because once you kiss him, you’ll be a goner.”
Yes, a goner with an orgasm.
Evie’s phone beeped, indicating she had another call, and she groaned when she saw her mother’s name pop up. “Gotta go, Sophie. If I don’t take this call from my mom, she’ll keep bugging me all night. Thanks for the advice, though.”
Talk before kissing. Definitely something she would do.
She ended the call with Sophie and switched to her mom. As usual, her mother started speaking before Evie even managed a hello.
“Just got off the phone with Ida, and Bennie’s still in Vegas,” her mom said. “Have you told him you want him to come home?”
“No. Actually, I haven’t spoken to Bennie since his elopement.”
“Well, you should. Bennie and you—”
“Are finished,” Evie interrupted. Since her mom seemed to be gearing up for a lecture, Evie decided to keep interrupting her. “Do you really think I want him back after he ran off with a stripper? Plus, Bennie and I haven’t actually been together in a long time.”
“But that’s only because you were going through the treatments. Of course, you weren’t thinking about love and sex and stuff.”
Her mother hurried over that last handful of words. It couldn’t be comfortable for her to talk about sex with her daughter, but it was doubly uncomfortable for Evie to talk about it with her mother. That was why she changed the subject.
“Carson is coming over for dinner,” Evie said. “He should be here any minute now.”
The silence on the other end of the line told her loads. Of course, she hadn’t needed the silence to know that her mother disapproved.
“Carson’s too old for you,” her mom finally said.
“Maybe ten years ago he was, but I’m twenty-eight now, and he’s thirty-six.” There wasn’t much more to add, which was a good thing, because she spotted Carson’s truck pulling up in front of her house. “Bye, Mom. I’ll call you tomorrow.”
And since her mother had terrible boundaries about such things, Evie turned off the ringer on her phone before she went to the door.
She had no neighbors, which meant there was no one around to see Carson and feed that tidbit to the gossip mill. In fact, that was one of the reasons she’d bought the old farmhouse that sat in the middle of ten acres.
Evie threw open the door and took a moment to admire the view. And what a view it was. Carson, standing on her porch, flowers in hand and looking good enough to classify as dessert.
It was raining again so his hair was damp and rumpled from having to run from his truck. There were a few drops on his face, too. He smelled like some kind of expensive bottle of sin.
Just the way she preferred her men to smell.
“I was afraid you wouldn’t come,” she admitted.
“I was afraid I would,” he admitted right back.
Obviously, he’d been doing some soul-searching, and she hoped that didn’t mean he was about to turn around and leave. But he didn’t. He stepped in, handing her the flowers. His gaze skirted around the house before settling on her. He definitely wasn’t smiling.
“Garrett and I had a talk on my drive over,” he said. “He’s worried about you getting a broken heart out of this, and he advised me to talk to you before we do anything stupid.”
“Apparently, Garrett and his sister are of a like mind because I just had a similar chat with Sophie.”
He nodded. “It makes sense.”
She nodded, too, because it did. Then she waited for him to get this talk started. But he didn’t.
Carson cursed. “Screw the talk,” he snarled. And she wasn’t sure who was more surprised when he dragged her to him and kissed her.
* * *
CARSON KNEW IF he thought about what he was doing, he’d stop. And that’s exactly why he didn’t think about it. He wasn’t the sort to bury his head in the sand, but he sure as hell was going to be that sort right now.
Evie went a little stiff at first. No doubt because she hadn’t realized he was about to kiss her. But soon the stiffness vanished, and she melted against him. There would have been some nice body-to-body contact if she hadn’t been holding the flowers. They squished between them.
Carson pulled out the flowers, dropping them in the general direction of the table by the door. He had no idea if that was where they actually landed because he didn’t take his attention off Evie. Specifically, this kiss. He’d spent a very frustrating last two days with the Bennie fiasco and his body burning for her, and Carson took out all the frustration and fire in the lip-lock.
All in all, it was a darn good way to relieve some stress. A darn good way to get a hard-on, too. But that seemed to come with the territory whenever he was around Evie.
She made a sound of pleasure. Then, not of pleasure. “Something’s burning,” she said.
Maybe his jeans were on fire. Hell, maybe he was on fire. But judging from the way she pulled away from him and ran to the kitchen, he wasn’t the one who’d ignited into flames, yet. But there was something on the stove that looked and smelled way past the well-done stage.
“I burned the beef stir-fry,” she grumbled, moving the skillet off the burner and onto the back of the stove.
“That’s okay. I wasn’t hungry.” Not hungry for food, anyway.
The kitchen had plenty of smoke in it, so when Evie turned to start back to him, she looked a little like a goddess walking through otherworldly mist. But she didn’t feel like a mythical goddess. It was a flesh-and-blood woman who slipped right back into his arms and picked up where they’d left off. The moment would have been perfect if the smoke alarm hadn’t gone off, and if they both hadn’t started coughing like fools.
She cursed, and coughing she turned on the fans, threw open the windows. Evie didn’t stop there—she caught on to his hand and led him out the back to a porch that overlooked what had once been a pasture. Behind that he could see the creek. No smoke out here to make them cough, and Evie kept it that way by shutting the door. No rain on them, either, since the porch roof would keep them dry.
“Sorry,” she said.
“I’m not. I can kiss you just as much out here as I could in there.”
She smiled. It was that smile he really liked, too, because it had a sexy edge to it. Most people probably never thought of Evie as someone who could have down and dirty sex, but Carson was betting that beneath the bookkeeper exterior, there was the heart of a lap dancer.
Not that he wanted a lap dance.
Well, maybe after he did something about this first erection and took care of a few of Evie’s needs. And he was certain she had them because she’d already said she’d gone a year without sex.
Carson set out to fix that by pulling her to him again. She had already started in that direction, and they crashed into each other. Mouths crashed, too, and he probably would have registered some pain if she hadn’t tasted so damn good. That quelled any doubts that started to creep into his mind. But what really helped was when she caught on to his rodeo buckle, her fingers dipping down into his jeans.
Into his boxers, too.
Of course, her fingers couldn’t venture far since he was still zipped up, but they could remedy that soon enough. First, though, he wanted more of the foreplay.
Carson kissed her, all the while nudging and adjusting her position so that their parts were aligned. Yeah. That’s what his erection wanted. Well, actually it wanted full-blown sex, but it was occupied for now so he could shove up her top and play a little.
He lowered his head, kissed the tops of her breasts. She clearly liked that because she called him a bad name, latched on to fistfuls of his hair and anchored him in the general area of her torso. Tha
nkfully, Carson still had her other breast to play with.
The urgency kept notching up a little, and then it notched up a lot when he went even lower and kissed her stomach. Where he found something, well, interesting.
A little gold navel ring.
He looked up at her, managing to raise his eyebrow. It looked as if it’d been there for a while.
“A friend talked me into getting it when I turned twenty-one,” she said. “There were tequila shots involved.”
Well, at least it’d been a less wild option than getting a tattoo, which would have been much harder to remove. And the gold felt good against his tongue when he flicked it. It jiggled a little. Evie jiggled some, too, wiggling closer to get to his mouth. So, he flicked it again. And then did some French-kissing below the navel ring.
Below her panty line, too.
There was some pain involved in that since she didn’t let go of his hair, but it was worth it.
“It’s still too smoky to go inside,” she managed to say.
Yeah, and he didn’t want to get caught up in a coughing fit. Didn’t want to wait, either, so he did a logistics check. There wasn’t anyone in the pasture, no one by the creek, either, and there was a white-painted porch swing. It even had an old blanket draped across the back of it.
That’s where Carson headed.
He didn’t let go of Evie, though, when he got moving. He just kept kissing her. She kept pulling his hair, and they did a hard landing on the porch swing.
With her in his lap.
His erection really liked that.
It liked it even better, though, when she went after his belt and zipper. She only got him partially undone when she stopped, and he followed her gaze to the tattoo on his hip.
An embarrassing tattoo of a red cherry with a stem that pointed right to his erection.
“There were tequila shots involved,” he explained. “And some really bad advice from the tat artist.”
She smiled, managed to get her mouth down there, and she did some tongue action on the tat. Of course, any kind of tonguing in that general area was going to make him even harder, but because this was Evie, he reached a whole new level of hardness.
Since that was a definite escalation from foreplay, Carson shifted his attention from kisses to getting her naked. Well, partially naked, anyway. It was probably best if they didn’t strip down completely out here.
He did keep her top shoved up and her bra pushed down because he liked being able to drop a few kisses on her breasts and that navel ring. But he also unzipped her. Since she was trying to do the same to him, it turned into a hand bumping contest, which had the potential to end all of this a little sooner than Carson wanted.
That’s why he caught her right wrist, finished unzipping her, and then helped her shimmy out of those jeans and her panties.
He saw the scar where she’d had the surgery to remove one of her kidneys. A reminder that he should be taking things a lot easier than he had been. But Evie shot that notion to hell and back when she unzipped him and latched on to him with a vengeance.
This wasn’t a woman who had gentleness in mind.
So Carson gave her what she wanted. After he fished out a condom from his pocket, that was. She tried to help with that, too, and he wanted to tell her that she really sucked at that. It became more of a hand job.
Considering what he really wanted was a “job” from that part of her that was only a few inches away, it made him start throbbing. He was within seconds of begging for mercy when she finally finished.
“Let’s play,” she whispered, her voice all hot and silky.
He only got a few seconds to savor that look and her incredible face because she did something else incredible. She guided him inside her.
Hell, yeah. This was what both Carson and his erection wanted.
She laughed, an evil little laugh that made her evil little smile seem like foreplay. And she started to move. Evie caught on to the back of the swing, and the motion of her hips caused the swing to move, too. The gentle rocking motion combined with Evie’s thrusts nearly took off the top of his head.
Carson did manage to get in that kiss. First to her breast. Then he hooked his hand around the back of her neck to pull her to him for a kiss. The timing was perfect.
The swing moved.
Evie moved.
And all the foreplay, kisses and touches created a flash of scalding pleasure. First for Evie. Then for Carson.
He gathered her close and took every last bit of that pleasure, knowing that it wouldn’t be long before he had some music to face.
CHAPTER FIVE
EVIE WAS POSSIBLY PARALYZED. Either that or every part of her body had gone numb. Too bad because she was on the porch swing with Carson, and she would have liked to at least feel all those incredible muscles in his chest and stomach. As it was, the best she could manage was a sound that was part grunt, part groan.
Carson seemed to be having trouble moving, too. That was probably because after he’d come back from the bathroom an hour ago, they’d tried to curl up on the swing rather than go back inside the still smoky, smelly house. The swing was a great reading spot for one person, but it wasn’t meant for post-sex cuddling.
She forced herself to move, located his mouth and kissed him. “Thank you for not treating me like a sick person.”
His eyes had been half-closed before she said that, but that got them fully open. “Should I have been gentler with you?”
“Nope. I’m all healed. When you saw the scar, I thought you were going to hesitate.”
“I did hesitate,” Carson admitted. “But hesitation doesn’t stand a chance against you.”
She smiled, pulled him closer and just savored the moment. At least she savored it as much as she could, considering his phone buzzed again. It was in his pocket, on vibrate, and if it didn’t stop, she might get another orgasm. She wanted another one, but Carson would be much better at it.
“I’m supposed to talk to you,” he said a moment later. “About that possible broken heart you might get out of this.”
Since everything inside her was calm and slack from the orgasm, she actually felt relaxed enough to consider it. She wanted to dismiss the possibility, but the truth was, she couldn’t.
“Do Sophie and Garrett think a broken heart will cause my cancer to come back?” she asked, only half-serious. “Because I doubt there’s a correlation.”
“They don’t want you down and depressed,” he clarified.
“Ah. That. Well, I did have some serious blues when I was going through treatment and contemplating my possible mortality. It was while I was doing all that contemplating that I decided I wanted to have sex with you.”
He stayed quiet a moment. “Sex,” Carson repeated. Except he didn’t just repeat it. His tone made it sound as if he was saying, “Only sex?”
As in—that’s all you want this to be?
Even though he hadn’t come out and asked, they were good questions. She didn’t have anything that remotely qualified as good answers. Because, yes, she did want more from him, but that was a lot to spring on a man who’d just had sex with her for the first time. Even though she’d known Carson her entire life, they hadn’t ever gone on a real date.
His phone buzzed again, and since it had only been a few minutes since the last call, Carson must have decided he needed to at least look at his screen. Groaning, he maneuvered himself to a sitting position so he could pull his phone from his pocket.
“Bennie,” he said after cursing. “Four missed calls from him. I’ve got a missed call from my mom, too.”
She knew what that meant. Carson needed to find out what Bennie wanted, and she doubted that he preferred to have their conversation with her half-naked and coiled around him. That was her cue to get up.
Easier said than done.
She finally managed to stand. Then staggered. She wasn’t very graceful because she was also naked from the waist down. Even though Carson was about to make that call, he still took a moment to hook his arm around her and kiss her. It was a sweet way to end the lovemaking.
Which she hoped was only round one.
Evie gathered up her clothes and took them inside so she could dress. Carson stayed on the porch to make his call. What she needed was a good air freshener for the burned smell and a shower. But as she was heading past the kitchen counter, she noticed her own phone.
Six missed calls from her mom.
Sheez, that was extreme even for her mother. Since it appeared that Carson had managed to get in touch with Bennie—he was talking to someone, anyway—Evie decided to have a quick chat with her mother just to make sure the sky hadn’t fallen. However, before she could press the number, a new call came in, and an unfamiliar number popped up on the screen. She instantly got a weird feeling about this. Not a good kind of weird, either.
“Evie?” a woman said once she’d answered the call. “Look, you don’t know me, but—”
“You’re Gigi, Bennie’s wife,” Evie supplied. She placed the call on speaker so she could set aside her phone to put on her clothes.
“Uh, yes. Just how mad are you right now?”
Since that seemed like a trick question, Evie decided it was best to go with a question of her own. “Is there a reason you’re calling?”
“Yes,” Gigi answered without hesitating. “It’s Bennie. God, Evie, I’m so scared. I don’t know what to do. I’m on my way to Wrangler’s Creek, but I’m not sure where to start looking.”
That got her attention. “What’s wrong? What happened?” And because they were talking about Bennie, Evie’s mind started to come up with all sorts of bad scenarios. The man certainly had a knack for getting into trouble.
“So you haven’t seen Bennie? I’d hoped he would go to you. Or Carson. Where’s Carson? I’ve been trying to call him.”
Evie glanced out the kitchen window at the porch to see him putting his belt back on. “He’s here at my house,” she settled for saying. “And I think he’s talking to Bennie on the phone right now.”
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