But the first draft, the completely unfettered, untainted and unclean version of the words in his head—done.
He could, without the slightest hesitation, describe the moment he saved the file after typing The End as one of the best feelings a man could get.
He’d lost about a week, based on the calendar in the bottom corner of his screen. A week of eating only when hunger interfered with the work and sleeping in fits and starts, dragged awake by the characters demanding he finish what he’d started. He’d slept in her bed.
A glance at the ceiling didn’t reveal Sheri, however the knowledge that she was up there, curled on her side and sweet-smelling, only increased his smile.
She needed to read this one. She’d like it, he thought, or hoped anyway.
Bouncing to his feet, adrenaline high from the completion of the damned book, he made it as far as the door before he got a good whiff of himself.
Dear God.
And she’d let him snuggle her close and hold her, smelling like this?
The woman was a saint, obviously. Showering, he found himself singing a tune he vaguely remembered from his high school days and rushed. He wanted to go to her, to tell her…
To do more than sleep by her side, lost in a story.
He groaned when he got a good look at himself by swiping a hand over the condensation-covered mirror. More time lost to shaving, finding his face under the growth of a pretty decent start of a beard. Back to two eyebrows and, hell, he even dashed on some cologne.
Tugging on fresh jeans, he didn’t bother with a shirt.
Up the stairs, pausing only once he stood at her door, not sure if he should knock. Perhaps he should wait until morning, let her get her sleep, and then tell her he’d finished it?
The door opened and she blinked up at him, the wild length of her hair a cloud of sweet scent and her eyes owlish in the darkness. “Is it an emergency?”
“No.”
“Are you okay?”
“Yes.” Better than okay. He was wonderful. He’d finished the book and realized it was the first of a series. Already, the ideas flowed for the next books and he’d done brief sketches in between chapters so he’d know where to pick up with the next book.
“You pounded up the stairs again. Could you refrain from doing that in the middle of the night if the house isn’t on fire?” Yawning, she pushed the door the rest of the way open to reveal her room and slogged toward the bed. “C’mon, get some sleep.”
He didn’t want sleep.
Following her anyway, he considered the changes in the room since she’d taken it over. She’d covered the bed in a large and comfortable blanket, added more pillows, and claimed the space, just as she’d claimed a space in him. Shoving to her side, since they’d gotten into a routine in the last week, she held the blanket in the air with one arm in invitation.
He bit his lip. She hadn’t noticed he’d showered or shaved. Damned woman didn’t get impressed by the things she should notice. Easy enough to solve. Joining her on the bed, he pulled her T-shirt-clad form against him, brushing her hair aside so he could drop a kiss on her ear. “Are you really that tired?”
She groaned and smacked the pillow near her head. “Well, I was having a fantastic dream—you don’t want to know what Robert Downey Junior was doing with his hands—and you interrupted it.”
Spreading open-mouthed kisses along the column of her throat, he was rewarded by her soft sigh and a pliant stretch against him. “I finished the book.”
Her head came up so fast she cracked into his jaw and he rolled onto his back to clutch it as if to hold in the pain.
“Holy shit! That’s awesome!”
“You really are hard-headed. Literally, ow.”
She rolled toward him, her face rising above his. “So the sleep helped? I wasn’t trying to interrupt you, but I thought—”
“Don’t babble.” He brushed her hair back, since it practically smothered him, and peered up at her. Even in the dark, he could see her smile.
“You smell better.”
He growled. Enough talking.
Pulling her mouth down to his, he kissed her. Only once her pulse raced under his fingertips and she pressed closer to him did he pause and whisper, “I think this was where we left off our conversation.”
Suddenly shy, she pulled back. “Yes, well, I admitted you were more than a project.”
Caging her against the pillows, he wished there was more light so he could read her expression. “Kind of like you were saying you had feelings specifically for me.”
Her touch on his face, so simple a thing, left him with his eyes closed and turning toward it like a flower to the sun.
“I like you.” The confession was great, but not nearly enough.
“I more than like you, Sheri.”
“I can feel that against my thigh.”
He bit her shoulder, causing her to giggle in her whiskey-drenched way. “Stay. With me. Lie with me and be my love, as Marlowe said. Let me make love to you.”
The words could have been something one of his characters would say. Radcliffe would like to think he’d never beg a woman—never need one. He might like to think it, but he thought he might need this one.
Her soft sigh whispered over him and he, for a panic-filled moment, feared she’d reject his proposal.
“Candice asked me if we were dating. I didn’t really have a good answer for that one.”
Streaking his hand up her side, he took her mouth again, hoping to say all that he felt with his lips, if not his words. Resting his forehead against hers when he needed to breathe—God, how she took his breath away—he searched for something to say. “What did you tell her?”
She shrugged beneath him, her hand buried in his hair and her heart thudding against his, the thin cotton not enough of a barrier to hide her reactions. “I didn’t. It’s none of her damned business.”
Laughing, he hugged her close. “Date me. Fuck me. Renovate me, whatever you want to call it, Sheri. Just do it, fast. I need you tonight.”
Her legs closed around his waist and her arms surrounded him, welcoming him home. “McQueen, if you do it fast, I’m going to file a bitter complaint in the morning.”
He considered that a challenge and took her up on it.Chapter Seventeen
Surrendering never felt so much like triumph as when his arms closed around her. For all his talk of fast, he seduced her with his words, with his shaking fingertips as he stripped her with all the awe of a person unwrapping a gift. She’d been the one who tried to rush, fingers fumbling to divest him of his jeans when his hand closed over hers and helped.
The feel of his body, his long and strong body, pressing her into the mattress, might be out of her depth, but she dove into the water and streaked her hands across the foreign turf, desperate for more. She didn’t know what the future held, how they’d reconcile their future or what might happen in the morning, but she couldn’t drudge up even the slightest bit of panic past her need for him.
He delivered, seeming determined to taste every inch of her body, to capture her and conquer her flesh like an explorer claiming new lands. When he rolled to his back, dragging her with him, she braced her hands on his chest and thanked the bit of moonlight carving a path across her bed to illuminate his face, animalistic and hungry. His frustration with the small foil packet left her giggling, until his fingertips found her and he left her almost shivering in need. When he hissed between his teeth as he lowered her onto his length, she was torn—one part wanting to watch the play of emotions across his features, another wanting to close her eyes and revel in the stretched fullness of having him inside her.
Then he moved her, lifting her, and she cried out, lost in the magic of his touch.
“Slowly,” he whispered, his voice little more than a pant. “Slowly or I’m going to deliver on that promise
of fast, even if I don’t want to.”
“I changed my mind,” she answered, moving to the rhythm her body demanded rather than the pace he tried to set with his hands on her thighs. “Maybe I want fast.”
He groaned and she sped up the pace, driving herself down onto him and edging closer to a peak of tension her body seemed unable to resist. His hands captured her breasts, tugging the nipples, and she marveled in the way he rose off the bed to meet her motions. “Sheri.” He whispered the word over and over as if it were a chant.
Bending, she met his lips as he sat to meet her, tangling his hand in her hair. He pushed her back, for a moment ending the blissful contact, and she let out a single syllable of complaint that made him smile, a promise in the curve of his lips. Then he plunged back inside her, changing the angle and she let him take control, holding on as he sent her system into overdrive.
Between one heartbeat and the next, she shouted his name and shattered into a million fragments of light only to have him gather the bits and bring her right back to that edgy precipice. “Wouldn’t want you to be able to complain in the morning,” he whispered close to her ear, and she shuddered at the combined need for him and the wild look in his eye. “Let go, my Sher.”
Unable to resist his assault on her senses or the soft plea in his voice, she tumbled back over the edge, feeling him lose his rhythm and fall with her until her hands clutched at his sweaty back and his weight dropped to crush her into the mattress. Her head dangled off the end of the bed, her hair spilling free behind her, and she tried to remember how to breathe without catching on a gasp.
“Pull me up on the bed,” she requested when she remembered how to use her voice.
He grumbled, still splayed across her like some giant man blanket. “Pull yourself up. I’m not sure I can move.”
Her laughter dislodged him from his position and, with a growl, he tugged her up and squeezed her tight against him. “Thanks,” she murmured against his chest, her fingers splayed across his flesh so she could feel his heart thudding under her touch.
“Two conditions,” he muttered, his hands stroking her, relaxing her closer to him. She wasn’t sure she ever wanted to leave this bed.
“Pardon?”
“I have two conditions for you to stay.”
Her brows popped up and she twisted to see his face. “I don’t remember specifically agreeing to stay. You asked me to, however I don’t recall answering.”
“Don’t state the obvious, Sher, it’s boring.”
Bubbling with joy, she traced his face with her fingertips. He’d probably always be a grumpy man, prone to not shaving and forgetting to shower or sleep when his stories overtook him. She couldn’t change that if she tried.
She’d always be a meddling artist, willing to grumble back at him and meet his temper with her own. She might not be a good person, but he wasn’t a very good person either.
Which was good. She didn’t want to change it, not one tiny bit of it.
“I have a condition of my own, but do continue, McQueen. I’m dying to hear what rules I’ll be breaking next.”
His growl warned her only a second before he pinched her ass. “The first condition is that you give me back my demon painting. I need to remember who I am, how very ugly I can be, so I can remember that I want to be a better man. You make me want to be a better man, Sher.”
Her fingertips trembled and she kissed him, long and slow, and whispered, “I don’t want you to be a better man. I like this one just fine.”
He nuzzled her nose and sighed, as if some weight had lifted with her declaration. “Second, don’t give up on me. You’re stubborn—annoying as hell at times—and I promise I’m going to push your patience to its limits, probably daily. I can also say, trite and romance novelesque as it might seem, that no one will ever love you as much as I do, or as much as I can learn to, if you give me a chance.”
Tears pricked at her eyes, and she answered, “Dammit, now my condition seems downright shallow.”
“Sex doesn’t fix things. If you were going to ask for me to boink you again, I’m willing, but I wanted to make sure you knew I liked you for more than your breasts.” He paused to give them attention. “And for more than the sweet taste of you on my lips while you ride my face.” He licked his lips and the first pink glow of morning sent tendrils of light through the window to emphasize the hungry look in his gaze.
“You’re a dirty-minded man, for a romance novelist.”
His brows waggled at her. “You have no idea. Don’t worry, I intend to show you.”
“I agree to your conditions. I’ll stay here, paint—even though I’m sure you’ll interrupt my work and possibly throw things at me and forget to shave until you look like a crumpled old man with a piss-poor temper.”
“Showering…I’ll probably forget that too. And eating. And sleep.” He listed them, punctuating the list with kisses on her fingertips.
She sighed. “I’m thinking there are probably going to be rules to go with the conditions as we go along?”
“You’re starting to keep up better. Finally.” Pushing her back, his hands strayed south and she gasped.
“Really, McQueen, trying to have a conversation here. You haven’t agreed to my condition, nor have I agreed to yours.”
Innocently, he raised his hands and rolled to his back, tucking them behind his head as he closed his eyes. “Oh, do tell, Sher. What is your condition?”
Capturing his cock between her lips, she didn’t answer right away. His hand, clutching at her head, told her he didn’t mind the disruption.
Finally, she raised her head, licking her lips as he came up off the bed after her. “Fire Candice.”
That he laughed even as he attacked her made her smile harder. But she was pretty sure, as they lay panting and groping in the darkness, they’d both agree to the conditions.Epilogue
He pitched the glass across the room. “Dammit, Stewart, I told you I didn’t want to be interrupted. The door being unlocked was an oversight, not an invitation for you to come trotting in here, waving lists at me. I’m working!”
Stewart clutched his tablet to his chest like a shield, wide-eyed and meek, the bastard, but didn’t retreat. “And I told you, sir, we needed to go over this schedule. I have to e-mail people back with your responses.”
“Tell them all I said go to hell, I’m working!”
He turned away from the man, shocked when a hand landed on his shoulder. He was about to growl and spit out another oath when her lips landed near his ear. “Well, you’re in a mood. Emma not cooperating this morning?”
With a sigh, he glared at Sher. “We discussed this. I’m working and—”
“You’re playing a game on your computer. Last night you were going through your mother’s boxes. You’re not writing and haven’t been for at least two days.” She bit his shoulder. As always, her very presence awakened a hunger he wasn’t sure he’d ever satisfy. He reached for her and she danced back a step, one brow raised. “You can take five minutes out and answer Stewart.”
Pasting his conference face on, he turned with utmost politeness and answered the questions that Stewart rattled off in a shaky voice. Within minutes, the man scurried off, tail between his legs, to do whatever in the hell Radcliffe paid him to do other than interrupting his work. Sheri followed him to the door, shutting herself inside and turning the lock.
“There, was that so hard?”
“You’re still in my space and I’m working.”
As usual, she didn’t back down or hesitate, looking up at him with her mysterious eyes and smiling her secretive smile. “I know. I’m here to help. When I saw the game up, I realized you must be stuck.”
While she spoke, she’d unbuttoned her shirt, letting it fall to the floor. She wasn’t wearing a bra.
Leaning back in his chair, he considered his new wife with i
nterest. “How, precisely, do you plan to help, Mrs. McQueen?”
“Oh, Radcliffe, I’m sure we can think of something. After all, you said not to state the obvious. I wouldn’t want to bore you.” Stepping out of her jeans she knelt in front of him, her smile warming him almost as much as the sight of her nude on the floor of his office.
“I’m not bored,” he offered.
She took his hand and he pulled her close to kiss the lips he couldn’t quite describe, no matter how many times he’d tried in countless books since he’d met her. “Good,” she answered.
Radcliffe decided he could probably work later, since making her see how very good it could be became a sudden and overwhelming priority.
About the Author
Virginia Nelson believed them when they said, “Write what you know.” Small town girl writing small town romance, her characters are as full of flaws, misunderstandings and flat out mistakes as Virginia herself. When she’s not writing or plotting to take over the world, she likes to hang out with the greatest kids in history, play in the mud, drive far too fast and scream at inanimate objects. Virginia likes knights in rusted and dinged-up armor, heroes that snarl instead of croon and heroines who can’t remember to say the right thing even with an author writing their dialogue. Her books are full of snark, sex and random acts of ineptitude—not always in that order.
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