Consumed By You

by Lauren Blakely

  But words eluded him now as he drove into her and she roped her arms around his shoulders, her body still hot and sweaty from the sun, and soft and pliant from the two orgasms. She gave herself to him, arching into him, holding on tighter, digging her nails harder, and he loved every second of this reaction from her.

  He felt it, too. He felt the difference. It wasn’t just the mattress. He couldn’t attribute the furious beating of his heart to the change of scenery.

  It was her.

  All her…and how he wanted more from her than he had a right to want. Because he knew with a bone-deep certainty that this was how it should be. This was how a man and a woman were meant to be. This kind of connection, this kind of intensity, this kind of deep, primal need.

  God, he would miss this.

  He would miss her.

  She moved beneath him—sensual, wild, and free as she called out his name, clutched his shoulders, and held on tight as she came apart in his arms. Within seconds he followed her there, joining her in ecstasy, in a finish that felt different from the others.

  He kissed her cheek, her eyelids, her sweet, sexy lips, then slipped away briefly to remove the condom.

  “Bet you didn’t know it was really a three orgasm special today,” he said, flopping down next to her on the bed when he returned, and holding her in his arms, layering kisses on her belly, her shoulder, her neck.

  She laughed, and ran her fingers from his ribs through the hair on his chest. He squirmed the slightest amount.

  She arched an eyebrow. “Are you ticklish?”

  He shrugged noncommittally. “Not much.”

  Her eyes lit up, sparkling with naughtiness. “You are,” she said, enunciating each word, like she’d caught him in a big, fat fib.

  “Fine,” he said, heaving a sigh. “Maybe more than a little.”

  She dragged her fingers once more over the ticklish spot, and he laughed out loud this time.

  “Ha. I have found your weakness.”

  He narrowed his eyebrows, fixing her with a serious stare. “Don’t use it against me, or I’ll be forced to give you more than three orgasms, and you know what happens to your brain after three orgasms.”

  “I do not know. Tell me,” she said, snuggling up closer, fitting far too wonderfully in his arms.

  “You won’t be able think straight any more. It’s a very serious condition,” he said.

  “I’m willing to suffer for that affliction.”

  “Maybe for our last time I’ll go for four,” he whispered softly, then planted a kiss on her forehead. She tensed in his arms, and he wished instantly he could take those words back. But yet, it was better to focus on the truth. Neither one of them needed to lose sight of reality.

  They didn’t have a future. They weren’t a couple. They couldn’t be anything more than this two-week affair. But he wanted one more special moment with her, and he planned to take it.

  …

  The words cut. Last time. They were a cruel reminder that the clock ticked ever closer to the end. She shouldn’t be upset. She had signed up for this. She’d requested this damn affair. But now, she wanted more than an affair. Only today was clearly not the time to ask for it. Not when the man was very much living in the here and now.

  This was going to be harder than she thought—laying her heart on the line for someone who’d been one hundred percent clear and then some that he didn’t do relationships.

  Even though surely it had to mean something that they’d finally slept together in a bed? She could write it off as an escape from the neighbor’s eyes, and it was that. But it also felt like something more.

  For the first time, it felt like making love.

  “Hey,” he said, sitting up in bed. “Let’s take a shower. I can’t promise you that your fantasy of finding me there is ever going to come true, because the reality is I’d much rather be pleasuring you than myself, but at least we can get cleaned up.”

  “Fair enough,” she said, trying to stay rooted in the moment. Later, when she was alone, she’d devise a strategy. She’d need time and a plan to do this right. Especially since asking for more with him was such a risk—the ultimate risk to her own mapped-out life. So she kept her words to a minimum for now as they headed to the bathroom.

  He turned on the shower then reached for her hand to bring her under the hot stream with him. The tenderness of his touch, and the gentle way he held her hand, nearly split her heart wide open. She was so ready to blurt it all out, to spill everything she was trying desperately to keep locked up safely in her chest until she knew what to do with it.

  He wrapped his arms around her, layering kisses on her shoulders. She bit the inside of her lip to keep from speaking.

  “Hey,” he said, whispering softly as the water rained down. “I know we both turn into pumpkins or something when the auction comes around, but what would you think about us going to the wedding together this weekend?”

  Her heart stopped. “Like a date? Like in public?”

  She lifted her chin to face him. Water streaked down her nose, a bead dropping off and splashing on the tiled shower floor. He leaned forward and kissed her nose. It was so damn affectionate, and he probably had no clue what all this sweetness was doing to her.

  “Yes. A date. It’s not like we’ve done such a good job hiding the fact that we’re into each other, so we might as well just go together,” he said, turning her around so her back rested against his chest. He reached for the shampoo and lathered up her hair. She leaned into him, a soft sigh escaping her lips as he washed her hair. A hope for more. A wish for both the hot, wild times in the yard, on the car, in the hallway, and the sweet, quiet ones like these.

  “I would like that,” she said, then didn’t say anything more. What she really wanted were less mixed signals. But in the absence of clear ones, she’d have to figure out the next steps on her own.

  …

  She didn’t see Travis the next night. She had plans with her sister and her parents for a welcome back celebration at Stacy’s house. True, her parents had only been in South Carolina for a few weeks, but she and her sister had bought balloons and hung them up in Stacy’s kitchen, with help from Stacy’s husband and their four-year-old son. Their parents got a huge kick out of the over-the-top decorations, then regaled them with tales of the latest antics of their East Coast grandchildren.

  After the meal, her parents left first, yawning as they headed to the door, saying the time difference between coasts was dragging them down. Then it was Cara’s turn to say goodnight, so she read a book to her nephew, tucked him in bed, and said good night to her sister’s husband as he cleaned the kitchen.

  Stacy walked her out and gave her a hug on the porch.

  “It’s getting hard to hug you. You’re like a double wide,” Cara joked.

  “Watch it. Or I’ll add bleach to your shampoo when you’re not looking, and you’ll wake up with Bozo the clown hair.”

  Cara shuddered playfully as she left, then walked down the stone path in Stacy’s front yard.

  She opened the gate, and started to close it behind her, when she stopped. Night had fallen, and stars winked on and off in the sky. She gazed heavenward, hunting for the constellations she recognized.

  The Jalapeno Dipper. Orion’s Suspenders. And Cleopatra.

  She flashed back to that night outside Becker’s bar when Travis had renamed the stars. She’d scurried away from him then, doing everything to eradicate him from her mind. She’d had no luck though. And, as it turned out, her brilliant strategy to get him out of her system through a steady diet of mind-blowing sex had failed miserably, too.

  She was no closer to getting over him. In fact, the opposite was true.

  She wanted more of him.

  She tore her gaze away from the endless star-spangled sky to the white fence her fingers were wrapped around.

  A white picket fence.

  Everything she thought she’d wanted.

  And right then, with the clar
ity of the brightest star in the sky, she knew she had to let it go. She had to give up the dream. She’d found something she wanted more than her carefully detailed and neatly planned blueprint for happiness. She wanted Travis, and she’d have to find a way to meet him in the middle.

  Chapter Twenty

  As the sun rose, Cara called up the message from Joe. From her safe zone under her purple cover, she took a deep breath, clicked open his last email, and began typing.

  “Thank you so much for the lovely dinner, and while I had a wonderful time, I need to decline our second date. You’re a fantastic guy, so please don’t think it’s you. The problem is me, and my affections are elsewhere.”

  She wanted to be direct, but kind. She hoped this note fit that bill.

  An entire squadron of nerves took flight in her belly, but she somehow found the courage to hit send. She was only sending an email, but as it traveled into cyberspace, hurtling on a path to Joe’s inbox, it felt like freedom from her own plans.

  But it was fear, too. Fear of the great unknown. But you had to let go before you could move forward. You had to give up the safety net before you went for what you wanted.

  She wasn’t sure how to navigate the what’s next in her life without a roadmap.

  But she’d figure it out soon enough. Probably today, in fact, since she had a wedding to attend.

  …

  Travis sneaked a quick peek at the time on his watch. The clock was ticking, and he had to hit the road to make it to the wedding.

  But he had a client to calm down.

  Hunter slammed the cards on the oak table at the private business club in Napa. He jammed his hands in his hair, plowing them through like bulldozers.

  Travis had seen this before. This kind of frustration, from Hunter and from others like him—guys with lots of spare change. ’Course, that was his whole card-playing client list—high rollers. Venture capitalists, vineyard owners, real-estate developers—they turned to him in the first place because they had money to gamble. That was a blessing and a curse.

  Hunter was the wildest of the lot. Like a caged lion in a zoo, he paced around the table, back and forth, back and forth. “What the hell just happened? How did I lose that much money?”

  The room had been vacated. Travis had told the other gamblers to take five.

  A vein pulsed in Hunter’s neck. The man was close to snapping. He’d had two nines a few minutes ago. It was a good hand, but not nearly good enough for what he’d been wagering. Hunter had called Travis after the first hand of the game had gone bust, pretty much begging him to come by. Travis had been hoping the man was ready to have the apron strings cut. No such luck. So Travis dropped in and gave him a solid pep talk, but the advice had fallen by the wayside when the game turned heated. Travis swore he’d seen the dollar signs multiplying in Hunter’s eyes as the pot swelled. The guy was rich, but he still hated losing money.

  “Seriously. What happened?” Hunter asked, practically vibrating with negative ions. “Just tell me,” he gritted out.

  Calling on his best calm voice, the one he used not only with his card-playing clients but also in the firehouse, Travis prepared to lay it out for him. “Do you really want to know?”

  “Yes.” Hunter crossed his arms over his chest as he bit off the one-word answer.

  “It’s simple. You got too cocky. Too confident. You forgot the rules of the road,” he said, opting for directness because he knew that was what Hunter needed. He was one of the few clients who’d been with Travis for several years. He still hadn’t learned to rein in his childish desire to win big. This was Travis’s specialty, though. He knew how to keep every emotion in check.

  “But isn’t that what the game is about? To go all in?”

  “Yes and no,” Travis answered. “This is not your livelihood, man. Even if it were, you’d need better control. But it’s not. You play for fun. And you’re not having fun when you lose this big. And you always lose big when you don’t follow the plan.”

  Hunter sighed in frustration, and then cursed under his breath. “Shit.”

  “You’re like this cleanup hitter who swings for the fences every time. The opposing teams know you can’t resist a fastball down the middle, so you swing every time and you miss. You need to play poker like you invest in the tech companies. You study the companies, you analyze their P and Ls, you know what you’re getting into. You need to bring that to the game. You need to stop making decisions based on your emotions.”

  That approach had served Travis well in life and love. He’d studied the risks of relationships and analyzed the pros and cons. He knew when to hold and when to fold. Like with Cara. Even if some part of him craved more with her, he had to lean on the analytical side of his mind. That was the side that protected him from loss. He wanted Hunter to do the same when it came to poker.

  Hunter nodded several times as the advice seemed to register. “You’re right,” he admitted.

  “If you could do that, you wouldn’t need me anymore, and I’d really like you to not need me, because that means I’ll have finally done my job and taught you something,” he said, clasping his hand on the man’s shoulder. “Got it?”

  “Got it,” Hunter said with a nod.

  “Now, I need to go to my buddy’s wedding. You,” he said, clasping his hands on Hunter’s shoulders and staring him square in the eyes, “are going to master this.”

  “I am,” he said with a nod.

  Travis sure hoped so. He wanted to see the man act with his head, not his heart. The heart led to trouble, and no one needed trouble in his life.

  …

  “You look perfect.”

  Cara was the first bridesmaid to issue the declaration as the bride swiveled around to show off her attire. Megan had zipped up the back of Jamie’s dress, and earlier in the day Cara’s sister had transformed Jamie’s long blond locks into a gorgeous French twist that made her look both classy and utterly sexy on her wedding day.

  The dress was simple and elegant, with cap sleeves, a fitted bodice boasting a string of delicate beads, and an A-line skirt.

  “I second it. You are gorgeous,” Megan chimed in. “Now, look in the mirror, and prepare to be astonished.”

  Megan guided her to the full-length mirror behind the door in Jamie’s bedroom, where they were helping the bride prep for her big day.

  Jamie’s eyes widened to moon-size and she clasped a hand over her lips.

  Megan beamed. “Your dress is perfect. Everything is perfect.”

  Jamie nodded and swallowed visibly, as if she were holding back a tear. “I love it,” she whispered reverently.

  “No crying,” Cara said, wagging a finger at the bride. “We can’t have you messing up your makeup an hour before you say I do.”

  “I know, I know,” Jamie said in a thin voice as she sucked in her breath and waved a hand in front of her made-up face. She flashed a bright smile. “There. It’s all under control.”

  Jamie’s phone rang from her small clutch purse on the bed, a high-pitched bell sounding. “My sister. She’s overseeing the flowers,” she said as she grabbed it and walked into the living room.

  Cara glanced at the time. “As soon as she’s done with her call we should go.”

  Megan nodded, and then plopped down on the edge of the bed. “Sorry. I’m just tired these days,” she said, her hands resting on her belly.

  “I think it’s permissible to be tired, considering you’re baking a person in your belly,” Cara said.

  Megan smiled, then cleared her throat. “So I hear you and Travis are going together today. Well, meeting up there, since we’re going with Jamie in the limo.”

  Cara blushed but nodded. “Yes. Sort of like a date,” she said. Then she raised her chin higher, owning it. Megan knew they’d dated on and off; she knew they were having a thing. They were all adults. She didn’t need to act coy. “Actually, exactly like a date.”

  Megan’s features lit up, a wide smile spreading across her fac
e. “It’s about time,” she said with a quirk in her lips.

  Cara shrugged. “I don’t know that it’ll amount to more than a date.”

  “Do you want it to be more?” Megan asked, crossing her legs and kicking her sandaled foot back and forth. She’d chosen a pale yellow dress for today; Cara had opted for peach. Jamie said she wanted her friends to pick their own colors. Jamie didn’t call them bridesmaids. She and Smith had chosen not to have specific titles for everyone. They’d simply asked their closest friends to stand with them.

  “I do want it to be more. I have no idea if he does though. He’s not the easiest guy to read,” Cara said, then stopped and quickly corrected herself. “Actually, he’s quite easy to read because he’s so direct. What I mean is I have no idea if he’d ever want more than just one last date.”

  Megan smoothed her hands over her skirt. “He’s a bit rigid, isn’t he?”

  Cara laughed, but it came out a bit more like a scoff. “Yeah, that kind of describes him.”

  “Listen. I don’t know if Travis is a ‘more’ kind of guy, but all I can say is when he came by my house to get flowers for you, that was a big tip-off. He’s never done that before for a woman.”

  Cara’s heart beat harder. “They were lovely flowers.”

  “And he asked me for the recipe for my cookies,” she added.

  “Well, that was over a bet he lost,” she admitted with a shrug. “But they were amazing cookies.”

  “And he brags constantly about the things you’ve taught Henry. And how he thinks you’re great at everything. Cooking, dogs, making him laugh…”

  “Okay, now I’m going to blush even more,” Cara said, waving her hand in the air, as if she needed to cool off.

  Megan rose and draped an arm around Cara, squeezing her shoulder. “It’s not as if he confides in me, but I think I know my brother pretty well. He’s been changing because of you, Cara. I can see it. Heck, Becker can even see it. And when a man’s friends can pick up on that, you know it’s real.”

  “It is real,” she said softly. A butterfly flapped happily inside her chest. Maybe she wasn’t so crazy for coming up with her plan.