by Violet Duke
He brushed over her slick heat and groaned. In perfect harmony to her needy gasp.
And then he paused. “Tell me now if that’s not what you want, too.” Another torturous glide of his thumb. “Not just this but all of this, the whole package.” A palpable tension steeled his entire frame.
She wriggled her hands free from his hold, slid out from under him and scooted back just a bit.
A dark cloud settled over his features.
“Only if that rule goes both ways,” she said softly, easing his worries as she reached out to pull his shirt off of him. “If I’m going to be naked and exposed in front of you, then you have to do the same.” She stripped off his jeans and boxer briefs.
Distracting him with a little appreciative exploring, she managed to maneuver their positions so she was straddling his legs. “Because I don’t want casual either. I want the raw, unboxable thing we have between us—emotional scars, stubborn-ass alpha tendencies and all.”
And she meant it. She wanted him untamed, as untamed as he made her feel.
When she rocked her core against him and felt him pulse back—hot, hungry, and impatient—she almost gave in and abandoned her wicked plan altogether.
Almost.
Instead, she shifted forward, effectively taking a slick ride across his steel hard length just as, oops, her nipple slid past his lips…not exactly a difficult target considering he was gaping at her now in near desperate disbelief.
Fitted as tightly against him as she was, it took just one, tiny little clenching of her inner muscles…
To find herself flipped onto her back.
“You evil little tease.”
Her chuckle of laughter quickly turned into a demanding moan as she felt his teeth dole out his retaliation. A barely tamed nip that sensitized her nipple to near pain and—good lord—a tight, wet suction that had her legs clamping down around his waist.
“Oh no you don’t,” he grumbled roughly, gripping her ankles and pushing her knees back against the bedspread. Molten hot kisses rained down her torso as he hooked her legs hooked over his wide shoulders
A gliding lick and a rumbling groan were the next and last things she remembered before he stole her mind and hijacked her senses. Two, thick unrelenting fingers—oh god, make that three—had her talking gibberish, mostly. Threats, definitely.
Clearly, the vindictive man was setting out to damn well catapult over the edge.
…Or maybe not.
“Brian!” she cried out in a crazed frenzy.
Steel arms wrapped tight around her as his lips came down to claim hers. Then his rough, calloused hands were everywhere at once, memorizing every inch of her, branding her for him alone.
Yes. This was what she wanted. Brian unplugged.
Mindless with need, she shifted so he was nudging up against her now, just barely slipping in. Just a little deeper—
He tore his lips from hers. “Condom, Tessa. Now, dammit. I’m about two seconds from taking you without one.”
“It feels better when you rub against me without one,” she said without thinking.
“Jesus Christ.”
She angled her hips again, gliding against him until he slid right over—
She gasped.
Once, she told herself, just once. She plunged down on him and reveled in how different it felt from the other night. Slicker, more sensitive. Hotter.
The slide back out was just as mind-erasing.
“That’s it,” he growled before flipping her onto her stomach and sliding his hands under her with unerring aim. His teeth caught her earlobe just as his hands began issuing a no-holds-barred twin assault on her body.
Oh God.
She felt one of his hands abandon the mission, a split second before his biceps flexed against her sides and a pillow was slid under her belly.
Then the hand was back.
But on its own mission.
The dual sensations were too much. She bucked against him when his lips laid scalding hot kisses across her back. Her hands nearly shredded the comforter when he grasped her hips and slid into her in one hard thrust.
All the way to the hilt.
And she exploded around him.
HOLY HELL, the things he wanted to do to this woman. It’d never been like this for him. Wild and soul-deep, swimming in untamed emotions he couldn’t name, didn’t want to control. He relished every soft, needy sound he could drag out of her, imagined taking her against the wall, on her knees, in every way possible.
One more. Even though she was still pulsing all around him, riding out her last orgasm, he wanted her to lose control for him one more time.
Raking his teeth over her shoulder blade, he nipped at one creamy shoulder as he plunged into her again. Thrusting deep, he gripped her tighter, rode her harder until she began writing in his arms, needy, wrecked whimpers spilling from her lips.
She cried out his name as she shattered through her release, and a splintered bolt of lust shot through him, stole all semblance of restraint, of control. He surged inside her one last time, his orgasm twisting all through his body as wave after burning hot wave of intense pleasure crashed over him. Decimated him.
Utterly ruined him for all other women.
So now they were even.
Later, three-weeks-worth-of-missed-sex later, she was lounging across his chest in bed—the first time they’d actually been there together.
Her words came out muffled against the column of his throat.
“What was that, sweetheart?”
“I said, you still owe me lunch. Liv said that this great guy that she thought was perfect for me was going to take me out to lunch. She was right about Part A,” she smiled, “so we should go do part B right now.”
Chuckling, he swept her back up in his arms. Damn, he’d missed her so much.
CHAPTER TWELVE
TESSA BROUGHT OVER two plates of scrambled omelets and sat down across from him.
After nine days of spending every single night together, Brian was starting to come around to the breakfast food at dinner thing.
The gorgeous company, too.
Grinning as she clinked forks with him, he dug in, pausing only when he felt her eyes studying him. “Everything okay?”
“That’s just what I was about to ask you. You look…I don’t know…troubled.”
So much for not worrying her.
He sighed. “It’s Skylar. But don’t freak out. She’s fine.”
Tessa put her fork down. “Then what’s bothering you?” Concern darkened her eyes.
He loved how protective she was about her. “Nothing like the last time, I swear. She’s just been a little down lately, and I think part of it is because Becky’s decided she wants to try out for the volleyball team when they get to high school next year. I mean it was bound to happen. They couldn’t share every single extracurricular interest. Anyway, Becky’s signed up for volleyball workshops every weekend afternoon for the next few weeks, so Skylar’s a little bummed about that.”
“Aw, poor girl.”
“So, I’ve been trying to think of something special I can do, nothing fancy, just maybe a father-daughter outing or something to cheer her up.”
Suddenly, Tessa’s eyes widened and a slow twinkle grew brighter and brighter in their depths.
Oh boy, this was going to be good. “Alright, tell me. What are you thinking?”
“It’s a really good idea.” She grabbed her laptop from the couch and brought it back to pull up some info. “Perfect for a father-daughter outing.”
“Uh huh. I’ll be the judge of that.”
“You might hate it a little bit.”
“I think we can safely change that ‘might’ to ‘probably.’”
“You would’ve loved to do something like this at her age.”
“Aaand, we can officially log this in the definitely hating it category.”
“It involves a really pretty beach.”
That brought his guard down a
bit. “Skylar loves beaches.”
“I know, she lights up whenever she talks about the beach. She even showed me her collection of sea glass once; I’ve never seen anything like ‘em.” Spinning her laptop around to face him, she could hardly contain her glee. “Okay, here it is. Check it out. Beautiful, right?”
He studied the pictures on the website and read the captions. “Pismo Beach? Yeah, it looks great. But it’s like eight hours away. There are closer beaches.”
Her shoulders were practically parked up next to her ears, her fingers flutter clapping away before she went back to clacking away on the computer. “But this beach is special.”
God, the woman had this uncanny ability to look hella sexy and crazy cute at the same time. He was all indulgent smiles for her when she spun the laptop back around to him again.
His grin faded. Okay, so right now, she was just plain crazy. “Are you out of your mind?”
“It’s totally safe! Look, there’s a kid doing it in that picture right there.”
“Coastal dune ATV riding? You want Skylar to race up and down sand mountains in a quad?”
“Yesss. Oh, c’mon, look how fun it looks! And this is one of the few dunes that you can ride all the way down to the water.”
It did look pretty cool.
She was practically buzzing out of her seat. “You know Skylar would love this.”
No doubt.
“I don’t know,” he frowned. “Eight hours is still a long drive for a day trip.”
Her face fell. “That’s true.”
“But I bet if you drove us, we’d get there in seven.”
The look on her face was priceless. “What? No. I couldn’t. This is your father-daughter outing.”
“Which would be infinitely more special for Skylar if you came along.” He scooted forward and popped a kiss on her lips. “For me, too.”
Her smile went up to thousand-watt brilliance as she launched herself onto his lap and peppered his face with kisses. “I’ve always, always wanted to do this.”
Laughing, he nuzzled the side of her neck, her bouncing hips in his lap sending his imagination heading in a completely new direction of one other thing he’s always wanted to do. Settling her flush against him, he whispered against her lips. “You know what piece of furniture we haven’t christened in this apartment yet?”
His imagination was having a field day already.
She hopped off his lap. “Rain check!” she called out as she ran off to her room. “There’s so much to do before this trip.” She practically cartwheeled all the way down the hall. “My first vacation.”
With a sighing chuckle, he turned back around to finish eating his breakfast-dinner, smiling over the thought of taking her on her first non-work trip.
“Brian, I need your help for a second.”
He went over to the bedroom. And got rock hard in an instant.
“It occurred to me,” said Tessa as she draped two different bikinis on the desk chair that normally sat in the corner of her bedroom, “since I’ve never been swimming before, I’ve never actually worn a bathing suit. I bought these years ago, but never had a chance to wear it outside of the store.”
For Brian, he had somehow gotten transported to a silent-movie place. With all the blood in his brain rushing past his ears and heading south, all he could do was watch, his eyes taking in every single detail before him.
The bikinis themselves were actually pretty tame. The naked woman standing there, holding them up against her body, however, was far less so.
She slowly rounded the chair and kept her back to him as she tied one of the bikini tops on.
Somehow, even though this was going terribly in reverse, it was sexy as hell.
Peeking over her shoulder at him, she reached for the matching bikini bottom and teased impishly with the worst—and still stunningly effective—pick-up line he’d ever heard, “So if I dropped this rain check. Would you help me pick it up?”
God, he really was head over heels in love with this woman.
“THAT WAS the best day ever!”
Brian chuckled, looking up at the rear view mirror and seeing Skylar not even remotely near coming down from the excited high from spending the day ATV riding in Pismo Beach.
“And it was so gorgeous! I can’t believe they let us drive all the way up to the shore. It was crazy! Can we come back again, dad? Pleeeease? Oh! And with an RV next time, so we can camp out on the sand dunes like all those other riders? I totally want to try one of the other quads too, like the ones the older kids were riding.” She sighed happily. “I’m going to show Becky all the photos as soon as we get home. She’s going to flip out. OMG, can we bring Becky next time, too?! That’ll be so amazeballs!”
“Amazeballs?” mouthed Tessa, laughing silently.
Brian rolled his eyes. Yes, that seemed to be Skylar and Becky’s current saying of choice. Personally, nothing he’s done has warranted the prestigious honor, until now. And now that it has, he was starting to come around on the word.
While Skylar continued to jabber and squeal in the back as she looked through the photos they’d taken throughout the day trip, Brian reached over and grabbed Tessa’s hand, giving it a gentle squeeze. “Thank you,” he said quietly, bringing her knuckles up to his lips.
They’d been driving for nearly three hours, and Skylar had been talking for about two and a half of it. It was really great to have his daughter back.
When finally nothing but deep breathing echoed out from the backseat, he looked and saw Skylar was fast asleep.
“This was all you, Tessa. I think I’m going to go in the dad hall of fame for this one.”
“You’re already in it,” replied Tessa sleepily as she too started to drift off to sleep. “In my book, and in Skylar’s, you’re definitely already in it.”
She stifled a giant cat-yawn. “Maybe we should stop for coffee. I can’t seem to keep my eyes open.”
“Go on and sleep, babe.”
“No,” she protested weakly. “Then I’m going to be wired when we get home, and I’ll be up all night listening to you snoring.”
His heart leapt up to his throat. Home. She’d never done that before, even by accident. The only home he’d ever heard her reference was her childhood home that she’d lost to foreclosure. She’d only ever say, ‘my place’ or ‘my apartment’ or ‘your house.’ But never, simply, ‘home.’
With an intensity that kind of stunned him, he wanted to hear her say it again, keep saying it.
Forever.
With him.
SKYLAR PLOPPED her backpack on the ground and bee-lined it straight for the cordless. “Hold it!” Brian called out. “Shower first, missy. You’re getting sand everywhere. You can call Becky afterward.”
With a mock salute, Skylar rushed down the hall and called out on her way to her room, “If Becky’s not doing anything, can she come over later?”
“Did you finish all your homework?”
Silence.
Brian sighed and shook his head. “How about you tell Becky to bring her homework with her and then you two can pretend to study while you tell her about the trip. Then, afterward, you two can study for real with pizza as an incentive.”
“Deal!”
Tessa wrapped her arms around his waist. “Nicely done. It’s always impressive to see a hall-of-famer at work.”
So she remembered that. He wondered if she remembered the rest of what she’d said in the car, too.
He brought her in for a kiss. “We should hurry and shower too. Do you want to save some electricity and water by—”
She clapped her hand over his mouth and gave him the cutest little scowl. Adorable rabbit. Even though Skylar was ecstatic that they were dating, Tessa was always extra mindful when Skylar was in the house. No showering together—especially not in the dark—no PDAs, and no sleepovers.
Though he was starting to wear her down on the latter two.
As Tessa ambled away to take a shower in his m
aster bath—alone—he noticed a cell phone on the ground near her bag, but not a smartphone, a flip phone that he didn’t recognize. “Tessa? Do you have two cell phones?”
Tessa froze, patted her pockets quickly and spun around to check his hands. Eyes zooming in on the phone, she rushed over to swipe the phone from his hands.
“I found it on the ground; it must’ve fallen out of your bag or your pocket. It’s a little wet.”
That seemed to alarm her even more. Frantic now, she flipped the phone open and began madly hitting the keys.
“Sweetheart, what’s wrong?”
“I shouldn’t have taken it with me,” she cried out softly, sobbing as she fell to the floor. “But I wanted to take her with me.”
That made absolutely no sense to him. But he didn’t think this was one of her cute eccentricities. Seeing tears streaming down her face for the first time, true and real panic filled his veins and he raced over to pull her into his arms.
“Tessa, sweetheart, tell me what’s going on, please. Let me help you. Is it your phone? Because if it’s broken, we can fix it or replace it.”
“I can’t replace it. And it was already broken.”
More incomprehensible answers.
“Talk to me, baby. Please.”
“It was the last thing I had left.”
Oh god.
Tessa was curled in a ball against his chest, clutching the phone to her heart. “It’s an old phone that doesn’t work anymore, but it’s the only thing I had left that still had Willow alive in it.” Tessa opened it again and pressed at the buttons, slowly, carefully this time, staring at the screen as if it would light up any second now. It broke his heart when the phone didn’t turn on.
“Now I’ve lost her forever.” Hot tears slipped down her cheeks. “Willow was the only one that used to remember my birthday. Did I ever tell you that? The only one. Every year, my mom would forget…or rather, she just didn’t remember because she never bothered to. My dad, on the other hand, would remember when he could, but he was usually bone tired from working all day in construction, and all night as a handyman that it’d usually just end up being an apologetic, belated wish, weeks later.”