She sighed, picked up the beer bottle and guzzled down a large portion of what remained. “My parents are coming on Tuesday. I wanted to be out of their house before then.”
Dean nodded slowly as understanding began to set in. “You don’t want to live with them.”
“Would you? Imagine having to live with your parents again after being on your own for so long. Imagine having to answer to them about your every move, abiding by their rules, having a curfew for crying out loud!”
Dean’s gaze dropped to the table. His fingers toyed with the neck of the beer bottle, spinning it, tilting it from side to side. “I never had to answer to anyone, never had rules or curfews,” he said quietly. “Besides, my father is dead, and God only knows what happened to my mother. I don’t think I have anything to worry about there.”
Veronica realized what she had just said, who she had just said it to. Dean never had parents that cared. He had been a young boy when his mother took to the road and Veronica knew his father never was what anyone called a candidate for the Father of the Year Award.
The need to reach for him, to hold him tightened like a vise on her heart. She had never considered his childhood, how he felt about being on his own all his life. The thought that he might want a family, parents that loved him, someone to put order in his life, had never occurred to her.
“Dean, I’m sorry. I—”
“Don’t push your parents away, Veronica.” He cut her off, pinned her with a serious and steady glare. “Be grateful that you have them. Even if they do try to control you, set rules for you. They love you. That’s what matters most.”
“And I love them. I’m not trying to push them away, Dean. But don’t I deserve to have my own life, be my own person? Dad controls me. He always has. And he will do anything and everything he can to keep that control. He hates the idea of my store, and he hasn’t even stepped foot through the door yet.”
His lips twitched as she could see him fighting to hold back a grin. “You actually expected a man as old fashioned and high society as your father to like it? I’ve been in your store, Veronica, and I—” He shook his head and laughed.
Veronica laughed, too. “Okay, point taken. No, I didn’t expect him to really like it, but he could accept it. My store is me.” She pointed a finger at her chest. “I made the place into what I wanted, the way I wanted it. Maybe the stock is questionable for a man like my father, but we aren’t living in the fifties any longer. You would think being a man that he would realize women are more sensual, more sexual than they were back then.”
“You dammed sure are,” Dean muttered, and his gaze raked over the top of her body in a way that had her nipples growing hard beneath her tank top.
“I wasn’t alive in the fifties,” she reminded him. “Anyway, the point is, I would like for my parents and I to come to some sort of an understanding. I want them to accept my independence. They will never do that as long as I’m living under their room. Whether they are there or not,” she added.
“Then where are you going to live for the next month?”
Veronica heaved a sigh, propped her elbows on the tabletop, a frown etching itself between her brows. Trying to appear casual, despondently even, she said, “Good question. I wish I had an answer.” She looked at him, shot him a coy half smile and as though the thought just occurred to her, she said, “I don’t suppose you’re looking for a roommate for a month.”
* * * *
He should have seen it coming, should have known what was going through that pretty head of hers as soon as the conversation started. But he hadn’t. And once again, she caught him off guard and completely unprepared. He stood, walked to the fridge for another beer, stayed in the kitchen as he allowed her words and their implications to sink in. She wanted to move in with him, to live with him. He would be stupid, absolutely insane to agree. But he would have her under his roof, the woman of his dreams within arms reach 24/7 for a month. As bad of an idea as it was, it was dammed sure tempting.
“Can I have another one of those?”
Dean hadn’t realized she joined him in the kitchen. He started, pulled another beer from the fridge, and twisted off the cap before handing it to her. She didn’t return to the table as he expected. Instead, she stayed where she was only inches away from him.
So much for keeping distance between them, he thought grimly. “What do you want from me, Veronica?” The words were out of his mouth before he could stop them. He was glad. The question had to be asked. He needed an answer.
She paused, the beer bottle frozen in mid-air halfway to those luscious lips that he was dying. to taste again, and stared at him. It was about dammed time he caught her off guard. She recovered quickly though, and the answer she gave him wasn’t what he wanted to hear. “A place to stay for a month,” she said and drank the beer.
“That’s all? Just a place to stay?”
“And some more of what you gave me last night,” she said, her voice taking on that soft, seductive tone that drove him nuts.
“And sex,” he clarified more bluntly on a deep sigh. Once again, not what he wanted to hear. Yet, wasn’t it the answer he had expected?
“Was last night enough for you? Or was it too much, cutie?” She took a step closer to him, lifted her hand, but it fell back to her side when he took a quick step back. She glared at him, and he didn’t miss the slight trace of hurt that flashed through her eyes. “If you don’t want me anymore, all you have to do is say so. It was just an idea.” She shrugged. “And even if you go for the idea, that doesn’t mean that we have to have sex. People live together all the time and don’t have sex. It’s called roommates.”
Yeah, right . He could live with Veronica and not have sex with her. Fat chance on that one! “Last night was no where near enough,” he admitted and watched that slow, easy smile return to her face. “But it was also too much.”
“You’re not making any sense, lover boy.”
“Is that what you’re looking for, Veronica? A lover? Or do you simply want a man to have sex with until the next one comes along? Or hell, do you even want an exclusive sexual relationship with someone?”
“I’m not running around fucking every man in town, Dean.” She spat and spun on her heel, walked back into the dining room.
Her bluntness surprised him, as did her anger at his implication. What had she expected him to think? They had exchanged more words in the last ten minutes than they did in the last week!
“But you’re all too eager to fuck me,” he said, equally blunt as he following her. “I want to know why.”
She stopped behind the sofa, her back to him. “I told you why. That day at the station in the locker room, I told you I always had a secret crush on you.”
“So that’s it. You’re just entertaining a teenage fantasy to go to bed with me.”
“Is that so wrong?” she asked, whirling to face him, and the gleam of tears in her eyes tore at his heart. “Is my wanting to be with you so wrong?”
“No, absolutely not. But what I’ve been trying to figure out is whether you simply want to be with me or if you really want to be with me.”
She placed her hands on the back of the sofa behind her, the beer bottle dangling in her right hand, and looked at the floor. “I don’t know what I want, Dean,” she admitted quietly, shaking her head. “That day…When I came to the station that day, I knew. When I saw you again, I knew. I knew that I wanted you, that I wanted to have you.”
“And now?” he asked and braved a step closer to her.
“Now.” She sighed, and the hopeless sound to it, the confusion he could see in the slump of his shoulders, tore at him. “I know that I still want you. I know that I love being around you, I love touching you and you touching me. Last night, it was…” She trailed off, threw her head back, closed her eyes, and he knew she was seeing them on the floor in her parents’ house, remembering the way they had made love. It was the same thing that he saw each time he closed his eyes. “God! It w
as amazing.”
“Do you want to know what I want, Veronica?” He set his beer on the end table and moved to her, placed his hands on her shoulders, and waited for her to look at him. “I want you. I always have. But not just sex with you. I want it all. I want exclusivity, a real relationship, a commitment, marriage, kids, the works.”
Her eyes widened with each point he made until she looked like a frightened deer in the path of a set of headlights. “I—I don’t know if I can give you all of that,” she whispered.
“You can if you want to, if you want me enough.” Her eyes narrowed, and he stopped, shook his head. “No. I didn’t mean—That’s not—I meant, if you care about me enough to want those things with me like I want them with you.”
“Can we take it one step at a time? Start with the exclusivity. I can give you that,” she said in a tone of complete certainty. “I want to give you that. I feel something with you, Dean, something I’ve never felt before but have longed to feel for years, maybe even my whole life. There’s a spark with you that takes my breath away, and I like it. I really like it. It makes me feel alive, makes me feel like a real woman. But what if…”
“What if that spark doesn’t last?” he asked when her words trailed off. He had to admit that she had a point. He felt the spark, too, always had with her. But what if it did go away too quickly? It hadn’t died in him after all these years, but he had never been this close to her before, had never touched her, kissed her, made love to her. What if they had sex again tonight and he woke up in the morning to find the spark had died out? It could happen, he knew. Maybe it simply hadn’t gone away after one night because his desire for her had been pent up for too many years. Maybe once hadn’t been enough, but more than once would be.
He cupped her cheek in his hand, and her head leaned into his palm, her eyes growing heavy lidded, her lips parting on a contented sigh. “There’s only one way to find out,” he whispered and kissed her.
Chapter 6
Somewhere deep in her mind, she heard a whoosh sound as the spark inside her ignited to a raging inferno. His lips brushed hers like the softest of feathers, sending tingles all the way to her toes. It was a sound heard when a match was held to gasoline-covered charcoal as it went up in flames. She waited for the explosion, for him to devour her mouth, devour her, the way he had last night. But he kept the kiss light, licking her bottom lip, her top lip, skimming his tongue over her parted lips but not entering.
His arm slid around her waist, his palm opening on the small of her back, and he pulled her against him. Her nipples tightened as they pressed against the hard planes of his chest. His hips rocked into her, and she felt the evidence of his inferno, huge, and blazing hot against her middle. But it was her mouth that held his current concentration, so she focused her thoughts there as well.
The hand on her cheek slid to the nape of her neck, and finally his tongue snaked into her mouth, brushed her tongue, tangled over it before making an all too quick retreat. His forehead came to rest on hers, and she gazed into his eyes, saw the smile playing with the hot desire in their blue depths. “Definitely a spark,” he whispered.
“Oh yeah, it’s still there.” Her arms found their way around his neck, her fingers locking together. But she moved them now, trailed them over his shoulders, between their bodies and down his chest. Needing to feel the warmth of his skin, wanting to bury her fingers in the dark curls that covered his upper body, she gripped his uniform shirt in her fists and pulled it free from his jeans, slid it over his head and tossed it over her shoulder. She heard it connect with something in the living room behind her with a clatter. “Oops.”
“It was only an empty glass,” he said softly and kissed the tip of her nose. “Shouldn’t have been left there anyway.”
She flattened her hands on his now bare chest, explored the hard, smooth ridges, loving the way his skin felt. He let her play, let her caress until she began inching toward the button of his jeans. Before she could undo the button, his hands slipped beneath her halter-top, found the front clasp of her bra. He removed her hater top and bra in record time and bent to take one breast in his mouth.
Though he removed them fast enough, his mouth on her breast moved with an excruciating slowness that had all the electricity in her body gathering in that one spot beneath his lips. He licked, suckled so sweetly, so tenderly. She felt him pull at her waist, slowly began to turn her before walking her backwards toward the hallway even as he swapped his attention to her other breast, taking it with the same slowness as he had the other.
Even as she reveled in the pleasure he brought her, her attention returned to his pants. By the time she felt her heels hit against the carpeted bottom step of the staircase, she had his jeans unfastened and slid her hand inside. She found his dick rock hard and ready for her, and curved her fingers around its shaft. He straightened, gazed at her with heavy lidded eyes, their blue depths now almost black from desire. She squeezed gently and saw his eyes roll, heard his low, almost animalistic growl of pleasure.
Then he made quick work of her jeans, unfastening and tugging until he had them, along with her panties, down around her ankles. With one hand still on the small of her back, he slowly lowered her to sit on the stairs, pulled back to remove her shoes and clothes.
She was naked now and sprawled on the narrow staircase. He sat on his knees on a step below her, his hands easing up her legs, moving between them, spreading them until her pussy was open and on display.
“You are so beautiful.” His whispered words sounded awestruck, and she felt a surge of pride rush though her. He wasn’t the first man to tell her she was beautiful. She had heard it most of her life. So much so that the words came to have no effect on her. Except when they came from his lips, when they were spoken with such heartfelt emotion, when they were spoken in such a moment of intimacy. It wasn’t simply a compliment or flattery when he said it. He really and truly meant it.
His fingers found her pussy lips through the mound of blond curls and held them open. Then he leaned into her, licked her with the tip of his tongue, and she gasped, squirmed, trembled.
“So beautiful,” she heard him whisper again, and he plunged his tongue inside her. She nearly came off the stairs from the shock of it, the sheer electrifying fervor of it. He licked, fucked, and tormented her with his tongue until she was mindless. She wanted to rear up on her elbows, wanted to watch him as he feasted on her, but her bones felt like jelly, her muscles useless. Somehow, one arm did move, her hand coming to rest on his head, pushing his face into her. She felt his tongue slide out of her sopping hole to lick over her clit, and she exploded with little warning. She began to jerk, groan, her pussy pulsating from the orgasm and his tongue returned to her hole, slurping up her cum as it gushed from her like a river.
Breathless and spent, she lay there with her eyes closed, forgetting that she was sprawled on a staircase until she found the energy to attempt a stretch and nearly slid off the step.
Dean caught her, his hands on her waist and a smile lighting his eyes. She looked at him, at the gleam in his eyes, at the sheen of her juices around his lips and felt something open inside her. Her heart stilled.
As if sensing something had changed, he asked, “Are you okay?”
Something had changed and the transformation wasn’t yet complete. She knew it, felt it in her bones, in her mind, in her heart. She didn’t want to analyze it now. Instead, she stared at him, unable to speak for several, still ragged breaths. Then she reached inside herself, found the part of her that thought only of sexual pleasure and latched onto it. “You have one hell of a tongue there, cutie,” she said and grazed the pad of her thumb over his lips. She felt the juices her thumb picked up from his mouth, and inspired by it, licked the salty-sweet cream.
He growled and tugged her up until they stood on the stairs. “Woman, you’re going to kill me doing stuff like that. Do you think we can make it to the bedroom now?”
“Maybe,” she said and turned to wal
k up the remaining three steps. When she reached the top, she discovered that the staircase made a V shape, a flat short hallway separating the two flights of stairs. She turned the corner, moved onto the first of the next set of stairs and stopped. He was right behind her, and her sudden halt had him crashing into her. Unable to keep her hands off him a moment longer, she reached back, found his jeans still unfastened, and easily slipped her hand inside them again finding his cock.
“Veronica…” He said her name on a low exasperated gasp of desperation.
“I want that, you know?” she said and gave his dick a little squeeze.
“Just a little further, baby. Then you can have it.”
She looked up the stairs, saw the two open doorways on her left, the one on her right, and knew one of them had to be his bedroom. Even the closest of the doorways was too far, her need for him too great to wait that long. With her free hand, she reached behind her and began to tug at his jeans, willing them to fall. But they were too tight to be removed without more help.
His hands were still on her waist, and she felt him gently push at her, urging her to continue up the stairs. “Veronica, move, baby, or I’m going to end up taking you right here.”
“Now you’re catching on, handsome,” she said and stroked his dick with a bit more pressure. His hands released her. She felt the material give around her hand as, at last, his pants and briefs were pulled down. Then his hands were on her back, sliding down, caressing, and she slowly began to lean forward. She caught herself with one hand on an upper step, her other hand still stroking his cock.
His hands moved down her sides, over her hips, and she heard him whisper, “Oh wow,” before he said, “We have to make it upstairs, baby. The condoms are in my bedroom.”
“We didn’t use one last night,” she reminded him, rocking her hips back until she felt the tip of his cock brush against her ass.
Caught Off Guard Page 9