“No, but once is taking a chance, twice is playing with fire.”
“I thought that was your specialty.”
* * * *
Dean heard himself chuckle, heard how breathless the sound was, heard it die a quick death when Veronica wriggled her hips again and the effect had his dick nearly lodging between her butt cheeks. He couldn’t stand it, couldn’t resist the temptation. They were mere feet from his bedroom, from where he intended to take her, but she was apparently not willing to wait. The way she was moving against him left him completely unable to wait.
Her hand still wrapped around his dick, he allowed her to guide him to her sweet opening. He didn’t immediately plunge into her as he had last night. He was in more control of himself today—okay, so maybe not a lot, since he couldn’t wait until they made it to his bedroom, but he still had more restraint than he possessed last night. He positioned his feet shoulder width apart and slid just the head of his dick inside her. Her hand fell away. When she attempted to push back on him, drive him all the way in, he caught her on either side of her waist and held her still.
He eased inside her, inch by slow agonizing inch, savoring the way her inner muscles parted for him before clenching around him, on fire from her warmth and reveling in the magnitude of the emotions that swam through him. When at last he filled her completely—even more completely than last night given their position—he paused and slowly began to ease out again.
She moaned, and when she said a quiet, “Dean, please,” he knew what she asked for, but he simply smiled. She wanted it fast and hard like he took her last night, but he was determined that this time he would keep it slow and easy. He wanted to savor the moment, wanted it to last as long as possible. He wasn’t trying to make her beg, though he did have to admit it was incredibly erotic, a mind-blowing turn on to hear her soft whimpers, her quiet pleas. Today, he made sure without a doubt that she knew who was inside her, that she could feel all of his wants, his desires, his emotions. He wanted her to feel how much he loved her.
He did love her. If the truth were known, he had probably loved her most of his life. It didn’t matter that he got close to her when they were younger, didn’t matter that she had only been back in his life less than a week. She was the only woman for him, the woman of his dreams, of his every fantasy. The woman of his heart, and he wanted her to know it.
Maybe it would have been simpler to tell her. Yet he knew saying the words aloud would only frighten her. She wasn’t looking for love. She had all but said as much downstairs. She didn’t know what she was looking for. Except for sex. Oh, yeah, she knew she wanted that. So he would use what she wanted to get what he wanted. It was a simple enough plan. And she made it easier for him by asking to move in for the next month. Only what she didn’t know, hadn’t yet figured out, was once she moved in, she would never be moving out.
He slid inside her to the hilt, keeping his movements in that measured pace he had set despite the building urge inside him which wanted to pound, to claim, to possess. He wouldn’t let her move out, and he—he slid his hands from her waist and over her baby-soft ass cheeks—he was never moving out of her.
“Dean, please,” she panted breathlessly. “You’re driving me cra-zy.”
He leaned over her, reached around and found her clit with the tip of his finger. She gasped, writhed, ground her hips into him. He had to calculate PSI in his head—a technique firefighters used to determine how much hose pressure was needed to put out a fire—to keep himself from losing it inside her. He traced lazy circles around her clit with his fingertip, all the while keeping his invasion of her wetness slow and deliberate. Within seconds, he felt her entire body tense. She rose on her tiptoes, her arms collapsing until her forehead rested on the step above her. Her cries became louder, her breath more ragged.
Then she exploded. It was the only word he could think of to describe it. He felt her insides explode around him, felt her muscles contract in hard and fierce determined clutches around his dick, felt her warm sticky wetness wash over him.
Still he held himself back. He waited until the contractions subsided, until her breath seemed to have returned to a slower, steadier pace, and eased himself free. It was quite possibly one of the hardest things he had ever done, pulling out of her before he achieved his release. But his determination to prolong the moment, to have her in his bed prevailed.
When he thought she could stand, he gently urged her up, his palms roaming the silky skin of her back, her ass. She shot him a look over one shoulder, her eyes both questioning and clouded with satisfaction. “Did you—”
He shook his head, knowing what she asked and smiled when her eyes widened in surprise. “Second door to your left,” he said and indicated the stairs with a lift of his chin.
She stared at him for a long heartbeat and then, to his dammedest surprise, bolted up the remaining stairs and disappeared through the door of his bedroom. He heard the bedsprings creak as she obviously threw herself on top of it.
Dean shook his head and laughed as he followed the path she took. Caught off guard and completely un-expecting…It quickly became obvious that’s what a relationship with Veronica Abbott would be like. No matter how he tried, somehow she always managed to surprise him, to catch him off guard.
He stopped when he reached the open doorway, his gaze traveling over her. She had thrown herself onto his bed and lay there now, her thighs completely spread, her hands roaming over her breasts, her eyes imploring him to join her. God, but he did love this woman!
* * * *
Veronica wanted to stretch, but couldn’t find the energy, so she settled for a yawn instead and burrowed herself deeper in the crook of Dean’s arm. Three orgasms. Three! In the short span of—well, she didn’t exactly know how long it had been, but she figured an hour would be a safe bet, because it couldn’t have been much longer than that. He had given her three mind-blowing, sanity stealing, life draining orgasms. God, she hadn’t known that was possible!
“I was wrong, you know,” she said and skimmed a lazy hand over his chest. It was the only movement aside from breathing that she could manage.
“About what?”
“You’re specialty. You may be good at playing with fire, but making love is definitely your forte.”
He laughed, a soft airy sound and kissed the top of her head. “Where did you learn that stuff?”
Confusion rendered her the motivation she needed to be able to lift herself onto one elbow. She looked down at him and asked, “What stuff?”
“You drive me wild, sweetheart. You always have. But some of the things you do…” He shook his head.
“Like what? Give me an example.”
He cocked a brow at her. “Honey, if I do that, your little buddy down there will spring to life again.”
“Little buddy? Cutie, there isn’t a part of you that is little.”
“Okay, bad choice of words, but you got the meaning well enough.”
“I’ll take my chances. Give me an example.”
He looked to the ceiling as if a multiple-choice quiz had been etched into it, and he selected his answer. “In the locker, room when you…”
“Sucked you off,” she provided when he hesitated too long.
That had him laughing again. “And when did you become so blunt?”
“Nope, you haven’t completely answered my first question yet.”
“How did you get so good at that? You don’t strike me as the type of woman to go around giving men blowjobs to get practice. And the way you waited until I was watching before you swallowed. It was…God, it was amazing! You can’t imagine what that did to me.” He looked at her, and when he saw the knowing smile on her face, he closed his eyes, shook his head. “Okay, so maybe you can imagine.”
“That was the whole point.” She hadn’t known what possessed her to do that, to do any of the stuff she did that day, but she figured at the very least it would give him something to remember.
“So, w
here did you learn stuff like that?” He prodded.
She shrugged, not really having an answer for him. It wasn’t like she had taken classes on how to drive a man wild. They hadn’t offered ‘Dirty Ways
to Make a Man’s Eyes Wide and Dick Hard’ classes in college. Somehow she had just known. “I guess it just comes naturally,” she said, knowing it sounded lame, but it was all she could think of to say.
“No. No way. If it was a natural thing, then every woman would do it, and trust me, baby, not every woman can do what you do.” He pulled her down, kissed her lightly on the lips.
“I think every woman could. I think it comes from being in touch with yourself. I spent a lot of time soul searching, getting familiar with my sexual side, I guess you could say.”
“Did Robert help you with that?”
Veronica closed her eyes, took a deep breath. She should have realized Dean would have questions about Robert, about her marriage. Still, hearing her late husband’s name put a definite damper on her mood. “Do we have to bring Robert in the room with us?” she asked, pushing strands of his hair away from his forehead. His hair was soft, her fingers sliding through it as easily as they would strands of pure silk.
“He’s already here,” Dean said, his hand lightly caressing her arm from shoulder to wrist.
She knew that he was right. The fact that she had been married, that Robert had died, would inevitably lay between them at least until she put Dean’s questions to rest.
“But we don’t have to talk about him now if you don’t want to,” he said, complete understanding filling his eyes. “We can wait.”
Yes, they could wait. However, what would be the point? Veronica sighed, pushed herself up and rolled off the bed. She spotted a robe draped over the back of the chair—obviously an extra belonging to the dining room table—just inside the doorway and walked to it now, slipped it on. It swallowed her, the shoulder seams reaching halfway down her upper arms, but she knew she would never be able to discuss Robert while she was naked in front of another man.
She tied the belt of the robe around her waist and walked back to the bed, perched on the edge beside Dean. He had sat up and leaned against the oak headboard. He had attempted to pull the sheet over him but it barely covered his groin.
“Robert was a simple man in a lot of ways,” she began slowly. Needing to look at something other than Dean, her gaze locked on the open closet across from the bed. Several navy blue shirts were bunched together on the far left. Obviously his uniform shirts, she decided. Beside them, hung several pairs of jeans and slacks. It was quite possibly the neatest man’s closet she ever saw. “He was also a very confused man.”
“He was a cop.”
It was a statement more than a question, but Veronica nodded anyway. “It was only to get a rise out of his parents. He wasn’t a very good cop,” she said on a slight laugh, completely devoid of humor. “I often wondered how he made it through the academy much less two years on the force. He was a pussycat, reared to sit behind a desk and push a pencil all day, not carry a gun and fight the war against crime. He should have been in the family business.”
“Why wasn’t he?” Dean asked quietly. He kept his tone conversational. It made it easier for her to answer his questions. They were simply two people talking about someone else. At least, that's how she figured he wanted her to feel. He didn’t touch her and she guessed it was because he sensed that she wouldn’t want to be touched right now. “Or why didn’t he do something else? If all he wanted to do was piss off the family, he could have chosen dozens of other far less dangerous careers that would have done that.”
“A young boy’s fascination with the rotating red and blue lights, a man’s need to be seen as a tough guy…I honestly don’t know.” She shrugged. Though she had asked Robert that very question many times in their marriage, he never actually gave her a true answer. “I’m not sure he even knew. It worked…somewhat. The job did toughen him up. But he had a head for business. Not one for piecing together clues or chasing after the bad guys. Or dodging bullets,” she added, her voice growing quiet as the memories of the day he had been killed assailed her.
Robert had been working the late night shift. She had been pouring her first cup of morning coffee when the doorbell rang. Expecting one of her neighbors, she was surprised to spot the squad car parked outside. She shook her head, shook away the memory. Robert had had one hour left to his shift that morning. He hadn't made it. The time clock on his life had run out first.
Her focus returned to the closet, her eyes narrowing as she spotted a…Was that a suit jacket? It was, she realized as she studied it more closely. Dean Wolcott owned a suit. She wasn’t sure why that surprised her so, but it did. Maybe it was because she couldn’t quite picture the rugged, motorcycle riding, fire fighting man she had only seen in a uniform, T-shirt and jeans, or nothing at all, wearing a suit. Even the slacks he wore to her house last night had been the casual style, not the type generally worn with suit jackets.
“Is that why you married him?” Dean’s voice pulled her back to the conversation. “To get a rise out of your parents.”
“Yes,” she admitted. “And no,” she said a bit more softly. “I loved him. I can’t honestly say that he was the man for me, my soul mate, you know? Because I can’t say that if I met him today instead of all those years ago, I would even give him more than a second glance. But the girl I was then loved the guy he was.
“It was timing really,” she said, her gaze shifting out of the closet to a poster that hung on the small spot of wall between the closet and door of the room. It was a poster of a fire truck. Go figure. “My parents were all for our marriage,” she continued. “But at the time our engagement was announced, no one knew Robert’s plans of going to the police academy. He kept it a secret. My parents thought I would be marrying the suit-and-tie, rich man they wanted for me. Imagine their surprise when I married the rich man who quickly exchanged that suit and tie for a blue uniform and a gun.”
“But you knew. He told you what he planned to do, didn’t he?”
“Oh yeah. I knew. And that was the fun part. That was my little spurt of rebelliousness as a young woman. I think I knew deep down that I didn’t want to live my life like my mother has, days of fancy women’s club meetings and bridge games, the trophy wife to my husband. But I was still too afraid to defy my parents, too. With Robert, I got both. I got a bit of the rebellion but still had the riches, the social standing.”
“And now?”
Veronica’s gaze moved to the wall behind the door. Another poster, this one of a half nude blond clad in only a fire helmet and fire-engine-red g-string. Hmm, she thought, not a bad idea, and tucked it in her mind for future use. “Now I could care less what my parents want or think.” She paused, took a deep breath and shook her head. “No, that isn’t true. I do care. But I want what I want. And I want them to understand that and see me for who I am instead of who they expect me to be.”
“Do you think they will?”
She thought about that, about the conversations—more like shouting matches—she’d had with her father about the store, thought about her mother. “Mom might,” she said after a moment. “When Dad isn’t listening, she can be very supportive. If she would simply stand up to Dad, my life might be a whole lot easier. It’s the store that’s really the current source of the contention between Dad and me. Mom seems to be intrigued by the idea.”
“Maybe she’s hoping you can show her how to spice up her sex life with your father,” Dean said, and she didn’t have to look at him to know he smiled, trying to lighten the darkened mood that had settled over the room.
Veronica laughed. “I think I would prefer not to imagine my parents’ sex life. Thank you very much.”
“Just a thought,” he said. She felt the mattress curve in as he leaned closer to her, saw his hand as it reached around her to cup the side of her face. He turned her head so that she had no choice but to meet his gaze. “Does my being a
firefighter scare you? Is that what you’re afraid of? Being with me? That I will be killed in the line of duty, too?”
The thought had never crossed her mind, and yet hearing him say it now, hearing him admit that he could be killed while doing his job as Robert had been, sent chills down her spine. As the chills subsided, she realized the sudden fear that washed over her with his words had fled as well.
“You love your job,” she said slowly and saw the truth of her words in his eyes. How could she tell him that it didn’t frighten her without leading him to think that she didn’t care if he lived or died? She hadn’t lived her years with Robert fearing that every time he walked out the door, it may be the last time she would see him alive. Maybe that was simply a strong part of herself that she hadn’t really realized she possessed, an accepting part of her heart. Of course, she wouldn’t want Dean to die. She hadn’t wanted Robert to die. Still, both men had chosen their careers for whatever reason, and she acknowledged that, accepted the danger and possibilities that came with their choices.
“No,” she finally said. “Because I would know that if you died on the job, you would have died doing what you love.”
He nodded slowly. His thumb brushed her cheek under her eye as if wiping away a tear though she wasn’t crying. “Do you miss him?” he asked, his voice soft, his words carefully spoken.
He had steered the conversation back to Robert. She hesitated as her mind switched tracks. “Sometimes,” she admitted. “I don’t know if our marriage would have lasted. While we did our best to hold it together, we were slowly growing apart. We were too young. It’s really that simple. We were far too young to get married when we did. Neither of us really knew what we wanted, who we were. We weren’t mature enough to know. We had only just begun to figure it out when he was killed.”
“And what is it that you want, Veronica?”
What do you want from me, Veronica ? The two questions were nearly one in the same though the first held a broader scope than the one he had asked her earlier downstairs. She gave him the only answer she could. “Time. I want time to be certain.”
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