Accidentally All Of Me

by Parker, Ali

  “Most of it was Winnie’s idea,” he replied.

  I cocked my head at him. “I guess you’re going to have to give her the bottle of whiskey I got to say thank you.”

  He grinned at me. “Really?”

  I nodded, reaching into the bag and handing it to him. “I’m sure it’s not as good as the stuff you usually get, but it’s the best I could come up with.”

  He took the bottle from me and shook his head, clearly delighted. “This is perfect,” he assured me, and he squeezed my hand tightly.

  I handed over the book to him as well. “I got this for Winnie. Not sure if she’s the biggest reader, but given how she can’t seem to make her mind up about what she wants to do, I figured this could give her some good ideas to start with.”

  “Raina, you didn’t have to go to all this trouble for us,” he told me.

  I shook my head. “And you didn’t have to do that for me, but both of you did, didn’t you? This is the least I can do to say thank you. You guys went above and beyond for me.”

  I stopped myself before I could get too caught up in how touched I was at what they had done. It was more than just the stuff they had brought me, even though that had been touching. It was everything that had come along with it. Everything that they had done to make sure that I felt cared for and looked after.

  I couldn’t remember the last time I had felt so valued, so special. It felt right that this was the week he had chosen to tell me that he loved me because I had never felt more loved by him or anyone in my life.

  I could feel myself starting to get a little choked up, which I knew was ridiculous. I wasn’t going to sit here and get all emotional at how amazing he was. That would have just been silly.

  “And I wanted to show you how much it meant to me,” I finished up, glancing away from him and smiling.

  He squeezed my hand again. How was he just so damn sweet? That was what I wanted to know.

  Everything about him seemed to just radiate that kindness, and it was no wonder that Winnie was as kind and lovely as she was. She had learned from him, and no doubt his sister, too, before she had been so cruelly taken.

  He had been through so much, but he still had this depth of kindness in him—the kindness that it took to make me feel like he really wanted me as part of his life.

  “Anytime you need it,” he replied, and I knew that he meant it.

  The waitress returned with my tea, and the moment flitted away. I let out a long breath I didn’t know that I had been holding and tried to lift the mood a little bit.

  “So, how has work been for you?” I asked, trying to keep my voice light and not to come across as too sentimental. I was dealing with a lot of first times with him, and sometimes, it kind of all piled up on me at once, and it was easy for me to forget that he had probably done this all before with someone else. Even if that had been a long time ago now.

  “Oh, same old,” he replied.

  Suddenly, I realized that Tink was under the table as he nudged my foot with his nose to get to a scrap of meat that had fallen on the floor. I reached down to pet his scrubby head and smiled. This was just what I had needed. I felt like I had been cut off from the real world for far too long now, and I was ready to slide back into it.

  He told me a little about what had been happening with him at work, and I bemoaned the fact that I had been away from the office for so long and how badly I wanted to get back. I didn’t like just lying around and feeling useless, not if I could help it, and this week, that was pretty much all that I had been able to feel.

  “But you weren’t useless,” Harry pointed out. “You were taking care of yourself. And I happen to think that’s quite an important job.”

  My heart melted like ice cream on a hot day. I could feel myself falling for him, harder and harder, with every second that we spent together.

  Was it dangerous? Sure, but that didn’t mean that I could stop it. It felt like, since I had told him that I loved him, that the two of us had finally felt free to come out and say everything that we had been trying to avoid for so long. To be real and honest about the way that we felt. It was a little scary, for sure, but more than anything, it made my heart feel full in a way that it never had before.

  “I should be getting back to work,” he said finally as we finished up the coffees that we had ordered after our meals. “But when do you think we could meet up again? I don’t want to rush you—”

  “Saturday,” I told him with certainty. “We can meet up on Saturday. I’ll be feeling all better by then. I promise.”

  “Are you sure? Because you really don’t have to worry. I’m not going anywhere.”

  I nodded. “I’m sure. Saturday. I’ll see you then, all right?”

  “I’ll see you then,” he agreed. “And hopefully, I’ll actually be able to kiss you on that date, huh?”

  “I don’t know what kind of lady you take me for.” I gasped in faux outrage. “But kissing? Seems a little forward.”

  “God, I love you so much,” he blurted out to me all at once.

  I closed my eyes and let the words fizz through me.

  “I love you too,” I said.

  He grabbed my hand and kissed it before I could pull it away. He knew that he was risking infection, but he didn’t seem to care.

  “I love you too,” I repeated, and I couldn’t help but smile as I watched his face light up at the sound of those words.

  “I’ll let you get back to work now,” I said, even though I wanted nothing more than to steal him away from the rest of his day. We said our farewells, and I made my way back to the apartment, just about in one piece.

  I was exhausted by the time that I got through the door. I was still getting over the ass-end of this flu, after all, no matter how much I would have liked to pretend it was behind me already. I crashed headfirst into bed and wondered if I had made a mistake agreeing to a date so soon. I should have taken more time to recover, perhaps. Like he said, he wasn’t going anywhere.

  But I wasn’t ready to leave it that long until I saw him again. I wanted to be with him. Just seeing him today had been a tantalizing treat, and I wanted to do it again sooner rather than later. I wanted to show him just how much I loved him, properly this time. And I had every intention of doing that on Saturday night.

  Just as soon as I had gotten a little more sleep to tide me over.

  Chapter 44

  Harry

  “Are you sure you don’t mind taking her for today?” I asked Yara quietly as Winnie petted Tink and rolled around the backyard with him.

  Yara shook her head. “Of course, I don’t,” she assured me. “I haven’t had a chance to spend some good time with her in ages. I’m glad to. Besides, you said she’d had an argument with her friend, right?”

  “Yeah, so I hear.” I looked over at my niece. I wasn’t sure what the argument had been about, only that it had been very serious and that Winnie was very unhappy about the way it had unfolded.

  “So she needs a feminine shoulder to cry on,” she told me. “Trust me. I’ll get her feeling better by the time I bring her back tomorrow.”

  “Thank you for this,” I replied.

  She grinned at me. “Please tell me that you’re going to be using the time to yourself for good?” she asked, raising her eyebrows pointedly to let me know that she was thinking far outside the socially acceptable limits of what we could discuss with a kid on the property.

  “We’re going out to dinner tonight,” I said. “Though I don’t know if she’s feeling better yet. I’m not going to push anything.”

  “Oh, I bet she’ll be feeling a lot better,” she replied, waggling her eyebrows at me.

  I shook my head at her and laughed. I loved Yara, but man, she could be inappropriate. She was lucky that she was my best friend because if she had just been my employee, I would have fired her by now for totally overstepping her lines at every opportunity.

  “All right, Winnie, you ready to get out of here?” Yara called
to Winnie from the kitchen.

  Winnie looked up and offered her a smile. It was good to see that. She had been in a down-and-out mood since she’d gotten back from school the day before, and I felt bad that I hadn’t been able to do more to make her feel better.

  I felt like I had done my best, but I didn’t really understand what had happened with her and her best friend, and there was only so much I could do to keep her mood bright. I had asked Yara to give me a hand today because I knew that she would get her smiling again and because I had that date tonight that I didn’t want to miss out on.

  “I’ll see you soon, all right?” I told Winnie as I gave her a hug at the door.

  She and Tink were going to stay with Yara for the evening, and that meant that I had the house to myself—a state of affairs that I was seriously looking forward to, given what I had laid out in front of me right about now.

  “See you soon,” Winnie replied, and she squeezed me tightly, like she didn’t want to let me go.

  I hung on to her, holding her close, and I knew that I was going to miss her the rest of the night. Not enough to think about calling off what I had planned, of course, but still.

  I waved them off and headed inside the house to get it and myself cleaned up in preparation for the date this evening. I was taking Raina out to dinner and then to an art show. It wasn’t much, but I was looking forward to spending just a few hours alone with her again.

  I had been thinking about her all week. It had been so tantalizing to see her in person over lunch and not be able to do anything about it. God, I wanted to touch her.

  I wanted to hold her and kiss her and fuck her and tell her every way that I could that I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about her since we had last been together. But now, I was going to get the chance to do just that. And I was more than ready to remind myself how she felt.

  I couldn’t help but find myself thinking about how good it would be to have her around here long term, too. I hadn’t been much help with Winnie in the state that she was in, but maybe Raina would have been better at handling her.

  I was sure that she would be able to make it work better than I could. I liked that thought, actually, of Raina being the one to slide in and help Winnie when she needed it. I was sure she would give great advice. She always seemed so wise, like there was so much that she was storing up there in her head for when the time was right.

  I drove to her apartment to pick her up, and honestly, it was a good thing that she came outside to the car because if I had walked in and seen her like that, I would have had a hard time remembering that we’d had anything else planned for the night.

  She kissed me softly on the lips before she so much as said hello, and she smiled and closed her eyes as she let the thrill of that rush through her.

  “God, you have no idea how much I’ve been missing that,” she murmured.

  I cupped her face in my hand. “Plenty more where that came from,” I promised her.

  She brushed her nose against mine before she settled into her seat. I drove us to the restaurant, my hand on her thigh, which was exposed under the hem of her tight black dress.

  I pulled out her chair for her at the steakhouse I had chosen for our date, and she smiled at me.

  “You’re such a gentleman,” she remarked.

  “You make it easy when you look like such a lady,” I joked back.

  She rolled her eyes and groaned at my cheesy joke and then turned her attention to the menu in front of her so we could get down to eating.

  We were in a quiet, dark corner of the restaurant, and I was having trouble keeping my hands off her. She was just so damn tempting.

  I knew that if someone recognized me and saw me acting this way with her, there could be some serious trouble, but it was hard to care when I saw the flush to her cheeks when I skimmed my fingers over her thigh.

  She giggled when I put my arm around her, and we ate our food together with a hunger for something else entirely on our minds.

  “This art show,” I said once we had finished dinner. I was hoping that I might be able to find a way to talk her out of it and convince her that the two of us would have been better off just heading home back to my place, where we could take some time to just be together the way that I had been missing since the last time I had seen her.

  “This art show,” she repeated after me. “I’ve been looking forward to it all day. So if you think we’re going to skip out on it...”

  “All right, all right, point taken,” I replied, holding my hands up and grinning. “You got me. Let’s get to it, shall we?”

  We headed down to the small, independent art gallery a few blocks away, and she held my hand and pressed her body into mine in a way that I knew was just meant to taunt and tease me. She knew just what she was doing, and she didn’t care one little bit.

  In fact, if anything, she seemed to like the fact that I was so hopelessly obsessed with her, that I couldn’t wait to strip her down naked and hold her in my arms and remind the both of us of what we had been missing.

  “And what do you think of this one?” she asked, gesturing to the painting hanging on the crisp white wall in front of us.

  “Hmm.” I stepped back, making it clear that I was checking her out and not the painting at all.

  “Well, I like the shape of it,” I told her softly, and I brushed my hand down her side and sank my fingers into her hip. “And the color is good. A little dark. I could see it being a little more striking in flesh tones, though.”

  She had to bite her lip to keep from giggling out loud, and we caught a dirty look from one of the other patrons who had likely figured out just what we were talking about and was less than impressed by it. I had to keep back my own snort of amusement.

  I knew that we were attracting attention, but it was difficult to care when I just wanted to have my hands all over her already. I was surprised I had managed to keep myself together this long without just cracking and ripping that dress right off of her. Maybe we could pass it off for a piece of performance art or something. No, probably not.

  She took her time going around the gallery as though she could tell that I wanted nothing more than to be out of there and to have her to myself once more. The art was good, but it was hard to pay attention to it when she was right there, looking as hot as she was, knowing that she was teasing me and unable to do anything about it.

  I missed her. How could I miss her when she was standing right there in front of me? It didn’t make any sense.

  “What about this one?” she asked, gesturing to what I assumed was an abstract piece hanging on the wall before us. It was just a large black square surrounded by a large green one, and I couldn’t for the life of me figure out what it was meant to be.

  “I’m not sure about it,” I admitted.

  She smiled. “If I said I liked it, would you buy it for me?” she asked playfully.

  “If it meant that I could get you out of here already,” I replied.

  She cocked an eyebrow. “Hey, what if I’m not done yet?”

  “I’ll stay as long as it takes,” I told her, slipping my arms around her waist. “But just so you know, you’re driving me totally crazy.”

  She put her arms around my shoulders. “Seems like a you problem. Doesn’t much seem like something that I should be worried about.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” I murmured to her, and I could feel her whole body trembling for a moment in my grasp.

  She wanted this. She might have been playing like she was too cool for school, but she was as eager for this as I was, and finally, it seemed like she was willing to give in to me.

  I led her back to the car, and the two of us made out against the side for a moment, her tongue in my mouth, the taste of her hot on my lips. I pulled the door open for her, and she practically tumbled inside, catching herself before she landed with a thump.

  I slid into the front seat and pulled away from the gallery, so ready to get out of there, so ready
to get her back to the one place I truly wanted her to be. In my bed, in my house. The place that I hoped I could convince her was home soon enough.

  The place that I wanted to make ours, not just mine.

  Just like I had on the way out, I drove with a hand on her thigh. But this time, I knew that she was ready for where we were going next.

  As ready and willing and hungry for this as I was.

  Chapter 45

  Raina

  By the time we made it back to his place, I was ready to strip out of my clothes all by myself. But luckily, I didn’t have to bother with making that choice myself.

  “Fuck, you’re so beautiful,” he growled into my ear as he kissed me in the car, his hand tucked behind my head and his mouth starving for me.

  I knew that he had been thinking about this all night long, and it was such a turn-on knowing that he had been waiting all this time just to get his hands on me. I loved the thought of him running through this in his head over and over again, until he could hardly take it any longer, until he was practically acting out in public to force a reaction from me.

  Being wanted this much was a spell, a treat, a charm, one that I was sure I was never going to grow tired of.

  He pulled me into the house and undressed me like he couldn’t wait to see me. The dress was cast off in the hallway, and he scooped me into his arms and carried me up the stairs to the bedroom, tossing me down on the bed where I bounced, laughing at how enthusiastic he was.

  I loved being loved by him. I loved being wanted by him. I couldn’t get enough, not even close. I could never imagine getting enough.

  I reached up to pull him down on top of me, and the two of us tangled together once more, a mess of limbs and tongues and hands that were hungry for what came next.

  He kissed down my chest, undoing my bra and tossing it aside, and then down, down, down—over my stomach, brushing his lips over that point of burning heat just below my navel.