She must have snuck a taste of the apple filling while Oma’s attention was on him. Now, not only could he smell her sweet scent, he tasted it, too. Cinnamon spiced apples and rum teased his taste buds. The perfect blend of virgin and vixen.
His hand slipped under her skirt. “Can I touch you?”
His fingertips trailed up her inner thigh.
She tensed. “Will it hurt?”
He pulled back and held her gaze. “I’d never hurt you, Monica. We don’t have to do this. I’ve waited so long to be with you, if all we did was hold hands for the next ten years, I would be the happiest guy in the entire world.”
She smiled, shyly. “I want this, Gabe, but I’ve never been with anyone like this. I’ve never had…sex.”
“I haven’t either,” he confided.
Sure, he hooked up with girls. He’d gotten a few disappointing hand jobs. But nothing ever clicked. Nothing felt right. It wasn’t the girls’ fault. They couldn’t help not being Monica.
“We’ll take it slow,” he said and began to remove his hand from where it rested against her inner thigh, but Monica stopped him. She slid his hand up to the sensitive place at the apex of her thighs then guided his fingers inside of her panties.
“I want you to touch me,” she breathed.
She moved their hands up and down in a slow, dreamy rhythm, stroking her sweet bud. She closed her eyes and rested her head against the wall. “This feels so good with you.”
Fucking hell!
Everything melted away. All that existed was Monica. She was so warm. He teased her entrance, slick with arousal, with the tip of his middle finger as his palm rocked against her. She released his hand and allowed him to work her body.
Her breaths came fast. He increased the pace, and her soft sighs grew into heated moans. He silenced her with kisses, swallowing her lust. Slowly, he slid one finger inside her. He was nearly bursting with desire. She was tight, but her core welcomed his touch. She gripped his biceps and thrust her hips. Monica rode his hand, her torso moving in rhythmic circles.
“I’m…yes… Gabe…yes.”
He reached under her dress and cupped her ass with his other hand, steadying her as she went over the edge and came in his arms. Her cheeks were flushed and her gaze unfocused when she opened her eyes. She smiled up at him, all ruby red lips and dark wisps of hair trailing down her cheeks.
“I could watch you come all day,” he said and tucked a lock of hair behind her ear.
He bent forward to kiss her when a squeak from upstairs caused him to freeze mid-almost-kiss.
“Monica,” Oma called from the top of the stairs.
Monica’s eyes went wide. He still had his hand in her panties. “Yes, Oma?”
“Make a note for me and put it on my bulletin board.”
“Sure, Oma, what do you want it to say?”
“We need to break cherries.”
Monica met his gaze and bit her lip. Her cheeks turned from pink to crimson.
His heart was pounding. What the hell was Oma talking about?
“Make,” Oma called out, correcting herself. “We need to make extra cherry filling for the tarts.”
“Okay, Oma, I got it,” Monica called back.
“And, Gabriel?”
Gabe’s eyes went as wide as Monica’s. “Yes, Oma?”
“Work starts no later than five in the morning. Do not be late.”
“Okay…thank you,” he added and cringed.
Another creak echoed through the floorboards letting them know Oma was back inside the apartment.
Gabe gently removed his hand, and Monica buried her head in the crook of his neck. Her chest heaved with silent laughter. He wrapped his arms around her, shaking with giddiness.
“Holy shit,” he sighed and kissed the top of her head.
She leaned back and captured his gaze. “Are you sure you’re up for a summer at The Little Bakery on Mulberry Drive?”
He smiled, lost in her blue eyes. “I’m up for anything if it means I get to be with you.”
7
“Gabriel,” Oma said and glanced down at her clipboard. “Where are we with the Schaumrollen order?”
Monica slid a tray of cookies onto the cooling rack and peered through the slats to stare at Gabe. He wrapped a strip of puff pastry around a metal baking dowel to create the delicious Schaumrollen known to the bakery customers as charm rolls, which would then be filled with vanilla cream or chocolate mousse, while he simultaneously prepared German chocolate cake filling in a copper pot on the stove.
“Schaumrollen will be good to go. I just need to get this last batch in the oven,” Gabe answered.
This had become their rhythm over the last two months. Sun up to sun down, she and Gabe worked side by side in the bakery. Oma would go up to their apartment at five sharp when the bakery closed and prepare a simple dinner. The three of them would eat together and then Oma would retire to her room while she and Gabe went back to the bakery to prepare for the next day.
They had found many, many ways to prepare.
Gabe reached for a ladle, and his hard abs peeked out from beneath his T-shirt. Monica felt a blush heat her cheeks. She knew Gabe Sinclair inside and out. She knew each sinewy stretch of muscle and each hard line. She knew the feel of his strong hands as they massaged her breasts and gripped her ass. She knew his lips and his tongue. She knew the hard length of his cock and the delicious friction of rubbing against it.
He glanced her way and winked. In eight hours, at the stroke of midnight, she would be eighteen. They’d decided to wait to sleep together until her birthday. It gave her time to go to the women’s clinic and get on the pill. They had too many plans to worry about getting pregnant. Gabe had assured her there was plenty they could do before having actual sex, and Holy Mary, was he right!
Monica licked her lips thinking about what they had done with whipped cream last night, but before she was able to fall head over heels into a Gabe Sinclair fantasy, the door to the shop opened and Gabe’s older brother, Sam, walked in.
“Look, the Ginger Mountain Man has come to pay us a visit, Oma,” Gabe said sharing a cheeky grin with his big brother.
Oma gestured toward the stove. “Check your German chocolate cake filling.”
The cockiness drained from Gabe’s face as he attended to the copper pot.
Monica slid a tray of iced cupcakes onto the display rack then rested her elbows on the counter. She gave Sam her brightest smile. His auburn mass of wild curls and scruffy cheeks did make him look like a ginger mountain man, but she would never tell him that. She loved Sam’s visits. He would share tales about studying abroad, and how a few summers back, he’d gone to Honduras to help build schools in rural, remote areas. His stories helped her forget that she and Gabe had another two years in Langley Park attending community college.
“What’ll it be, Sam?” she asked.
“German chocolate cake sounds amazing! I love the coconut in the frosting. I’ll take one of the cupcakes—just make sure it wasn’t one made by my little brother. I want one of the authentic German chocolate cupcakes made by the lovely Oma herself.”
“Oh, no,” Monica said and cradled her head in her hands.
“Samuel, where do you think you would find a coconut tree in Germany?”
Sam scratched his head. “Is this a trick question?”
“German chocolate cake is nicht Deutcher. Not German,” Oma said.
Sam bent down and looked at the German chocolate cupcakes through the display glass. “Then where are they from?”
“Texas,” Oma whispered like the word was an obscenity and made the sign of the cross.
Sam shot up. “Really?”
Monica nodded. “Yeah, as far as we know, some Texas housewife in the fifties sent in a German chocolate cake recipe to a local newspaper. It called for this brand of chocolate called German’s baker’s chocolate which was made by some American guy named Sam German. Nobody really knows for sure if that’s the real s
tory, but I can tell you, from listening to Oma go on about it, German chocolate cake did not originate in Germany.”
“Then why do you make it?” Sam asked.
“Americans,” Oma said on a tight rush of breath and went back to her clipboard.
Monica leaned in, and Sam met her halfway. “When my grandparents opened this shop, and people heard there was a German bakery in the neighborhood, guess what everyone wanted to order?”
Sam’s eyes twinkled. “German chocolate cake.”
Monica retrieved a German chocolate cupcake for Sam and handed it to him. “Here, this is on the house. It’s still one of our best sellers, and that makes my grandmother crazy.”
Sam took a bite and hummed his approval. “This is amazing.” He wiped a few crumbs from his lips. His expression grew serious. “How’s your friend—the girl with the new heart?”
“I think she’s doing well. She had the surgery a couple of days after she got the news of the donor heart. We saw her a week after that, right Gabe? She was in recovery but in really good spirits.”
“Was that the last time we saw Vanessa?” Gabe asked, sliding a tray of charm rolls into the oven.
She thought back. The summers were always busy with orders for weddings and outdoor events, but the last delivery they’d made to the hospital was the day they visited Vanessa, more than a month ago. As far as she could remember, the bakery used to make weekly deliveries there.
Monica turned to her grandmother. “Oma, the hospital hasn’t put in any orders in weeks. Did something happen?”
Oma glanced up from her work. Her grandmother was the queen of the poker face, but Monica sensed something troubling in her eyes.
“Budget cuts,” Oma replied. “Now the hospital orders cheap baked goods from the big box grocery store. Lots of preservatives! Nothing organic!”
“Is the shop doing all right?” Monica asked. In all her years working in the bakery, she had never once contemplated its finances—until now.
Oma smiled. That in itself was odd. “We’re fine, enkelin.”
Monica nodded. Her grandmother hadn’t addressed her as enkelin, granddaughter in German, since she was a scared little girl, struggling with her parents’ death.
She returned to Sam. “What brings you to town?”
He polished off the cupcake in one giant bite. “To say happy birthday! The big day’s tomorrow, right? Got any big plans?”
Monica glanced back. Her grandmother had left the work area and gone into her office. She caught Gabe’s eye, and a heated blush crept up her neck. She could feel the warmth moving to her cheeks. She met Sam’s gaze and gave him a sheepish smile.
He narrowed his eyes and looked from her to his brother. “Never mind! I absolutely don’t want to know what you two have planned.”
“I didn’t say anything!” Monica protested.
Sam shook his head. “You didn’t have to say anything. You and Gabe turned the same shade of pink the second I asked if you had plans.” He leaned in and lowered his voice. “Does your oma know about you and Gabe?”
“I don’t think so,” she answered. “She hasn’t mentioned anything. I was worried she might tell him to go after the new door was installed, but she never said anything.”
Only Sam, Gabe’s cousin, Michael, and his good friend Zoe Stein knew that she and Gabe were together. As far as Oma was concerned, Gabe was merely summer labor.
Gabe joined her at the counter. “They installed the new door a couple of weeks after I started. Oma didn’t say a word about me going or staying. So, I kept coming in.”
“Pop’s okay with it?” Sam asked.
“Dad and I needed a break from each other. I’ve barely seen him at all this summer.”
Sam nodded and checked his watch. “I better go. Michael wanted me to stop by. I’m sure he wants me to buy him some beer for the Sadie’s Hollow party. Such a pain in the ass to drive all the way out into farm country to drink crap beer. But it’s kind of a Kansas teenage rite of passage to puke in a field after ingesting Everclear. Have you guys gone to any of the parties this summer?”
Gabe shook his head. “Not really. I’ve helped Michael out a little with getting his deejay equipment there, but I never stay long.”
“Better things to get back to in Langley Park?” Sam asked with a grin.
Gabe reached over and took her hand. “Yeah, everything I want is here.”
She met his gaze and thought of their plan. She was itching to get out of Langley Park, but she could wait. The plan was to work and go to school for the next two years. They would save money and then head off to New York or California so that she could pursue modeling.
Sam’s gaze moved to the back of the bakery, and Monica dropped her hands to her sides and glanced over her shoulder. Oma was back in the work area, but she wasn’t wearing her apron.
The door to the bakery opened, and an older gentleman entered.
“Fred,” Oma said, her voice an octave higher than usual. “I thought we were meeting at the church.”
Fred Collier owned the flower shop a few doors down. He was holding a small bouquet of roses, sunflowers, and sky-blue delphinium. “It’s such a nice day, Gerda. I thought I’d bring you these and join you for the walk over.”
Gerda?
Oma came around the counter with her purse tucked under her arm and took the flowers with barely a glance in their direction. She handed the delicate blossoms to Monica.
“Please put these in some water for me. You’ll need to close up the bakery on your own tonight. I won’t be back until later tonight.”
“The Assumption service isn’t until tomorrow,” Monica said, still surprised to see Mr. Collier. She had known him the entire time she’d lived in Langley Park, but her grandmother had never mentioned spending time with him at church. She had never mentioned him at all.
Mr. Collier held the door open for her, and Oma walked to the front of the bakery. “This is just a meeting to make sure we have enough food and flowers for a small gathering after the mass. I trust you and Gabriel can close up on your own?”
“Of course, Oma,” Gabe said.
The pair left, and Monica shared a shocked expression with Gabe and Sam.
“Did Oma just get picked up for a date?” Sam asked.
“I don’t know what that was,” Monica replied.
“He called her Gerda,” Gabe said.
Monica had picked up on that, too.
“Good for Oma,” Sam said with a wide grin. “Go get it, granny!”
Monica’s expression changed from astonishment to completely grossed out. “Don’t even joke about that!”
“I don’t know,” Gabe said with a teasing smile. “Oma is pretty hot as far as senior citizens go.”
She smacked him with a dish towel. “Not you, too! You’re no better than your brother!”
Sam glanced at his watch again. “I do need to go, but I wanted to ask if you guys have seen Zoe around today.”
“Zoe Stein, Michael’s friend?” Monica asked.
Sam shifted his weight from side to side. “Yeah, that’s the one. Has she been by?”
“No,” Gabe replied. “Do you want me to pass on a message if I see her?”
“No big deal. I just thought I’d ask,” Sam said.
But something in his eyes made Monica think it was a big deal.
“Happy birthday, Monica,” he said. His smile was back, but it wasn’t as bright. “Thanks for keeping my brother in line.” He gave them a quick nod then left the shop.
The door closed, and Monica glanced over at Gabe. He was smiling at her, and that dimple of his melted her heart.
“What?” she asked, feeling another blush coming on.
He encircled his arms around her waist. “I was just thinking about tonight.”
“Were you?” she replied.
Gabe tightened his grip. “Can you be ready a little before midnight, like eleven thirty?”
“I can be ready,” she answered and s
wiveled her hips against him. Gabe grew hard. His cock pressed into her belly. “Or we could just put up the closed sign and go upstairs now.”
“Jesus, Mon,” Gabe said, voice low. He shook his head. “As much as I’d like to rip your panties off right this very second, I’ve got something special planned for your birthday.”
Her core tingled at the thought of his strong, tanned hand ripping her little satin panties from her body.
“Oh, yeah?” she purred.
“Yeah,” he said with that sexy dimple.
She licked her lips. “I have a little surprise for you, too.”
“You’re going to kill me, Monica!” he said and led her behind the ovens.
He pressed her back to the wall and ran his hands down her sides. She trembled beneath his touch. Their mouths met in a frenzied kiss fueled by excitement and arousal.
She thought she would be frightened about losing her virginity. She’d heard girls whisper in the bathrooms of Sacred Heart about awkward sexual experiences. But she wasn’t scared at all. She loved Gabe. She hadn’t told him yet, but she did.
She ran her hands down his back, and he hummed his delight against her lips.
“Want to go upstairs?” she whispered.
Gabe stilled and blew out a frustrated breath. “I need to do a few things before I come for you tonight. I want your birthday to be special.”
She stroked his cheek. “It will be. I’ll be with you.”
He cupped her face and ran his thumb across her bottom lip. “I love you, Mon. You know that, right?”
That adorable dimple was back.
“I know.”
He released her and took a step back. “Be ready to sneak out around eleven thirty. I’ll be waiting for you in the alleyway.”
Monica finished pulling up her knee socks when the tap of a pebble hitting her bedroom window cut through the silence. She released a shaky breath. Adrenaline, excitement, and apprehension coursed through her veins. What did Gabe have planned? Most nights, they climbed the fire escape and went up to the roof. Spending sixteen hours together in the bakery wasn’t enough. So Gabe would return, and their nights were spent laying on a blanket, limbs tangled around each other as they gazed at the stars and planned their future.
The Complete Langley Park Series (Books 1-5) Page 84