“Woman,” I repeat with heavier emphasis. “Who’s cooking for your little behind right now?”
She laughs. “My behind, as you put it, hasn’t been called ‘little’ in a long time.”
I make a show of walking around behind her and taking a long look at her ass in the jeans she’s wearing. Shit, hers has to be the nicest ass I’ve ever seen. I want to slide my hands over it. Hell, if her kid weren’t here, I’d be bending Autumn over the kitchen counter right now. Instead, I make an appreciative noise under my breath. “Your behind is perfect,” I say, walking back to the counter.
Autumn’s cheeks flush pink, which only makes me think about what she’d look like flushed with arousal underneath me in bed. Or on top of me. Or pinned against the wall. Or sitting on the kitchen counter.
Damn it. This girl is going to be the death of me.
She’s going to destroy me, ruin me in every way it’s possible to ruin someone.
In all of the best possible ways.
“In fact,” I say. “I’ll let you know what I think about it later.”
“Oh, really? You think so? Is that what you came over here for, to finish the job?”
“I didn’t come here to finish anything, Red,” I say. “I’m just getting started with you. I have no intention of finishing the job anytime soon.”
She smiles, looking at me for a long moment before she says exactly the last thing I expect to hear from her. “I’m not looking for a boyfriend.”
The words catch me so off-guard that I laugh uncomfortably. “Excuse me? Did I ask you to be my girlfriend?”
“Nope.” She crosses her arms, which has the unintended effect of giving me a view of her chest down the front of her shirt. I have to glance away and think about something decidedly un-sexy, because if I keep looking there, I’m going to be rock hard in all of about twenty seconds.
“Well, in case you haven’t noticed,” I point out helpfully, “I’m not ‘boyfriend material’.”
Autumn laughs. “I’m rather clear on that point. So we’re just friends.”
“Friends,” I agree. “Though, I don’t know that I’ve ever been down on the floor between a friend’s –“
“Luke!” Autumn protests loudly as Olivia comes toddling back toward her.
“Mama,” Olivia howls, veering right toward the refrigerator.
“Are you hungry, Liv-bug?” she asks. “Do you want a snack?”
I turn back toward the counter, focusing my attention on prepping dinner. Friends, I tell myself. That’s a novel concept. I’ve never been friends with a woman I’ve screwed before. Shit, I try my damnedest not to have conversations with a girl beyond exactly what I’d like to do to her.
Friends – with a woman who has a kid.
Maybe I’m growing. Becoming a better person.
After Autumn settles Olivia into her highchair, she comes back to the counter to fill up a cup of water for her. She brushes against me – accidentally, I think – but when I look up at her, I realize it’s totally intentional. “I think it’s called friends with benefits,” she amends, her voice low, as she passes by.
Shit. And just like that, I can’t stop thinking about Autumn naked. I’m not getting even slightly more mature.
Friends with benefits.
I should be pleased with this development. I should congratulate myself on my luck with escaping a potentially clingy girlfriend.
Except there’s just a small part of me that finds it annoying that she just suggested we only hook up.
14
Autumn
“Is it always this way?” Luke asks.
I’m holding Olivia in my arms after reading three stories to her in the rocking chair – one extra, because she was too excited about Luke being here, mostly because he raced cars around the living room floor with her for an hour. Now he’s standing in the doorway of her room, whispering.
“Like this?” I ask softly, looking down at Olivia, who looks positively angelic in her sleep. “Are you kidding? Hell, no.” Standing up, I cross the room to lay her in her crib, kissing her on the forehead as I tuck her in, and then shut her door behind me.
Luke steps back, but not much, and I’m suddenly very close to him. The faintest hint of cologne, or maybe aftershave, lingers on his skin. “Hell, no?”
“She looks adorable when she’s asleep,” I say. “Not so much when she’s screaming at three in the morning.” I feel the need to warn him that kids don’t sleep through the night. I’m nervous and self-conscious, and standing so close to him makes me feel panicked. So I ease away from him, walking down the stairs as I clear my throat. “I’ll clean up the kitchen. I may not be able to cook, but at least I can – oh. You already cleaned up. Of course you did.”
I’m looking at my kitchen, spotless, the dishes put away and the counters gleaming.
“While you were taking care of Olivia,” he explains, his voice low in my ear. He’s standing right behind me, not touching me. And all I want him to do is touch me.
“What’s wrong with you?” I ask, and he laughs.
“What’s wrong with you?”
“You cook, you clean,” I go on, distracted as he trails his finger along the side of my neck, sending a river of goose bumps down my arm. “There has to be something wrong with you, some dirty secret you’re hiding.”
“The dirtiest,” he whispers, hooking a finger under the strap of my tank top and sliding it down over my shoulder. He kisses me softly on my skin where the strap was, and it makes me gasp.
“I can imagine,” I say, my heart beating wildly in my chest. I’ve done quite a bit of imagining when it comes to Luke.
“Oh?” He pulls me back toward him, hard against his erection. “What exactly have you imagined, Red?”
“Th-That. You.”
“You’re tense,” he observes, sliding his hands along my arms.
Hell, I’m stiff as a damn board. It’s been over two years since I slept with anyone, since I got pregnant with Olivia, and the thought of fucking Luke fills me with a confusing mixture of lust and fear and apprehension I can’t possibly put into words. “It’s… been a while,” I say, my voice catching in my throat. “For me.”
Luke pauses, his hands still, and for a second, I think he’s going to change his mind and walk away. But instead, he just utters the word, “Fuck,” under his breath. Then he speaks low in his throat, his mouth near my ear. “I don’t know what the hell happened, Red, who the hell let you go, but he was a fucking moron, because I can’t get you out of my mind. I can’t get the taste of you off my lips, and I don’t want to.”
Before I can say anything, he’s kissing me again behind my ear, his lips on that place that has always been so sensitive. He sweeps my hair from my neck, pulling it to kiss the nape and arousal courses through my body.
There are a million reasons I should say no to this. There are a million reasons I should not sleep with him, a million reasons I should find someone my own age, someone responsible, someone appropriate, someone settled.
Someone who’s not Luke.
But Luke’s touch, his fingers running down my arms, his lips on my skin, his hands reaching around, palming my breasts… his touch makes me weak-kneed. It makes my head cloudy, my brain shut down, and my thoughts consumed with lust.
“I… want… you,” I choke out, my words stupid. As if it weren’t already apparent that I wanted him by the way my breath catches in my throat, by the way I practically pant with the anticipation of his hands on me, by the way I moan as he slips my shirt over my head.
He cups my breasts in his hands, kissing me, his lips on my neck, on my shoulders, and I’m practically drenched. I want him now – fast and hard, fucking me with abandon. I don’t want foreplay. I don’t want anything but him inside me.
“Fuck, Red,” he says, pushing his erection against my ass. “Do you feel that? Do you know how hard you make me? Shit, I’ve been thinking about my cock inside you since the day I first looked at you.”
/>
A moan, louder than it should be, escapes my lips, and Luke growls again. He pulls my hair to the side, sending a shock of pain through me, intermingled with lust and desire. “Fuck me,” I beg, surprising myself with my own words. I’ve never said anything like that before to a man, never been so consumed with need and want.
Luke yanks my jeans over my hips, and I kick them across the floor, irritated by the fact that I’m still clothed. Standing behind me, he reaches between my legs with his fingers and slips inside me in one movement, filling me, but not the way I want to be filled.
“You’re soaking wet,” he says, his voice gravely.
“I want you now, Luke.”
“Shit. Do you know how hot it is, hearing you say that?”
I can’t think, not with what he’s doing with those fingers of his, stroking me inside, pressing against the textured wall inside me, sending waves of pleasure coursing through my body that threaten to completely undo me.
And I don’t want to be undone right now. I don’t want to come on his fingers, or on his tongue, like before.
I want him to fuck me. I want to come on his cock.
“Stop,” I say, the word barely audible, more of a moan than an actual word. “Stop.”
He pauses, slips his fingers from me, and I can feel his body stiffen behind me. Spinning me around, he looks at me, his brow furrowed. “This whole thing,” he says. “We can stop if you want to, Red.”
I laugh, unbuckling his belt and pulling his jeans open forcefully. I want to tear them open, rip the fabric like he ripped my panties from my hips earlier. When he pulls his shirt over his head, I run my palms over his chest and down his rippled abdomen, admiring him. He’s trim and muscled and so damn gorgeous I can hardly stand it.
“You,” he says, “standing there looking at me like that, is killing me, woman.”
“Get these stupid pants off,” I whisper as I try to pull his jeans down his hips, wanting him in a way that makes me feel clumsy and drunk and overwhelmed.
But he doesn’t. Instead, he pulls me against him forcefully, his hand at the nape of my neck, fingers tangling in my hair, mouth on me as his tongue finds mine. He kisses me hard, rough, like he can’t get enough of me. He palms my breast with one hand, his finger rolling over my nipple until I’m so far gone I think I’m going to come from his touch.
Then he steps away from me, smiling. “Now I’ll take these stupid pants off,” he says, smiling as he strips.
And then he stands there, naked as a jaybird.
Naked and hot as sin, muscled from working the orchard and fighting fires and—oh shit, I can’t remember what the hell else he does. Oh my God, I realize, I don’t know a lick about the man standing buck naked in the middle of my kitchen, not really.
Buck naked with a raging hard-on.
A holy-shit, huge-as-hell erection.
I stand there gaping, watching as he runs his hand over his length all the way to the tip. “Well, Red?” he asks.
“Well, what?” I try to sound casual, like it’s every day that I have a hot-ass naked man in my damn kitchen, and fail terribly.
“Tell me what you want,” he says, crossing the space between us. His cock is so close to my body, all I can think about is wrapping my hand around it. But I don’t. I seem to have completely forgotten how to move, and now he wants me to articulate what I want?
I can barely remember how to breathe.
And no one has ever asked me what I want, let alone told me to say what I want.
"Tell me," he says, his voice low and demanding. "I want to know exactly.” When I try to reach for his cock, he wraps his hand around my wrist. "Not so fast. Tell me."
"I want you," I answer feebly.
He reaches up, traces his finger down my chest, between my breasts, his eyes never leaving mine. "I already know that,” he says. “Tell me what else you want."
I'm self-conscious, tongue-tied. "I want you to ... fuck me."
"Yes, I know that too." He slides his finger over my clit. He kisses me, drawing my bottom lip between his teeth, and this time he doesn’t stop me when I reach for his cock, wrapping my hand around his thickness. "How do you want me to fuck you? Do you want me down on my knees, my tongue licking your pussy until you come on my face, before I carry you up to your bed and fuck you so slowly that you're begging me to let you come?”
My breath hitches in my throat as I slide my hand up and down the length of his hard cock, my thumb grazing the head, already slick with his pre-cum. "Yes," I whisper, but he stops moving, his finger pressed against my clit.
"No." His eyes examine me so intently that I feel vulnerable under his gaze. "That's not it. You don't want slow and gentle. You've had that before. That would only disappoint you."
I inhale sharply, my hand moving more quickly over his cock.
Luke smiles. "Tell me. Do you want me to pick you up, fuck you on the kitchen table? Put your hands on the kitchen counter and bend you over and take you from behind?" When I bite my lip, Luke chuckles. "That's it, yes?" he asks softly. "You want me to bend you over, fuck you so hard that –"
He stops abruptly, as I sink to my knees on the kitchen floor in front of him. His cock is close to my lips, almost touching, a gossamer thread of precum hanging from the tip. Gripping the base of his cock, I open my mouth and catch it on my tongue.
And I suddenly find my voice. “Yes,” I say. “But first, this is what I want.”
15
Luke
This woman is on her knees in front of me, her mouth open, the tip of my cock an inch away from her as she looks up at me, her eyes hooded and heavy with desire.
If she only knew how absolutely fucking excruciatingly painful it was to not come, just looking at her like this...
Then she wraps her lips around the tip, and it's heaven. It’s pure, warm, velvety heaven as she takes me into her mouth.
And she moans.
She fucking moans, like this is what she's wanted forever.
What she does with her mouth is magic. I push her hair back from her face, threading my fingers through it as she moves up and down on my length, practically swallowing me, moaning with each pass down my cock.
I've had a lot of head in my life, a lot of shitty head from college girls who didn't know jack about giving head.
This is on a whole different level.
I don't want her to stop. She sucks me for I don’t know how long – forever, it feels like. And I want her to keep going, to keep working me with her mouth. It’s the best thing I’ve ever felt in my damned life. I want to let go, to give in, to release everything that I’ve had pent up since I saw her.
When I look down at her, big green eyes looking back up at me, pupils dilated large because she's so turned on, it nearly pushes me over the edge. I almost come in her right then and there. I have to yank her back by her hair with more force than I intend. Autumn makes a sound under her breath.
"Shit, I'm sorry," I say, loosening my grip. But I don't let go. I can't let go. She’s kneeling at my feet while I grip her hair in one hand, the other wrapped around my cock. But I tell myself that I can’t come yet, not like this. It’s crass, classless, the kind of thing that Luke Saint, part of the trashiest damn family in West Bend, does. It’s not something a woman like this does.
"Do it," she says, like she can read my thoughts. Her eyes remain trained on mine, and she arches up, her breasts in the air. "Come on me. Now."
I’m not going to. I’m going to pull her to her feet, roll a