“See if I bring her a bone anytime soon,” Duke said, a total liar because he really did love that dog of hers.
They moved together in her kitchen, setting the table and getting the food out before sitting down to eat.
She jiggled a switch and then had to duct-tape the door closed on the oven. “What’s going on?” Duke asked.
“It’s old and temperamental. The landlord tells me he’s replacing it, but that doesn’t appear to be too high on his list. It works. It just needs some extra love.”
He frowned, making a mental note to take a look at it later on.
The first bite of the pasta told him everything he needed to know about Carmella Rossi. “This is magic,” he managed to say in between bites.
“Everyone has one or two things they make really well. Baked ziti is mine.”
“Your mom teach you? Mine isn’t such a great cook, but I learned enough to get by.”
A shadow crossed her features for a brief moment. “My grandmother. She taught me how to cook. She was good at everything, and when I’d complain, she’d say she had a sixty-year lead on me and when I was old like she was, I’d be great at lots of stuff too.” Her smile told Duke that Carmella had a great deal of affection for the woman.
After they finished, he watched her wash dishes from his side of the kitchen, while he put things away in her fridge.
She had such an intense look on her face—a little dreamy, a little driven—that it was impossible not to keep his gaze from returning to her time and again.
Quickly enough, though, they were done, she let the dog outside to do her business and turned to him, her back leaning against the archway to the kitchen.
“Maybe you should give me a tour,” Duke said.
Suddenly Carmella was shy. Her one bedroom couldn’t be anywhere near as nice as the house he owned next door.
“Why are you looking at me that way?” He stepped close enough to brush some hair away from her face with a fingertip.
“What way is that?” What was she going to say? Confess her weirdness about the house or go for sexy to change the topic? Like it was any contest.
Carmella took his hand and pulled. “Not a big tour. You’ve seen the kitchen and living room. The backyard.”
“That’s just for this flat, right? Or do you have to share with the downstairs guy?”
“He has a patio out in front of his place. The back is all mine and Ginger’s.”
“He’s odd. The guy downstairs, I mean.” Duke walked down the hall with her.
“He’s quite shy.” Carmella pointed to the bathroom and then opened the door to the bedroom.
“Is this where the magic happens, Carmella?” Duke stepped close, crowding her until her back met the wall.
“Sometimes. Sometimes it’s out there too. Magic can happen in lots of places.”
“Do you realize how hot it makes me when you’re like this?”
“Like what?” Carmella asked, a little breathless at his proximity.
“You’re a woman who knows what she likes and isn’t afraid to demand it.”
Not when it came to sex. At least with sex, she was in charge. She made the choices about who and when. If or not. A hard-won gift of self-confidence when it came to that one very essential thing.
She wanted the man in front of her. Wanted the heat coming off him in waves. Wanted his taste, his touch, his scent all over her.
This greed for him was stupid and selfish but she was going to keep him anyway.
“Take your shirt off,” she said.
“Right on,” he said slow and honey sweet with a smile that sent her blood rushing straight to her clit.
And then he reached down, the muscles in his forearms cording as he grabbed the hem and yanked the T-shirt over his head.
She shoved her hands in the front pockets of her shorts to keep from touching him just yet.
On his belly, he bore the tattoo of some sort of insignia she recognized as being connected to his military service. A fist, knuckles first.
“Knuckles up.” He brushed his fingertips over it. “Our patch.”
Carmella nodded, past words at how fucking hot he was standing there in her bedroom. The late afternoon sun cast the bedroom and hall in a warm, golden glow. It hit the caramel notes in his hair, the bits of gray at the temples and shot through his beard. One curl hung toward the front and he worked it a little.
“Okay, I can’t deny the appeal of that little look there.” Carmella fanned her face and then yanked her shirt off, tossing it to the side.
“I …” Duke indicated her breasts. “Wow.”
“I didn’t know you’d be seeing me undress today. So I must confess I’m wearing all my daily, non-going-to-have-sex stuff.”
“You have non-going-to-have-sex stuff?” He crept close enough to slide a finger beneath one of her bra straps. A shiver stole over her skin as she let herself fall into this thing they were making between them.
The slow build of attraction and sexual chemistry that had been building bit by aching bit until it had spilled free.
“I clean up nice. If I’m going to be seen naked or getting naked, I bring out the big guns. Lace. Some silk. All the colors of the rainbow. You know the drill.” Carmella had been aiming for saucy, but he hooked the strap and pulled it down her shoulder, leaned down, and licked the skin.
A helpless moan of entreaty broke from her lips then, sending saucy straight out the window.
“I’m finding this plain cotton pretty damned hot. Who needs lace when your skin is covered in poppies and freckles?” To underline it, he bent to kiss the freckles over her shoulder as he traced over the garden of orange flowers inked over her back and side.
“You’re trouble.” A tease, yes, but also the truth. While Carmella couldn’t deny how flattering and sexy the stuff he said to her was, it would be suicide to take him too seriously.
“I’m not,” Duke protested and then snorted. “Well, maybe I am sometimes. Usually for a good reason and usually with someone else who is also trouble.”
That grin he tossed her way was a panty dropper. Stepping back, Carmella spun her finger in a circle, urging him to turn.
Hoo.
Across the very wide, sun-kissed muscles of his shoulders, Twisted Steel scrawled in old-school tattoo letters. On the left shoulder, a black-and-gray half sleeve. A screaming skull with pops of red where the petals of a rose had been inked as if they’d fallen.
His jeans hung low, the top bit of his boxers showed now that his shirt was off. For some reason, this only made him hotter. Like the wide shoulders that led down to a tapered waist. Here and there, small tattoos dotted his torso.
Duke Bradshaw was a man very much at home in his skin. He knew she liked what she saw. Preened a little. His confidence was beyond erotic.
“Whad’ya think?”
“Oh, there’s your New Hampshire showing.” She liked that as much as she liked that surfer dude drawl. Especially loved it when they combined in a way that suited him perfectly. “I think you’re wearing pants.”
Duke unbuckled his belt and got rid of his jeans, along with the boxers and his socks.
Powerful thighs and rock-hard calves weren’t that much a surprise, though no less a delight to look at. An ass that called out to be gripped, urging him on as he fucked her hard and deep. Yes, lawd.
And then, as she came around him, his cock. Hard enough that it stood up, nearly tapping his belly, curved just a smidge to the right. Fat. She only barely managed not to sigh happily at the sight.
“Now I think, lucky me.”
He tipped his chin. “Make me lucky too then, Carmella. Get naked.”
* * *
She was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Carmella Rossi in her plain white cotton panties and bra, now naked except for the beautiful orange poppies on her back, sweeping down from one side to the other.
Honest-to-god dimples at the small of her back to each side of her spine led to the curve
of hips he couldn’t wait to sink his fingers into. On her forearm, an old-school anchor tattoo with a smattering of nautical stars.
Without her bra, Duke had much easier access to her breasts, which, like the kiss, had been even better in reality than he’d dared imagine.
Perfect.
“Lucky doesn’t even approach how I feel right now.” He stepped to bring them skin to skin, his arms sliding around her, hers around his waist, her cheek to his chest.
So. Good.
She licked over his nipple, then dragged her teeth across until he broke out in shivers.
“On the bed. I need to be horizontal with you all spread out for my enjoyment.”
Carmella closed the door before getting in bed. “If not, we might have company.”
Duke wanted her all to himself so he had no problems with that. He got on the mattress, crawling up her body on all fours, kissing his way to those magnificent tits.
Licking over the left nipple, he blew over it, watching it tighten. Several times before she tugged on his hair.
He looked up from what he was doing. “Yes?”
Carmella rolled her eyes. “You’re killing me.”
“I know. And you interrupted me.” He caught the other nipple between his teeth, settling against her, making a space between her thighs, his cock sliding against the wet heat of her pussy.
“Carry on,” she said, a little breathless.
There was something irresistible in ruffling her feathers. She was normally so unflappable that getting a reaction from her was unbelievably hot.
He teased, biting and licking her nipples until she writhed against him, and that’s when he kissed a trail south, over one of her hips and across her belly to the other.
She had a faint scar there and he kissed it as he moved on, spreading her thighs wide and pushing her up the bed a bit so he could get comfortable.
It was full daylight, sun streaming in through curtains sheer enough that if someone was standing outside her bedroom they’d be able to make out what was going on. But Carmella wasn’t shy. Not about this. He looked his fill at her pussy, slick, dark with desire, and then he took a lick and was lost.
He held her up to his mouth, serving himself, his hands splayed over her ass and the backs of her thighs. He ate her cunt like a starving man, devouring each one of her moans and gasps along with the taste of her body.
When she flew apart in his arms, he continued to push her higher and higher until she spun into another climax on the heels of the first.
Carmella gave a long, satisfied sigh as she opened her eyes to find him digging through his pants until he held a condom aloft with a triumphant grin.
“Glad to see you were prepared, but don’t go wrapping your cock up just yet. I haven’t even gotten to play with it.”
Laughing, he jumped back into the bed, rolling to bring her atop his body. “This is a mighty fine view. You can play with it inside your pussy because I’m dying to get inside you.”
She blushed, one of the big bouncy curls of her hair fell forward, the sight filling him with tenderness.
Carmella fell to her hands at either side of his head so she could kiss him long and slow, licking over the swell of his bottom lip as she drew away at the end. In the other room, the Sneaker Pimps’ “6 Underground” began to play and he molded his palms against her breasts, her nipples at his palm.
She got flustered a few times, which made him feel very smug until she angled his cock and backed herself up against it, taking the length of him inside her in one movement.
“Not so smirky now, I see,” she murmured with a sly look.
An intensely fantastic rush of pleasure had taken him beyond words so he tugged her nipples until her eyes went glossy.
She tightened her inner walls, sending stars to the edges of his vision.
“This is the best contest I’ve ever been part of,” he gasped out.
“I never had any idea I was so competitive.” Carmella sat straighter, now undulating herself against him, keeping his cock deep.
“Gold star. Blue ribbon. World champion.” Duke let go of one breast long enough to give her the you’re number one symbol and then grab her, flipping them both so she was on her back and he on his knees between her thighs.
Which only took him deeper into her heat.
Carmella thought she had never enjoyed sex more when he flipped them over and took over, fucking into her body over and over. But that was before he hooked her knees over his forearms, grabbing her hips and pulling her up his cock until her nails dug into his skin.
She hung right on the very edge of it being too much. It hurt and felt unbearably good all at the same time.
He growled, all that slow, easygoing long gone. This Duke was stripped down to the alpha male he was beneath all that suave cat stuff on the surface. And it was way too late to run the other way because damn and whoa he was good in bed.
And he made her laugh.
Right at that moment, though, he was so impossibly thick inside her pussy, so deep and so close to orgasm. The light in his eyes had gone from ferocious to dreamy and his growl had died, his mouth in a line of concentration.
Carmella was warm and soft, wet and open for him so she gave over to the pleasure of watching him come.
The muscles on his neck corded and his gaze cleared, locking onto hers as he pressed against her, coming as he kissed her senseless.
CHAPTER
Seven
Carmella, smiling, bearing a bag of food she’d made for her mother to eat over the course of the week, let herself in, calling out as she did.
“Mom, you here?”
A growl prefacing a stream of high-pitched barking sounded, answering her question.
Virgie had a dog of her own. A perpetually cranky dachshund her mother carried around like a baby and spoiled rotten. She was barely tolerant of Carmella but was absolutely horrible if any other dogs were around.
“I brought you some food.” Carmella headed toward the kitchen, poking her head into the living room as she passed by.
“Thank you, sugar,” her mom called out.
Carmella unloaded the food into the cabinets, fridge, and freezer before heading to drop a kiss on her mom’s cheek and sit across from her.
In her day, for a brief, shining time, Virginia Hay was a great beauty. She liked to tell a story about how at sixteen she ran off to Hollywood to be a star but that in the end, love saved her from that crazy famous life she’d have had.
Virgie liked the fragile flower bit. Maybe it was just an act, way back in the day. Maybe there was a time when Carmella’s mother had strength and courage. A time when she hadn’t been content with letting herself be taken care of—and sometimes ill-used—by people.
“I put your pills in the keeper in the cabinet. I’ll be here tomorrow at ten to take you to the doctor. I’ll call you when I leave work so you can be ready.”
Her mother shrugged to say time was something that never really bothered her.
“Remember I’m not at Salazar anymore,” Carmella said. “I have less ability to come and go as I please.” Though Carmella had no doubt that if she needed the time to take her mom to a medical appointment, Twisted Steel would give it to her.
Still, she’d prefer not to involve relative strangers in this situation so she’d go in early and take a long lunch to get her mom to the doctor’s and back without shorting Twisted Steel any time.
“I promise I’ll be ready.”
At Carmella’s look, her mother’s mask slipped a little, giving a glimpse of the lost girl who lived in her mother’s skin.
For as long as Carmella could remember, her mother made promises and broke them. Carmella believed honestly that her mother truly meant to keep her promises when she made them. She just never followed through.
“How’s my brother?” Virgie asked, lighting a cigarette.
Carmella sighed. “Put it out. You’re going to aggravate your lungs.”
“You’re
no fun,” Virgie said, meaning it. But she put the cigarette out.
“Someone has to be the grown-up.” Carmella hated herself when she allowed her mother to get under her skin and goad her.
“That’s boring too. You’re too young to give up on life, Carm.”
Carmella gave the dog a look, like for real? The vicious little snausage snorted a little. Even she couldn’t make excuses for Virgie’s bullshit.
“If you want to know how Uncle Carl is, you should call him yourself. I saw him yesterday. He and Aunt Maria just got back from a trip to Lake Chelan. Both were tanned and rested. They asked about you.” Her uncle loved his sister, even if he also understood how fucked up and toxic Virgie could be at times.
They never liked Carmella’s dad, or any of the placeholders Virgie brought around. They had called her on her bullshit when she’d waltzed off for several days, leaving fourteen-year-old Carmella at home.
Virgie didn’t get why her older brother, who’d spoiled her when she was a young girl, would make her do boring stuff like take care of Carmella every day and have groceries in the house.
Love was one thing, but he’d long since given up hope that she’d ever rise to the occasion and be a good mother. Or a halfway responsible adult. He resented the way that impacted Carmella’s life and future because she was the one her mother leaned on.
He saw it as Virgie stealing her daughter’s life and he hated it.
Over the years, especially after Carmella’s grandmother had died, it had driven a wedge between the siblings and Carmella had done her best to stand between her mother and uncle to keep the peace.
“Must be nice,” Virgie complained. “I never go on trips. Not that my brother ever bothers to invite me along.”
Carmella didn’t rise to the bait. It was a long road with no real destination. Just hours of listening to Virgie bitterly blame all her failures on other people. Or crying because she let them all down and knew it. Sometimes there’d be promises to be better, but usually it just went on and on until she wound down or Carmella left the room.
“I made you some enchiladas, some baked ziti, and chicken salad. Bread for sandwiches is in the bread box. I even put some presliced tomatoes, onions, and lettuce for toppings in your veggie drawer. I’m making pineapple upside down cake this weekend. I’ll bring some over for you.”