Delectable

  He wanted her so fucking badly that some days it took everything that he had not to give in to all the fantasies that he’d had over the past month and a half, find the nearest bed, and touch, lick, and fuck her in every way imaginable. He’d never wanted anyone as much as he wanted her and that fucking terrified him.

  He needed to get away from her before he did something that scared her off and if he gave into any one of the thousands of fantasies that ran through his head on any given day, she would fucking run. He had to be patient and take his time with her, but right now, as he stood in the bathroom with her wearing his tee shirt, he didn’t want to be patient.

  He wanted her.

  “I’ll go set up while you’re getting ready,” he said, hoping like hell that she took pity on him and was out of here by the time that he finished setting up.

  “Fine,” she grumbled, crankily grabbing a towel from the shelf and slapped it on the counter.

  Jaw clenched, he nodded, because he’d already reached his limit today. He needed to get back to work and get her out of his hair for a few days so that he could think straight before he did something to fuck this up, but god, did he want to do all those things and more that would make her run away screaming.

  Over the years, he’d dated a few women that had brought him close to saying the hell with it and finally putting himself out of his misery, but never with a woman that he hadn’t even fucking kissed. He couldn’t stop thinking about her, imagining how good it would feel to slide his finger inside her, how wet she would be, how she would taste on his tongue as he licked her, the way her hand would run over his cock, the way her lips would tease his cock, and he couldn’t function.

  She was driving him out of his fucking mind and he hadn’t even kissed her yet. She shouldn’t be affecting him like this, shouldn’t have him struggling to fall asleep at night and when he did, he shouldn’t be waking up with his hand wrapped around his stiff cock, stroking himself furiously as he imagined doing all those things to her that would scare her off.

  All those things that he wanted to do to her right now…

  Licking his lips, his gaze dropped to her heart shaped ass that had his hands clenching and unclenching, desperate to touch her. When he found himself taking a step towards her, he muttered a curse, turned around and stormed off, telling himself that he just needed to be patient.

  Chapter 29

  “Don’t make me break this door down!”

  “You do what you have to do!” she snapped back, too freaking exhausted to do this today.

  She didn’t care that she was supposed to be packed and leaving right now, not when she was this exhausted. She’d tried. God, knew that she’d tried to do the right thing and pack her bag so that she could clear out, but the moment that she sat down on her bed to apply lotion to her skin she’d lost the battle. Before she knew what was happening, she had her eyes closed and was curled up in her bed, already falling asleep.

  That’s when the pounding started.

  Well, to be fair, he’d probably started off with a soft knock, but by the time she’d heard him, he was pounding on the door and demanding that she move her butt before he broke the door down. Let him break the door down, she thought, really not caring at the moment, not when she was finally on the verge of falling into a deep, peaceful, restful sleep for the first time in weeks.

  She didn’t care what he did right now as long as he let her sleep. He could drag her out of here, throw her into his truck, and drop her on Sara’s doorstep for all she cared, just as long as he did it without waking her up.

  God, she was just so freaking tired…

  “What the hell are you doing?” Reese asked, not sounding mad as she felt the bed dip.

  “Sleeping,” she mumbled, wondering if he’d be willing to grab her pillow and comforter for her before he left.

  “I can see that,” he said, sighing as the bed jostled a bit and she felt him lying down next to her. “You know that you’re only wearing a towel, right?”

  “And you realize that you’re still talking, right?” she shot back, curling up and even more determined than ever to fall asleep.

  “And you’re hogging the bed,” he grumbled, shifting again.

  “It’s my bed.”

  “You can share.”

  “I really can’t,” she muttered, absently reaching back to push him away so that he would stop jostling her.

  “You really can,” he said, ignoring her demands that he move over and somehow ended up taking up more space.

  “Don’t you have work to do?” she reminded him, forced to shift over even more, not even caring at this point if she lost her towel in the process.

  “I do, but some pain in the ass won’t get the hell out so that I can get started,” he said, already sounding like he was half-asleep.

  “Jerk,” she mumbled, enjoying his chuckle even as he shifted, once again jostling her.

  “Brat.”

  “Would you stop moving?” she asked, too tired to open her eyes so that she could glare at him.

  So, instead she settled for lying there, getting jostled as the man that was clearly too big for her bed continued to move, slowly destroying her will to live. Whimpering, she grabbed hold of her towel, shifted to the edge, and released a long-suffering sigh only to end with a small grunt of surprise when she suddenly found herself dragged back into the middle of the bed and pulled up tightly against a warm chest.

  “What are-”

  “Shhhh, sleeping,” the manhandling bastard muttered as his arm tightened around her and god help her, but she was too tired to argue with him.

  That, and he was so warm and comfortable and she was so freaking tired.

  So. Freaking. Tired.

  “Are you going to grab the pillow and comforter?” he mumbled, tightening his hold on her and making it impossible for her to do just that.

  Not that she was actually going to do that when she was barely capable of doing anything more than mumble at the moment. Instead, she shifted back against him, put her arm over his, and slowly exhaled as she started to drift off when she realized that this was the first time that she’d fallen asleep in someone’s arms since Michael died and couldn’t help but smile when she realized that it wasn’t as terrifying as she thought it would be.

  *-*-*-*

  “What time is it?” the woman tangled up in his arms mumbled into his chest.

  “No clue,” he said, refusing to open his eyes and find out that this whole thing had been nothing more than a dream.

  A refreshing, soul-mending, blissful dream where he got to hold the woman that he wanted more than his next breath in his arms and-

  “Oh, hell,” he groaned when she suddenly turned in his arms and pressed her wiggling bottom against him, drawing a surprised hiss from him as his arm tightened around her, praying that she stopped all that wiggling that had him grinding his jaw as she settled in to get more comfortable.

  “Are you done yet?” he asked through a clenched jaw as he struggled to ignore just how good she felt in his arms.

  “Maybe,” she said with a little wiggle that had him slowing exhaling and going over in his head everything that he was going to need in order to finish the kitchen and living room to keep from enjoying that wiggle, because he knew better than to let himself enjoy her touch when it wouldn’t end well for him.

  “God, you’re mean,” he said with a pained chuckle, once against tightening his hold around her to get her to stop wiggling before he lost his fucking mind.

  “Mmmhmmm,” she murmured sleepily, already starting to doze off in his arms again.

  Opening his eyes, he looked down at the beautiful woman in his arms and couldn’t help but smile. She was just so beautiful and pixie cute, he thought with a chuckle as he gave into the urge and released his hold on her so that he could run his fingers through her short, silky hair.

  “What are you doing?” she asked with a twitch of her lips as she reached up and blindly swatted his hand away
with a laugh and a, “Stop!”

  “You know you snore, right?” he asked, chuckling when she cracked an eye open to glare up at him.

  “I do not!”

  “You really do,” he said, smiling down at the beautiful woman glaring up at him as she rolled over onto her back to glare more effectively at him, making sure to keep a good hold on that towel that refused to budge.

  “You know it’s wrong to lie, don’t you, Officer Bradford?” she asked, blinking up at him.

  “Oh, if only I was lying,” he said with a forlorn sigh and a sad shake of his head that had her narrowing her eyes on him.

  “Lies, Yummy. All lies,” she said with a tsk as she reached up and ran her fingers through his hair before smoothing it down as she smiled up at him.

  “Are you sure?” he murmured, looking into her beautiful blue eyes as he felt the air around them suddenly shift.

  “Yes,” she said, slowly losing that beautiful smile as she returned his gaze, looking a little lost as her hand fell away and he found himself looking at her beautiful plump lips, wondering how they would feel against his.

  “I-I should probably pack,” she whispered softly as she tightened her hold on her towel even as her gaze dropped to his lips and all he wanted to do was to lean down and find out if her lips were really as soft as they looked.

  “Probably,” he said, unable to take his gaze away from those lips that he thought about damn near every minute of the day.

  Unable to stop himself, he leaned down and found himself pushed back as Kasey shoved him away with a panicked, “I should get going!” as she raced from the bed, threw open the door and slammed it shut behind her, leaving him lying there, staring at the wall and wondering if she had any idea that she’d just escaped into the closet.

  Rubbing his hands roughly down his face, he sat up and shook his head in disgust at himself, because he was about to seriously fuck this up again.

  Chapter 30

  “Oh, my god,” she said, staring into the darkness, “I’m an idiot.”

  “Kasey,” came the softly spoken words by the man that she’d just ran into the closet to avoid kissing.

  “I’m kind of busy,” she said, feeling like an idiot, but really there was nowhere else to go with this.

  “I can see that,” he said from the other side of the door while she stood there, pressed up against all the junk she’d shoved into this closet over the years. Worrying her bottom lip, she shifted to the side only to wince when the move caused her to brush up against Mikey’s old baby stroller, reminding her that it had been a while since she’d been in here.

  “I might be a while?” she said, wondering why that came out as a question.

  “I can wait,” was the response that had her choking back a whimper, because she really should have known better.

  “Any chance that you could wait for me in another room?”

  “No,” came the immediate reply.

  “Reese-”

  “I want to kiss you, Kasey.”

  “I-”

  “But, I think you know that,” he said softly.

  She nodded into the darkness as she closed her eyes in defeat, because she did know. She’d known it by the way that he looked at her, the way that he touched her, and the way that she responded to him, because she wanted him to kiss her, too. Some days that’s all she could think about and other days…

  She was scared to death that he was never going to kiss her.

  It figured that she would freak out when the moment that she’d been waiting for finally came and she would end up running into the closet! Not that she’d done it on purpose, because she could honestly say that she hadn’t really been thinking when she’d decided to make a run for it.

  One second, she’d been staring at his lips, realizing that it was finally happening and then…

  She’d realized that it was finally happening!

  “Do you want me to leave?” honorable, sweet, kind, patient Reese asked, because he would never push her into doing something that she didn’t want to do and that was one of the things that she liked so much about him.

  She opened her mouth to take the out that he was giving her only to end up groaning pathetically, closing her eyes, and banging the back of her head against the door, because she didn’t want him to leave. She wanted to kiss him. Correction, she wanted to have already kissed him so that she could stop panicking and freaking out about it.

  She just wanted to kiss him.

  “So, this is what we’re going to do. I’m going to leave so that you can change out of that towel. While you’re changing, I’m going to go grab us something to eat. When I get back, you and I are going to curl up on the bed and watch whatever movie you want. Then, at the end of the night, I’m going to tell you goodnight and you can decide how we do that. We go at your pace, Kasey. Okay?”

  “Okay,” she found herself saying with a nod and a shaky sigh, wishing that she had the guts to open this door and kiss him instead of waiting until she heard the bedroom door click shut before opening that closet door.

  *-*-*-*

  “I hope you’re hungry,” he said, as he walked into the cozy bedroom where he’d left Kasey, carrying enough fast food and junk food to give even a Bradford a stomachache.

  “Starving,” Kasey said, smiling from where she sat in the middle of the bed, browsing through Netflix.

  “Good,” he said with a wink, relieved to find her out of the closet, dressed in a pair of old boxers, that had better not be Eric’s, a lilac tank top, and smiling.

  He’d actually considered just grabbing something from the snack box that Kasey kept well stocked since the kitchen was still off limits, just in case she’d decided to lock him out, but he’d decided to chance it. He needed to know just how scared she was, because he wanted to figure out if he’d pushed her too far and if it was time to back off and accept the fact that there was never going to be anything between them.

  He wanted her, wanted to be with her, to touch her and-

  He just wanted her, but not if it meant hurting her.

  “Are we hungry, Yummy?” she asked with a teasing smile as she tossed the remote aside so that she could help him with the bags.

  “A little,” he said, returning her smile as he pulled out the bottle of apple juice that he’d picked up for her at the store and handed it to her.

  “What else did you get?” she asked with an excited little smile as she started her search with the bag closest to her while he kicked off his boots and sat on the edge of the bed, knowing how she worked by now.

  Since her kitchen was out of commission, she either took over his kitchen, or ordered in, which wasn’t often since she was very particular about her food and how it was made. That being said, she had a system when she ate food that she hadn’t cooked.

  First, she inspected everything, making sure that the food looked good, checking for things that were missing, condiments, seasoning, etc. Then, if the food was from a place that she’d never tried before, and there were surprisingly a lot of places around here that she hadn’t tried since she usually cooked, she would arrange the food by appetizers, main course, sides, and dessert and taste each one, taking her time, savoring each bite and deciding whether it was worth a second bite.

  If she found something that she liked, she’d pull out one of those little notebooks that she kept around the house and in her bag, and start making notes. She’d write down what she liked, what she didn’t like, what she would change, and as soon as she got her hands on a stove, she would start playing around with those ideas.

  He liked watching her work. She’d worry her bottom lip the way that he liked while her brows arched adorably as she focused on whatever she was doing. Normally, he hated when anyone came between him and his food, especially since most of his meals were on the go and there was never a guarantee that he was going to get a chance to finish his food before he got a call, but he never minded when Kasey did it.

  He liked watching her w
ork and if that meant waiting until she was done doing what she loved then that was more than fine with him. While she took out every item and put it in its place on the bed that she must have made when he ran out, he sat down on the bed with a sigh and pretended to scroll through Netflix when he was really watching her.