B00VQNYV1Y (R) (8 page)

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M
ELANIE HAD ALWAYS
heard that the first time wasn’t very good. That, in her experience was a lie. But, her second time was even better. It was dark outside now, moonlight glittering on the lake. She’d left the cakes out to cool, the frosting stuck in the fridge to wait until she got around to actually decorating anything. She loved the function of fondant, but she preferred frosting. Regular old, butter-and-sugar-filled frosting.

She wasn’t sure how she’d gone from sex to frosting in her mind. Actually, it made sense. The two were closely linked. Indulgent, fantastic, potentially bad for you.

She shifted, looking over at Luke who was lying on his back, his forearm thrown over his eyes, his breathing ragged. She took a moment just to study him. To look at him like she’d never looked at her friend before. At the little lines around his eyes, the deep grooves that bracketed his mouth. His well-defined muscles, the hair on his chest, trailing down toward that very masculine part of him that was no longer a secret from her.

In that moment, she thought her chest might crack open. Which wasn’t what she was looking for. She was looking for a different sensation. One of chains dropping loose, freeing her from all the baggage she’d carried with her for years upon years. She didn’t feel free. She just felt chained to the bed. Chained to him.

She watched his chest rise and fall, his breath even, steady. He was asleep. She bit back laughter. So, men really
did
fall asleep after. Good to know.

She found she wasn’t tired at all. She felt like swimming laps, running a marathon. Eating half of the cake.

Well, the cake thing was a lot more realistic than any of those other options.

She slipped away from Luke, dressing for the third time that day, and padding out into the kitchen. She opened up the fridge, retrieved the frosting and checked the temperature on the cakes.

She couldn’t afford to be distracted too much. She had this wedding to contend with after all. A huge wedding meant a lot of cake. A large bridal party and rehearsal dinner meant even more. Which meant she needed to be cake focused. Not cock focused.

Her lips twitched, humor and her own joke making her smile. It was possible she was going a little bit crazy. But then, if anyone was worth going a little crazy for, it was Luke. That made her frown. Luke specifically was not supposed to be important. Her chest clenched tight. She was just having some kind of emotional reaction to the physical stuff that had gone on between them. It was chemical. Hormonal. Unavoidable. She would have felt that way about Joel, the cowboy. If that was his name.

Forget that. She would not have felt this way about Joel.

She eyed the frosting in the bowl, seriously considering just eating this batch.

No, she wasn’t going to do that. She grabbed her icing spatula and plunged it deep into the salted caramel buttercream, scooping out a generous amount and slathering it over what would be the bottom layer of this chocolate cake. It was only a tester size. If she liked the way it held up, the way it tasted and the way it looked, then it would move forward to actual wedding cake size.

“What are you doing out here?”

She looked up and saw Luke standing in the doorway, his voice rough from sleep, his body essentially bare except for a pair of tight, black briefs.

She was never going to get tired of looking at his body. His broad chest, slim waist, narrow hips. And his thighs. Mercy. She imagined they got a good workout from him squatting down to work on cars all the time. It showed. She’d never realized that men’s thighs could be a thing. They were absolutely a thing. At least, his thighs were.

She held up her spatula. “Frosting cake.”

“I see that.” He walked closer to her, and her heart shimmied up into her throat. “But that means you weren’t there when I woke up.”

“You’re getting used to this change awfully quickly.”

“Don’t you like it?”

She turned back toward the cake, her cheeks flushing. “Yes.”

He wrapped his arm around her waist, pressing his palm flat against her stomach, kissing the curve of her neck. “Why did that sound so much like a complaint?”

“It wasn’t.” She shivered as his hand drifted down beneath the waistband of her pants, his fingertips sliding across her clitoris. “Oh…”

“If you would’ve stayed in bed, do you see what might’ve happened?”

“Can’t it happen now?” she asked, her voice morphing into a needy whimper.

“I don’t know. I feel like it violates a lot of health codes.”

“These are just sample cakes. No one’s going to eat them.”

“Still. Rules are rules. You don’t get naked in kitchens…”

She craned her neck back to look at him. “You don’t get naked with your friends anywhere.”

“I guess you make a good point there. We’re already breaking the rules.”

“Broken. Smashed. Might as well keep going.”

“I don’t know if I trust you,” he said, his breath hot on the tender skin of her neck. “I think your judgment might be impaired.”

She arched her back, pushing her butt, grinding against his arousal. “No more than yours, I imagine.”

His breath hissed through his teeth. “Maybe.”

He reached past her, to the bowl of frosting, taking her spatula out, then bringing it back toward them, brushing her hair to the side, sliding the soft, silicon edge along her skin, leaving a thick layer of icing behind.

“What are you –”

His tongue followed the path he just forged with the spatula, licking her skin clean. “Delicious,” he said.

This was the dirtiest thing she’d ever done. Dirtier than any fantasy she’d ever had. And she was doing it with Luke. In her kitchen.

That nice Shuller boy, as her grandma had always called him, had a filthy imagination. And Melanie liked it a lot.

“I need that for the cake,” she said.

“You said no one was going to eat it.” He dipped the spatula back in the bowl, gathering another dollop of frosting. “I would rather eat you anyway.” He gripped her hips with one hand, turning her so that her back was pressed against the counter, then with one fluid motion he wrenched her T-shirt over her head, exposing her breasts to him. “Perfect.” He dragged the spatula in a straight line across her bare skin, from her collarbone on down, then across more sensitized skin. He put the spatula back down on the counter, holding her hips tight, so tight it was almost painful, but she liked it.

He lowered his head, tracing her collarbone with the tip of his tongue. “You still worried about the cake?”

“What cake?”

He chuckled, continuing his exploration of her body, continuing to lap the frosting from her skin. He paused at her breast, sucking her nipple in deep, looking up, his eyes meeting hers. Her stomach tightened painfully, desire building low and deep. He repeated the motion on the other side until her skin was clean. She didn’t know what she expected him to do next, but it wasn’t what he did. He dropped to his knees, undoing the snap on her jeans. He lowered her zipper, and as the fabric parted he swept his tongue over her tender, bared skin.

“There’s no frosting there,” she said, her voice shaking.

“I don’t need it. You’re sweet enough.” He grabbed hold of the waistband of her jeans, pulling them and her underwear down her thighs, down to the floor.

“Luke…” It had been one thing to do this for him, but it was quite another to have him do that for her.

She wasn’t really sure why. Maybe because she’d been confident in her attraction to him. Tasting him, taking him into her mouth had been fantasy fulfillment for her. But for him?

He said he wanted you. He said he wanted you then and not anyone else. Just trust him.

He kissed the top of her thigh and she shivered. She didn’t have the brain power to worry about what he wanted or didn’t want. She couldn’t think about anything but the way his hands felt, holding her so tight. The way his mouth felt, so hot against her skin.

“Mel…” His voice, the reverence in his tone. The desire so evident in his voice, in his actions, it healed jagged pieces inside her she hadn’t even known were there.

He pressed her back against the counter, lowering his head and tasting her deeply. The sudden, decisive action shocked her, stole her breath. This wasn’t tentative, no careful, slow sampling. He was devouring her.

She laced her fingers through his hair, holding him tight against her as he continued to tease her with his tongue. He pressed deeper, letting go of her hips, bringing his hand down between her thighs, pushing one finger inside her.

She gasped, moving her hands to his shoulders, her hands digging into his skin, her eyes closed tight. She didn’t want to close her eyes. Didn’t want to miss this. Didn’t want to miss him.

She forced herself to look, to take in the sight of his dark head between her legs, her hands braced on those familiar, broad shoulders.

Intimacy
.

The word burned itself across her brain. Hot and deep and impossible to will away. This wasn’t just sex. This was intimate.

He had licked her. Everywhere. He was tasting her now like she was the most exquisite dessert he’d ever had.

A man who had seen her cry, had seen her, bruised and broken, beaten by her own father. A man who’d watched her grow from a skinny, teenage girl into a woman.

The man she’d known since he was a lanky boy, with a home haircut that stuck out at odd angles and pants that were too short because he’d grown too fast and his parents’d had a tight clothing budget.

The boy she’d held onto while he’d told her about how he was barely graduating. How he was going to leave Marietta and start his own business. How his parents would hate him for it, but he wasn’t smart enough to do anything else.

She’d held onto him, and he hadn’t cried, but she’d known he wanted to. So she’d just held him while he’d sat there in misery. And he was holding her now. Holding her while he took her to ecstasy.

That boy and this man were the same person, and she couldn’t ignore it. Didn’t want to ignore it, even if it made her feel like her chest had been cracked open, left vulnerable to anything and everything that might hurt her, might destroy her.

Even if exposing her heart might mean it got stolen, twisted, tortured by the person who held it.

He pushed her higher, the tension in her stomach like a bowstring about to break. The tension wound itself around the emotions building in her chest, binding them tight, so tight she couldn’t release them, couldn’t let them go. Couldn’t separate the physical from the emotional.

It was a struggle just to breathe.

A second finger joined the first, his tongue sliding over her clit at just the right moment. And she fell. Endlessly, forever, in Luke’s arms.

Chapter Seven

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I
T HAD BEEN
a week. A week of amazing, mind-blowing sex with Luke. A week since she’d come apart in her kitchen, realizing that while she might have been able to simply have sex with another man, it could never be that simple with Luke.

She wanted it to be, though. More than wanted, she was determined.
Determined.

Determined that when they were having a conversation like they always had, she would see only Luke, her friend. Determined that when he took her into his arms and kissed her, that was when she would see Luke, her lover.

Of course, her determination was for nothing because she couldn’t do either of those things. Hadn’t been able to censor epiphany up against the counter.

The arrangement they had didn’t allow for that. Luke, unlike her, was keeping things seamlessly separate. He was visiting his family, and generally going about his business in Marietta, doing phone business for his garage, acting like things were normal between them. Until they had a few moments of free time. A few moments alone. And then the humorous glint in his eye would change, growing intense, hot. And that was when Luke, her lover would show up.

Too bad she wasn’t able to make as clean of a distinction. She found herself wanting to touch him casually throughout the day. To brush his hair off his forehead when it fell into his eyes, to take his hand when they walked outside the house.

Though, she imagined that since the rumor mill in Marietta said they were a couple, now that they were walking down the main street she could take his hand if she wanted to. But did he want her to? It would only be because of what he told his parents. But did he realize that? Or would he think that she was overstepping?

The introduction of insecurity in her relationship with him was not her favorite part of this arrangement.

This morning, Luke had discovered that her bathroom sink leaked. He had decided that it needed to be fixed. She wasn’t sure which Luke had decided that. Friend Luke or Lover Luke. Or if there was really a difference at all, and he was lying to himself.

He’d checked out of the motel two days after they’d started sleeping together. It made more sense for him to stay with her. Really, even if they hadn’t been sleeping together it might have made more sense for him to stay with her. She had an extra bedroom. Though, they weren’t using the extra bedroom since he was sleeping with her. He claimed he was going to fix her plumbing as a thank you. For letting him stay with her, he’d hastened to add.

A good thing. She didn’t want to feel like he was buying sexual favors with manual labor.

He’d been very circumspect in his touching of her on the walk from her truck to the hardware store, then in the hardware store, and now, on the trek back to where they’d parked. And she felt like there might as well be a canyon between them, rather than a foot.

She flexed her fingers, then stretched her arm out slightly, leaning in and she did, purposefully brushing up against the back of his hand.

What are you twelve?

No, she was not twelve. She was a grown-ass lady. Who was sleeping with a man who wouldn’t even hold her hand, because he was her best friend. That just seemed messed up.

You said you didn’t want this. You said you didn’t want a relationship.