Foreplay: The Ivy Chronicles (14 page)

He flattened his palm just below my bra, his fingers splaying wide, almost covering my stomach completely, fingertips brushing my ribs. “Sounds like a saint.” He cocked his head, assessing, staring at me, consuming me with his eyes.

All I could think was:
I hope not
. A saint would never look at me the way Reece was right now, and I wanted that.
Needed
that. His other hand slid around to palm my back. He traced my spine, caressing each and every bump of vertebrae. He made me feel feminine, small, and delicate. Like something to be worshipped.

Suddenly he shifted both hands to grip my torso. I was airborne for the barest moment as he launched me back on the bed. I landed on my back with a small yelp. Thank God he didn’t want me to keep talking about Hunter. I couldn’t speak coherently. Not anymore. Not even five minutes ago.

Rising, he unlaced my shoes and tugged them off. Each one hit the floor with a thud.

He eased down, coming over me, propping his elbows on either side of my head.

His face was so close. I felt his square jaw, reveling in the scratch and bristle. He held himself still and I let myself continue to explore his face, tracing the arch of his eyebrows, down over the bridge of his nose, the well-carved lips.

They moved against my fingers as he spoke. “As long as you look at him like that he’ll be yours.”

I pulled my hand back slightly. “How am I looking at you?”

He settled himself deeper between my thighs. One hand slipped between my back and the mattress. With one flick, he unhooked my bra and tugged it free. “Like you want to eat me.”

“Oh.”

His head lowered. I shuddered as he pressed one kiss to the tip of my breast.
Ohhh
. Then the next. I ran my fingers over his head. His mouth closed over my nipple, pulling me into the wet warmth of his mouth. I gasped and surged against him.

I clawed at his shirt, twisting the fabric, wanting to feel him, skin to my skin.

He sat up, reached behind him and pulled it over his head, and then came back down over me. This time we were chest to chest. His hardness to my softness. His mouth met mine hungrily. It wasn’t sweet or gentle or easy. He kissed me deep and hard. I kissed him back, running my tongue along his, licking at his teeth.

He bit my lip, tugging it between his teeth. I moaned, lifting up for him. He evaded me and I growled, chasing his mouth until he let me have it again with a satisfying collision of lips and tongue. My hands swept over his shoulders, gliding down his smooth back. The flesh rippled and undulated under my hands.

He pulled back and stared down at me, his blue eyes so deep and penetrating they glowed almost silver. His breath crashed on the air as his gaze roamed me.

“Reece,” I whispered and my voice sounded almost like a plea.

“I want to see you. All of you.”

“I—” My voice broke, unsure.

“You can trust me.”

I nodded, believing that. He wasn’t the problem. The issue was me. My fear.

He moved quickly, sliding down the length of me. His hands went to the waist of my jeans, fingers working expertly. The zipper sang briefly. He slid my jeans off with ease. He did it better than I could have. Like he stripped jeans off girls all the time.

“Now these are hot.”

I glanced down and winced at the white cotton panties with tiny yellow kittens on them. Not exactly sex goddess material.

A sound strangled in my throat, part laugh, part groan. “I really need to shop for some sexier lingerie.”

“Nuh-uh. These are hot. And I promise they make an impression.” He pressed a slow, savoring, open-mouthed kiss right above the edge of my panties, below my belly button. My nerves sparked and jumped like they were shot with electricity. His hand drifted lower, palming me between my legs, and I was panting now. Embarrassing little whimpers that I couldn’t stop.

“Pepper, let me touch you.” The rough catch in his voice was probably the sexiest thing I ever heard. He could have asked me anything right then—with that voice, with his hand between my legs—and I would have agreed.

I nodded, hair flying around me. His hand was inside my panties before I even blinked.

His fingers slicked through me, parting me. He made an almost animal growl as he eased a finger inside me.

I sat up, arching off the bed with a sharp cry. Shudders racked me. He pushed at that spot, the one he’d found before, with the base of his palm.

“So wet.” I barely heard his whisper as I held tightly onto his hard shoulders. He buried his mouth against the crook of my neck and pressed a kiss there as he pulled out and buried his finger back inside me again. Deeper. More intimate, stretching me. I cried out, clenching around him with muscles I never knew I possessed. My arms wrapped around his shoulders, clinging to him like a buoy at sea as ripples eddied over me.

We stayed like that for an endless moment. An immense lethargy stole over me. His hands slipped from my panties and he pulled me against his side, holding me. As sated as I felt, I was alert and awake, not yet willing to fall asleep.

I cuddled closer to him, glad for this moment where it was okay to touch him, to let him touch me. It wouldn’t be like this tomorrow. Maybe ever again.

I took the opportunity to ask what had been nagging at me ever since I learned he was running Mulvaney’s on his own. “Is it just you and Logan?”

Silence met my question and I darted a look up at his face. He stared down at me, considering me.

“Logan is still in high school, right?”

“Yeah. He’s a senior. He only picks up a shift here and there. He plays baseball. Hoping he can get a scholarship.”

So Logan must live out in the house near the Campbells’ place. With their parents. I pictured it. Some quaint old farmhouse like the Campbells owned. With a pond. And ducks. Maybe his mother wore an apron as she fed them leftover toast. An idyllic family scenario. I knew I was romanticizing his life. Okay, him. I just couldn’t stop myself. I always did that when I met people. Imagined their perfect lives. Normal lives.

“It’s just you living above the bar then?”

“Yeah.” His hands traced a delicious pattern on my arm.

“What about your parents? They don’t mind?”

“My mother passed away when I was eight.”

“Oh. I’m sorry.” I moistened my lips. “And your dad?”

“He’s in a wheelchair. Going on two years now.”

“God, I’m so sorry. That must be hard.” So that was why he was running the bar all on his own? His dad no longer could. I wanted to pry more information out of him, but he looked so hard all of a sudden. So unapproachable. Apparently I had touched on a subject he didn’t like talking about. I could understand that. I had my own ghosts that I kept firmly behind closed doors.

Still, I wanted to say something. Offer him some comfort. I sat up on an elbow to stare down at him, hugging the blanket to my chest as I smoothed a hand over his chest in a small circular motion.

“Don’t look at me like I’m something noble,” he said quietly, frowning, his blue eyes suddenly like frost. “I’m the one that put him there.”

This time I felt my mouth fall open. Heard my gasp. My hand froze on his chest.

“That’s right. Now you know what kind of guy I am. I work the bar because my old man can’t. Because it’s his legacy and it’s the least I can do for him after crippling him.” He made a sound in the back of his throat. Part growl, part snort of . . . something. Disgust maybe? With me or himself, I wasn’t sure.

I shook my head. “I—”

“You shouldn’t be wasting your time on me.” He rose abruptly and grabbed his discarded shirt. Shrugging it over his head, he continued in a hard voice, “This was fun, but I think you’ve had enough foreplay lessons, don’t you? You’re more than ready for your Polo-wearing frat boy.”

I watched him, his lean body leaving the circle of light cast by my lamp until he fell into shadow near my door. Part of me wanted to call him back and assure him that he was wrong. But wrong about what? That I wasn’t wasting my time with him? That tonight wasn’t somehow enough? That he actually couldn’t have done what he said and harmed his father? I knew next to nothing about him. I couldn’t say any of that.

I let my instincts kick in. The same instincts that helped me survive after my father died, when it was just me and Mom. I watched him exit my room and close the door behind him. Clutching the blanket close to me, I got up and locked it.

Chapter 16

W
ait. He said he put his father in a wheelchair?” Georgia demanded over a stack of pancakes at our favorite waffle house a few blocks from campus. Her fork cut into a link of sausage and then swirled it in syrup. She pulled the glistening meat off her fork with a snap of teeth and chewed, staring at me as though concentrating on something complicated.

Emerson shuddered and sipped her coffee, carefully adjusting her leopard print sunglasses on the bridge of her nose and angling her face away from the window to the right of her. A barely touched bowl of oatmeal sat before her, which I made her order, insisting she would feel better with some food in her stomach. “How can you eat all that?”

“I can eat like this because I run five days a week and I don’t get piss drunk,” Georgia replied, cutting a perfect, bite-sized triangle out of her pancake stack. “Now. Back to the bartender. Did you ask him what he meant by that?”

I toyed with my hash browns, stabbing at them. “No. He was in a hurry to leave after that admission, and to be honest, I was kind of in a hurry for him to go, too.”

“No joke.” Emerson sighed. “The hot ones are always sociopaths.”

“Really?” I looked at her across from me in the booth. “Always?” I glanced at Georgia for help. “
Always?
”

Em cringed, touching her forehead. “You’re too loud. And if not sociopaths, they’re at least damaged.”

“Now you tell me that. If that’s the case, why were you in such a hurry to hook me up with the hottest guy you could find then?”

“Did you want to hook up with someone homely with no skills in the bedroom? I thought the point was to get you some experience.”

“Ignore her.” Georgia batted a hand in the air. “She’s moody because she’s hungover. Hunter is hot and
not
damaged. The same can be said for my boyfriend.”

Emerson muttered something into her coffee mug that sounded suspiciously like “Are you sure about that?”

Georgia shot her a look. “Funny.”

“I’m just saying you never know what’s really inside anyone.”

“Well, that’s a cheerful thought.” Georgia shook her head and reached for her juice. “Listen, I doubt he meant it like that. Maybe his father injured himself on the job, working long hours to support the family and Reece blames himself. You know, something like that. The guy obviously didn’t
hurt
his own father or he’d be in jail. And if he was that malicious, why would he feel obligated to run his father’s business?”

“Maybe he wanted the business for himself all along,” Emerson supplied.

“Gosh, you’re full of optimism this morning,” Georgia snapped.

“Sorry, I just don’t want Pepper hurt, and he’s starting to sound like someone capable of doing that.”

Georgia took a sip of her juice and seemed to consider this. As did I. We made out twice, and each time he made me come without any expectations for himself. He could have hurt me plenty of times.

Georgia swirled more sausage in her syrup. “I just think she needs to find out what he meant.”

“Yeah,” I murmured. In the light of day, my flight instinct had diminished. Now curiosity had hold of me. What really happened to Reece’s father? A guy who stopped to help a girl stranded on the side of the road wasn’t the type who would put someone in a wheelchair. Especially not his own father. “I want to know.”

Emerson muttered something into her mug again.

“What?” I demanded.

She leveled her blue eyes at me over the rim. “You know what they say. Curiosity killed the cat.”

E
ven though I had decided to see Reece again and get to the bottom of his confession, it took me several days to get around to it. Partly because of my wavering resolve and partly because I was busy. Between writing a paper for World Lit, studying for my Abnormal Psych exam, and working two shifts at Little Miss Muffet’s, I hardly had time to sleep.

It was probably for the best anyway. I needed a little space to remember why I began this whole thing with Reece. It was purely curiosity that refused to let me put him behind me for good. At least this was what I told myself after I turned in my paper and found a parking space in the parking lot at Mulvaney’s. Upon entering the bar, the tantalizing aroma of chicken wings assailed me. Apparently it was ten-cent wing night. The place was full of stocky rugby guys. A few girls sat at tables loaded with baskets of wings. They, too, looked like they might belong on the men’s rugby team.

I stepped into the open space of the main room, and it was like the last time I stood there all over again, when everyone had funneled outside after last call and the space felt wide and cavernous. There was no sign of Reece at the bar, but I recognized the older bartender with the handlebar mustache. He recognized me, too, apparently. He waved at me. “Hey, Red, what can I do for you?”

“Is Reece around?”

“Not today. He’s sick.”

“Sick?”

“Yeah. Called me in this morning. Asked if I could cover for him.” He shrugged a bone-thin shoulder. “I said why not? Tuesdays are slow.” He motioned to a basket full of chicken bones at his elbow. “I can get all the wings I want and watch TV here just as well as at home.” He nodded to the television positioned high in the corner above the bar. Without the usual din, I could actually hear it.

“What’s wrong with him?”

“Didn’t say. Just sounded like death warmed over. Hope I don’t catch it.” His eyes glinted at me with a knowing light. “Hope you don’t, either.” He winked and it was enough to know he thought Reece and I were more than friends. He assumed we were the type of friends that might share a few things. Including a virus.

With overly warm cheeks, I waved good-bye. “Thanks.”

I headed back the way I entered, hesitating near the food counter. A few guys stood in line. The same girl who’d watched me and Reece go into his room the other weekend took orders. I hovered there for a moment, staring back into the kitchen as if I could somehow see up into his room.

Oh
,
what the hell?

I moved, unlatching the half door that led into the kitchen. The girl behind the counter started for a second and looked at me, a protest forming on her lips. When her gaze focused on my face, she hesitated, clearly recognizing me.

“Hey.” I sent her an easy nod, acting, hopefully, like I had every right to waltz through the kitchen.

“Uh, hey,” she said back, still looking uncertain. I felt her stare on my back as I strode deep into the bowels of the kitchen, where the sound of food frying in hot grease filled the air. None of the cooks paid me any attention.

Hoping the door was unlocked, I tried the handle, releasing a breath of relief when it opened. Closing it behind me, muffling out the sounds of the kitchen, I climbed the stairs. At the top, I slowed and called out.

“Who’s there?”

“Pepper.”

A groan met my response. Not the most heartfelt welcome. Ignoring that fact, I stepped onto the top floor.

The sight of the bed, the sheets all rumpled around him, hit me like déjà vu. It was so much like my last glimpse of him the night I’d snuck away. Especially considering the amount of his bare skin visible. A quick glance revealed that he wore a pair of athletic shorts. Grateful for that, I inched toward the bed.

“I heard you were sick.”

“Dying, to be more specific,” he croaked, his arm flung over his face, hiding all but his lips. Lips that looked ashen and leached of color. “Go away.”

“What’s wrong? Besides the fact that you’re dying?”

“Let’s just say that the toilet and I are suddenly on a first name basis.”

“How often are you throwing up?”

“I don’t know . . . think it’s slowed down.”

Without replying, I moved to his fridge and peered inside. Pulling out a liter of Gatorade, I poured him half a glass and dropped two ice cubes inside.

Walking back to the bed, I lowered myself to the edge beside him.

He peered out at me beneath one arm. His eyes were red-rimmed, the whites of his eyes bloodshot. His blue irises stood out in stark relief. “I said go away.”

“Here. Try a sip. You don’t want to get dehydrated.” I held the cup to his lips.

He shook his head and pushed it away. “I can’t keep anything down.”

“Maybe you have food poisoning.”

“I ate the same thing as someone else last night. She’s not sick.”

She
. I don’t know why, but this single word jarred me and twisted my stomach into knots. Which was just wrong. I had no claim on him. I
wanted
no claim on him.

I set the glass on the nightstand and touched his forehead, wincing at the burn of his skin. “You have a fever, too.”

“You shouldn’t be here.” This time his voice had decidedly less bite to it. “You’ll get sick, too.”

I shook my head. “I never get sick. Second year working at a daycare. I have an iron constitution.”

“Must be nice.” His eyelids drifted closed.

I frowned at him. I had to work in a few hours, but it didn’t feel right leaving him like this.

“Do you have a thermometer? Have you checked your temperature?”

He cracked open his eyes. “I’m fine. I’ll be fine. You can go. I don’t need anyone to take care of me. Been doing it for years.” His eyes drifted closed over those brilliant blue eyes.

I sat there for a moment, staring at him. His chest eased into slow and even breaths and I knew he was sleeping again. I brushed a hand over his forehead. He still felt too hot. I wasn’t totally unaccustomed to caring for sick people. I’d lived with Gram for years, after all. I’d seen what could happen when people didn’t get medical care in time. Yes, he was young and strong, but one never knew.

Rising, I crept out of the loft and exited back through the kitchen again.

Five minutes later I was at the drugstore around the corner. Grabbing a hand basket, I filled it with a thermometer, Pedialyte, Sprite, and more Gatorade. I tossed in Tylenol in the hopes that he could keep some of that down, too, and then added saltines, Jell-O, and a couple of cans of chicken noodle soup for when he was feeling a little better. An employee helped me find those little frozen head packs. If he couldn’t keep the Tylenol down, I could press that onto his forehead.

Ten minutes later, I was walking back into Mulvaney’s. I gave a quick nod to the cashier. A smile touched her lips as she scanned the bags in my arms.

When I reentered the loft, it was to find the bed empty. Then I heard him in the bathroom.

“You okay?” I called out.

Several moments passed before he surfaced, wiping his mouth with a small hand towel. “Gatorade not such a good idea.”

I winced. “Sorry.”

His bloodshot eyes scanned me standing there with white plastic bags dangling from my fingers.

He flung the towel back into the bathroom with a sharp move. My gaze drank in the flex of sinew and muscles in his arm and torso. Even sick, he looked strong and powerful and sexy as hell. I blinked hard, shoving the totally inappropriate observation away. Now was not the time. And really, after his admission the other day, I wasn’t sure there would ever be a time for those kinds of observations anymore.

He took several dragging steps toward the bed. “You came back.” Not a question.

“Yeah.”

“And you went shopping.”

“Yeah. Just got you some things you might need.”

I moved into the kitchen area and put the cold things away, sticking the two little ice packs for his head into the freezer. Tearing open the thermometer’s package, I read the instructions and then approached him.

He watched me through slit eyes, eyeing the device like it might bite him. Or maybe that was just me in general. “You bought a thermometer?”

“Yeah.” Sitting on the edge of the bed, I held the button down and glided the roller along his forehead. Pulling my hand back, I read, “A hundred and two point four. We should get some Tylenol in you.”

He motioned to his now empty cup. “I can’t keep anything down yet.”

I nodded. “Okay.” Rising, I fetched a washcloth from the bathroom and ran it under cold water. It would do until the ice packs were chilled enough. Sitting on the bed again, I positioned the cloth on his forehead. Moving away, I gasped when he grabbed hold of my wrist. Even sick, his grip was strong.

His blue eyes drilled into me. “Why are you doing this?”

I shrugged uncomfortably. “I don’t know.”

He shook his head once like that wasn’t good enough. “Why are you here?”

His fingers shifted, the tips sending hot little sparks up my arm. He should look ridiculous with the blue washcloth covering half his face, but he didn’t. He looked human and male and all too vulnerable right then.

“Because you need someone.”

It was the simple truth, but the words hung between us, and I realized they sounded like so much more than I intended them to be. His fingers slid from my wrist, and he expelled a heavy breath—like he suddenly remembered that he was sick and couldn’t deal with this—with me—right now. His eyes drifted shut again. Almost instantly, he was asleep.

Y
eah, sorry to give such short notice, but I can’t leave her alone. She’s too sick.” I paused and listened as Beckie commiserated and assured me it was okay. “Thanks for understanding. I’ll see you Saturday.”

I hung up the phone on my manager, feeling a little bad about waiting until the last minute to make the call, but it had taken me the better part of two hours to decide that I couldn’t leave Reece alone. Or I wouldn’t. Either way, I had resigned myself to the role of nurse, even though he hadn’t asked it of me. Even though he didn’t
want
it of me.

“I’m guessing I’m the ‘she’ you were talking about?”

I swung around to meet Reece’s gaze head-on. “You’re awake.”

He pressed down on the mattress and lifted himself up on the bed, propping his back against the pillows bunched up at the headboard. “How long was I asleep?”

“Almost two hours.”

He sighed and scrubbed a hand over his face. “And I didn’t get sick. That’s good. Maybe I can try that drink now.” He glanced to his left and, seeing that the empty glass was gone (I had since washed it), swung his legs over the side.