His brows rose, and he smirked. “Okay.” He brushed her hair away from her face. “Tell me your favorite time of year.”
Easy. “Christmas.”
Rolling to his back, Reed settled her against him, her cheek in the cup of his shoulder, his hand slowly trailing along her back from her neck to her waist and back up again. While it didn’t seem a touch intended to incite, her nerve endings went on alert, each subtle stroke making them sing.
“Once upon a time,” he began, his voice a near-whisper.
She shivered.
He glanced down at her. “Cold?”
She shook her head.
When he kissed the top of her head, she could feel the smile that followed it. “Once upon a time, it was the holiday season and a very pretty young woman needed help hanging her Christmas lights.”
“Not the blinking kind.”
“Not the blinking kind. These were the ones that look like icicles.”
“I like those,” she said.
“Good.” His hand slid down and squeezed one of her butt cheeks. “I aim to please.”
Cleo tried to pretend she wasn’t hyper-aware of that hand, so big that it encompassed the entire curve. “Go on.”
He squeezed again. “She asked the strapping young landscaper who serviced the neighborhood for help.”
Serviced?
“His name was…”
“Leif.”
“The landscaper is Leif?” His voice was filled with amusement.
She shrugged.
“Okay. So Leif put up her lights and knocked on her door to tell her he was finished. She asked him to wait while she got her purse to pay him, but he told her there was no charge. A small Christmas gift.”
“That was very nice of him.”
“Well, not so much. The truth is, Leif had a crush on the pretty customer and he often made excuses to knock on her door. She usually invited him in for lemonade or coffee, and this time was no exception. She told him it was the least she could do.
“In her kitchen, the pretty lady picked up her wooden spoon, just for something to do with her hands, because she was suddenly made nervous by buff and handsome Leif in her house. The walls seemed to be closing in. And then Leif was moving closer so that he loomed over her.”
“He wasn’t threatening, though.”
Reed lowered his voice. “Only in the very best way.” His fingers trailed down her back again, this time all the way to the cleft of her behind. He brushed back and forth there, the tips catching on the divide each time. Her inner muscles clenched, her body becoming so wet and ready she wanted to beg him to slide that hand between her legs and touch her where she was aching.
Then his hand moved upward again. “Leif asked her if there were any household repairs he could help her with. She remembered a box at the top of her bedroom closet she’d been unable to reach—it held her favorite Christmas ornaments—and she nicely requested he perform that simple task. She even handed him the spoon in case he needed it to nudge the box closer to the front of the shelf.”
Reed paused in his storytelling to play with the hair at the nape of her neck. It was a surprising erogenous zone and…his. No one had ever touched her there. “Is the story over?” She heard the quaver in her voice.
“Not even close. What do you think should happen next?”
She thought about telling him it was his story, but she suspected he’d prolong the anticipation by describing the room, the closet, the ornaments. “I think the pretty lady says she’s very hot and would like to remove her dress but the zipper is stuck and maybe he could do something about that.”
“Really?” Two of Reed’s fingers found the first bump of her vertebrae and then drew downward with excruciating slowness. At the exquisite sensation, Cleo hissed, the sound like the parting teeth of a zipper.
“She sounds quite brazen.”
“She wants Leif. She’s…she’s been watching him while he works in her yard.”
Reed’s fingers paused at the base of her spine, then they slid up her side and he tweaked her nipple.
Cleo yelped in surprise…and in arousal as her nipple started throbbing just like the pulse in her clit. She squirmed closer to him and pressed the pad of her sex to his denim-covered thigh.
He moved his leg and she had just enough dignity left not to chase it across the mattress. “Stay here,” he said, then vaulted off the bed.
She barely had time to wonder about his latest move when Reed was back, sliding into place beside her. He cleared his throat. “So…we have the pretty client out of her dress. But now that Leif knows she’s as interested in him as he is in her…well, he’s got to tease her…just a little.”
“Tease her?”
Reed’s arm came up to show her something he had in his hand. It explained his brief absence. “You haven’t forgotten the wooden spoon, have you?”
The story became only staggered phrases after that. Moans. Leif—Reed—played the bowl of the spoon over the woman’s body. It was slightly rough and the sensation was exquisite as he stroked it over her back, her buttocks, her thighs. Then he pressed her shoulders to the bed and caressed the front of her in small circles. It maddened her, feeling those strokes from the inanimate object and not his hand.
“Hold still,” he whispered, when she was squirming.
“Reed.” She caught at his hand. “Please.”
He refused to be captured. Instead, he drew the spoon down the center of her body. Then he kissed her, deep and hard. “Spread your legs,” he said against her mouth.
Desperate for him, she could only obey. The edge of the spoon slid along the slick groove of her body. She whimpered, but he kissed the sound off her lips as he continued toying with her.
Cleo wrapped her arms around his neck, surrendering to his mouth. Her thighs spread to get as much sensation as he’d allow.
He lifted his head and watched what he was doing to her. “Beautiful,” he said.
Her hips shifted on the mattress. “Please, Reed.”
His gaze shifted to her and his smile had a devious edge. “Do you need to be filled, Cleo?”
Embarrassed, needy, desperate, she squeezed shut her eyes. “So much,” she confessed.
“With me?” he asked. “Or is this enough?” Then he flipped the spoon, his fingers wrapped around the bowl so the thick handle nudged her clit then skimmed her wet flesh to find her entrance. He eased inside, the intrusion unbearably arousing.
Hot and shaking, Cleo lost her breath. Lost her voice. Her fingers clutched at him as he penetrated her in short, careful strokes.
Moaning, she lifted her hips, trying to take more.
“Shh,” Reed said. “Don’t move.” Shifting lower on the mattress, he eluded her grasping clutch.
Through half-closed eyes, she saw him watching the penetration of her wet flesh with an avid gaze. His focus, his fascination, coiled the already-tight arousal. Making a noise low in her throat, she lifted her hips again, but he placed his free hand flat against her belly, holding her to the bed.
“Oh, God.” His control of her body made every one of her muscles tighten and tense.
“Do you want to come, Cleo?” The dark whisper was another sensation on her skin.
“Please,” she said, and then cried out when he pulled the spoon free…only to tap the wet, slippery inches that had been inside her against her engorged clit.
Her body detonated. Still pinned by his hand on her belly, she came with a desperation she’d never experienced, jolting with each surge of sweet, fevered pleasure. He leaned up for a deep kiss, as if knowing she needed his tongue in her mouth.
She sucked at it with greed and then with less intensity, calming herself as the spasms slowly diminished. Finally, there was only the occasional tremor and he eased back. Cleo swallowed. “That was…”
“Not finished,” he said, smiling at her as he reached for a condom and the fastening of his jeans. “There’s a very satisfying epilogue.”
He wasn’t wrong. This time, it was his penis, thick and long, that eased inside her. He hovered over her on his elbows, his gaze taking in every expression on her face as he impaled her. She was grateful for his attention because she needed time to get accustomed to the intrusion. But it was a curiously exciting discomfort.
And when he was all the way in, the way he groaned and dropped his head to her throat thrilled her.
It all thrilled her. His wide shoulders, his strong back, the rhythm of his thrusts. Cleo found herself writhing again. He was breathing hard, color high in that elegant face. One of his hands slid between her bottom and the mattress to lift her into his strokes. She opened her legs as wide as she could and when he pushed into her again she ground her clit against the root of him…and came.
He followed immediately, and she pushed her head into the pillow and soared at the thought that gorgeous Reed Hopkins had climaxed in her arms.
When he lay at her side, she didn’t know what to say. So she allowed herself to feel, instead. Elation, satisfaction…happiness.
Reed rolled his head her way, and it was the tenderness in her expression that stopped her heart. “Are you all right?”
She smiled, and lifted her hand to touch his cheek. “I’m more than all right, you’ve got to know that.”
His answering smile was more of a smirk, and entirely male. “Good.”
More smugness. It made Cleo laugh. She opened her mouth, unsure what she’d say next and hope it wasn’t something completely witless like “This is the happiest I’ve ever been in years.”
Then, in the distance, her cell phone signaled a call. She struggled to her elbows, remembering they’d left it…where?
“I’ll get it,” Reed said, and shoved into his jeans. In moments he was back.
The number on the screen said the boys’ school. Frowning, she accepted the call and brought the device to her ear.
The best morning in recent memory turned into her worst nightmare.
From his place beside her perched on the top of a picnic table, Reed glanced at Cleo, saw that she continued to stare at her children playing on the equipment at a suburban park ten miles outside their neighborhood. Upon getting that phone call, she’d raced into jeans and a T-shirt. Shoved her feet into a pair of flip flops.
He wasn’t sure she’d even realized he’d climbed into her car, riding shotgun on her short trip to the local elementary school. When she’d gone inside, he’d hung out in the parking lot. Upon her return a half-hour later, this time with the kids and their backpacks in tow, she’d blinked as if she was surprised to see him.
Eli had looked wary and Obie just like the bouncy little kid he was. He’d told Reed that his mom was taking them out of school early as a special treat and they were getting ice cream before lunch.
The expression on his big brother’s face revealed there was more to the story.
Now, post strawberry and chocolate cones, the kids were running off the sugar rush.
He opened his mouth, but Cleo beat him to start the conversation. “Why are you here?”
Christ, did he have to explain? “I heard morning ice cream. Irresistible.”
“I mean, why did you get in the car in first place?”
Because her response to that call indicated there was some kind of trouble. And minutes before she’d answered it, he’d been buried deep in her body. Everyone knew he was aloof and detached, but he’d smelled of her sex at that moment. His conscience wouldn’t allow her to go off alone wearing that expression of almost-panic.
“Reed?”
He shrugged. “What any man would do.”
She choked out a sound that was half-laugh, half-sob.
The noise seemed to wring his previously hard, inflexible heart. His hand rubbed at the pain in his chest and the truth was, if he was any closer to home, he might have run there to escape it.
“You should tell someone what’s going on,” he heard himself say.
“You?”
Not him. He liked his imaginary world where the monsters were ones he made up and that he could vanquish when he liked. Real life didn’t work that way and he didn’t want to be sucked into a drama that involved nervous children and bruised women.
Squeezing shut his eyes, he pinched the bridge of his nose. But the memory of those photos of her wouldn’t go away. Like the dangling legs, the small shoes, they’d been branded on his psyche.
“What happened today?” he asked.
Her hands were tightly entwined with each other, the knuckles white. Their grip was too tight. Reaching over, he worked at the knot of fingers. Once one hand was free, he brought it to his thigh and covered it with his. “You’re cold,” he said, which spoke to her emotional state, because the outside temperature was near eighty.
And yet her skin was icy. Nothing like the flushed warmth of her limbs when they’d been together in bed. “Do you have a sweater in your car?”
When she shook her head, he scooted his ass down the wood and pulled her nearer his side. She was stiff, but he put up with that, not dropping the arm that circled her shoulders.
“Why are you hugging my mom?” Obie popped up from nowhere, curiosity in his gaze and a stain of strawberry ice cream on his T-shirt.
“She’s chilled,” he told the kid, keeping his tone matter-of-fact.
“Oh.” The boy looked down, then glanced back up, a cute trick Reed had seen his mom do as well. “Do you want to push me on the swings?”
Cleo was already beginning to unfold from her place on the table. He exerted pressure to keep her in place. “I do. But in a while, after your mom feels warmer.”
“Okay!” He dashed off.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I’ve got hands.”
She peeked at him through her lashes. “I suppose I know that to be true.”
Her little tease slightly loosened the knot in his belly. “Feeling better?” he asked, running his hand up and down her upper arm.
“I
was
feeling great.”
“I suppose I know that to be true,” he said, repeating her words.
Some of the rigidity went out of her body and this time her laugh didn’t hold tears, too. Then she sighed, as if remembering her burden and the shouldering of it was wearing on her.
Shit.
“I’ve seen the photos,” he said, having no idea if it was the right move or not. “The ones in your bedside table. I wasn’t prying…I stumbled upon them by accident.”
She turned her head, her brows coming together. “Photos?” Then her expression cleared, understanding dawning even as color rose on her cheeks. “I…”