The look was like a siren’s call. His libido went on alert and he had to shove his hands in his pockets or reach for her again. Dangerous, dangerous.
Not only had he made the promise that nothing overt would happen between them around the kids, but perhaps it was best that they didn’t indulge physically again at all. If he thought avoiding intimacy was best, having sex with her once more was not the way to go about that.
Then Eli began crowing in delight, leaping about the sand. He handed off the phone to his little brother and grabbed at his mom’s arms. “Can we? Can we?”
Obie went into similar spasms of joy. “Say we can!”
“Say they can what?” Reed asked.
“Go on a short vacation with their grandparents,” Cleo told him. “Three or four days to the Grand Canyon.” Then she turned to her boys. “Yes, you may.”
Meaning Reed and Cleo would have those three or four days all alone.
Eli and Obie’s grandparents were scheduled to arrive at the compound the next morning. Reed didn’t discuss the trip or anything else with Cleo. She and the boys rushed around in preparation, washing clothes and packing a small bag for each of them.
Just before 7 a.m., Don and June Anderson arrived at the gates of the compound. The boys raced out of the cottage to greet them and Cleo trailed them out the door, a wide smile on her face. Hugs and kisses were exchanged. As the boys ran back to their room to get their luggage, Reed stood aside to allow the older couple inside.
Cleo made the introductions. “Reed Hopkins, who has been a very good friend to me and the boys.”
He shook hands with them both and made the usual small talk about the trip they’d had from Tulare and the road conditions they’d find on the way to the Grand Canyon. If the older couple were curious about Cleo’s “friend,” they didn’t let on. Before they left, they actually thanked him for providing their daughter-in-law and grandsons a safe haven.
That didn’t mean Reed was completely at ease with them. Clearly they adored Cleo and wished her only the best. They didn’t venture into his and Cleo’s plans while the boys were gone, which was damn fine, because he didn’t have a clue what would happen once their pint-sized chaperones left the premises.
It remained a bitter struggle between what he wanted to do and what he thought he should do.
Cleo had her game face on when she said goodbye to Eli and Obie. Neither seemed to sense anything amiss, but now that Reed knew what a faker she was, he could see she was already having a hard time with them leaving. But he guessed she knew the opportunity to be with their grandparents was not only good for the older people and her kids, but a way to put them farther from their father’s possible reach.
As they stowed their things in the bed of the extended cab pick-up, Reed watched from the cottage doorway. When both Eli and Obie trotted back toward the house, he expected they’d left behind a beloved dinosaur or that stuffed dog that Obie often dragged around. Imagine his surprise when they each gave him a hug.
Of their own accord, his arms wrapped around them in turn.
The boys must have inherited some of their mother’s wizardry.
As Cleo waved them off, Reed retreated into the house where he called up the newspaper online and pretended to read it at the kitchen table. His ears were tuned to the sound of Cleo returning, but he went on alert when several minutes passed without the telltale sound of the front door opening and closing.
Rising from the table, he peered out the French doors to what he could see of the compound grounds. All seemed quiet, no one about. His gaze tracked from Hop’s house, to Mad Dog Maddox’s castle, where Cilla, Bing, and Brody had grown up, and finally to the Colson place. When he still didn’t spot her, he let himself out.
Then a movement in the orchard caught his attention. Cleo moved among the fruit trees and something about her solitary state called to him.
His shoes crunched on the gravel paths as he made his way to her. Without the benefit of the other Rock Royalty or Cleo’s kids as distraction, a dozen personal memories of compound life bombarded him. Even the days hadn’t been peaceful, with the band or friends of the band always somewhere about jamming. The nights had been downright noisy.
Drugs and booze and cigarettes had littered countertops and tabletops and the parties had gone on for days. Food had been delivered at all hours and if fish sticks and applesauce were absent from the Hopkins pantry, he and his brothers would end up eating leftover foie gras on soda crackers or caviar spread on frozen waffles.
It had been so screwed-up.
He passed by the pool and the faint smell of chlorine and the steam rising from the adjacent hot tub brought back even more salacious recollections. Before he’d gone to Oceanview, he’d witnessed sex in nearly every form. When he’d returned, a strapping fifteen, he was no longer a mere witness to the carnal games. No one had thought it the least bit wrong for the teenage rock princes to partake of the pleasures offered.
Ahead, he saw Cleo, facing away from him. Her jeans were faded and stuffed into a short pair of sheepskin boots. Her T-shirt came from a thirty-year-old Velvet Lemons concert. She’d found it stuffed in a drawer and he’d told her she could have it.
Now he wished he’d burned the damn thing instead of letting it touch Cleo’s skin. He thought perhaps he shouldn’t touch her either. The Lemons lifestyle had left him tainted. His childhood and teenage experiences had led him to cut himself off from the warmer human emotions.
Sure, he wanted to fuck beautiful Cleo, his libido was alive and well, but it didn’t seem right to only offer orgasms to someone so genuine and loving and good.
Then she turned, stiffening as she caught sight of him. Hastily, she wiped away the wetness on her cheeks.
His noble intentions were drowned by the sight of a single tear.
Striding forward, he took hold of her shoulders. “What’s wrong?”
She looked down, rubbing her face with the backs of her hands. “Dumb stuff again.”
“Tell me.”
“I miss them already,” she whispered.
“Of course you do.”
“They’re all I have. My only family.”
“Ah.” He drew her to him and cupped the back of her head with his palm. Christ, she made him wish so many things, not the least of which was how to ease her heart. But he didn’t have the right emotions available for that. He could only offer diversion. The expertise gained in all those years of debauchery. The entertainment that a practiced imagination could bring to the table.
He pushed her a little away from him. “You should go take a bubble bath.”
“What?”
“Something you don’t often get to do as a busy mother, right?”
“Reed—”
“Enjoy yourself.” He bussed her on the nose. “Unless you’d rather I pick you up and drop you in the hot tub.”
She smiled a little. “Do you mean I’m damp if I do or damp if I don’t?”
Oh, God. She was killing him. He pasted on a stern expression. “I think we should nip this silliness in the butt.”
Then she laughed. “All right. I’ll do as ordered.”
As she took off in the direction of the cottage, Reed headed for the shed in one corner of the compound where he knew there were all sorts of supplies.
When Cleo emerged from her bedroom’s attached bath, wrapped in a towel and flushed from the warm water, he was standing in her bedroom, dressed only in a pair of jeans and wearing a new pair of leather work gloves. She stared at him.
“Ma’am,” he murmured, not moving. “I pulled the weeds and trimmed the hedges and I wondered if there was anything else I could do for you today?”
Her nostrils flared. “I…um…you…”
“Leif,” he reminded her helpfully.
Cleo had a dimple. When she was trying hard not to surrender to a smile, it dug itself near the right corner of her mouth. “I’m just surprised to see you…Leif.”
“I’ll go away if you have no use for me.” He rubbed a gloved hand over one pec, across his abs, and then down to cup the heavy bulge in his jeans.
Her gaze had followed every inch of the slow path. “Um, I’m sure I can think of something that needs to be done.”
“I want to do you,” he murmured.
“What’s that?”
He smiled. “You heard me.”
“I’m shocked,” she said, widening her eyes.
“Oh, not so much.” He approached, slow and steady. Cleo backed up until her knees hit the mattress.
Reed caught her before she toppled, and he took her face between his leather-clad palms, tilting her head for his kiss. She moaned into his mouth, accepting his thrusting tongue and going on tiptoe for more. He inserted two fingers beneath the towel at her cleavage and yanked, causing the tucked fabric to fall with a soft
plop
.
Her hands clutched at his shoulders as he insinuated a jean-clad knee between her legs. They parted, and he pressed his thigh upward, fitting it to the hot notch. “Wet already,” he murmured lifting his head.
“From the bath.”
He arched a brow. “You know what happens to fibbers.” One of his hands slid down her back and he squeezed a bottom cheek.
She moaned, and then again, when he gave it a slap. The leather muffled the sound and likely the sting, so he made the next smack harder.
Her yelp was sweet and surprised and when he rubbed the soft skin to ease the small pain, she melted against him. “I think you’re very bad,” she whispered against his throat.
“That would be you, remember?” When he spanked her other cheek she bit him right above the nipple at the second soft strike.
They both shuddered.
Then she moved her mouth over his chest, laying on kisses and tiny bites. When she found his nipple she sucked it into her mouth and he clutched her ass, then rubbed his leather-covered palms over her back and shoulders. She undulated against him, and he pushed her onto the bed then followed her down.
Her hands fisted in his hair to bring his mouth to hers. He held back from the deep kiss she demanded, instead playing with her, fluttering his tongue against her lower lip and nipping at the upper. Beneath him, her body was restless, and he settled his weight more firmly upon her, then drove his tongue into her mouth.
She went boneless, her hands drifting from his head to the pillow on either side of hers. He drew his mouth across her cheek to toy with her earlobe, and then he chased the goose bumps he’d provoked until he found her breasts.
He plumped one in his gloved hand and gave it all his attention. She moaned as he lashed the tip with his tongue, tilting her hips as he sucked on it in a strong rhythm. Her breath was in rough pants as he moved to the other, and he strummed his thumb over the damp nipple.
Sliding to the side of her, he kissed her again, rubbing his leather-encased palm over her skin from throat to belly. When he moved his fingertips closer to her mons, her legs fell farther apart. Wrapping his hand around her upper thigh, he opened her more and he went up on one elbow to look at her folds, deep pink, wet, and swollen.
His cock jerked in his pants and he reached inside them to adjust himself. The sensation of buttery leather against his shaft made him groan.
Glancing up, he caught Cleo’s avid gaze.
“Let me,” she said, reaching down.
He caught her fingers, placed them once again beside her head. “Not yet.”
At her pout, he leaned close and bit her bottom lip. At the same time he slid his hand over her spread pussy.
Her body arched. He drew her lip slowly through his teeth and when he released it her eyes were closed and her breathing was more ragged.
“Beautiful Cleo,” he murmured, placing a kiss on her temple, her cheek, her chin. As he dropped the gentle kisses on her face, he played below with his leather-clad hand, rubbing his thumb against her clit, circling the entrance to her channel with his forefinger, using the heel to massage the engorged lips and the pad of her mons.
The leather was damp with her fluids and the fragrance of leather and female arousal mingled in the air, joining with the flowery scent of Cleo’s skin. Reed breathed it in, committing it to olfactory memory.
Then he kissed her, deeply, romantically, while one hand kneaded her breast. Two fingers of the other, still in leather, he pushed steadily inside her, the wet tissues giving way. She gasped and lifted into the invasion, impaling herself. He began teasing more then, circling those fingers within her tight channel, pulling them nearly free only to push them inside once again. Her breath was moving faster, and she was moaning, urgent sounds that drove him onward.
She speared her fingers into his hair, fingernails digging into his scalp and at that unspoken urging he nudged her clit with his leather-clad thumb, then rubbed there, his fingers shoved deep inside her. Her whole body shuddered, once, twice, and then she was coming, her muscles gripping his fingers with a milking rhythm.
As the climax gentled its hold on her, he eased off his kiss, until she tore her mouth away and turned her head on the pillow to breathe.
Reed brushed her damp temple with his lips and then her hot ear as he slowly, carefully withdrew from her body. Her swollen tissues had difficulty releasing his leather-covered digits. “Relax, baby,” he whispered in her ear. “Let me go.”
“I don’t want to,” she said, then stiffened as if she heard herself and worried she’d crossed a line.
He teased the whorls of her ear with his tongue. “It’s okay, darlin’. I’m glad I made you feel good.”
When his hand was finally free, he laid his palm on her belly. “Kiss me.”
She rolled her head, and when their lips met, what started sweet almost immediately turned heated. Cleo shifted, pushing him against the mattress to hover above him. He allowed the takeover, sucking her tongue into his mouth and rubbing the wet glove against her hip.
Shuddering, she looked up at him. “I can’t wait,” she said.
He tightened his grip on her flesh. “Oh, yeah.” Then he winced. “Hell, I forgot to bring a condom.”
“Don’t worry about it,” she murmured, then kneeled up to press kisses to his jaw, his throat, his chest. She had an obvious destination and he groaned as she made her way to his jeans. But then…oh, God, then, instead of going to work on the fastening, she picked up one of his hands—the one that hadn’t been in her body. Taking each leather fingertip between her teeth, she yanked upward until she finally worked the glove free.