Single Mom Seeks... (10 page)

And now, he was here, her in his arms, her with nothing at all to say and nowhere else she wanted to be.

He went still and quiet, his body all but surrounding hers, until he seemed to take over her senses. She could feel the heat coming off of his big body, feel both the patience and the urgency inside of him, and the self-control. She could smell his slightly minty aftershave and hear his slow, even breaths, could feel his chest rise and fall with each one, could swear she felt him staring down at her.

Ever so slowly, he bent his head down to hers, doing nothing more than laying the side of his face against hers.

Lily closed her eyes. Her hands latched on to his arms and held him there almost against her, but not quite.

Don’t go.

Don’t come any closer.

She wanted both things very much.

His breath warmed her ear for a second before he whispered, “You can have as much time as you need to get used to this, Lily.”

“I don’t think I could ever get used to anything that feels this good,” she admitted.

He laughed against her ear, and then he kissed the side of her face, her jaw, her neck, like a man who had an eternity to do nothing but tease her.

She shivered at each touch. Her nipples bunched into hard peaks, her breasts trembling and seeming to know they were inches away from being nestled against his chest, and she could hardly breathe.

He was grinning. She could tell as his mouth closed against the point where her neck smoothed out into her shoulder, and it was like a jolt went right through her at the contact.

She wrapped her arms tight around him as her whole body sagged and he caught her close, holding her there, letting her feel just how different they were. His body was big and unyielding, even more solid than she’d imagined, made of the kind of muscles that had been tried and tested over a lifetime of what had obviously been very physical work, and she wanted to touch him everywhere.

He was done teasing.

He picked her up easily, as if she weighed next to nothing, and backed her onto the kitchen countertop until she was sitting there, his body nudging her legs apart, sinking in between them.

His lips found hers, and she opened herself up to him, to the heat of his mouth and the delights of his hands running up and down her back.

Lily groaned and wrapped her arms around his broad chest, thinking this was what a man was supposed to feel like. This was how a woman was supposed to feel in the arms of a man.

Tempted and turned on and all tangled up inside of him and what he was doing to her.

She just opened herself up to him and let him take what he wanted, let him kiss her again and again and again.

He groaned deep in his chest. His hands slid down to cup her bottom, and then he pulled her up against him and leaned into her. If they both hadn’t had clothes on, he’d have been inside of her.

As it was, she felt everything he had to offer her, wrapped her legs around his waist and rubbed herself up against him, aching for him, just like that.

He hesitated for the first time, pulling away from her lips just enough to mutter, “Damn, Lily. You’re about to make me forget everything I promised you when I came over here tonight.”

Which let her know she wasn’t the only one who was so turned on she could hardly stand it.

Lily arched herself up against him once more, feeling that big, throbbing hardness against the place in her that ached. He caught her bottom in his hands and held her there and groaned again, his face pressed against hers once more.

“I thought we’d be safe in the kitchen,” he said, still holding her there, shaking his head back and forth, breathing hard. “Apparently, I was wrong.”

“Apparently.”

“Just stay right here and let me enjoy this for a minute before I make myself let you go, okay?”

And it was still there, all the heat, all the longing, all the possibilities, stretched out between them, holding them there like an invisible bond.

It was delicious and thrilling and so tempting.

“You could kiss me again,” Lily said shamelessly, lifting her face to his so he could do just that.

“No, I couldn’t,” he said, easing her back down onto the countertop and pushing her face down to his chest. “Tell me to go. Tell me to go right now.”

But Lily didn’t want him to go, especially now that she knew how safe and yet how turned on she felt in his arms.

She eased back and lifted her face to his. “But I don’t want you to go.”

He shot her a look that told her she was in very dangerous territory. “Don’t you do that to me—”

“Do what?”

“Look like you’d give me anything I wanted right now, but you trust me not to take it.”

“I do trust you not to do anything else.”

“That is so not fair. Not after you caught fire in my arms.”

“Okay, it’s not fair.”

“And you don’t look like you’re the least bit sorry,” he teased.

“I’m not,” she said and reached up to kiss him again.

He let her have one kiss, but carefully held his body away from hers.

“I’m leaving,” he said. “And if you invite me into this house at any point when the girls aren’t here, you’ll be naked. I’m just telling you so you know that. Unless it’s what you want, we should not be alone here together.”

“Okay,” she said, thinking that was in all likelihood completely true.

“Think about what you want, Lily. Be sure.”

“I will,” she promised.

“I have to go.”

He kissed her once more, kissed her hard and quite thoroughly, and then he was gone.

Lily lay in her bed that night, unable to go to sleep, and kept running through those moments in the kitchen with him.

Those delicious kisses, the hardness of his body, the gentleness of his touch. It was like she’d been asleep for what felt like decades, and he’d come along and awakened every bit of sexual feeling inside of her, and she wasn’t quite sure what to do about that.

Tearing off his clothes came to mind.

But then she had to consider taking off her own clothes, which made her think of her thighs, which she hated most any time she really looked at them.

And then she thought of those last six months or so with Richard, the halfhearted lovemaking that hadn’t been love at all on Richard’s part, just guilt and obligation and probably trying to keep Lily from getting too suspicious about what he was doing with someone else.

The humiliation she’d felt upon finding out.

The vow she’d taken to never trust another man again.

The fear she felt at the idea of doing just that.

And then she came back to having to take off her clothes in front of another man for the first time.

Complete and total darkness seemed to be a good idea, but then she’d really like to see Nick naked.

Maybe she could be in the dark, and he could be in the light. No, she could undress him in the light and admire him there, and then pull him into the darkness and shed her clothes there.

Yeah. That could work.

Problem solved.

Maybe she could dream of him, have him there in her dreams, find some satisfaction in the fantasy of him without ever really having to trust him enough and take the risk of really letting him into her life, even if it was just sex.

Could she make that work?

Erotic dreams of Nick?

If she was lucky, Lily decided.

If she was very lucky, Nick the Dream-Lover would be enough.

S
he slept fitfully all week and without an appearance by Nick in her dreams.

That Friday, thoroughly disgusted that her dream plan hadn’t worked, she concentrated on getting cranky, sleepy girls ready for school and out the door, then what she had to do with her own day.

The girls were anything but cooperative. Brittany couldn’t find her favorite red shirt and didn’t want to wear anything else. If Ginny weren’t only nine, Lily would swear her daughter had PMS and was trying to get on Lily’s last nerve by objecting to anything and everything Lily said that morning, even the most normal and reasonable of requests. If this was what lay ahead for Lily, parenting preteen daughters, she was truly frightened.

Richard called to whine about this and that—as if Lily still cared—but it was really to try to explain how he could take the girls on Sunday that week, but not on Saturday and how difficult and stressful and challenging his life was. Lily managed not to reach through the phone and smack him, but just barely.

She needed to go shopping, because she had to make cookies for a party of some kind for one of Brittany’s classmates the next day, and Ginny was complaining that her shoes hurt her feet, which meant she’d probably outgrown another pair. One more thing for Lily to take care of.

But first, she had to get some work done in the dining room. The wooden trim had been there, waiting for her to put it up for days, and Lily tried. Honestly, she did. She’d finally decided on some fancy, arts-and-craft wooden trim, actually more like small panels, that she was assembling in the garage. A million little pieces, it looked like at the moment. Impossibly time-consuming, but also ridiculously popular right now.

So she tried.

And got nothing but a huge splinter in her palm, but she persevered beyond that.

It was when she smashed her thumb being careless and distracted with her hammer that she really got mad.

“Ahhh!” She actually yelled, because it hurt and she was so frustrated.

She threw the hammer down in a rather unladylike fit, and it banged against the concrete floor of the garage and maybe bounced off the opposite wall, probably putting a gash into the wall that Lily would have to fix later.

But she didn’t care at the moment.

She grabbed her throbbing thumb to try to stop it from hurting and when that didn’t work, stuck it in her mouth and sucked on it.

Nick found her like that, sucking her own thumb and near tears. He must have heard her yell or heard the hammer bouncing around in the garage.

He came to an abrupt stop, seeing that she was relatively okay, and stood there, maybe scared to come any closer.

“Don’t worry, I won’t throw anything at you,” she said.

“Promise?” he asked, mouth twitching, like he was trying not to laugh.

“Well, if you start laughing at me, I might!”

And then he did burst out laughing.

Lily, much to her own horror, burst into tears right there in her garage.

Nick looked horrified. “Lily, honey. I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you were really hurt.”

He rushed to her side and started running his hands over her arms, looking for a broken bone or something.

“I’m not hurt,” she said, sniffling furiously. “Just my thumb. I smashed my stupid thumb with the hammer. I’m just…”

“Yes?” he asked, seeming genuinely concerned.

“I’m just mad!” she said, giving up on maintaining any dignity in the situation at all.

He looked flabbergasted and unsure for a moment, maybe afraid of a woman who was all over the place emotionally, then rallied and scooped her up in his arms. “Come on. Let’s get you inside and get some ice on that thumb.”

Lily gave up and let him carry her, which wasn’t any kind of hardship at all, really. She even let her head rest against his chest, took deep, shuddering breaths and tried to stop crying before she really freaked him out.

He got her into her kitchen and sat her on the countertop, then found a dish towel and wrapped ice in it. He came to stand in front of her, as he’d been that night they’d kissed with such abandon, right here in her kitchen, took her hand in his and gently wrapped the towel around her poor thumb, then held it there with his own two hands.

“Better?” he asked very gently.

Lily nodded, still able to feel the tears falling down her cheeks.

“Bad day, Lily?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“Bad week?”

“Yes.”

He winked at her. “You’re not quite as tough as you look, are you?”

She brought her chin up at that.

“No, don’t take it like that. I didn’t mean it like that. It’s just that…you seem like you can do anything. Like you’re Super Woman. Jake thinks you absolutely walk on water. You make all this parenting stuff look effortless. Like you know exactly what to do and how to do it, and you don’t need help from anybody. But some of that’s just an act, isn’t it?”

“It’s all an act,” she admitted. “I’m never sure of the right thing to do, and I’m tired all the time and mad and…lonely. I’m really lonely sometimes.”

There, she’d said the hardest thing.

“Especially since you moved in next door,” she added, then immediately felt guilty for it. “Okay, no. That’s not right, either. It’s been nice having you and Jake there. Really nice. But…it makes me miss things, too.”

That looked like it interested him quite a bit.

“What kind of things?” he whispered.

“You know. A man. I miss…having a man in my life, and I didn’t before, or maybe I just didn’t notice. I don’t know. But now, I do.”

He nodded, considered, then said, “Sorry.”

She frowned. “You are not. You want things from me, and you make me want…all those things, too. And things were much simpler when I didn’t want those things. I wish I just didn’t want all those things.”

He shrugged, as if he just couldn’t help himself. “Jake and I could pack up and move, if it helped.”

Which made Lily laugh a bit.

She knew she was being foolish, and she knew that he knew it, too.

And he didn’t have to be so nice about it or so charming or so close.

“I felt safer when you weren’t here,” she admitted. “Safer not wanting the things you make me want.”

“Could we expand a little on what exactly you want and maybe on why you can’t let yourself have it?” he tried.

“Because…Well, I’m not sure why right now. Because I’m scared. The last year was awful, and I’m just starting to feel safe again, and I don’t want to get hurt. Again.”

“Okay.” He nodded. “I can understand that. But…you’re lonely, too. You’re a beautiful, young, sexy woman, and you’re lonely. You’re allowed to do something about that, if you want, aren’t you?”

“I don’t know. It’s never really seemed that simple to me. I have the girls and all these things to do, and I’m so busy, and…I really don’t like my thighs,” she blurted out.

Nick’s lips really twitched at that one. “How is that even possible, Lily?”

“No woman really likes her thighs!”

“But I’ve seen yours. I’ve seen them in those cute little shorts you wear when it’s really hot outside.”

“I don’t wear little shorts,” she insisted.

“I’d be happy if they were even littler, but the ones you have are really nice. Trust me. And I liked what I saw.”

Which was nice to hear.

Still…“And…I’d have to take my clothes off if we were to…. you know.”

Nick considered for a moment. “You want me to say you can keep your clothes on? Because if that’s what it takes, honey, I’m willing. I mean, I’d prefer that you take them all off, but if you insist.”

“Well…maybe if it was really dark….” Lily conceded.

“Really dark and you keep your clothes on?”

“No. I mean…I don’t know! I did think…I was kind of hoping…I really want to see you,” she confessed. “All of you.”

He laughed out loud then. “Lily, honey. I would do anything I could to make you comfortable with this, and I am absolutely willing to take off every stitch of clothing I have on, and you can keep most of yours on, if you must. But I just don’t see how this can work if I’m in the light and you’re in absolute darkness.”

“I know, I’m being ridiculous! Believe me, I know.”

“I mean, we really have to be in the same room, and I don’t get how to make half of it light and half of it dark—”

“Stop it!” she cried. “I already feel foolish enough.”

He grabbed her and wrapped his arms around her, laughing as he did it, and she reached out and wrapped her arms around him, too, her poor thumb forgotten along with her towel and her ice.

It fell to the floor, the ice clattering and skating along the floor, as Nick leaned down and kissed her, finally, and she forgot how foolish she felt and all her doubts and most of her fears, and she remembered, completely, how wonderful it was to have a big, strong, sexy man in her arms.

At the moment, it seemed impossible that she’d been without one for so long, because suddenly, it was like she couldn’t stand to go another minute without this.

She kissed him back with a fury, wrapped her legs around him and pulled him to her.

He groaned and palmed her hips and pressed her against him, and she felt his body’s growing response to hers.

It was like going from zero to sixty in seconds flat, and it left her thinking she could just tear his clothes off of him right there in her kitchen.

Which to Lily was nothing more than a fleeting thought, but to her surprise and shock and absolute pleasure, he pulled his shirt over his head and threw it in the direction of the dining room, and then she had a beautifully shirtless man, miles of honey-brown skin and smooth muscles, in her arms.

Lily shuddered and debated the wisdom of exploring all that beautiful skin with her hands and her mouth versus the idea of begging him to carry her upstairs right then or maybe just into the living room and onto the sofa.

It was such a difficult decision to make.

Especially since he was still kissing her like a man literally starving to death and every now and then gently thrusting against her open thighs, a tiny, increasingly frustrating version of what she really wanted him to do.

He finally dragged his mouth back from hers long enough to whisper, “So…exactly where would you like to see me naked, Lily? And when were you thinking of this happening? Please tell me you were thinking right now. Because I think now would be a really good time.”

She ran her hands down the smooth, broad plane of his back, enjoying herself all the way, then came to the waist of his jeans, slid down and cupped his hips, pulling him to her.

He groaned, his forehead falling until it rested against hers.

She looked at him, then looked at his gorgeous body, followed that swirl of hair on his chest as it narrowed into a thin line down the center and then disappeared beneath his jeans.

She reached out and kissed one side of his chest and then the other, and one of her palms started slipping down, following that line of dark hair.

His whole body stiffened. He gave her a look that said she was heading into dangerous territory and she’d better know what she was asking for before she did it, but Lily was beyond doubts now.

She let her hand slip down over the waistband of his jeans to find an altogether impressive bulge and cupped him with her palm. She was looking right at him as she did it, so she saw his eyes go even smokier and narrow in on her face like he couldn’t see anything but her. He sucked in a breath and stood there and let her explore as she wished, rubbing him and then slipping her hand down inside his jeans.

He sagged against her, his forehead to hers as he half gasped, half laughed, and she thought about how much she wanted him inside of her, right then, big and hot and throbbing.

“Okay,” she said. “If you have a condom, I’ll get naked.”

“Right, front pocket,” he whispered.

“You carry a condom around with you?” She was happy, mostly, but surprised.

“Since that last night with you in your kitchen, I do. It seemed like a really good idea,” he said, kissing her neck, taking his teeth to it gently, then not so gently as she gasped.

He started to undo her jeans, and she protested, “Someone might see us, Nick.”

He turned and looked out her kitchen window. “Only if they’re snooping around between the side of my house and the side of yours.”

And then he waited, hands on her waist. She closed her eyes and said, “Okay. Let’s live dangerously.”

He grinned, undid her jeans and then somehow lifted her with one arm and pulled them and her panties off with the other. Lily peeled her T-shirt off while he pushed down his jeans and put on the condom.

He looked back up at her, then the bra, then her again, waiting.

“In my kitchen?” she protested.

He nodded, took her mouth. “Yes, Lily, right here in your kitchen. We’ll do it in the dark, behind a locked door in a bedroom next time, I promise.”

Which was an image that pleased her almost as much as it shocked her to be naked in her kitchen, but naked she was as she peeled off her bra and threw it in the direction of the sink.

He gave her a purely wicked grin, then hauled her up against him, so her breasts nestled against his chest. She closed her eyes and thought of that day he moved in, all those pretty muscles and the hot skin, standing here in her kitchen practically panting over just the idea of him and how long it had been since she’d even noticed a man in that way and how long it had been since anyone had touched her.

And now, here he was, naked in her arms and as beautiful as ever, even more so, she decided.

He was kissing her relentlessly, like he could devour her whole, and gently rocking against her, giving her a moment to get used to the feel of him and to make sure she was ready for this. Lily already knew she was, embarrassingly so.

He palmed her hips, his big hands hot and insistent, pulling her to him, thrust once easily, then again.

Lily groaned.

“Too fast?” he asked.

“No, not fast enough,” she told him, feeling downright greedy for him.

And then he slid all the way inside.

“Ahhh!” Lily nearly yelled, because some things just felt too good. Too impossibly good.