Bliss and the Art of Forever (A Hope Springs Novel) (32 page)

Their
date
. What a fiasco that had been. Poor Addy. What in the world had Shirley Drake been thinking, saying such a thing to her granddaughter? She knew Callum had talked to his mother; he’d told her so on one of the several times they’d talked, but he hadn’t said anything about the outcome. And Addy hadn’t mentioned the incident even once.

“I decided not to do the Root Beer Float candy,” he said. “If that’s all right with you.”

“Okay,” she said, having to jar herself back to the present. What was it they’d been talking about?

“I mean, if you’re set on that one I’ll do it,” he said, both hands spread out on the island counter between them. “But it’s more complicated than some of the other flavors in that the layers need time to cool and set. I thought something simpler would hold the kids’ attention better. And the Root Beer Float isn’t very colorful, though I could change that up.”

He was so cute when he rambled. She reached up to tuck back her hair, thinking of kissing him in the parking lot of Back Alley Burgers. Wanting to kiss him again now. But not wanting to cause any additional trouble for him and his mother and his girl. And so she looked at the ingredients he’d set out, including the package of Oreos, and asked, “What were you thinking?”

“Cookies and Cream. A white chocolate filling. A dark chocolate shell. I mean, what kid doesn’t like Oreos? Except those with allergies, I guess.” He looked at the same ingredients and frowned. “Do you clear that kind of stuff for parties and field trips? What the kids can eat? Because I use a lot of peanuts here. I don’t want to send anyone into anaphylactic shock.”

“I do,” she said, nodding as she pushed her glasses up her nose. “It’s district policy. And all the children in my class are cleared to visit.”

He grinned, a big show of dimples and teeth. “You get all protective and professional when you talk about your job, you know.”

“You’re just as professional,” she told him. “And I think you may be equally protective.”

“Protective of what?” he asked, frowning.

“This kitchen, for one thing,” she said, as she looked around. “You’re always looking for something you’ve missed. A cookie crumb or a chocolate shaving or a spot of cocoa butter.”

“That’s just common sense,” he told her. “Clean now, I won’t have to remember it later.”

“I know that,” she said, an eye-roll implied in her tone. “But you clean as you go. I would think doing that would interrupt your flow.”

“I guess it comes from where I started.” He shrugged, crossed his arms, leaned against the counter behind him. “I was in a kitchen a quarter this size if that, and it wasn’t dedicated to making candy, so I had to be sure I wasn’t getting coffee grounds in my ganache.”

“Do you ever miss that?”

“Are you kidding?”

“Not the kitchen itself.” Though she had no idea what this Duke’s place had been like. “But I don’t know. The discovery,” she said, and waved one hand. “Figuring out what worked, what you liked. The success of something finally turning out, and not really being sure why. Assuming you had more than a failure or two.”

“I had one or two . . . thousand.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“It felt like that.” He gave a self-deprecating laugh. “Stupid mistakes, and I’m not talking hot buttered rum popcorn, but things like thinking I could skimp on the quality of the chocolate. Learned that lesson in a hurry. So I do miss some of that, yeah. But I don’t want to go back there again. Not to California. Not to the kitchen. Not to any of it.”

“You don’t miss your friends?”

“They weren’t friends. Not really,” he said, turning to plug in his tempering machine. “Well, Duke and Lainie, but they were the only ones who were.”

She started to ask about Addy’s mother, if he’d considered her a friend, or if their relationship had been more about what they’d shared in bed. Which had her wondering if they’d even bothered with a bed. Which had her asking, “Have you ever had sex on your motorcycle?”

He turned slowly, looking at her over his shoulder as if he couldn’t believe what had come out of her mouth. “Did you really just ask me that?”

She shrugged and moved on, because really. What was wrong with her? “It had to be an interesting life, belonging to a club.”

“Brooklyn—”

“I know. I’m sorry. I don’t mean to pry. But I have been known to watch the occasional episode of
Sons of Anarchy
. . .”

That made him laugh. But all he said when he finally spoke was, “Yes.”

“Oh,” she said, her skin growing flushed. “Okay. So it is possible. But while parked, right? Not while riding?”

That had him laughing harder. “Parked, yes. The closest I’ve come to doing it on the road would be getting hard thanks to the woman behind me.”

Her eyes went wide. “Oh. Is that . . . normal?”

His mouth pulled sideways as he fought a grin. He was enjoying this way too much. “Are you asking if I’ve been aroused when riding with you?”

Was that what she was asking? Did she really want to know? Her own body’s reaction to riding with him . . . it was so personal, yet letting her imagination run wild, she could see herself touching him in ways that had nothing to do with her holding on.

“I’m sorry. That was totally inappropriate. I don’t know why—”

“Yes,” he said again, though this time he was answering his own question, not hers, because she hadn’t asked, and she didn’t want to know, and she wasn’t sure if either statement was the truth or a lie.

She looked away, not sure how to respond.
Be careful what you ask for, Brooklyn. You might get what you want, and then what are you going to do with it?
“Can we go back and pretend I never asked such a stupid question?”

“We can. Or we can face the fact that it’s a whole lot of fun for a guy to have a gorgeous woman pressed to his back and hanging on for dear life.”

He thought she was gorgeous. The words had her skin warming and prickling from the heady rush of her blood. Then again, he could’ve meant any number of the women he’d ridden with; she was certain there had been more than a few. He’d left Texas at eighteen. He’d been twenty-eight when his daughter had been born. Ten years. Single. Tattooed. Bearded. Long-haired. She wondered how many women there had been.

She didn’t ask, but what she finally said, as lame as it was, as benign, was, “You’re fun to hang on to.”

The groan that rolled up his throat nearly undid her. And when he came for her, she thought she just might die from the need in his eyes. He didn’t ask permission, or wait to see if she was ready. He slid one hand into her hair at her nape, and cupped her neck with the other.

“You gonna hold on now?” His words were gruff, his mouth inches from hers, his breath warm, his hands warm, too.

He smelled like sugar and chocolate and as many sweet things as ones that were dark, and those were the ones she wanted. “Where?”

“Anywhere you want,” he said, and she reached for his wrists, sliding her hands beneath the sleeves of his chef’s coat to his elbows.

“Can you get rid of this? It’s in my way. I can’t get the grip I want.”

He looked between them, down to where his chest was rising and falling rapidly, and his voice was gruff when he said, “Buttons are right there.”

The sound was like fingertips running from the base of her spine to her neck, and she shivered as she slipped her hands down his forearms and pulled them free of his sleeves to reach for the front of his coat.

He kept his hands on her shoulders and watched her, not her hands but her face; she could feel his gaze move from her lips to her eyes and back again, and she smiled as the first button popped free.

She’d seen part of his chest when he’d shown her his tattoo of Piglet and Pooh, but she’d been too caught up in the emotion of the moment to appreciate the texture of his skin, the hair that dusted his pectorals, this more ginger than that on his head, and covering more tattoos. She was curious about the art—

“I’m beginning to think you’re just here for my ink,” he said after clearing his throat.

“What ink?” she asked, all innocence and tease, tracing a nail along the edge of an abstract design in blue and green spreading right from his sternum to his shoulder. Buried in the colors were more words, but she would need better light to make them out, and she didn’t want him to move.

A bird, maybe? A phoenix, or a raptor, in the same colors as Mercury’s wing on his leg, its talons extended to strike. She outlined one, then another, and when she flicked over his nipple, he hissed.

His hand on her neck tightened. “Are you done with my buttons?”

His coat hung all the way open. She could see the spine of the dragon arching above his fly, and the bear and his piglet behind the fabric on the left. Discovering the rest of his ink could wait. She wrapped both of her arms around his neck and pulled his mouth down to hers, whispering, “I’m done with your buttons,” before parting her lips against his.

His groan echoed off the small room’s walls when he backed her up against the door, his leg sliding between hers and pushing them apart. She obliged him, and ground down when he shoved himself hard to her sex, moaning into his mouth, her hands traveling . . . up his neck, into his hair, down his shoulders, to his chest, around his ribs, under his waistband.

And then he was under hers with one hand, the other taking his weight as he leaned against the door. He fought with her pants’ back zipper, getting it down far enough to give him access, and then his hand was in her panties, and his fingers sliding up and down, arousing her, playing her, bringing her up on her toes as she moved against him, inviting him in with the tiny sounds she made, with her tongue on his, with her hips writhing.

She kicked off her shoes and went to work on his belt. He finished her zipper and tugged down her pants. She ached, and she was so very wet, and this was such a terrible idea, but she wanted him too much to care about anything but right now. Well, almost anything.

“Do you have a condom?” she asked, tearing her mouth from his.

“Front pocket,” he said, his forehead against hers, his breathing rough and ragged. She reached into the right, got an “Other front pocket,” and reached into the left.

“Got it,” she said, so glad he’d been thinking about this enough to be ready.

Then he was tugging down his pants, and she was tugging off hers, and he sheathed his erection while she kicked her panties away. He cupped her bottom and lifted her, and she wrapped her legs around his waist, and he pushed into her, stopped, pushed farther, pinned her to the door with his weight, and held her there, unmoving, panting, his mouth at her ear.

“I didn’t want it this fast.”

“I know.” He was inside of her. He was filling her. He was stretching her and was glorious and thick and full, and she hurt with how long it had been and how much she loved him.

“I wanted a bed and I wanted you naked and I wanted hours.”

“I know.” She wanted to cry. She wanted to laugh. She wanted to climb on top of him and slide up and down and feel every inch of him, and never forget anything about now.

“I have to finish.”

“I have to finish, too,” she said, and he let loose a string of curses fit for a biker and slammed into her, stroking her, moving where she told him she needed him and rubbing her until she came.

She nearly screamed with it, the release, the pleasure, the absolute joy in giving to him and taking from him, and she shuddered, and he grunted, growling as he let go, surging into her, rough and demanding and bold.

He scraped his beard against her cheek, making desperate sounds and needy sounds, nearly purring, then shuddering to a sigh, flexing his hips one last time. “I want to stay here forever.”

“I don’t want to move.”

“My thighs are about to give out.”

“My back is killing me.”

They were a mess of satisfaction and tangled clothing; her hands were inside his open jacket, one arm around his neck, the other beneath his arm that was still holding his weight. She began to let him go, and he eased from her body, a withdrawal that left her bereft as she straightened her legs to stand.

He turned away to take care of his clothing, while she grabbed her panties and pants from the floor. “I’m going to . . .” she said as she reached for the door’s handle. “The restroom.”

He nodded. “Yeah, me, too. But you go ahead.”

She scurried out the door, the air cool on her bottom, the tiles cool on her feet, her face burning, and when she looked in the mirror, she saw why. Her cheek was red from the chafing of Callum’s beard, her jaw nearly raw.

And then it hit her. Tomorrow she’d be back at Bliss with fifteen kindergarteners and three chaperones, looking through the window into the kitchen, where twelve hours earlier, she’d been pinned to the door, Callum’s pants around his ankles, her pants in a puddle with her panties on the floor.

She giggled, though the sound was as much of a hysterical cry as anything. She was absolutely crazy, thinking she’d be able to make it through tomorrow’s field trip without giving herself away.

Groaning, she hung her head, and was almost presentable when she heard Callum talking to himself in the restroom on the other side of hers. Somehow, his being just as rattled made her feel not quite so alone.

“Seems the Cheshire Cat was right. We’re all mad here,” she told her bright-eyed, sex-drunk reflection, fighting another burst of giggles as she did.