Calendar Girl: November: Book 11 (2 page)

“I recognize the word chicken, but what is the rest?”

He chuckled. “Pretty much rice and chicken.”

“Pulling out all the stops, I see,” I said, deadpan.

Anton pushed my hair off my shoulder and ran his thumb down my cheek. “For you,
lucita
, the world.” His tone sounded serious, but the twinkle in his eye belied the mischief.

I snorted. “With chicken and rice?”

His eyebrows narrowed. “Hey, don’t joke. Everyone loves chicken and rice,
si
?”

“
Si
, Anton. Wes, you want something to drink?” I turned around and faced Weston. His eyes were plunging daggers straight into the back of Anton’s head, and I hadn’t a clue why. “Wes?” I asked again until his green eyes focused on me. “A drink?”

Heather came over and yanked open the fridge. “I’ve got some Cristal chilling, which I think we should pop now, in lieu of the martinis I was going to make. We certainly have a reason to celebrate since you’re getting married! Oh my God! Are you just dying?” She asked as she went over to a cabinet and pulled out four champagne flutes.

I inhaled full and deep and let all the tension slip out of my shoulders as I held my hand up and stared at my ring. “Dying, no. Happier than I’d thought I’d be at this moment in my life? Damn straight!” I looked at Wes, and his entire body seemed to soften, the edge he’d had a minute ago gone with my words. His shoulders no longer looked as though they were as high as his ears, and he held his head in the palm of his hand, elbow resting on the kitchen bar in a lazier, more casual resting position.

“What woman wouldn’t be beside herself?” I leaned over the other side of the bar and grabbed his hand. He held mine, lifted it, and kissed the palm. Tingles started low in my back, and I mentally followed them as they tickled along my spine. Those tingles turned into ribbons of heat when he ran his thumb down the center of my palm. I swear it was like a hot button direct to my clit. The moment he scraped his nail along the inside of my hand I had to stifle a moan. Now was not the time or the place to be getting riled up. We had the rest of the night to get through before we could bask in the glory of our love once more. But we would. Oh, yes, we would.

I decided right then and there that I was going to make my man so hard before the night was up that he’d lose his mind in lust before he even took me back to the hotel.

Playing his game, I gripped his hand and pulled on his arm. Then I ran my finger from the inside of his elbow to his wrist where I traced a few figure eights. His eyes lit up, and he grinned, all white even teeth and a dazzling pair of lips I’d never tire of kissing. For a moment, I worried my secret plan to seduce him and make him crazy with lust might backfire on me. He was quick on the uptake, my guy. Regardless, it was a worthy tradeoff. I came around the kitchen counter and stood next to him. He claimed me instantly.

Heather poured the ridiculously expensive champagne. “Come on, Anton. Put the burner on low and get over here,” she urged.

Anton turned a few knobs, spun on his toes as if he were in a Michael Jackson video, tipped his body back, extended his foot out, and shimmied over to her.

“Show-off,” I coughed.

That time, Wes burst out laughing. Finally my guy was loosening the hell up, but I think it had a lot to do with the fact that I was one, wearing his ring; two, clamped to his side; and three, Anton was actually a dork. A sexy as fuck dork, but a dork nonetheless. The first I’d never admit to even if under extreme duress because Wes would lose it. Besides, if Anton’s fans knew how cheesy he was, they’d still love him because his music was on point and he was hot as Hades, but the silly factor might actually score him a few good girls. One could only hope.

Anton lifted his glass, and we all followed suit. “To
lucita
and her
hombre
, may you both shine as bright as the sun and share many days lost in
amor
.
Salud
.”

I grinned, and for the first time, Wes actually smiled at Anton and nodded. Anton looked at Wes and then at me, tipped his chin, and drank the entire glass in one go. He finished it off with a hearty, “
Segundo ronda
.”

Wes squeezed the ball of my shoulder, and I cast my eyes to his. “I’m glad we’re here,” he admitted.

I closed my eyes, inhaled, and planted my forehead against his neck. “Me too. They are good friends and only want the best for me. Which. Is. You.” I nudged against his cheek with each word.

Wes lifted my head and pecked me on the lips. “I can see that. My head is still…you know…tainted.” He spoke so softly only I could hear. It didn’t matter, because after our toast, Anton went back to cooking, and Heather went back to filling the drinks and then away to put on some tunes.

“No.” I caressed his temples. “Just misplaced concerns. There will never be another. I swear it.”

He nodded and leaned close enough for me to feel his breath against my lips. I could almost taste the notes of the champagne from his breath alone. “And I’ll make sure of that,” he whispered against my mouth before taking my lips in a deep, wet kiss, one far deeper than was appropriate.

We ended our kiss to the sound of applause and whooping and hollering from the peanut gallery on the other side of the counter. It was going to be a long night.

“
N
o
! Don’t touch her. Gina! Gina!”

I woke to Wes’s raised voice. He was calling for Gina. I wiped the sleep and way too many glasses of champagne, coupled with martinis-a-plenty, from my eyes and sat up.

Beside me, Wes tossed and turned. The sheets were wrapped around his body, and his forehead was dotted with drops of sweat. Even his chest glistened with slick pools of sweat, which caught the moonlight pouring through the windows. He must have been in the throes of this one for a lot longer than normal. Usually, I was able to place a hand on his arm or chest, and he’d settle, maybe wake up, maybe not. It had been a few days since he’d had a dream. Almost a full week. Things had been going extremely well with the therapy. Since we left Malibu to come to NYC, he missed his last session this past week.

For a second, I cursed myself for being so selfish. Here I wanted him to be with me on assignment in New York when he probably needed the comfort and security of home to continue through the healing process. It had only been five weeks since his captivity. Not nearly enough time to be leaving the one place that made him feel safe. Shit!

I slipped out of bed just as he cried out again.

“Gina…no. No. No, oh my God. Mia! Mia! That’s my wife! Get your filthy hands off her!” He screamed out, his body arching in what looked to be an extremely painful half-moon shape.

Flicking on the lights, I called out to him. “Wes! Please come back to me!” I didn’t want to risk touching him. The one time I did, he shot his arm out and caught me in the rib with his elbow, giving me a nasty bruise that made him feel worse than I did. Since then, I didn’t make a move to wake him physically.

“If you touch Mia…I’ll kill you. I’ll kill you! She’s mine!” he roared.

Grabbing the bottle of water next to my side of the bed, I opened the cap, said a prayer to the big guy upstairs, and poured a line down Wes's chest.

His body shook, and his arms flew out in opposite directions. I was prepared for that and just barely jumped out of the way in time to avoid getting tagged by his automatic fight-or-flight response.

“Mia!” His pupils were fully dilated, and his lips curled in toward his teeth. “Are you okay?” he growled. I wasn’t sure if it was because he was angry with me, still lost in the evil clutches of the dream, or because he genuinely wanted to know.

I licked my lips and pushed my hair off my face. “I’m fine. Do you love me?” I asked this same question every time he had one of these dreams.

“More than anything in the world.” His response was instantaneous.

He moved to get up, but I put a hand out. I still wasn’t sure who this person was. My Wes. Captive Wes. Victim Wes. Dangerous, angry Wes.

“Who am I?” I asked, trying to ensure he wasn’t still locked in his nightmare.

“You’re Mia Saunders, soon to be Mia Channing.” His words were soft though strained, as if it hurt to say them.

I grinned slightly at the use of my name paired with his last name. “That has a really nice ring to it.”

“It sure as hell does. Come here.” His eyes were coming back to the brilliant green I fell in love with all those months ago, but I was still leery.

“Why do you love me?”

He smiled, rubbed his jaw, and let that hand fall to the sheets. “Because I’m not
me
without
you
. And I don’t ever want to be a
me
without
you
.”

I closed my eyes and crawled over the bed and right into his lap. “Baby”—I cupped his cheeks—“tell me what happened.”

“After,” he whispered before looping an arm around my back and sucking my nipple into his mouth through the silk nightie.

Wes loved me in lingerie. That was a surprise. He’d seemed to be a man who preferred it on the floor since he usually took it off almost as quickly as I’d put it on. Even so, he said he loved seeing me in it. I arched into his searing kiss, loving the way the silk grated against my tip along with the suction. Divine.

With very little prompting, he found the hem of my nightie where it had bunched at my hips and pulled it up and over my head so he could have unfettered access to my breasts. They were swollen and achy with need as he fed my desire with long licks, deep suckling, and playful, heated nibbles. He played with each burning peak until both of them were as red as cherries and just as round.

“I love your breasts.” He swirled his tongue around one.

“And they love you,” I panted, wanting more, needing far more.

Using my hips, I ground down against his manhood which rose proudly between my thighs. Wes was beautifully naked beneath me. When we finished making love after coming back from having dinner with Anton and Heather, he didn’t bother to don his briefs. He just rolled against my side after I put on my nightie—sans undies—and jumped back into bed with him. He hooked a leg over mine and crashed.

“Take me inside, sweetheart. I want you wrapped around me.”

No better words had ever been said.

“Gladly,” I whispered against his lips, sucking the bottom one into my mouth as I knelt, grabbed his long, thick cock, and nudged it at my entrance.

Closing my eyes, I took him into my body, enjoying every glorious inch of his cock stretching over-sensitive tissues to their maximum. Once I was seated fully and his cock rooted deep, we both sighed. It was one of those sighs that made everything that had happened before disappear. Life, bad dreams, all the things we still had to do in the day to come. Gone. All of that wiped away the instant our bodies joined as one. Pure bliss.

With his hands on my hips, I let him guide me up and down at a pace he set. With Wes, every single time was amazing. There was absolutely nothing like the pure pleasure that came from him nestled deep within me. I’d never get over it. I knew no matter what the future held, I’d die wanting to be with only this man for the rest of my life.

Following his lead, I moved a little faster. Slowly coming up and then slamming down with a grunt, until he started to thrust up on my down-stroke. Each time was like his dick were piercing straight through to my soul.

“So damn deep…” I moaned and took his mouth in a blistering kiss.

He groaned into my mouth as we both enjoyed another meeting of our bodies against one another.

“Need to fuck you hard, Mia. Chase away the demons…” He closed his eyes, fingers digging into my hips.

“Let’s chase them, baby.” I lifted up and squeezed my internal muscles so he’d have no choice but to pay attention to the naked woman wrapped around his cock while sitting on his lap.

“Christ! You’re too good to me,” he said while he slid both palms up my back and curled his hands around my shoulders.

Oh, shit. Anytime he curled those hands he was going for maximum leverage. I was going to walk funny tomorrow, but the orgasm that came with it would rock my world. Just as I suspected, the moment I lifted up, he pulled down with his hands and power drove up into my sex. I cried out, feeling like I'd been split in two by his thick cock ramming deep. Again and again he pounded into me, taking everything he needed to fight back the demons that plagued him, and I was right there with him. Every thrust and tug, and every breath that burst out of our mouths was bringing my man back to me, back to the here and now. To the place where love reigned and the demons could slip back into their holes and die.

My body tightened at the same time that Wes’s thrusts became more insistent. His teeth were clenched, and his eyes were closed tight. There was no way I was letting him fall into the abyss without me right there with him.

“Wes…” I said, a warning in my tone.

He pounded relentlessly into me, striving for the edge. Every neuron and nerve inside me came alive, sparked, and was ready to light on fire, but I needed him there with me. Always with me.

“Wes, baby.” My voice was weak, lost in the haze of extreme desire. I was riding that wave of a pleasure so huge it would swallow me whole, but I wanted him there, too.

“Wes.” I choked back a sob as the splintering feeling of riding his cock and how it was about to take me beyond the ability to hold out.

Finally, finally he opened his eyes. Blazing green orbs of lust stared back at me, and he growled a single word. "Come."

For the first time ever, that one word did it. I shot off like a rocket into orbit, locking down my body around his while he thrust a few more times and together we found nirvana.

His cries mingled with mine, and I
knew
we’d be okay. As long as we could bring one another back from hell, we’d always have this.

O
nce we’d cleaned up
, I tumbled back into bed, tired out of my mind and wanting to know what happened. The therapist said Wes needed to work through these issues or they’d fester and the dreams could get worse.

Sprawling my body over his, I centered my chin over my hands, which were over his heart. “So…what happened in the dream?”

He sighed and pushed a hand through his unruly dirty-blond layers. The bedhead look was working for him in a big way. If he hadn’t just broken the rollercoaster ride that was my vagina from too many goes, I’d be ready to scream my way through the hills and valleys with him again. Alas, the sore, achy feeling between my legs confirmed that my pleasure center needed a comp day for sure.

“You really don’t want that shit in your head, Mia. Hell, I don’t want that shit in my head, let alone have you worrying about it.”

“Was it a flashback?” I knew he had those pretty regularly.

He shook his head, paused, and bit his lip thoughtfully. “Kind of, I guess. I was back there, in the hut. Things were different. At first, they had grabbed Gina like they did.”

I shivered, knowing exactly what those extremists had done to his ex. Repeatedly raping someone didn’t hurt only her. Wes had been forced to watch it happen day in and day out. “And what changed?” I asked softly, not wanting to spook him for sharing.

He inhaled, blinked a few times, and brought his hand to the layers of hair that had fallen in front of my face. For a few seconds, he rubbed at the strands between his fingers.

“She turned into you,” he eventually said.

“How so?”

His eyebrows furrowed, but he continued to play with my hair. His gaze was concentrated on my face as if cataloguing every feature with an intensity that he hadn't shown before.

“The hair was different at first. It was Gina’s dark hair only not black and silky like yours.” He frowned. “Then it was the lips.” With one finger he traced my pout. I responded by kissing his fingertip. “The nose lengthened in front of my eyes.” He ran that same finger down from my brow to the tip. “Still I didn’t believe…” His voice got gravelly, as if he’d gargled with a box of jagged rocks.

“You didn’t believe what?”

“I could believe it was her until her blue eyes turned a pale, pale green. Eyes I’ve only ever seen on one person…you.”

“Oh, Wes, God…” I swallowed the emotion that was clogging my throat. “It wasn’t me.”

He closed his eyes and pointed to his heart. “I know that here, but here”—he pointed to his temple—“the details get mixed up sometimes. And tonight was the worst. One minute it was playing out like one of the nights they’d taken Gina, but then she turned into you. And Mia…I wouldn’t have survived seeing that happen to you. I can barely handle it now, having seen it happen to someone I care for, but you? Jesus…the thought alone is killing me.”

I cupped his face. “Wes. I’m right here. I was never there. You survived something horrible. You watched one of the worst things possible happen to someone you care about. But it was not me. I wish there were some way in the night that I could get you to feel that. Take you away from that place, out of that line of thinking.”

Wes wrapped his hands around my naked back. “You are. What you’re doing. How you help me in the night. It’s getting better. I promise it is.”

Tears pooled at my eyes. “So me dragging you here isn’t making it worse?”

He smiled, did an ab curl, and slid me along his chest until our noses could touch. He kissed me long, slow, and so very deep, hand cupped around the nape of my neck to hold me at his mercy.

With little nibbles against my lips, he gently moved his face back an inch. “You’re the only thing keeping me sane. Without you, without our love, I’d have gone down a very nasty path. Mia, you give me a reason to carry on, a reason to live. You give me hope for what’s to come. Being with you is not a hardship. I wouldn’t have come if I thought being away from you was a good idea.”

I snuggled into his chest and kissed the space directly over his heart. “And if you hadn’t come, I wouldn't have this sparkly ring on my finger.” I wiggled my left hand so he could see, and I could see the diamonds glittering in the moonlight. It was spectacular and stole my breath every time I looked at the simple design. The style was just right for me and proved my man knew me very well indeed.

He huffed. “Don’t think for a minute that I wasn’t going to ask you the first chance I got. I bought that ring right after I left Miami.”

“Miami! But that was months ago!”

He chuckled. “Yes, but if you remember, we had very little time before you were off to Texas, and then I was on assignment. The assignment from hell.”

I cringed.

“After that, I needed to heal. Didn’t want you thinking that I was asking out of some kind of PTSD distress, or trying to pick up the pieces of my life in haste. I wanted you to know I was ready, seriously ready to commit to you and our life together.”

“I love you, Weston Charles Channing, the third.” I said and smiled.

“The third.” He mouthed mocking me.

So I gave him something else to mouth by shutting him up with mine.

T
he phone rang
three times before she picked up with a breathless, “Hello.”

“Gin, what’s going on? Why are you out of breath?” I glanced at the clock and it read eleven o’clock in the morning, eight Pacific Time.

Wes and I’d stayed in today, resting, watching movies, and having room service. We were both scheduled for some pampering couples' massages in the hotel spa in an hour, but I figured now was as good a time as any to give my girls the news. I’d called Maddy already, and she was ecstatic. Talked all about us having a double wedding when she graduated. Humoring her was the only option when dealing with a full-on over-excited Maddy. I did, however, neglect to tell her that Wes believed he was marrying me on New Year’s Day. That was something I wanted to tell her in person, over drinks, possibly more than a few.