Sexy and Funny, Hilarious Erotic Romance Bundle (78 page)

We went all the way down to the “heart of the machine,” where he showed me the laundry facilities and the boiler room.

The air was moist and hot, even hotter than it had been outside in the sun. I could feel my thighs sticking together under my thin cotton skirt, and my cheeks flushing red.

We stopped in a narrow hallway, underneath giant pipes and ducts, and he turned to me.

“Feather, I should have called.”

“I didn't call either.”

“I wanted you to.”

Feeling hot and sticky, I crossed and uncrossed my arms.

My voice thin and breaking, I said, “I missed you.”

He pulled something from his pocket—my check. And the yellow note.

“
Dear Devin
,” he read.

“Don't.”

He continued reading, “
I'm sorry I didn't help you.
”

I started to say something, another apology, but he stopped me, holding up his hand.

“This isn't true and you know it,” he said. “There are many ways one person can help another, and you did the two most beautiful things anyone has ever done for me. First of all, you opened that vault I keep hidden inside, and you showed me that along with the pain, I'd locked away the light. I wasn't afraid of kissing someone and being rejected.”

“You weren't? But…”

“It wasn't fear of rejection. It was the opposite—the fear of
not
being rejected. Of having to be close to someone. To open myself to them.”

“Oh.” I fidgeted with my feather necklace. “I guess you're seeing someone now who's helping you sort things out?”

“I am.” He put his hands in his pockets and leaned back against the wall, a slight smile on his face. “Don't worry. It's a guy.”

I let out a nervous laugh. “Okay. You said I did… two things?”

His face got serious. “Right. This one's hard to talk about.” He coughed. “You, um, cared about me. Without wanting anything in return. I'm not saying this because you sent me the check, either. I could tell you cared right from our first meeting. My staff… they respect me, but I'm their boss. And my family is great, but they're family. I've been so busy the last few years, running this place, that most of my friends have drifted away.” He looked straight at me, his dark brown eyes glistening. “I didn't realize how lonely I'd been until I had you in my life. You were like air. Like sun.”

Despite the heat in that hallway, my forearms bristled with goosebumps.

After a moment, I said, “And here I came to yell at you for not cashing my check. Then you have to go and say all those really nice things. Now I'm the jerk.”

“Feather, may I kiss you?”

I shook my head. “No. I'm done being the kissing coach.”

“Not as a coach.” He took two steps toward me. “I want to kiss you to show you how I feel about you.”

I laughed, my voice still squeaky. “I hear people do that.”

He caught my hands in his and moved in closer. My back was against the cool, concrete wall.

“You're nervous,” he said.

“So are you.”

He looked down at my lips, and he leaned forward. I tilted my face up.

Our lips touched, and I felt a sizzle of energy snake through me.

My arms wrapped up around his shoulders, and he pulled me into him.

Both of us breathed heavily, breathing as one, and his hands were hot and moist on my back as he ground his hips into mine. I moaned into his lips, and soon he was kissing my throat, unbuttoning my cotton dress, and kissing me between my breasts.

We paused just long enough for him to lead me over to a workshop area and set me up on a workbench.

He stood before me, between my legs as I sat. We kissed some more, and I unfastened his belt. I wanted our skin to touch. I wanted to lose the distance between us. His pants fell to the floor with a thud.

“Wallet and cell phone,” he said as he finished unbuttoning the front of my dress.

I pulled him into me, and wrapped my legs around him, both of us in nothing but our underwear.

He sucked on my neck as I ran my fingertips up and down his beautiful back.

“I don't have a condom,” he said.

“I'm already on birth control, to help with my cycle. I've been tested for everything, and I haven't been with anyone but you in years.”

He pulled back and blinked at me.

I continued, “How about you?”

“If you're asking if I've been with anyone else since my first time with you, the answer is… are you kidding me? How could anyone ever top that? I mean, of course not.”

I covered my face with my hands, feeling shy. “Well, I don't know. I mean, it's been a while.”

“It's been one hundred days since I saw you.”

I pulled my hands away from my face and stared into his brown eyes. I could lose myself in those dark eyes.

He took my hand in his and kissed my forearm, then all the way up to my shoulder. As he pressed his body against mine, he said, “I want to make love to you.”

“Oh.”

“Because I think I'm
in
love with you.”

“That would explain the counting of the days.”

He kissed my lips, then said, “You're so cheeky.”

“I did lose track of the days, but my heart is beating like a rabbit's. I think I might be in love with you, too.”

He hugged me, burying his face in my hair next to my neck. “I was so worried you didn't feel it too. I didn't dare call. I kept putting it off, but I shouldn't have. I'm so stupid.”

I ran my hands through his soft, black hair. “Doesn't matter. I'm here now.” I looked around the room, at the assortment of tools hanging from the walls and the stacks of cardboard boxes, some of them labeled
Xmas Decorations
.

We were in one of the most beautiful boutique hotels in the city, and Devin had access to all the rooms, and here we were, down in the tool shop, and it was perfect. Just perfect.

He kissed his way down my chest, then helped me wriggle out of my panties.

Still seated on the work table, I ran my fingers over his bare chest, over his chest muscles and taut abs, and then I pulled down his underwear.

He ran his fingertips up and down the spot between my legs, wet and swollen for him. He stopped on my nub and rubbed it in a circle as he leaned down to kiss me. As our tongues touched, I felt pressure on my opening.

He moaned into my mouth, a sound that seemed like a question.

His fingers kept circling, sending wave after aching wave of pleasure through my body.

I responded to his wordless question by grabbing his ass with both hands and pulling him into me.

As his whole erection slid easy into me, filling me, I gasped and started to come immediately.

He rocked gently in and out, still working me with his finger, and soon I was moaning into his soft lips, shuddering with pleasure, from the inside of me where he was, and all the way to the back of my skull.

He started moving faster and harder, both of us sweating and grunting now, and with a gasp, he paused and then shook, coming inside me.

I held him against me.

The space between us was gone.

After a moment, I took his hand from between us, kissed his fingertips, and then placed his hand on my back. We hugged, holding each other tighter and tighter, me with my legs wrapped around him.

My life had just changed.

“We're together,” he whispered.

“Together.”

I got a serious case of the giggles as I put my clothes back on, picking my bra off the top of a miter saw.

“Look at that,” Devin said as he swiped some sawdust off the back of my thigh.

“Disgraceful.”

“Girl, you make me crazy. I see you buttoning up that dress, and I want to take it back off again.”

I pretended to be prim and proper. “Sheesh. Maybe you should buy a girl dinner.”

He grabbed me in a hug, still shirtless, his skin so hot under my hands. “Every night,” he said. “I will buy you dinner every night, forever.”

“Except for when it's my treat, which will be half the time.”

He pulled back and stared into my eyes. “Not if you keep mailing checks back to clients.”

My body felt strangely loose and tense at the same time, but his beautiful skin and eyes were turning me on again.

I said, “You're not going to cash that check, are you?”

“You earned it, and I don't need it. You're an excellent coach. I'm seeing that guy, the therapist, and he's not half as good as you, but I'm not staring at his hot body and getting all distracted, so…
there's that
.”

He reached into a cupboard below where I was sitting and pulled out two bottles of a pink, sparkling drink. The bottles were cold.

“Mini fridge,” he said.

“It's almost as if you planned this.”

He stammered, looking embarrassed. “Feather, I swear I didn't. I wasn't sure if I'd ever see you again. I thought you hated me, and sending that check back was your way of telling me to fuck off forever.”

I shook my head and joked, “Oh, Devin, why can't I quit you?”

His eyes brightened and he leaned in to examine my necklace.

“It's a feather,” he said. “That's the coolest thing I've ever seen, but now I'm angry.”

“Why?”

“Because now what am I going to get you for your birthday? I don't even know when your birthday is, but I want to go back in time, buy up all the feather necklaces in town, and surprise you on your birthday.”

“You have a time machine?”

“Yes, I've been spending a lot of time down here in the shop, tinkering away at one. My plan is to go back and see the dinosaurs, of course.”

“Oh, of course.”

He retrieved his shirt and put it back on, which only made me want to tear it off.

“October,” I said. “My birthday's in October.”

“Mine's in November.”

He slipped his arms around me and drew me in for a kiss, a lingering, closed-mouth kiss that felt as hot as any passionate kiss I'd had.

When we pulled apart, I said, “My middle name is Katharine.”

“Mine's Arthur.”

We kissed again.

I told him, “I'm a college dropout.”

“I play a lot of video games in my free time.”

I giggled as he crushed his lips into mine again. This kiss was longer, sending heat down between my legs.

“My best friend's name is Steph, and I tell her everything. I may have broken the confidentiality rule just a bit.”

“I can't wait to meet her.”

“She gave me the necklace.”

“Good!” He examined it again. “I'm glad it wasn't some guy.”

“Do you have a best friend?”

“I have two best friends, and they're good guys.”

“Maybe I'll meet them. Maybe some day we'll leave this basement.”

“Not yet,” he said, and he started unbuttoning my dress again.

We did leave the basement of the hotel… eventually.

He had to stay and work, helping with some interviews, but before I left, we made a date for the next day, Sunday.

I rushed home and got changed for my
other
date, the one with my mother.

Since the day she'd brought over the croissants and been so sweet to me, we'd been getting along better. I could still only handle her in limited doses—no more than three hours—but things had been going well.

Occasionally, she'd say something rude and my hackles would go up, my system flooding with stress chemicals. I'd been practicing biting my tongue, though, and it was paying off. When I failed to respond to one of her little “digs,” she'd actually talked herself down, arguing with herself and then eventually apologizing to me for the original comment.

That Saturday night, she was having a dinner with two of her oldest friends, Lacey and Bev, both of whom I used to call “Aunty” when I was small. Both had moved to other cities within the last five years, but they'd come up with this new plan where every August, they'd meet in one of their three cities for a girls' weekend.

We met at a restaurant that was a little stuffy for my taste, but perfectly appropriate for the group. The two women hugged me and showered me with compliments. I felt a little guilty for stealing all the attention, but my mother didn't seem to mind.

“Feather's one of the top coaches in town,” my mother said as the salads were served.

When the main courses arrived, she said, “Feather has a dedicated clientèle who couldn't live without her.”