“I want to take you on a date.”
Somehow Anthony had managed to persuade me to stay over again last night. We’d spent the day cuddled up watching TV and it was exactly the kind of day I needed. I needed time to marinate on what he’d said. He loved me. He couldn’t do the surgery. Part of me had already known and the other part of me was still freaking out about it. Still, I was glad I’d stayed. I’d let him wrap his long arms around my baby bump and spoon me. Doc was one hell of a big spoon, and me, well, I was an itty bitty one, but we made it work. It felt good to be held. I’d needed it. Maybe it was because my emotions were so raw from his confession yesterday. He’d told me he couldn’t do the surgery. That he loved me. It was probably the most bittersweet day of my entire life. On one hand I was crushed that he couldn’t do the surgery. On the other hand I was ecstatic that he loved me like I loved him. I hadn’t told him yet. I was scared to. Like somehow if I said the words everything would change. I couldn’t lose our friendship now. Over the last seven days without Anthony I’d realized how vital he was to me and my happiness.
I was in the kitchen making pancakes for my big guy and he was standing on the other side of the counter, toweling off his wet hair and looking utterly delectable in a T-shirt and jeans when he sprang that doozy on me.
I looked at him like he was crazy and continued on making the pancakes like he hadn’t said a damn word.
“Did you hear me?”
I looked at him again like he’d lost his mind. “Oh, I heard you.”
“So?”
Flipping the pancake I answered, “So what?”
“Will you go on a date with me, Kelly Ann Potter?”
I put the rest of the pancakes on a plate and moved the skillet off the burner. “No way.”
“Why not?” His look was incredulous.
“Because I’m almost nine months pregnant.” What kind of harlot did he think I was? I couldn’t just be going on dates. Going on dates was for women who were single and not pregnant. Women who could wear skimpy dresses and drink cocktails and laugh like they didn’t have a care in the world. I had responsibilities. Like a baby and myself. That was all I could handle right now. If the past ten years were any indication, I was a far cry from adult material. I needed to mom-up, stop being so damn selfish and start thinking like a momma bear. He wanted me to add dating to the mix. I could barely handle my life right now without the added dating part. What was he thinking?
“What does that have to do with anything?” He added a ridiculous amount of syrup to his pancakes. The man’s sweet tooth was out of control.
“I don’t know. It’s weird.”
“It’s only weird if you make it weird.”
I gave him the look again.
He rolled his eyes. “You’re making it weird. Pregnant women go on dates all the time.”
“With their husbands,” I agreed.
He leaned over the counter, his face deadly serious. “You need a ring to go on a date with me, baby?” He sounded like he was about to take me down to the courthouse ASAP.
Eyes bugged out of my head, I answered, “Oh my God, no!” I might have lied a little. I’d love for Anthony to be my husband. He was caring and sweet and the only man I’d ever loved. But he was asking me for a date, not my hand in marriage. “Besides, I can barely fit in my sweats I’m so big. I don’t have anything to wear on a date.”
“It doesn’t matter what you wear.”
“It does to me.”
“Why are you so argumentative all the time?”
I quirked an eyebrow. “Then why do you want to take me on a date, if I’m so argumentative?”
“Christ almighty! You drive me insane!”
“Again, why—”
His big frame leaned over the counter and he placed his hand over my mouth. “Don’t make me shut you up, little bit.”
I grinned as he removed his hand. I was feeling saucy and flirtatious. Maybe it was that his hand had been pressed to my lips. Maybe it was sleeping with him wrapped around me. Maybe it was all the talk of dating. I was flattered. This big, beautiful, kind man loved me. He wanted to take me out and show me off like I was a prize even though I was anything but. “And how are you going to do that?”
His eyes heated. “I’d walk into the kitchen and I’d pin you to the refrigerator and I’d kiss you. Hard. Greedily. Really fucking kiss you like I’ve been waiting for what feels like forever to do. But I wanted to take you on a date first.”
I licked my lips. Kisses were good. I wanted kisses. Dates, not so much. But yes to all the kisses.
“What if I want to just skip to the kissing part?”
He stared at my lips hard, considering my words. “What about if I kiss you and then you let me take you on a date?” He prowled around the counter and into the kitchen, the pancakes long forgotten.
He was like a big, stalking lion, so slow but every step so deliberate, his eyes hot on mine, and I backed toward the refrigerator, falling completely into the trap he’d voiced only minutes ago.
“What if we stay in and kiss all night?”
My back hit the fridge and his front hit mine. His hand went to the back of my neck, his face a few inches from mine.
“What if I kissed some sense into you, instead?” His deep, growly voice ghosted over my skin, making me warm from outside in. His head lowered and I held my breath. Yes, we’d shared small friendly kisses but nothing like this. Pecks, that’s all. Nothing sexual, really. Not since years ago when we were young and I wasn’t pregnant with someone else’s baby.
His soft lips met the corner of mine, sweet, tender, like he knew I needed time. And then the other corner the same way. He was going slow and I was dying, my stomach quivering.
Once he kissed my cupid’s bow.
Twice he kissed the pillowy pad of my bottom lip.
Three times he rubbed his nose along mine.
I’d kissed this man with my eyes a thousand times over the last month, but nothing compared to the real thing.
“Breathe, baby,” he whispered across my lips.
I exhaled into his mouth and he moaned low into mine before giving my lips a lazy, slow lick right up the center. It surprised me. It sent my belly flip-flopping. It made me ache between my legs. It tasted like maple syrup and man. It was dirty in the perfect kind of way, that lick.
I shouldn’t have been surprised. These kisses somehow perfectly personified the man who gave them. Sweet but so sensual. Thoughtful but incredibly sexy.
“Up, baby,” he muttered against my mouth, our breaths intermingling, as his hand left my neck and trailed down my back to grip my ass. His other hand joined in and before I knew it I was hoisted up. I immediately wrapped my legs around his waist for leverage and because, well, I knew it would feel good. My arms tangled around his neck and his mouth finally took mine. His kisses went from slow and sweet to fast and hard, and I was right there with him, his tongue sliding along mine, his teeth nipping at my bottom lip. I groaned and the bottom of my body involuntarily pushed against his.
His body was pressed to me, and oh God! His cock was right there. Right at my center, the thick head pressed to my clit and it was so hard and big, and I could feel it all too well through the sheer fabric of my granny panties and yoga pants. And I wanted it. I wanted to push down his pants under his cock and have him slip it inside of me right here against the cold fridge in the middle of the kitchen. So, I rocked against him again and this time he didn’t miss it.
“Fuck,” he growled before pushing me harder into the fridge and grinding that thick cock against me, my big stomach only slightly encumbering our grinding.
It felt too good. I couldn’t breathe. I hadn’t done this in so long. I’d wanted him for weeks. My brain had absolutely no control over my body. I couldn’t think. I couldn’t speak. I couldn’t breathe. All I could do was feel. I was mush.
I snapped my head back against the hard surface behind me, desperate for air. “Oh, God.”
“Mmmm,” he growled against my throat and he licked up the column of it before assaulting my collarbone. He sucked there, biting the spot and then licking it better. He was driving me mad and he knew it. Every suck, every lick, every kiss spurred me on and still I continued to rock against him, my head thrown back, my eyes squeezed shut, trying to suck every bit of pleasure I could out of the moment.
“That’s it, baby,” he husked against my throat. “Use me.”
And those words, use me, they did something awful, something amazing to me. Something unexplainable. My insides split apart at those words. I did. I wanted to use him up. I wanted to press against him until I came. I couldn’t stop it. I was as helpless and wanton as the grunts and groans that seemed to echo out into the kitchen.
And he had to have known what those words did to me. It was so obvious they pushed me over the edge of oblivion into some unknown space.
With one hand still holding me up at my ass, he used the other to grab the back of my hair tight, turning my head so that my ear could meet his mouth. It started with a small suck at my lobe but turned into the dirtiest words I’d ever heard.
“Ride it, honey. Ride my cock.” His words fucked my ear. “It’s yours. Take it.” Dirty whispers filled my fuzzy, sexed up brain. “I can feel how wet you are through your clothes.” I should have been embarrassed. Instead, I pushed against him harder.
“God, you’re going to come on me, aren’t you, baby? And I haven’t even really touched you yet. Fuck, but you’re perfect.”
I groaned loud.
“I remember it, you know. How tight you were. How wet you got for me. How your pussy almost felt too small for me,” he panted. “Fuck, I remember it and I stroke my cock.”
And the simple thought of him touching himself while thinking of me sent me racing toward my climax, spiraling down a vortex of pleasure.
“That’s it,” he coaxed as I curled my shaking body around him, my face planted into his shoulder, his mouth still to my ear. “Come on me. Come all over my dick.” His voice was thick and rich with lust.
And then his hands were back to my ass, pushing me against his thickness. The head caught my clit, one, two, three more times and stars burst behind my eyes. My head shot back, his hand already there to protect it as my body locked tight.
Breathe, I encouraged myself and he continued to rock his body against mine and kiss the spot behind my ear, the place where my neck met my collarbone, the dip at the base of my neck. I groaned long and hard as I rode out the longest orgasm of my life before finally my body fell slack against his.
I had nothing left. Every bit of my everything had been zapped out of me. I couldn’t even wrap my legs around him anymore, so Anthony carried me to the couch where he propped me in his lap and brought my head to his chest.
Anthony pushed the sweaty hair off my forehead and smiled down at me. “You’re the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.” And fuck if he didn’t mean it. Love shone out of his eyes like the sun poured down on the Carolina beaches in the summer.
I wanted to tell him he was the most beautiful man I’d ever seen, too. I wanted to confess my love for him. I wanted to lay it all out there. That I’d never forgotten about him and our night. That it had meant something to me. That he meant something to me, but I was still stupidly and selfishly scared, so I burrowed further into his chest, still trying to catch my breath.
He hugged me to him and I let him. The best place in the world was inside one of Doc’s hugs. For those few minutes when his arms were wrapped around me everything seemed perfect.
Ya know, until he spoke.
“I think I held up my end of the bargain, Peanut. What do you think?”
I smiled into his shirt. “What bargain?” I mumbled.
“The one where I kiss the shit out of you and you let me take you on a date.”
I couldn’t tell him no. I already couldn’t tell him I loved him. He deserved a date. He deserved whatever he wanted. He was too good to his core, this one. I’d give him anything.
“Okay.”
He laughed. “What was that?”
Rolling my eyes, I answered, “I said, okay, Doc. Calm the fuck down.”
He kissed my forehead. “I love how agreeable orgasms make you. I’ll have to remember that in the future.”
I hid my flaming face in his chest and wrapped my arms around his middle. I couldn’t even argue that point because he definitely wasn’t wrong.
“Move in with me.”
My body flew back and I almost fell off the couch, if not for Doc catching me just in time.
“No.”
“How many orgasms is it gonna cost me?”
The loon was completely serious.
My face burned hotter. “Oh my God, stop talking about orgasms, please!”
I laid my head back to his chest and listened to his laugher there vibrating around his heart. It was the sweetest sound I’d heard in a long time, even if it was at my expense.