Reese
The door opened. Laird’s scent reached me first, soap and bad ideas and fairy tales all mixed up in a pheromone cloud I was powerless to resist.
“I shouldn’t be here.” My voice sounded weak and a bit defensive as I looked at his neck, his chin, his nose—anywhere but his kryptonite green eyes.
“Wrong. This is exactly where you should be.”
His hand closed around my wrist and he pulled me out of the endless Alabama heat into the coolness of his townhouse, then crowded me against the wall. Before I could protest, before I could even take a breath, his mouth was on mine, desperate, hungry, and so damn hot. Rational thought fled my mind. My knees buckled and I clutched his shirt, letting his arm around my back support my weight.
“Right here. With me. In my arms.” The husky words hit me like bullets.
His tongue licked the seam of my lips, then plunged inside. A greedy noise spilled from my throat. I’d never get enough of the way he tasted, of the way my skin seemed to hum whenever he touched me. His other arm fell to my thigh, tugging my leg up to wrap around his waist as he arched my back. That dirty mouth of his wasn’t the only thing pressing against me.
I raised my arms to his wide shoulders, feeling his muscles bunch under my palms. My nails scratched along his scalp, and his answering groan had me shivering in wanton desire.
There was no spark, no slow build-up. This was an instant inferno of need.
“Laird.” I rubbed my cheek against his stubble, then tipped my head to the side as he trailed kisses down my neck. “We shouldn’t.”
It was my last attempt at logic, at sane reasoning, although it was half-assed at best considering my words came out more as a moan.
“Says who?” His eyes bored into mine, snaring me in their frustrated heat. “You? You want this. I can feel how much you want it. Your nipples are already hard and begging, your mouth is swollen and pouting, and there’s no doubt in my mind, if I reached between those sweet thighs of yours right now, that you’d be wet and ready.”
He rocked his hips, his hard length obvious behind his zipper. “That’s just the start of what you do to me, Reese.”
Laird traced his fingers along my face, rubbing at the crease between my eyebrows with his thumb. “Tell me you don’t want to be here.”
Before I could open my mouth, he stopped me with a grunt and a sharp shake of his head. “No. Not whether you think you should be here, tell me you don’t want to be here. That you don’t want me to cook you dinner, and tell you how damn beautiful you look, and kiss you until you’ve been kissed every single way there is to kiss.”
I bit my lip, unable to lie to him when he held my gaze like this, wringing the truth from me whether I wanted to give it to him or not.
“You didn’t even take the time to see what I was wearing,” I pointed out with a soft laugh.
“Doesn’t matter.” His eyes never wavered from mine. “You’re gorgeous in everything.”
He released my thigh, letting it drop until I was standing on my own two feet again, albeit a bit wobbly.
“Besides,” he pressed his forehead to mine, “Oscar’s missed you. And there’s nothing worse than a sad wiener.”
I finally registered the ecstatic dachshund weaving around our feet and head-butting our calves, a well-loved tennis ball wedged in his mouth. I crouched to rub his soft ears, and he flopped on his side in blatant surrender.
“Fuck, Oscar. You don’t have to be that whipped. You could make her work for it a little.” Laird watched his dog snuffle in happiness, tail thumping out a blur of eighth notes. “I’m gonna leave you two to your little reunion while I throw the steaks on the grill. How do you like yours cooked, Reese?”
“Make mine like yours. I don’t eat steak that often, so I’ll trust your judgment.”
He paused at the corner to the kitchen, eyebrows scrunched. “Why not?”
“Why not what?”
“Why don’t you eat steak that often? Steak is awesome.”
Fuck. Me and my big mouth. I tossed him a shrug I hoped passed for nonchalant. “My parents didn’t let me have too much red meat. You know, the free radicals and stuff…” My voice trailed off in embarrassment. Fucking cancer. Fucking overprotective parents. A steak wasn’t going to kill me, no matter what psycho article they’d read.
Laird looked stricken.
“No!” I hastened to reassure him, to not be that girl. The one he’d look at differently—treat differently— because of some stupid fucking rogue cells that had once wreaked havoc on my body. They were gone. Had been for years. I was safe. Healthy. Strong.
Normal.
And if he brought out the kid gloves my parents used around me, this was going to be over before it ever really started.
“Laird, it’s fine.” I rose from my position on the floor, crossing to his side and squeezing his arm. The muscle beneath my hand was rock hard with tension. “My parents… Look, my parents were crazy overprotective. But I’ve been in remission for a decade. A decade. I can have steak. I can march on drumline.” I offered him a wicked smile. “I can even have naughty, wall-banging sex with a hot guy if I want. I’m fine.”
He swallowed hard, his eyes searching every inch of my face. Slowly, by tiny degrees, his forearm relaxed, and he reached out to tug on a wayward lock of hair.
“How ‘bout this? No cancer talk tonight. At all. Not your history with it or mine. We won’t even talk about the hospital. Eli, Amelia, none of that.” He looped his arms around my waist and drew my hips to his. “Tonight, we’ll eat some fantastic fucking steak—medium rare because that’s the only way to eat it—and talk about happy stuff. Then maybe afterward we can revisit your statement about banging on walls.”
I beamed at him. “Sounds perfect.”
And it was.
Over a salad with the best croutons I’d ever had, I told him about my early childhood, when I explored the Appalachian foothills, climbing every tree I could, and swam in the Monongahela River, chasing minnows and Canadian geese as they migrated south, and how I made the biggest damn mud pies in three counties.
While we ate steak so tender we barely needed knives, and sweet potatoes drowning in butter, brown sugar, and cinnamon, he told me about Mario Kart tournaments with Garrett, building Lego empires, and the tire swing in their backyard, the one Garrett fell off when he was four because Laird had pushed him too high and he’d gotten scared. Garrett had broken his arm, and Laird had felt so bad, he found the steepest hill in the neighborhood, the one three streets over from where they lived, and raced his bike down it as fast as he could—then purposefully crashed into the Morrisons’ fence at the bottom, fracturing his elbow and breaking two fingers. They’d had matching bright blue casts the whole summer.
“See right here?” Laird held up his hand and pointed at his little finger, which was just a bit crooked at the joint. “A little memento from that day.”
I snagged his hand and pressed a kiss to the old injury. “There. All better.”
His eyes turned darker, laced with lust and something deeper I wasn’t ready to examine.
I ducked his gaze, took a sip of water, and traced a pattern into the condensation on the side of the glass.
He picked up the last bite of steak from his plate and held it up to my mouth.
I parted my lips obediently, letting him feed me, letting him perform one of my most basic needs. It didn’t feel demeaning or belittling, the way it did when my parents micromanaged my life. Instead, I felt cherished, protected, taken care of as if he was honored to do so, not because I was fragile and delicate.
I swallowed, then wiped my mouth with my napkin.
“I’m wearing them,” I blurted out, no finesse, no segue. “Like you asked.”
“Wearing what?” His eyes drew together a bit in confusion.
I rubbed my damp palms on my thighs. “The black lace panties.”