CHAPTER
SEVEN
SHAWN wasn’t sure exactly what had just happened, but it definitely wasn’t what she had intended. Yes, she had purposely dressed in an outfit that would get his attention, and she had made dinner to throw him off-kilter. The only one in this damn kitchen who was off-kilter was her. Somehow, he had effectively turned the entire situation to his advantage.
Now she was just sopping wet and aching to be taken by him.
She had proved to herself that he was interested in her, and wow, wasn’t that a satisfying victory? Not. He seemed to want her, alright. Wanted to torture her.
It wasn’t every day she flashed a guy. It seemed like it should be a little more noteworthy than “Where are the dinner plates?” But maybe that was just her.
“In the cupboard next to the fridge.” Shawn bent over again to retrieve the twice-baked potatoes out of the oven, hoping that Rhett was looking so he would see that she had logged a lot of time at Zumba and yoga classes to get these legs.
He hadn’t even noticed that she was wearing the bra he had gifted her with the day before. She was also wearing the matching thong, not that he was going to see it.
“I hope you like twice-baked potatoes and asparagus,” she said, using tongs to pull the broiled vegetables off the pan and onto the two plates Rhett brought over to her.
“I do.” He stood next to her, facing her, while she was facing the counter, which brought him in close and intimately. “Thank you again. I appreciate this.” And he tucked her hair back behind her ear, a personal gesture that made her want to step away, retreat.
But she held her ground, and she transferred potatoes to plates. “You’re welcome. So does everyone know we’re married? Did you tell your parents?”
He nodded. “They were more than a little surprised. And we’re the subject of gossip at the track. Most people seem to be of the opinion that you’re pregnant.”
“What?” Shawn carried the two plates over to her kitchen table and set them down. “I guess I’m not surprised, though nothing could be further from the truth.” According to seventh grade health class she couldn’t get knocked up from a toilet seat, and it wasn’t going to happen any other way, so she was safe.
“Good to know. I’d hate to think I was your cover for having an illegitimate child. I don’t really want to end up on the Maury Povich show. Rhett Ford, you are not the father.”
Shawn laughed. “Yeah, me either. Do you want some wine?”
“What I want is something that’s not on the menu,” he told her, even as he glanced down at his steak. “Though this looks very tasty.”
She shouldn’t ask. She knew what he meant. It wasn’t exactly subtle. But for whatever perverse reason that meant she probably needed therapy, she wanted to hear him say it out loud. “What is it that you want?” she asked, ignoring her own plate of food as she walked across the kitchen, her heels clicking on the linoleum floor as she went for a bottle of merlot.
Any other man she’d ever dated would have said, “You” or “Isn’t it obvious?” or something generically similar. She knew that wouldn’t be Rhett’s answer. He would give specifics, and they would make her wish she hadn’t asked at the same time they would turn her on. A lot.
She was right, and she did like being right.
He said, “I want you, Shawn. I want you out of that dress, strewn across this table with your legs spread for me so I can lick your pussy until you scream. Until you beg me for my cock. You’d like that, wouldn’t you?”
Shawn froze in front of the wine rack she had mounted on the wall next to the fridge. It was a rhetorical question, she supposed, and she knew what her answer was, but if she said it, well, would that mean she’d lost?
Then again, what would she lose? A bet that had no stakes, really? Or her dignity? No. He wasn’t trying to strip her of that.
More likely she would lose control, that’s what she was afraid of.
It was going to be a very long six months if she was terrified the entire time.
So she turned around and very slowly, she nodded. “I probably would like that.”
He smiled. Then said, “Sit down, babe. I can get the wine for you.”
“I’m fine. I have it.” Turning away, Shawn used her automatic bottle opener to uncork the wine and poured herself a healthy glass of red. This was nuts. How was she going to do this for half a year? “So I suppose I need to make a key for you. And you are free to come and go as you please, you know. No need to feel like you have to check in with me. I don’t want to . . . interrupt your life.”
Rhett pushed his chair back and stood up, and when he came toward her, Shawn shivered in anticipation. She had a feeling he was going to pull her dress down and suck her nipple, which was really a perfect way to kick off any dinner, wasn’t it? But he actually walked right past her and stared at her, expression curious, as he yanked open the fridge and rooted around, before emerging with a beer.
“Is that what you would like? For us to be roommates, accidentally sharing the same space?” He shook the beer. “Should we have separate shelves for our food and take turns supplying the toilet paper?”
When he said it like that, it wasn’t particularly attractive-sounding. “I’m trying to be accommodating.”
“Let’s not make rules. Let’s not stress out. Let’s just feel our way through it.” He popped open the beer with his bare hand, no bottle opener needed, apparently. “Now come sit down and enjoy the dinner you were so wonderful to make.”
What the hell was she supposed to say to that? He really left her very few options. She was just going to have to relax and behave like they were friends. It was maddening. Confusing. Because now she really had no idea whatsoever what it was she wanted. Did she want to sleep with him? Did she want him to go away? Did she want to sleep with him, then have him go away?
Good question.
She had no choice but to sit down and eat her meat. The answers would come later or never. Much like her.
The interesting thing was that Rhett was an easy conversationalist. She wouldn’t have expected that. She wasn’t sure why. It wasn’t like the guy could smolder 24/7. At some point he had to make conversation. Presumably.
Which again made her feel at some sort of disadvantage. So he could toss out sexual comments and invade her personal space and then switch gears and talk casually about the weather and tell anecdotes about his family. It left her no way in which to gain the upper hand.
Though he almost never laughed. Maybe instead of trying to play a sexual cat-and-mouse game by wearing a sexy dress—a game she would most definitely lose—she could disarm him by making him laugh.
Shawn mentally eye-rolled herself. What was she going to do, dress like a clown? Do stand-up? So a priest, a driver, and a parrot all went into a bar. He’d think she was a freak.
She was starting to worry she was.
She was also full. Pushing her plate back, she said, “When I was a kid I always wanted a huge family. I felt sort of ripped off that it was just my mom, Will, and me. At the very least I wanted a sister.” Truthfully, what Shawn had wanted was some attention, any attention. Her mom had checked out emotionally the day her dad had left physically.
“You can borrow one of mine if you like. Seven sisters is a bit excessive.” Rhett had eaten everything on his plate, including the potato skin.
“They’re going to hate me, aren’t they? For ‘eloping’ with you?” Not that it mattered, since it wasn’t a real marriage, but hey, Shawn liked to be liked.
“I doubt my sisters will care. They just want me happy. Frankly, they’ll appreciate not having their kids dragged into a wedding as flower girls and ring bearers and whatever.”
“How many nieces and nephews do you have?”
“Fourteen. No, fifteen.” Rhett frowned. “Wait. Then Owen was born. Sixteen?” He started murmuring names and counting on his fingers. Finally he said, “Hell if I know. You’d have to ask my mom.”
Shawn couldn’t even imagine having a family that big. “I’m surprised someone doesn’t go missing on a regular basis. That’s a lot of kids to keep track of.”
“Once when I was five, my parents left me home by accident. They took two cars to go to my grandma’s house, and both thought the other one had me in their car. I was in my room getting my Power Ranger to take with me, and when I came out, the house was empty.” He gave a wry look. “It was my Home Alone moment. Thank God they just went down the road, not to France.”
“Were you upset? Did you cry?”
“No. I watched TV and ate chips, grateful for the silence. When the phone rang, I answered ‘Ford Residence,’ feeling pretty badass about the whole thing. It was my mom, and she burst into tears and told me to lock the front door, that they were on their way home.”
“Aw, your poor mom. I can only imagine how worried she was.”
It wasn’t hard to picture Rhett as a solemn, curious child, watching everyone, not reacting with any fear. In total control of his emotions.
Shawn had never been in control of her emotions. It was why she was so willing to dive into stupid situations.
“I bet you were a sassy little girl,” Rhett said, draining his second beer.
“I was the kind of kid who got into a lot of scrapes. Climbing trees, crawling in drainpipes, trapping snakes. Yeah, that was me. Eve and I were a force to be reckoned with on the junior racing circuit.” The memory made her smile. “Picture two dusty little tomboys talking smack, and that was us.”
“I have no problem picturing that. But Eve is more the smack talker than you. I bet you got your way with your charm.”
She snorted. “What charm? Though after I heard Eve had kissed Junior Spaulding behind the grandstand at the county fair the summer we were thirteen, I decided my life wouldn’t be complete until I got Ty McCordle to do the same with me. So I carefully laid the foundation with clumsy flirting all week at the track.” She shook her head, remembering all the hair flipping and lip gloss that had gone into that summer. She had walked around looking like she’d dipped her lips in the fry oil.
“So what happened? He kiss you?”
“Of course,” she told him. Hey, she may be thirty-two, but she wasn’t above a little bragging still. “Though it didn’t go off without a hitch. He was chewing gum and it ended up in my hair. I had to use peanut butter to get it out, and for days I smelled like a peanut butter cup.”
Rhett laughed. “Smooth, McCordle. I wish I knew him better so I could give him shit about that.”
“Well, the peanut butter seemed to make me instantly desirable. Boys were crawling out of the woodwork the rest of the summer because I smelled like a candy bar.”
“Or maybe because you were the thirteen-year-old version of hot.”
“Or because they heard I was up for tonsil tango.” Shawn grinned at the thought of that summer. She had been skinny, flat as a board, and sporting braces. Probably not every teenage boy’s fantasy. Then again, she hadn’t looked much different from the other girls. “I was taller than most of the boys my age that year. They needed serious motivation to overcome the embarrassment of coming up to my chin.”
“I bet. That’s a scary thing for a guy.” He gave her a look, the one that usually meant she was about to be sorry she had taken that bet. “Did you wear cowboy boots? I always had a thing for girls who wore cowboy boots.”
“I might have.” She’d had three pairs that she had rotated on a regular basis. She’d been particularly fond of a red pair, but he didn’t need to know all her secrets. “I bet you were a father’s nightmare in high school when you came sniffing around his daughter.”
He didn’t deny it. “I was harmless. For the most part. Like now.”
Harmless as a rattlesnake. If you didn’t get too close you wouldn’t get bit. Otherwise, you were dead. “Uh-huh,” she said noncommittally.
Rhett stood up. “Can I get you more wine?” He collected her plate and took it with his to the sink, where he rinsed them and loaded them into the dishwasher. For a second, Shawn thought she might have an orgasm just watching that. A man who cleaned up without being told? Without bitching about it?
“No, I’m fine, thanks.” Shawn stood up quickly, wanting to do . . . something. The truth was, she wanted to be near him. How utterly lame was that? His presence was so powerful that when he moved away, the air seemed colder.
And she was clearly drunk.
But that didn’t change the fact that the dishes still needed to be washed. She’d left the detritus of the broiler pans on the oven and several mixing bowls in the sink. Edging him aside with her hip, she rapidly pumped soap onto a sponge. And actually, she wasn’t drunk at all, she was just acting like she was. She only wished she could legit use it as an excuse.
She started scrubbing like a madwoman, wanting the heinous chore over and done with. This was the downside of cooking a decent meal. It also didn’t help that Rhett was still next to her and he had suddenly decided it made sense to run his tongue along her bare shoulder. His tongue. On her shoulder.
“What are you doing?” she asked shrilly.
He didn’t bother to answer.
Of course he didn’t answer. He didn’t seem to think being polite was necessary when it came to sexual advances. Yet he cleaned up plates, opened her car door, and treated her with respect. How in the hell was a woman supposed to respond to that?
Well, Shawn’s response was to let out a little involuntary moan. She didn’t mean to. But that licking was so suggestive, so intimate, as his tongue traced the path of her clavicle bone up to her neck where he nuzzled into her flesh. How could she stay immune to that? Only a robot could remain unaffected, and hell, even a robot might short-circuit it was that hot.
Then he stepped back. “Here, I’ll rinse, and then we can watch a movie.”
On. Off. On. Off. He was killing her.
“Sure. Great idea.” Mr. Suckity-Suck. He was doing this on purpose, she was convinced. He would rev her engine, then stay in park. He wanted her to cave, to beg him to have sex with her. That was not going to happen, no matter what her lady parts had to say about it.
So she held strong as they sat on her sofa together, perilously close, his hand stroking across her thigh. He chose a thriller to watch, but it also had several steamy sex scenes in it, with lots of moaning and dewy skin, and arching backs as the hero of the movie pumped hard into his love interest. The woman was clearly enjoying it, given her pronounced moans and bouncing breasts, but Shawn wasn’t feeling it.
Or rather, she was feeling it too much.
It was almost impossible to sit still next to Rhett, where she could hear him breathing, could feel his thigh touching hers, and watch a couple having way more fun than she was. Shawn bounced her foot rapidly. Bit her nails. Cleared her throat. And finally jumped up.
“I need a glass of water. Can I get you anything?”
His smile was slow and suggestive, and while he didn’t say anything, his expression told her exactly what he was thinking.
“No,” she told him sourly.
He laughed.
He didn’t protest, but when she sat back down, his hand started at her knee and ended up under her dress dangerously close to the end zone.
Shawn pushed it back down as something exploded on the TV screen. Or maybe that was her resolve going up in flames.
He switched tactics. He shifted sideways and pulled her against his chest, so that she was resting between his legs, her butt nestled on his crotch. Yeah, that wasn’t helping. Because he either had a hair spray can down his jeans or he was happy to see her.
By the time the movie ended, she was a hot, aching mess, and he looked as calm as usual.
“I’m going to bed,” she announced, flipping the TV off. “I made up the guest room for you. See you in the morning.” Just in case there was any doubt that she was not letting him into her room, her bed, or her vagina. Tonight anyway.
He didn’t respond. He just watched her as she retreated to her room and closed the door with a sigh. Then she went straight to her nightstand drawer where she kept her vibrator. This was an emergency situation.
• • •
RHETT knew that Shawn was well aware of how much he wanted her. She was choosing to ignore that and her own desire. He was willing to let her. For now. Because it was obvious that she was an impulsive person, and all it would take was the right moment, a certain look, the perfectly placed touch, and she would forget about her irrational need to win a no-stakes bet, and she would open herself up to him. He could be patient for a little longer.
The payoff of having her come to him desperate and ready would be worth it.
He might be in a bit of blue-ball hell in the meantime, but he could handle that.
What he could not handle, though, was the realization that Shawn was in her room touching herself. He knew she was because when he walked past her room to the bathroom he heard the very faint sound of something battery-operated and her anxious breathing. Damn it, those walls were thin, and now he had an image he just couldn’t shake. Pausing, he listened for another second, which confirmed his suspicions, his mouth growing hot, cock thickening with need.
She hadn’t even waited five minutes.
There was something immensely satisfying in that. Not however, as satisfying as pounding her would feel.
Rhett knocked on her door. She gave a tiny squawk from her room, then called out in a shaky voice, “Yes?”
Peeling his shirt off, he dropped it on the hallway carpet before shucking his jeans as well. “I want to take a shower and I can’t find a towel.”
“They’re in the hall closet,” she said.
“What? I can’t hear you,” he lied, and he opened the door. It was a dirty trick, but then again, he’d never claimed to be a Boy Scout, and they were married after all.
“What the hell are you doing?” she asked. “You can’t come in here!”
“I couldn’t hear you.” He moved closer to her bed, hiding his amusement over the fact that she was clutching her covers to her chin. But there was still the faint sound of her vibrator humming away under the blanket.
“Hall. Closet.” Her teeth were clenched, and her hair was looking a little wild.
Had she been rolling around under there, rocking herself onto her vibe? Rhett pulled his fingers into fists at the notion.
“What’s buzzing?” he asked her.
The hall light was strong enough to illuminate the horrified expression on her face. “What do you mean?”
“I hear buzzing. What is that?”
“I don’t hear anything,” she said, voice high, grip tightening on the comforter. Her gaze dropped down to his lower half. “Oh! You’re not dressed.”
“I was going to the shower. Are you dressed?”
“I’m wearing a T-shirt.”
Somehow that was even sexier than if she were totally naked. It meant she was secretly pleasuring herself in the dark from under the hem of her shirt.
It also meant he could flip that comforter back.
“Seriously, what is that? It sounds like . . .” And Rhett peeled the side of her comforter back, not exposing her, but exposing her little friend. Who was not so little. It was a healthy-size purple sparkly vibrator, with rabbit clitoral stimulation. Fuck yeah. “A vibrator.”
Shawn screamed, “Rhett! Get the hell out of my bedroom!” She tried to flip the comforter back over the sex toy, only he had a firm grip on it, and they engaged in a brief tug of war over the fabric before she gave up and changed tactics, grabbing the vibrator and stuffing it under her pillow. “Go. Away.”
He would, if he could walk. But he was afraid he might injure himself if he tried to move. “Shawn. I’m going to ask you a very serious question. Why are you getting yourself off with a vibrator when I could do that for you? We are married, you know. Married people have sex.”
She finally let her death grip go on her comforter. She wasn’t lying about the T-shirt. It was a ginormous hot pink number, with a pocket over her breast. It said, “I love Mr. Darcy.” Who the fuck was Mr. Darcy and did he need to be jealous of him?
“It’s the principle,” she told him. “I don’t want you to think I’m easy.”
Rhett raised his eyebrows. “With all due respect, sweetheart, I’m not sure how your date with the purple pussy eater is making you look disinterested in sex.”
“Uh!” Color rose in her cheeks, and she picked up her pillow and smacked him with it. “I thought you were decent enough to respect my privacy and not enter a room with a closed door! And didn’t your mother tell you not to mention to a lady that she is using a vibrator? It’s rude!”
That made him laugh. “That is not a conversation I’ve had with my mother, no. Generally speaking, we steer clear of politics and battery-operated sex toys in our chats.”
She hit him again, harder this time, the pillow making a nice thumping sound in the quiet room.
Rhett ripped the pillow out of her hand. “Knock it off.”
“Fuck you.”
“I wish you would.”
Shawn grabbed another pillow and hit him with it, right across his face this time.
“You’re really pushing it,” he told her, wanting to give her fair warning that he wasn’t above a pillow fight with a girl if she started it. She packed a serious punch to her swings.
“So are you.” Her eyes were snapping with anger and lust. She swung again, nailing him in the chin. The pillow exploded, a cascade of feathers raining over his chest and down onto the bed. Shawn’s expression changed to one of amusement, her mouth twitching as she started to laugh.
So she was going to laugh at him? Rhett grabbed the pillow she had hidden her sex toy under and hit her in the chest with it.
“Hey!” she said, but she was giggling now.
It was a look he liked on her. He enjoyed the way she couldn’t hold on to anger, the way she was so easily amused. The pillow fight wasn’t having quite the same effect on him. He was just getting more and more aroused.
She hit him again, grinning, more feathers escaping the hole in the seam of the pillow, coming up on her knees to get more leverage and put more bite into her swing. Rhett whacked her on her ass with his pillow. He could see her thighs but not her panties, the T-shirt still covering them, but it was enough skin, enough to know that there was very little between him and her sex, that her breasts were bare under the shirt, to stir his desire even more.
“You can’t hit me there,” she said, breathless, whacking his arm and sounding more aroused than indignant.
“You hit me in the face.” And so he hit her right between her thighs.
“Rhett! You can’t do that.”
He wasn’t sure how the rules went if she was allowed to do whatever she wanted and hit him anywhere, but he had restrictions.
When she raised her arms again for another assault, he pulled the pillow out of her hands and tossed it on the floor. “Now what?” he asked with a smile.
She went for a backup pillow behind her, but he tore that out of her hands, too. So laughing, breathless, she tried to strip him of the one he was holding.
“I don’t think so, little girl.” He kept a tight grip on it.
“Little girl?” she asked with a snort. “I’m eight years older than you.”
For which he was definitely grateful. She was hanging in way better with him than the younger women he’d dated.
“You’re right. You’re a woman. But you still can’t take this pillow away from me, no matter how hard you try.” He knew she would. He’d already pegged that aspect of her personality, and he found her tenacity admirable. And he had to admit, he enjoyed baiting her.
“Oh, yeah?” She lunged for him, and she was faster than he expected.
He almost lost the pillow to her nimble fingers, but he clamped down harder on it and raised it high above his head so that she had to stretch for it.
“Oh!” She glared at him in frustration, but there was a definite twinkle in her eye.
Then she did something he never in a million years would have predicted. Nor was he at all prepared for it.
She reached out with her left hand and stroked right across the front of his boxers, down the length of his cock. He was so shocked that he loosened his grip on the pillow. Which she snagged and then scooted backward on the bed, laughing, removing her hand from his erection.
Rhett was stunned. And turned on. And filled with a new respect for her quick thinking.
“Oh, so that’s how you want to play it, huh?” he asked, nudging his knee between her legs and pushing on the pillow so that she fell backward onto the bed on her back. He dropped his forearm onto the pillow, pinning her.
She squirmed, trying to push him off her, but he wasn’t budging. They were going to finish this to both their mutual satisfaction. Rhett leaned down and kissed her, but she turned her head to avoid it, so he ended up kissing her cheek. Frowning, he pulled back to gauge her mood. She was still giggling, a nervous reaction that she seemed unable to control.
“What? What’s so funny?”
“It just popped into my head that you’re about to go Dom on me, and it makes me laugh.”
“Why?” He didn’t bother to correct her that he wasn’t a Dom. Not technically.
“Because it’s funny. Sex is funny.” She looked up at him innocently, like she genuinely believed her words. “It’s so dorky when you think about it.”
“Not the way I do it,” he assured her most sincerely. He had never once thought of sex as dorky. Or funny. “Who the hell have you been having sex with that just the thought of me fucking you makes you giggle?”
Shawn’s eyes were a dark amber, but now they seemed lighter, almost glassy as she looked up at him, her chest heaving beneath the pillow. “I don’t know. I guess mostly I have buddy-buddy relationships with men. I don’t think I’m their sexual fantasy any more than they’re mine.”
He had to admit, that surprised him. No wonder she always looked at him a little nervously, yet determined. She must instinctively know that it would be different with him. Which it was going to be. He was going to show her exactly how she’d been let down by the men she had dated. Then again, maybe it wasn’t entirely their fault. Attraction was a mysterious thing.
“You’re my sexual fantasy. When I’m here, with you, in bed and naked, you can trust that you’re the only woman I’m thinking about, that you’re the only woman I’m interested in.” Something deep and intimate and territorial rose up in him.
She stared up at him, her smile smoothing out into something thoughtful, curious. “I want to believe you. But I also still want to giggle.”
It was a start. “Go ahead and giggle if you want, and get it out of your system. But trust me.”
That was, after all, the key to a healthy and satisfying relationship, particularly given his tendencies. She needed to trust him to pleasure her, to let him steer the ship. Rhett eased up on the pillow and watched Shawn, waiting for her answer. If she resisted, he would leave her bed tonight. He wanted her all in. He wanted her acquiescence, her eventual surrender.
He knew he would get it.
The question was just if it would be tonight or not.