I told you I make a kick-ass hollandaise sauce,” Peggy murmured, drawing the fork back from Elliott’s chewing mouth. She was wrapped in a sheet in the center of his bed, his back was propped against the headboard, and the fingertips of morning were just beginning to pick their way through the blinds. “Is there anything she can’t do? That’s what you’re supposed to say next.”
His throat worked as he swallowed and, much to Peggy’s delight, grunted for more. “I was five minutes late to practice yesterday because I went shopping for eggs and a mixing bowl, just so it would be here when you came over. I’m never late.” He snagged a finger in her sheet and tugged. “So yeah, I’d say there’s not much you can’t do, Miss Clarkson.”
Failing to hide her pleasure, Peggy did a sitting victory dance on the bed and forked another bite of eggs Benedict past Elliott’s sculpted lips. “Reactions must have ranged from curious to aghast. The Kingmaker late for practice. Next he’ll forget to iron his polo shirt and the earth will forget which direction to spin.”
“You’re making my chest hurt.”
She dropped the fork onto the plate with a clatter. “What?”
Elliott’s gaze cut away, clearly having surprised himself. “The way you’re sitting there…the sun making your skin glow.” He sat up straighter in an abrupt movement that dipped that mattress. “Looking at you makes me want to forget everything else and never stop. Every time I’m with you, I come closer to giving in. Setting aside my responsibilities so I can spend more time looking and listening to each and every damn word out of your mouth. Every time.”
Heart running circles around her rib cage, Peggy set the plate of food aside and threw herself at Elliott, laying across him horizontally, her lower half still twisted in the sheet. “You don’t have to set anything aside, you can just shift them a little.” She smiled into his chest hair. “I’m short. I’ll fit.”
He didn’t speak for a long time after that, but the lighter it got outside, the more tension she could feel creeping into his shoulders. And then it was time to get up.
* * *
Elliott leaned back against the windshield of his truck and closed his eyes, because the feeling of Peggy lounging between his outstretched legs was more satisfying than any sunrise. He needed to snatch up every single second of the paradise she provided, because it couldn’t go on forever. Happiness this all-encompassing didn’t maintain itself. He could still see his mother and father going through the motions like a residual haunting…and he’d done the same in his own marriage. Through fatherhood. He’d been inflicted with the same DNA and eventually it would poison Peggy. At all costs, he would make sure that didn’t happen. He couldn’t allow her light to be dimmed by one iota.
She nudged him with an elbow, tipping her head back so he could see her dreamy expression, eyelashes gilded with sunshine. “What are you thinking about so hard, Coach?”
He cleared the debris from his throat. “I’m thinking I’ve never sat on the hood of a car before.”
“No?” She played with the laces of his boots. “It’s good to try new things, don’t you think?”
No. No, they only set you up for disappointment. “I guess it depends what we’re talking about.” He slipped his hands into her hair at the back of her head, tugging gently. “Is there something new you want to try?”
Elliott watched her legs grow restless on the hood, her knees pressing together the way they’d done around his head in the backseat a couple hours earlier, before he’d driven them out to East Fork State Park to watch the sun come up over the lake. “Yeah. Everything.” She paused. “I want to try everything with you.”
It took him a moment to find his voice. “Better be specific while I’m in a good mood.”
Her lips curved up into a breath-stealing smile. “Let’s go swimming.”
He shook his head. “This is the part where I say we don’t have our swimsuits—”
“Bingo.” She sat up and tugged the T-shirt over her head, sliding off the side of the hood to drop her skirt and crook a finger at him. “Better strip, Coach. Don’t want to let me down.”
That’s what I’m afraid of. The countdown clock ticking in the back of his mind cranked up the volume as he removed his shirt in one movement and strode after a squealing Peggy.
Paradise.
* * *
“Every move you make drives my men insane. You should hear how they talk about you,” Elliott rasped a breath away from her ear. “One of them plans to ask you out, and I swear to God, Peggy, if you say yes—”
“Why would I do that?” She ran her palms over his heaving pectorals. “I’m here with you, aren’t I? I don’t want to be anywhere else.”
He stooped down and pressed his open mouth to her neck, sucking her skin. Hard. Making his mark? “So fucking jealous. You’re going to feel how much.”
Peggy caged a whimper as heat ran south inside her. “I can’t stop people from looking at me. I’m a cheerleader, that’s kind of the point.”
“You think I managed to miss that you’re a cheerleader?” he growled, settling his hands on her butt, squeezing tight. “I know every time you shake your ass, every time you give some cocksucker in the crowd that smile. You’re the reason they’re all hiding their laps under balled-up sweatshirts, little girl. I feel everything you’re doing, even when my eyes are on the field. So remind me again you’re a cheerleader.”
She sucked in a winded breath, courtesy of his words knocking the oxygen clear of her lungs. He’d never been like this before…and she loved it. Loved knowing he cared enough to covet her. “Why don’t I give you a private cheer? None of those sweatshirt douchebags ever gets one of those, you lucky man, you.” She reached back and took one of Elliott’s kneading hands off her backside, leading him from the kitchen, guiding him into one of the dining room chairs.
Good Lord, the way he filled up the seat, powerful arms crossed, those tree trunk thighs extended and spread. So challenging. But the gray sweatpants he wore did nothing to hide how turned on he was, and that made Peggy confident.
Eyes on Elliott, Peggy grabbed the hem of her dress and slid the material up and over her head, tossing it to the side and leaving herself clad in nothing but panties. By the time Elliott came back into view, his arms had uncrossed, his jaw set in a rigid line as he shifted in the chair, obviously made uncomfortable by that almost cumbersome erection pointing straight up at his waistband.
Peggy turned, giving the coach her back, watching him over her shoulder, raising both arms in the air and clapping her hands together. Once. “We are the Bearcats and we want to win.” With a hip roll, she turned, sliding into the V of his thighs, smiling as he sucked in a winded breath. “We did it once before and we can do it again,” she continued, holding his knees for balance as she dipped down low and rose slowly, slowly, bumping her hips sharply to one side, and then the other, until Elliott finally gave in, reaching into his sweatpants, his hand moving in vigorous strokes. “Please don't make us mad. ’Cause we'll get nasty and mean,” she whispered against his mouth, before licking at the parted seam. “And we just might decide to roll over your team.”
Her back landed on the kitchen table a split second later, Elliott grunting above her as he shoved down his sweatpants, ripped off her underwear, and rammed home with a shout. “Christ. Christ, what you do to me. It’s the devil’s work.” He mounted her body, dropping his face into the crook of her neck. “When a man loses control of one part of his life, all others follow. All others.”
“And I’m the catalyst?” Peggy whispered, her voice shaking. “Guess you better punish me for it.”
When his hips gave that first rude pump, she felt it up in her throat, choking her and setting her free, all at once.
* * *
Elliott ground his fist against the concrete pillar of his garage, hoping like hell he would break something. Shatter his knuckles or rip the skin clean off. Anything to distract him from the machete making crisscross marks on his insides. His teeth gnashed inside his head, the sound sickening, but nothing could cause his stomach to rebel more than Peggy’s cab pulling up outside. The cab he’d called her five minutes ago. The one that would take her to the airport.
“This is so stupid, Elliott,” she half screamed, half sobbed across the garage. “It’s just a visit to California to see friends and then I’m coming right back.”
“You graduated last week,” he ground out, conjuring the coldest of words, knowing they were the only way to make her see reason, make her leave. “There’s nothing left for you to return to. No school, no job. Nothing.”
Betrayal hung in the air, so thick it clouded his vision of her. “You’re really going to do this? Act like we were nothing?” She kicked at her overnight bag. “This is like that scene in Harry and the Hendersons when they shout mean things at Harry so he’ll go back and live in the wild with the other Yetis where he belongs.”
He stared at her in probable disbelief, but inside he was fighting a battle not to take the three long strides that would put her in his arms.
“I make jokes when I’m upset.” She tucked a group of curls behind her ear. “You should know this about me by now.”
“I do,” he responded tightly. “I do know that, because I give you plenty of reasons to be sad around me.” No. No, he’d given her an opening to protest with that one. His resolve was slipping in the face of the reality of her actually climbing into the cab and never coming back. The only thing that made his blood flow and heat and pulse. His life force. She was leaving and he was the one sending her away. Behind her lay the driveway, the spot where his wife had been found lifeless while he’d been inside his own head, not sparing her a thought. Living with himself would be impossible if Peggy ended up the same way. Miserable, alone…hurt… “I knew going in this was going to be temporary. You were a senior. You weren’t going to be sticking around and asking me for more.”
Had she ever been so pale? Pale but still his courageous Peggy, through and through. Headstrong and demanding and gorgeous. “I didn’t know what this was going to evolve into, either, but you’re full of shit if you’re telling me it isn’t worth keeping.”
“You can’t put a name to it, either.” Elliott’s scoff ripped a hole in his throat. “Did you think maybe you’d make a good stepmother?”
She floundered. “I—I hadn’t thought that far ahead…”
Yes, she had. He could see it in the sudden pink of her cheeks, the way she couldn’t meet his eyes, her defensive posture. God. How fucked up that his love for her should swell to an unbearable degree when he was stamping an end date on their relationship? I can’t give you what you need, he wanted to shout, but she would protest and they would end up back inside, kissing and fucking and making up, just like the last ten times he’d tried to create distance between them. This time it had to be permanent, because the alternative was this beautiful woman building her life around the ruins of his. “I’m standing here telling you I want it over, Peggy, and it’s not because I like the tears and drama. These arguments you insist on making are childish, and they’re only delaying the inevitable.”
“Childish?” She reared back like a backhand had caught her across the face. “You’re the one too afraid to admit what’s really scaring you.”
“Enlighten me.”
“You’re scared of feeling anything you don’t understand,” she whispered. “I might be childish, but you’re a fucking coward.”
She was right. God knew she was. But the more his love…yes, love…for Peggy grew, the more tortured he felt about neglecting the one who came before. He hated the constant flux of happiness and self-disgust. It tore at him day and night. It was going to wreck Peggy for the world if he continued to keep her to himself, surrounding her in his misery. “When I look at you, Peggy, I see my guilt.” Her eyes lost their color in degrees, mutilating his insides. “I see the wrongs in my past. My sins. I can’t do it…” To you. “I won’t do it anymore.”
With that final shot hanging between them, Peggy gave him one last devastated look, picked up her bag, and went to meet the cab. Sobs shook her shoulders. A shout for her to come back rose in his throat like an expanding fist, so he pressed and pressed his hand into the concrete pillar, feeling the destruction of flesh at the same time his chest started to collapse. The cab door slammed. He watched it drive away with a scream careening through the landscape of his mind, changing its formation, and as soon as it was out of sight, Elliott got into his truck and drove to church. At least the chanting of the prayers helped drown out the horror.