By the time Winnie slipped back into the She Shed, her hands were shaking uncontrollably and the tears that she’d worked so hard to hold back had unleashed into a torrent of warmth and wetness on her cheeks.
A sob unfolded from her throat, one that had built up over the weeks of this transition to a new life in Bloomsburo. So much of these last weeks had been a denial of her loneliness, her lack of familiarity with anyone or anything in this new community.
Tonight had been among the first moments she actually felt at home here, and she’d ruined it. The night had been magical—talking and laughing and eating with the Spencers. Rhonda was so hospitable, the little fairies were so sparkly and affectionate, Cal’s sisters were delightfully merciless in their teasing of the man who seemed beyond reproach, and Cal had been a swoon-worthy uncle and a gentleman, casting only the occasional discreetly hungry glance toward Winnie to hint at their after-hours activities.
But the question about her family came up, as it always eventually did, and changed everything, like it always did. Winnie hated dropping that bomb about her tragic backstory, but it couldn’t be avoided forever. Once that sad truth was out in the open, though, everything changed. It stilted conversation. It made people uncomfortable. It resulted in friends disconnecting from her, so certain were they that their own stories about weekend trips to their parents or attending their siblings’ graduations would unravel her. So certain that keeping distance from her was the best way to protect her. Bree had been the only one to truly look past it. To accept this unfortunate part of Winnie’s life story, to witness and sit with her in her grief, and to love her unconditionally anyway.
It would always hurt. The loss Winnie experienced had been incalculable, and she suspected it would haunt her at the most inopportune parts of the rest of her life—every holiday, every birthday, her wedding day, the births of her children. She had no home base on which to land, seeking comfort or care. But she didn’t deserve the awkward, pained silence that so often resulted from sharing her story, that emotional disconnection, just because people weren’t sure how to talk about it or how to handle her. She may have a crack deep in her soul, but she wouldn’t break. She was stronger for what she had been forced to survive.
A soft knock on her front door jarred her from her sad reverie, and dread joined forces with the hurt and embarrassment flooding her. This conflicted need – to be at once connected to others and yet wanting to be alone, embraced yet safe from the pitiful stares of outsiders and the torment of being handled with kid gloves due to her losses—it never got easier to navigate.
But she couldn’t very well pretend she wasn’t home. Everyone had just watched her walk into this cottage. There was no hiding now.
She expected to find Rhonda on her step with a basket of food as an offering of comfort, so her mouth fell open in surprise when Cal’s inimitable frame filled the doorway, emitting that same virility and strength it had the first day she’d found him there. He said nothing, just looked seriously into her eyes. Looked at the tears streaking her cheeks. At the tiny tremble in her lower lip.
Winnie stepped back instinctively, ushering him in without a word and closing the door behind him. Before she had to bother coming up with the right words to convey her sorrow at how she’d screwed up, for interfering on his sacred family time and souring it with her sad story, his hands cupped her face and his mouth met hers in a kiss so deep, so sensual, that she momentarily forgot that there was anything to possibly be upset about. She grabbed his waist to steady herself with his solidness.
That kiss was a messenger, with its sweetness and passion and depth. Every sweep of his tongue communicated a level of care and affection that her brain couldn’t process. She wanted nothing more than to anchor herself to this man, to let her connection to his body, just for a fleeting moment, serve as her sole tether to this world.
His lips made their way to her cheek, covering the trail of her tears with the sweetest series of kisses. The gesture comforted her in a way that a thousand words couldn’t.
He pulled her head into his chest and filled his hands with her hair, massaging her scalp gently with his strong fingers.
“Winnie,” he sighed into her hair, and her heart seemed to stop for a full second.
Winnie.
He’d never called her by her first name before. Never referred to her as anything but Briggs, that roguish, unemotional term of address that always reminded her of the limitations of their connection. No endearments. No emotional intimacies.
Tonight, though, her name on his lips was a declaration of walls tumbling down.
The intimacy of it transformed their sweet affection into something hotter. More urgent. Her hands ran across his back, across the muscular ridges of his shoulders as she pulled herself tightly against his strength. She’d never been more grateful for anything in her life than this man’s offering of his body in this particular moment.
“Winnie,” he said again, more of a groan, and she felt him harden where his hips pressed against her. His eyes, their green flashing with untempered desire, met hers. Asking without words how to proceed. A gentleman would see if Winnie wanted to talk about what happened, what was shared. He would offer words of comfort and support. Cal Spencer knew differently, though. He knew the exact type of release Winnie needed to push away the pain.
She confirmed her consent with her body, her hands, her lips. Devouring him desperately, fitfully. What little sensual grace she might normally muster dissolved away into something messier. Rougher. She wanted to be taken hard and fast and mindlessly.
Cal had other ideas, and he met her frantic need with torturously slow consideration. No matter how she grasped and pulled and scratched, he continued with heart-searing tenderness. In between his kisses and caresses, in between the work of his mouth on her heated skin, words of affection sprung softly from his lips, falling light as a feather on her skin.
Sweet Winnie…
Beautiful…
My lovely…
Each phrase clearly violated the terms of their agreement, yet one by one, as the words floated into the space between them, they seemed to stretch a taut string between his heart and hers, creating a web of soft spokes that would bind her to this man forever.
She wanted to respond in kind. Wanted to tell him how thoughtful he was. Tell him what a generous lover he was. To thank him for helping her awaken to the pleasures available to her. Thank him for offering the cradle of his body to her on this night. But she couldn’t form the words, and instead tried to communicate them with fingers, her mouth, on his body.
She began to unbutton his plaid shirt, her fingers refusing to work fast enough for her satisfaction. Eventually she finished and he shrugged it off before yanking off the T-shirt he wore beneath it. Her breath hitched at the sudden feast before her—warm skin stretched over hard muscles, and that intimate smell of his skin and spice and something distinctly Cal. She rubbed her hands over him as he returned the favor, unbuttoning the front of her jumper, pushing down her tights. Tearing off the shirt that kept her breasts hidden from him.
Bared down to her magenta bra and panties, Winnie reveled in the touch of their stomachs skin-to-skin. She gasped in shock as he lifted her up onto his hips, forcing her legs to wrap around him in support. He pressed her back up against the kitchen wall, allowing her to feel the force of his erection where his straining jeans connected with the thin cotton of her panties.
Her memory sparked back to Cosgrove Hill. To all the ways he could make her body sing. To the thickness and taste of him in her mouth. She had to have all of him, right now. There could be no more waiting. She needed the man to fill her in every conceivable way.
“Take me to bed, Cal,” she pleaded, and he wasted no time carrying her over to the tall four poster bed in the back corner of the cottage. He set her down gently on the edge, keeping himself firmly between her legs. He cleared the bed of its abundance of throw pillows in mere seconds. But he didn’t move her, and he didn’t sit next to her. He stayed right there in between her thighs.
Reaching behind her, he unhooked her bra, freeing her breasts from their torturous capture. He gently reclined her down onto the bed, her legs still dangling on either side of him. Her nipples peaked just anticipating his touch and when his fingers, then his lips, found their way to them, she gasped in pleasure. The suction of his mouth sent shards of sensation to Winnie’s deepest core where desire pooled and pulsed. He nuzzled against her, rubbing the stubble of his jaw against the soft swells of her breasts and groaning with pleasure.
“You feel so good, Winnie. All I do these days is want you.”
She wanted relief. She wanted him to crawl on top of her, to thrust into her until the fullness cleared her head of all other thoughts and needs.
His mouth pulled back and Winnie whimpered at the disconnection. In one quick move, he had her panties off and flung onto the floor behind him. Completely naked now, and completely vulnerable, Winnie should have felt self-conscious, but her wants left no space for insecurity. Her need for this man’s sensual talents superseded all other possible thoughts.
“Winnie, Winnie, Winnie,” he whispered reverently, looking upon her and taking in her fully exposed body softly lit from the light of a lamp across the room. Any lingering shreds of intimidation dissolved as she watched his face process her with unfiltered hunger. “How did you fall into my life? How did I get so lucky?”
Her heart and sex clenched simultaneously as his hands fondled her breasts.
“So sexy,” he murmured. His fingers traced the length of her stomach until they reached her thighs, doubling her need. Tripling it. She’d never needed release so badly. She was close to begging him when his hand slipped down between her legs, gliding through her moisture and rubbing delicately over that most sensitive notch.
A sob of pleasure tore from her lips, even if his touch only deepened her panicked desire. She was aroused to the point of near pain, so desperate for Cal to drive her over the edge with the full force of his hardness.
His lips spread into a small smile as he observed the agony she felt beneath his hands. There could be no sexier version of Cal Spencer than the one before her, reveling in the pleasure he could coax out of a woman.
“Please,” she groveled, needing a climax more than oxygen.
“Do you need more, Winnie?” he asked, his eyes serious with a spark of mischief.
“God, yes,” she managed, closing her eyes as she bore out the relentless stroking of his fingers on her clit. Her wanting knew no limits. “There can never be enough of you, of what you do to me.”
“I’m going to kiss you,” he said, her brain barely processing the warning. He could do whatever he wanted to her as long as his fingers didn’t lift off her quivering body.
Unless…he wasn’t referring to kissing her mouth.
“Cal, I…” she started. Her heart skittered all over the place. Wanting him. Fearing that divine intimacy she’d never experienced even as her clit pulsed at the promise of it.
“You’re going to come,” he promised, his head leaning forward as he kissed her mouth, “and it’s going to be on my lips.” His wicked eyes met hers, daring her to challenge his vision for her rapture.
She couldn’t.
He sank to his knees between her legs. She waited with heightened pleasure. Waited for his lips to make contact, and when they finally did, they brushed her inner thigh.
Damn the man.
“Please,” she choked out. The vulnerability that came with what he promised to do scared her to death, but she needed it, now. Her sex throbbed with pent-up desire just waiting to be unleashed and, importantly, she trusted Cal intrinsically. She gasped as his lips moved a fraction of an inch at a time, up the sensitive skin of her inner thigh. Gasped again when he kissed the soft hair that surrounded her sex. And when the plush heat of his lips finally landed at the core of her desire, she moaned. The feel of his lips, full and warm and wet, cast a ray of golden light up into her throbbing body.
His mouth opened her up to a pleasure she couldn’t have fathomed. She’d read about it in books. Seen it portrayed in films, but nothing could have prepared her for the raw sensuality of Cal Spencer turning the full power of his mouth to her sex. Nothing had ever felt so generous. So intimate.
Just like with so many of his other kisses, his mouth was gentle at first, exploring her softly and stroking her with his tongue.
“Jesus, Winnie, this is making me so hard,” he groaned between kisses before sliding his tongue harder against her, adding pressure and suction and rhythm and depth. She grasped the sheets, certain she’d float up off the bed if she weren’t anchored.
“Cal, it’s too good,” she whispered, wondering if a woman could pass out from pleasure this intense. How had she made it to the age of twenty-six unaware that it could feel this good? The sensations grew so high and so strong that it became almost uncomfortable. She grabbed at his thick golden hair, and the feel of him working over her, working for her pleasure, took her that much closer. The pleasure seemed to fly through her body in wild, intangible sparks. She wanted to rein it in. Contain it. Magnify it.
He hooked his hands under her thighs, grabbing her ass and pushing her harder into the pleasures his mouth offered. No longer exploring, his mouth and tongue fell into a rhythm, working their way over that most sensitive spot, steady and firm. Helpless, her body surrendered to him, shattering in ecstasy, in wave after powerful wave of glittery release. She trembled, stunned by the intimacy and the beauty of what Cal had just offered her. What he still offered her as his mouth and fingers gently stroked and caressed her overwrought body while it came down from the stars.
It was so good. So bright. Winnie couldn’t help the tears that fell down her eyes, no matter if they embarrassed her. The physical and emotional release she felt in that moment couldn’t be contained. Cal kissed his way back up her body, caressing the softness of her stomach and the hills of her breasts until his fingers reached her neck, caressed her face.
“Winnie, you destroy me. I need you.”
His words set her sex throbbing. For as perfect as her climax had been, for all of the mind-numbing goodness he’d evoked from her body, it still hungered to be filled with the man.
For Cal, this was sex. This was about pure, physical connection. But Winnie knew deep in her heart that it had extended to more than that for her. There was a place deep inside of her that only Cal could fill. She’d stupidly gone and fallen in love with a man she could never have. A man who touched her only on the condition that it wouldn’t mean anything. Couldn’t lead anywhere. The acknowledgment of it sent a new torrent of tears down her cheeks, which he rubbed gently with the back of his hand.
She couldn’t play this game anymore after tonight. She knew from the beginning that Cal would open up doors to unbelievable offerings, but that the time would come when she’d have to walk away again. It would kill her to end it, but it would hurt even more to go one like this, having his body but not his heart.
She’d let herself have this night, though. One gorgeous parting gift.
“I want you inside of me,” she whispered, pressing her mouth onto his. The warm connection stoked the embers of desire that still pulsed deep within her. The faint taste of her own climax lingered on his lips, and it only made her hungrier for the man. He pulled a condom out of his pocket as her hands fumbled at the button and zipper of his jeans, shoving them down to reveal tight green boxer briefs that barely contained his desire for her.
Sexy as hell. Her hands gripped at the waistband, and he groaned as he sprung free from the fabric. She hadn’t gotten a good look at him in the shadowy haste of their fun on The Hill, but the man was magnificently hung. Hard and thick and satiny. Her mouth watered remembering her first introduction to his dick. Remembering the salt and the warmth of his climax in her mouth. She grabbed at him, needing to feel the weight and heat of him in her hand, on her lips, against her cheek, before he protected himself.
He didn’t let her play that way for long, though. She could hear his breath quickening, could see his own pent up need tightening his torso as he handed her the condom. She unwrapped it, and rolled it slowly down the hard length of his cock. She backed her way up onto the bed and when he followed her, his naked body crawling up between her legs, she moaned in anticipation.
The weight of his body pressed down onto her, and he kissed her mouth. Her neck. Her breasts. She could feel his dick twitch against her core at each connection. She could tell how much desire coursed through his strong body. She could sense how desperate he was to spend himself inside of her. Slowly, his cock slid into her slick depths, and inch by inch he deepened his penetration. They both cried out at the rightness of the joining.
“Christ, Winnie,” he said, giving voice to her very thoughts as he pushed deeper and deeper. His hardness stretched her and filled her in the most satisfying way. He looked so beautiful like that, planted between her legs, his strong, hands holding on to her hips, his eyes closed, his face twisted in pleasure, inaudible moans of satisfaction falling from his tempting lips. She could see how he willed himself to take it slow, how he resisted his own release from the moment he penetrated her. It felt so right, to have their bodies connected so intimately, to know that his body could take such pleasure from being inside of her own.
“I can’t take much more of this, Winnie,” he said, looking down at her, making eye contact with her for the first time since he’d entered her. Her sex tightened at the intensity of it, and somehow, impossibly, he grew harder inside of her. She couldn’t fathom the pleasure this gorgeous man brought her but she didn’t have to understand it. She only had to feel it.
“Winnie,” he pleaded, his eyes locked into hers as he quickened the pace of his thrusts. His breathing quickened with exertion. She wanted to break the intimate hold his eyes had on her. It felt too powerful. Made her feel too vulnerable. But she couldn’t. She was transfixed by this man. By his body. By his heart. She needed to memorize every second of what was happening so it could nourish her in the lonely days ahead. She needed to remember what it felt like when love transformed sex into something truly, inexplicably, sublime in case she never felt it again.
“I need you to come, Cal,” she whispered. “Please.” She rocked from the way he pounded into her now, no more signs of the tenderness or care he exhibited earlier. Now it was animal need, raw and unfiltered. His athleticism took over, ushering in those final, powerful plunges. With each thrust into her core in those final moments, he called her name, until that sweetest agony washed over his face, cried out from his lips, and he shuddered on top of her.
As his body collapsed onto hers, sweaty and breathless and deliciously heavy, Winnie clung to him like only a woman about to say goodbye to something glorious could.