Chapter Nineteen
He froze for a second at the sound of her neighbors heading into their backyard. A fence separated the yards, but there was no sound barrier.
She scurried inside, and he grabbed the condom and quickly followed her, slamming the door shut behind them.
The sexy moment had turned into an almost-got-caught-by-a-kid one. He eyed her up and down. Her shoulders were shaking with laughter. Damn, the way she laughed, with so much joy, so much exuberance, had his heart speeding into overdrive, and this time it wasn’t from desire, or from the need to get away quickly. It was from the wish that this didn’t have to end. All of these moments with her were among his happiest, and he hated to let them slip through his fingers, even though he knew they were cruising to the finish line. The end was necessary, though. He could never give her what she needed or what she deserved. Best to concentrate only on the here and now. He grabbed her hand and pulled her naked body against his, brushing her hair off her shoulder.
“I have a completely wild and crazy idea.”
“What is it?”
He held up his hands, took a deep breath, and spoke as if presenting something out of left field. “Seeing as we’ve christened every couch, table, counter, and appliance in this house, how about we break in your bed?”
He expected a no, given how she’d reacted with surprise the last time he’d suggested they get outside their comfort zone with a visit to a bed. But she was all yes today, nodding, grasping his hand, and leading him into her bedroom. The room was pure Cara—a purple bedspread, pillows in red and silver, and framed photos covering every inch of her dresser.
But he stopped looking around when she lay down on the cover and parted her legs for him.
So vulnerable, so beautiful, so aroused.
A groan worked its way up his chest as he walked over to her.
“You’re gorgeous, Cara. So gorgeous, and perfect, and beautiful,” he said, bending his head to kiss her ankle, then her calf, then her thigh.
She trembled under his touch and raised her arms to reach for him. “So are you.”
He rolled on the condom, lowered himself between those long, lovely legs, and slid into her.
At last. He was home.
She wrapped her legs around his hips, and he thrust into her. She kept her gaze pinned on him, and he didn’t want to look away either.
He wanted to say something, to tell her something dirty, to say something filthy.
But words eluded him now as he drove into her and she roped her arms around his shoulders, her body still hot and sweaty from the sun, and soft and pliant from the two orgasms. She gave herself to him, arching into him, holding on tighter, digging her nails harder, and he loved every second of this reaction from her.
He felt it, too. He felt the difference. It wasn’t just the mattress. He couldn’t attribute the furious beating of his heart to the change of scenery.
It was her.
All her…and how he wanted more from her than he had a right to want. Because he knew with a bone-deep certainty that this was how it should be. This was how a man and a woman were meant to be. This kind of connection, this kind of intensity, this kind of deep, primal need.
God, he would miss this.
He would miss her.
She moved beneath him—sensual, wild, and free as she called out his name, clutched his shoulders, and held on tight as she came apart in his arms. Within seconds he followed her there, joining her in ecstasy, in a finish that felt different from the others.
He kissed her cheek, her eyelids, her sweet, sexy lips, then slipped away briefly to remove the condom.
“Bet you didn’t know it was really a three orgasm special today,” he said, flopping down next to her on the bed when he returned, and holding her in his arms, layering kisses on her belly, her shoulder, her neck.
She laughed, and ran her fingers from his ribs through the hair on his chest. He squirmed the slightest amount.
She arched an eyebrow. “Are you ticklish?”
He shrugged noncommittally. “Not much.”
Her eyes lit up, sparkling with naughtiness. “You are,” she said, enunciating each word, like she’d caught him in a big, fat fib.
“Fine,” he said, heaving a sigh. “Maybe more than a little.”
She dragged her fingers once more over the ticklish spot, and he laughed out loud this time.
“Ha. I have found your weakness.”
He narrowed his eyebrows, fixing her with a serious stare. “Don’t use it against me, or I’ll be forced to give you more than three orgasms, and you know what happens to your brain after three orgasms.”
“I do not know. Tell me,” she said, snuggling up closer, fitting far too wonderfully in his arms.
“You won’t be able think straight any more. It’s a very serious condition,” he said.
“I’m willing to suffer for that affliction.”
“Maybe for our last time I’ll go for four,” he whispered softly, then planted a kiss on her forehead. She tensed in his arms, and he wished instantly he could take those words back. But yet, it was better to focus on the truth. Neither one of them needed to lose sight of reality.
They didn’t have a future. They weren’t a couple. They couldn’t be anything more than this two-week affair. But he wanted one more special moment with her, and he planned to take it.
…
The words cut. Last time. They were a cruel reminder that the clock ticked ever closer to the end. She shouldn’t be upset. She had signed up for this. She’d requested this damn affair. But now, she wanted more than an affair. Only today was clearly not the time to ask for it. Not when the man was very much living in the here and now.
This was going to be harder than she thought—laying her heart on the line for someone who’d been one hundred percent clear and then some that he didn’t do relationships.
Even though surely it had to mean something that they’d finally slept together in a bed? She could write it off as an escape from the neighbor’s eyes, and it was that. But it also felt like something more.
For the first time, it felt like making love.
“Hey,” he said, sitting up in bed. “Let’s take a shower. I can’t promise you that your fantasy of finding me there is ever going to come true, because the reality is I’d much rather be pleasuring you than myself, but at least we can get cleaned up.”
“Fair enough,” she said, trying to stay rooted in the moment. Later, when she was alone, she’d devise a strategy. She’d need time and a plan to do this right. Especially since asking for more with him was such a risk—the ultimate risk to her own mapped-out life. So she kept her words to a minimum for now as they headed to the bathroom.
He turned on the shower then reached for her hand to bring her under the hot stream with him. The tenderness of his touch, and the gentle way he held her hand, nearly split her heart wide open. She was so ready to blurt it all out, to spill everything she was trying desperately to keep locked up safely in her chest until she knew what to do with it.
He wrapped his arms around her, layering kisses on her shoulders. She bit the inside of her lip to keep from speaking.
“Hey,” he said, whispering softly as the water rained down. “I know we both turn into pumpkins or something when the auction comes around, but what would you think about us going to the wedding together this weekend?”
Her heart stopped. “Like a date? Like in public?”
She lifted her chin to face him. Water streaked down her nose, a bead dropping off and splashing on the tiled shower floor. He leaned forward and kissed her nose. It was so damn affectionate, and he probably had no clue what all this sweetness was doing to her.
“Yes. A date. It’s not like we’ve done such a good job hiding the fact that we’re into each other, so we might as well just go together,” he said, turning her around so her back rested against his chest. He reached for the shampoo and lathered up her hair. She leaned into him, a soft sigh escaping her lips as he washed her hair. A hope for more. A wish for both the hot, wild times in the yard, on the car, in the hallway, and the sweet, quiet ones like these.
“I would like that,” she said, then didn’t say anything more. What she really wanted were less mixed signals. But in the absence of clear ones, she’d have to figure out the next steps on her own.
…
She didn’t see Travis the next night. She had plans with her sister and her parents for a welcome back celebration at Stacy’s house. True, her parents had only been in South Carolina for a few weeks, but she and her sister had bought balloons and hung them up in Stacy’s kitchen, with help from Stacy’s husband and their four-year-old son. Their parents got a huge kick out of the over-the-top decorations, then regaled them with tales of the latest antics of their East Coast grandchildren.
After the meal, her parents left first, yawning as they headed to the door, saying the time difference between coasts was dragging them down. Then it was Cara’s turn to say goodnight, so she read a book to her nephew, tucked him in bed, and said good night to her sister’s husband as he cleaned the kitchen.
Stacy walked her out and gave her a hug on the porch.
“It’s getting hard to hug you. You’re like a double wide,” Cara joked.
“Watch it. Or I’ll add bleach to your shampoo when you’re not looking, and you’ll wake up with Bozo the clown hair.”
Cara shuddered playfully as she left, then walked down the stone path in Stacy’s front yard.
She opened the gate, and started to close it behind her, when she stopped. Night had fallen, and stars winked on and off in the sky. She gazed heavenward, hunting for the constellations she recognized.
The Jalapeno Dipper. Orion’s Suspenders. And Cleopatra.
She flashed back to that night outside Becker’s bar when Travis had renamed the stars. She’d scurried away from him then, doing everything to eradicate him from her mind. She’d had no luck though. And, as it turned out, her brilliant strategy to get him out of her system through a steady diet of mind-blowing sex had failed miserably, too.
She was no closer to getting over him. In fact, the opposite was true.
She wanted more of him.
She tore her gaze away from the endless star-spangled sky to the white fence her fingers were wrapped around.
A white picket fence.
Everything she thought she’d wanted.
And right then, with the clarity of the brightest star in the sky, she knew she had to let it go. She had to give up the dream. She’d found something she wanted more than her carefully detailed and neatly planned blueprint for happiness. She wanted Travis, and she’d have to find a way to meet him in the middle.