Accidentally Catty (26 page)

“Fuck,” he groaned, thick and muffled against her breast, his breath coming in harsh gasps. “There’s more, Katie. More I want to experience, but you’re so damned hot and tight . . .”

But Katie didn’t care about anything else. There was just Shaw’s naked flesh, glistening with sweat, sliding against hers. There was only his scent, musky and clean, in her nose. There was only his length, buried balls deep in her, sending her to the edge of madness.

Frenzied hands pulled him close to her chest as she used her heels to garner the leverage she needed to drive him deeper inside her. Her whimper was of desperation, a cry to find relief from this place he’d taken her to.

Somewhere she’d never been.

Somewhere she didn’t want to leave.

She clung to that thought until she was nothing but a shredded, hot mass of raw nerves, and as orgasm rose like a fiery swell, she couldn’t fight it. Her head flung back, her scream was a hiss of total, blinding fulfillment.

Shaw’s gasp filled her ears; his grip on her became almost painful. Yet she reveled in it, gripped his wrists so he’d dig his fingers farther into her skin as she came. She found herself deriving so much pleasure from his harsh grasp, it almost frightened her.

But that didn’t stop her on her quest to wring every ounce of tantalizing, decadent sensation. When she contracted around his cock for the last time, Shaw jerked within her, jutting his hips upward for one final thrust.

She fell against the shelter of his chest, boneless and weary. Their intakes of breath mingled while he still pulsed within her. Shaw’s hands soothed her flaming skin, damp and sensitive. He ran his hands all over her, along her arms, over the tops of her thighs, into her hair while they cooled down.

As her muddled thoughts cleared, she had but one notion.

This forbidden thing she’d been so hung up on? Not too shabby.

“Katie?”

“Shaw?” she asked from against his neck.

“Hot, huh?”

Like a fucking bonfire, baby. “Like lava.”

“Regrets?”

“Not at this moment. But give me an hour, maybe less.” She’d just had incredible, mind-blowing sex with a man who might not be far from the age of consent. That would have never happened with the old, adult Katie. The one who thought everything out, asked a million questions, asked a million more, and only then made a decision.

“No regrets. Something like that should never be regrettable.”

“I’ll work on that.”

His chest brushed against hers when he sighed. “I want to say I’ve never experienced anything like that before. But my guess is you wouldn’t believe me.”

“You’re setting a trend for disbelief.”

His chuckle was deep and amused. “Clearly, I knew what I was doing.”

“Should we knuck that statement up?”

“Are you going to start with the teen jokes again?”

Katie fought a grin. “Only if you make me knuck up your sexual success.”

“That doesn’t seem like something I’d do.”

“Well, herein lies the glitch. We don’t know for sure what you’d do or what you’ve done. For all we know, you brag about your conquests at the local pub while you have your eye on the next notch on your bedpost.”

“I find the sound of that scenario distasteful. So I’m going to go with the notion I’m not that kind of guy.”

“For all we know, you could be a serial killer. Don’t corner the market on good just yet. I’d pace myself, were I you.”

He laughed, his good-natured resolve firmly in place, pulling her closer while she used her biting sarcasm to push him away. “You know what the problem is here, Dr. Woods?”

“No. But I do know you’ll have an answer whether I want one or not. So I’m prepared to ride this loose. Go.”

“You’re embarrassed by just how into me you are.”

Was there a word bigger than embarrassed? Surely there had to be one for how totally into that she’d been. But the plan was to play it cool. She’d done it before, although, it had been a good fifteen years or so. Katie shrugged; game face in play, she leaned back and looked Shaw dead in the eye. “Maybe I’m just a nymphomaniac. Which means I’m into whoever my conquest is at the time.”

“You’re no nymphomaniac. You’re definitely hot. Completely not the prude I expected, wearing all that girlish lace all the time, but I’ll venture to guess you’ve had fewer lovers than you have fingers and toes.”

“Point. Prudes don’t do men they’ve only known for three days.”

“Two. You slept through today.”

“Thank you for the reminder. You’re better than my iPhone calendar.”

“I’m here to serve.”

“Speaking of serving, I’m starving.”

“You’d rather eat than talk about what just happened? Who’s the man in this relationship anyway?”

“I haven’t eaten since yesterday’s dinner.”

Running a finger across her cheekbone, leaving a tantalizing chill in its wake, he said, “I suddenly feel very cheap and discarded.”

“Did you expect to feel warm and snuggly?”

Shaw’s expression was mockingly grave. “I expected respect and understanding.”

“You mean afterglow?”

“I mean any kind of glow that doesn’t leave me feeling like a piece of meat.”

“Well, that settles it.”

“Settles what?”

“I
am
the man in this relationship.”

“You’re a mean one, Miss Grinch.”

“I’m a practical one. We just had amazing sex. Yippee. Now let’s eat.”

She began to rise, but Shaw stopped her, throwing her down on the bed with a grin. “You’re doing a fine job of pretending this meant nothing. I’m going to let you do that for a little while, but I’m certain I’ll lose patience with you. Then you’ll have to own this thing between us. Lock, stock, and my smoking gun.”

Katie forced her expression to go blank. “I didn’t say it meant nothing, and there’s nothing between us but some good old-fashioned sex. I just said I was hungry.” And she was. Ravenous, in fact. Those deer in her backyard better skedaddle or
Bambi Revisited
was a distinct possibility.

Refusing to allow her to dampen his spirits, Shaw ran a finger over her ribs and took a swipe at both nipples with his tongue before pulling her upward to stand and drape her arms around his neck. “I see how this is going to go. Okay, This Was No Big Deal, Dr. Woods. Have it your way, but when you can’t look at me without seeing me in the buff, we’ll just see if this isn’t such a big deal.”

He dropped her arms to her sides and strode naked to pull her lavender silk bathrobe from the arm of the chair in the corner of the room. He held it up for her with a grin. She followed suit by sliding her arms into it, fighting once again another swell of rising tingles he created when he nipped at her neck.

He was delicious. They’d had amazing sex.

The kind of sex she’d remember long after they solved his mystery and he was gone.

She hid her face in her tangled hair at the thought of Shaw leaving.

It left her stomach tied up in tight knots.

That just wasn’t okay.

Shaw, who’d pulled on his jeans and shirt, leaned over her shoulder while she thoughtfully stared out the window. “I told you,” he mocked with a light chuckle, like he’d read her dismayed thoughts.

He strode toward the door, stopping just short of it to shake his ass and roar with laughter before he slipped through it and closed it behind him.

Despite his blatant mockery, Katie let her head fall to her chest and she laughed, too.

Damn his infectious charm.

Damn his incredible lovemaking.

Damn
him
.

Just damn.

A week had passed since that night in Katie’s room. Though there’d been several nights just like it.

Fine. Every night was just like it.

She couldn’t get enough of him, his hands on her, his lips devouring every square inch of her. Each time they made love, she cursed him and her own inability to resist him. There’d even been a night or two she’d found herself knocking on
his
door.

Which, Nina had slyly informed her when she’d caught her in the act, made her a cougar in every sense of the word. In fact, she’d be a cougar-MILF if she had children. Teeny, thankfully misunderstanding the laughter among the women one evening over afterdinner coffee, declared herself a GILF.

Aunt Teeny had decided Shaw had a crush on her because he held her balls of yarn for her while she knitted him a sweater and they watched reruns of
The Rockford Files
.

The sight of the two of them, ensconced in James Garner and knee-deep in blue-and-green yarn had made Katie’s heart literally shiver in her chest, awakening yet another emotion for Shaw she neither wanted nor needed. This could only end badly. What if he had a wife? Children? A life full of things she could never be a part of?

What if he really wasn’t the child she’d accused him of being and instead, was like Nina and Wanda? Fully grown adults who had the youthful glow of teenagers, but lived responsible adult lives while trying to integrate into a human world.

They still had no new information about Shaw’s origins, and according to Darnell, who’d kindly appointed himself watchdog, Daniel Green was still in a coma. After seeing with her own eyes the mess Dr. Green’s notes were in, even Katie’d given up hope anything of use was in them. Ironically, there was no information online about Dr. Green, either. Kaih and Ingrid had searched tirelessly to find any information on him, but to no avail.

Mr. Magoo himself had closed the animal park until further notice, leaving a residual boo-hiss Katie heard in the averted eyes of the people in town when she’d gone to buy supplies for her guests, and pounds and pounds of beef to sustain her and Shaw’s growing appetites.

Attempting to contact Esmeralda to gather an explanation about her appearance the night she and Shaw had broken into the park left them all scratching their heads. Esmeralda and Delray had left town. At least, according to her gloating neighbor Doreen, who’d cackled when she’d told them as she straightened her wig on her hairless head.

Katie hadn’t shifted again since that night, either. Though Wanda informed her, shifting, when it first began, was as unpredictable as Nina’s mouth.

Yet, they’d all found a strange, easy rhythm to their days, despite the limbo they were now in. Nina and Wanda spent a lot of time with Teeny, helping her lift heavy wheelbarrows full of dirt in the garden and laughing like they’d always been friends. Nina with a hat and sunglasses to keep the sun from burning her, and Wanda with the mob at her feet running frenzied circles, Dozer never far behind, sprawled in a patch of weak sunlight.

She and Shaw shared coffee every morning at sunrise—in a silent salute to their bedtime hijinks. She fought not to grin over the rim of her cup, and he made no bones about the fact that he felt no shame over their debauchery.

Katie spent a lot of time fending off girly sighs and dreamy gazes while she showered or put makeup on. Shaw was becoming a part of her everyday routine, and that, above everything else, even her cougarlicious status, frightened her. She didn’t want to become attached to someone who was bound to have a life somewhere else, possibly far, far away from here, if his accent was any indication.

“You’re thinking about me, aren’t you?” a silky-rough voice whispered in her ear from behind. Shaw’s hands went around her waist, sliding upward to cup her breasts beneath her UCLA sweatshirt, making her drop her book of crossword puzzles.

Katie gasped at the sting of pleasure he aroused the moment his hands touched her. Her nipples tightened beneath her bra, pressing against it with delicious friction. “I was thinking about whether we should give you a nap time so I can get some work done without you sneaking up behind me all the time and accosting me.” As she spoke the words, she smiled, naughty and in anticipation.

Turning her to face him, he sipped at her lips while pushing her bra upward with aggressive, impatient fingers. “I’m always up for a nap. As long as it’s naked and with you,” he teased, backing her against the far wall of the boardinghouse and away from the windows.

“It’s always about the naked with you,” she remarked, keeping her tone dry despite the rasp of her zipper being dragged downward and the thrill his words brought her.

He drove a hand into her jeans, cupping her sex, spreading the lips to stroke her clit. “And it isn’t for you?”

“It’s not like you’re easy to avoid,” she said on a moan, biting her lower lip at the intense shot of pleasure he created between her legs.

Shaw nipped her neck hard, sending shooting volts of electricity through her veins. “I’m sorry. Wasn’t that you knocking on my door just last night?”

Katie gasped when he forced her jeans over her hips to drop to her feet, leaving her in just the silky oyster white panties she’d put on after her shower. “I just wanted to be sure you didn’t need anything before I went to bed.”

“I need you.
Now
,” he demanded, tearing off her sweatshirt and unclasping the front of her pink lace bra to shove it aside and encase a nipple between his lips.

Katie’s arms rose above her head without thought, reveling in the hot pulse of his tongue skating over her nipples. He slid a finger over her still-clothed cleft with a hot moan. She groaned when Shaw slipped his hands into her panties and inserted his index finger inside her. He drove it upward, making her hips crash against his hand in urgent need.

“We could get caught,” she huffed as her hips, adopting a will of their own, lifted upward, taking more of his finger, reveling in his callused skin scraping her passage.

Shaw’s mouth left her breast to mutter, “I locked the door. Now be quiet. I’ve been thinking about being in you all morning.”

Her whimper at his words wheezed from her lungs. She fought to slip her clogs off in order to allow him easier access, kicking them aside with sloppy feet.