Cream of the Crop (15 page)

“We do?” I asked, silently begging for fresh air, any air, any air sans funk.

“Unless you're too soft to do a country day's work,” he said, his voice literally dripping with challenge.

I turned on my heel and marched straight back to him, poking my spatula in his chest. “Bring it, Caveman,” I whispered, then stuck my empty hand straight out to the side. Picking up her cue perfectly, one of the other women tossed a rake thingie and I caught it in midair.

I worked hard that day. I raked cheese, I salted, I paddled, I pounded, I flipped, I shaped, and I hooped. I washed rinds, flipped rounds, scraped mold, injected mold, rotated molds, and damn near threw up about a hundred times. And through it all, sassing and teasing me, but also educating me, was Oscar. He knew every aspect of his little cheese world, and he was free with both knowledge and comebacks.

I laughed my ass off all day, but I must admit, nothing smelled as good as the clean fresh air at the end of the day, when he finally let me go outside to scruff around a bit.

“Sweet, sweet air, let me eat you,” I shouted, running past him when he finally pronounced it was quitting time.

“You'll get used to the funk,” he teased, taking off his own hairnet (which looked almost as good on him as it did on me) and scratched at his hair, extra curly after cooking under the nylon all day.

“I wouldn't count on it. I'll be lucky to ever eat Comté again! You may have ruined me.” I sighed, sucking in big gulps of the fresh air. I was feeling a little queasy. Cheese making was long, backbreaking work, and I'd never take it for granted again.

I also might need to modify my Dream Cupboard to reflect less cheese making and more cheese eating. Fingers crossed. Because right now, the last thing I wanted was—

“Oh, I almost forgot. Since I can't really pay you for today, I've got a surprise.” From behind his back, he pulled out a paper bag with Bailey Falls Creamery stamped on the outside, with the signature blue and white gingham wrapping peeking out from inside. “Your favorite Brie.”

I threw up on his boots. The ones
I
was wearing, luckily . . .

“I threw up on your boots.”

“You sure did.”

“I mean, my God, I threw up on your boots! For fuck's sake, how embarrassing!” I moaned, covering my face with the damp towel he'd brought me. One thought about Brie, the tiniest whiff, and out came the pancakes from earlier that morning. I could just die.

After making sure I wasn't about to barf again, he'd driven me to his house, and tucked me into a rocking chair on the front porch with a glass of water and the cool towel.

“I don't even know what happened! It was just, like, no more funk.”

“It happens.”

He said everything in that matter-of-fact, easygoing way. I'd thrown up all over the place, and he took it in stride as though I'd just dropped a bag of pretzels or something.

Was that his game? Acting like nothing bothered him, no skin off my nose, nothing was a big deal? Was not playing games his game?

Before I could ruminate on this for very long, the wind shifted and I got a strong whiff of . . .

“P to the U,” I groaned, pinching my nose.

“You get used to it. They're just cows.”

I shook my head. “No, it's me. I'm downwind of me, and all I can smell is vomit. I need to get back to Roxie's so I can shower.”

He rocked back and forth on his heels, seeming to ruminate on something himself. “I've got a shower here. I've even got some flowery soap that girls like.”

“Oh, you do, do you?” I asked. Was it left over from Missy? Hell, who gives a shit? “What kind of soap do
you
use?”

“Lava.”

“Of course you do.” I sighed, stretching out in the rocking chair, not feeling sick at all anymore. “I suppose I
could
shower here. It does present a problem, though.”

“Problem?”

“Mmm-hmm. I'll be naked. And you won't be.”

He shook his head. “I must not have been clear. If you're showering, I'm showering.”

My skin tingled. “That makes sense. Water conservation, being a good host—all those things.”

“Plus, you'll be naked. And wet.”

I blinked. “Why are we still talking about this, instead of doing it?”

I stood in his bathroom, letting the water warm up while brushing my teeth with my finger and then swishing with half a bottle of Scope I'd found in the medicine chest. I rinsed once more, just as the steam was starting to fog up the mirror. It was an old-fashioned bathroom, with a makeshift shower suspended over a claw-foot tub, which I'd bet someone's last dollar was original to the house.

I never bet with my own money.

He knocked at the door just as I was slipping out of my clothes, and I turned to look at him over my shoulder as he peeked his head around, his eyes covered with his hands.

“You decent?”

“Far from it,” I replied.

His answering grin was slow and sweet. He uncovered his eyes just as I let my smock hit the floor, and I loved the way they lit up at the sight of me, naked and ready for the shower.

“Nice,” he murmured.

I did love how he said exactly what was on his mind.

“Did you have this in mind when you asked me over here today?” I asked.

He closed the door, stepped toward me, then pulled his shirt off over his head. “You mean, when I invited you over to teach you how to make cheese only so you could vomit on me? All in the hopes of getting you naked and wet in my shower?”

I narrowed my eyes at him. “I knew it.”

He unzipped his jeans, pushed them down, and stepped out of them, leaving him as naked as I was, but with one beautiful difference.

“You're hard.” I gulped.

“I've been hard all damn day.” And with that he lifted me straight up and over the edge of the tub, under the spray of the water.

“That must have been terrible,” I teased as he closed the pink rose shower curtain around us. “I like the flowers, by the way.”

“What flowers?”

“On the curtain?” I shook my head as he gathered up handfuls of my hair and dipped them under the water. “We're kind of surrounded by them.”

“I don't see anything but you right now, Pinup.” And then his mouth was on me, leaning down and pressing kisses all along my neck, my throat, my jaw, as the water spilled down over both of us. I could feel him against my stomach, hard and thick. And he'd been hard all day?

It got me hot because the idea that someone like Oscar, all giant Paul Bunyan guy, was thinking about me all day, was intoxicating. “Did you really think about me today?”

“Mm-hm,” he said, his voice hot on my skin. I could feel his breath moving across my skin. “I thought about you all week.”

“You could have called me.”

“I didn't have your number.” He tipped my head back under the water, saturating my hair. Filling his hands with shampoo, he began to work up a lather.

“Roxie would have given it to you.”

“True,” he said, massaging my head with strong and sure fingertips. “But then you would have known I was gonna call you.”

“And that's bad?” I sputtered, just as he thrust his hips against mine.

“I knew you'd be back.”

Humph. Cheeky.

“Now close your eyes.” He brought my hands to my hair, encouraging me to rinse the bubbles out.

I did, leaning back and feeling the suds wash away, smoothing my long hair back and making sure there were no tangles. He knew I'd be back. How cocky was this guy? How did he know that—

He put his mouth on me.
Ohhhh.

He put his mouth on me
there
.

My eyes flew open to look down, down between my legs, where a beautifully wet Oscar was kneeling, kissing, licking my sensitive skin. His tongue delved deep and I shivered, slapping at the shower tile, slapping at his shoulders, trying to get purchase on anything that could ground me while his mouth surrounded me with the sweetest kind of torture there is.

One hand slid up the back of my leg, opening me further, snaking around my knee and lifting it to the edge of the tub, exposing me fully to him, to whatever he wanted to see or touch or taste.

“Oh. Yes,” I cried out, as he flicked his tongue against my clit, his shoulder pushing my legs wider as he panted against me, his mouth open and wet and hot and . . .

there

there

there

right

exactly

there . . .

“Oscar,” I groaned, feeling his late-afternoon stubble scrape
against my sensitive skin, too much and not enough all at once and wrapped together and

there

there

there

fuck

there

oh

yes

there.

And I exploded.

“There she is,” he moaned, licking and sucking and letting me ride it out as he held me up. And as soon as I was boneless and noodly, he scooped me up, wet and slippery, and carried me to his bed.

I tried to wrap my arms around him, tried to get them to work, but I was still shaking, still shivering as he rose over me. Dimly I saw him rolling the condom on. Dimly I saw him wrapping my legs around his waist. Dimly I heard him grunt as he twisted, pushing into me with words like
so tight
and
so beautiful
and
fuck that's good.

Finally I lifted my hips to meet his thrusts, wild and rough. He hovered over me, stretching his glorious body across me, those colors on his chest and arms flashing as he gazed down at me, all eyebrow scar and biting down on his lower lip and spilling down those gorgeous words all over me.

He held my hip in one hand, my breasts in the other, running his fingertips over the taut peaks and teasing. Then his mouth was on me again, on my breasts, using that same tongue and those same teeth that had coaxed that wild orgasm from me just moments ago to make me scream again at the exquisite feel of him sucking at me.

Sucking and fucking and biting and scratching as my nails scored his back, determined to bring him deeper into me, which was impossible, as his thrusts alone were ready to split me in two and it was
still not enough
.

“You. Again.” His brief words spoke volumes as he dragged one hand down between us, licking his fingers, then sliding them against me, knowing already exactly how I liked to be touched.

My back bowed off the bed as I came again, ridiculously loud and long and fierce, him following only a moment after, his own groans filthy and primal.

He collapsed onto me, his head on my breast, my arms and legs wrapped around him as I held him to me. And we panted heavily, a shuddering pile of “sweet fuck, that was good.”

Oscar's house was old and rustic, with wide-plank floors, wainscoting, beadboard—all the architectural details you'd look for in such an old farmhouse. He'd told me it wasn't nearly as old as the barn but still from the last century, and had been in the family he'd purchased the farm from for generations. It had the requisite farmhouse sink, the farmhouse kitchen table, the Franklin stove in the corner, and even an old outhouse hidden behind a stand of old trees.