Lush (17 page)

“Do you like them?”

She’d almost forgotten he was in the room. She’d been so taken with the beauty and intricacy of the design and the thought that something as beautiful as these could belong to her.

“They match your ring, except that I had pearls added. They’re Poppy’s birthstone.”

He sounded nervous. She glanced up to find him watching her with a look so intense her breath caught. He expected her to reject them, to reject him.

“I know,” she said. “They’re absolutely beautiful. But why?”

He let out a breath as if he’d been holding it waiting for her answer. “I wanted you to have something pretty.”

“These aren’t pretty, they’re absolutely gorgeous.”

His mouth curved up into a smile as his confidence fully returned. “I’m glad you like them.” He lifted her left hand. “I know colored stones aren’t what’s fashionable, but the sapphires reminded me of your eyes.”

Damn it! When he said things like that, it made her eyes all watery.

“Hey, are you crying?” He pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and handed it to her. “Are those happy tears?”

She nodded and sniffed, dabbing at the corners of her eyes with his handkerchief. “You always know what to say to make me turn into a watering pot.”

“Come here, darlin’.” He took her into his arms and rubbed her back. “I’m glad you like the jewelry. That’s stressful stuff for a man.”

“I like how you included Poppy in it.” She sniffed back more tears. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you when I was pregnant with her. I’m sorry you weren’t there when she was born and for all the months since. You’re a really good father.”

“Aww, Jesus, darlin’, when you talk like that… I didn’t deserve to be a father to her, but now I think I might. I’m trying real hard, and the truth of it is, she’s the best thing I’ve ever done, however accidentally and messed up I did it. I’m glad I’ve got this chance with her and with you.”

“Me too.”

She pulled back enough so she could go up on her toes and kiss him. As with everything with Cal, things got out of hand quickly, and before she knew it he’d backed her up against the dresses on the closet door with a knee between her legs, one hand on her breast and the other lifting up her skirt. Poppy started crying, and his hands fell away.

He put his forehead to hers and let out a breath. “Damn, darlin’, you’ve get me going from zero to sixty in about two seconds.” He kissed her hard on the mouth. “I’ll go get her.” He left to tend to his daughter.

She’d grown accustomed to having a real parenting partner since their marriage. Poppy lit up around her daddy. It was a treasure to watch the two of them together. She was starting to think that maybe things could work out for them. And that got her tearing up again. She unfolded Cal’s handkerchief to dry her eyes and froze. Lipstick. Red lipstick on the handkerchief she’d hand embroidered and had given to him. And he’d used it to wipe lipstick off. Off of what? And whose lipstick was it?

“Here she is.” Cal came into the room holding Poppy. “Sam said she heard my voice and started crying for me.”

He turned his face and kissed their daughter, and she saw the smudge of red at the side of his mouth. Her heart kicked out a ragged beat, and she flushed for an entirely different reason. This was how it had started the first time. Little signs that Lucy had ignored or made excuses for. In the end all of her denial couldn’t excuse the secretary Cal had bent over his desk and almost screwed. Hell, maybe he already had, and that scene in his office was one of many times he’d cheated on her. She only had his word to go by, and she wasn’t sure how good that word really was.

Now he was back at it. She’d been right not to trust him. Her mother had trusted her daddy even when he came home reeking of perfume with love bites on his neck. The last thing Lucy wanted for herself or for Poppy was a recreation of her childhood. Poppy would never hide in her room while her father fucked another woman as soon as her mother left the house. And she sure as hell didn’t want to ever look the other way like her mother did.

She reached up, swiped the lipstick off with her thumb and showed it to him along with the stained handkerchief. “Looks like you didn’t get rid of all the evidence. You’re getting sloppy.”

CHAPTER TWENTY

“Oh, that.” He chuckled. “Anne Gleason stopped by my office to invite us to dinner.”

“And you kissed her.”

“
She
kissed
me
.” He narrowed his eyes at her. “What are you implying?”

“It’s not like there’s no history here.”

“We’re not having this out in front of our daughter.”

He left the room. Lucy stewed like an overfilled pressure cooker. She didn’t have the self-confidence she’d had the first time she’d caught Cal cheating, but what she did have was a limit for how long she’d listen to him stammer and make excuses as to why he fell face first into another woman’s cleavage. Or why he couldn’t seem to keep his lips off another woman’s lips.

He came back and closed the door behind him. “You’re right. There is a history here, but it’s ancient history. I’m not cheating on you.”

“Yet? Or not at all?”

“Not at all.”

“What am I supposed to think when I find this?” She shook the lipstick-stained handkerchief at him. “How would you feel if you found evidence that I’d been with another man? How would you feel if you
walked in
on me with another man?”

“Before or after I punched him in the face?”

“I told you when we started this that I couldn’t take you cheating on me again.”

“I’m not. I wouldn’t.”

She stared at him, trying to find the truth in his expression. He hadn’t gotten to where he was without perfecting his poker face. But he wasn’t doing it this time. He stared straight back at her, and she could see the regret mixed in with something else—desperation. He not only wanted her to trust him, he needed her to. Her eyes teared up for a whole other reason.

She started to dab at her eyes with the stained handkerchief, then pulled the gesture in disgust and threw it on the ground. “I believe you.”

He sagged in visible relief. “It’s the truth, darlin’. I haven’t touched another woman since you stormed out of my office and out of my life. Every time I started to think I could be with someone else, thoughts of you would pop into my head, and everything in me would freeze up. No matter how many women I dated after we split up, none of them were you. None of them tossed their hair over their shoulder and jutted out a hip like you do. None of them made me feel both humble and like a conquering hero like you do. And I knew if I took them to bed that none of them would make that sound you make when I first thrust inside you.

“Or make me come so hard I think I might just die from it. And none of them would ever make me want to drop to my knees and beg to be believed. Because if you don’t believe me, we’re over. And I can’t be without you again, Lucy. I just can’t. So I’m thanking God you believe me. And I’m thanking you for giving me this second chance with you.”

She was sobbing now, covering her face with both hands, as he dropped to his knees and wrapped his arms around her waist.

“I won’t screw this up. I won’t.”

She cradled his head against her chest and cried harder. She was right to trust in him. She knew how aggressive Anne Gleason was toward Cal and how she hadn’t hid her desire to sleep with him. His words played over and over in her head. He hadn’t been with another woman since they’d split up? She could hardly wrap her mind around it. He’d gone without for seventeen months while she’d given herself to someone who had ruined her life and was still ruining it.

She cried for the time they’d lost together and the mistakes they’d made and for the sheer joy of finding each other again after all they’d been through. She couldn’t seem to stop crying until Cal lifted his head to look up at her and she bent to kiss him. The rising tide of sorrow and regret inside her spilled over, catching fire and morphing into something else altogether.

And then she was kissing him for an entirely different reason that had nothing to do with the past and everything to do with the future, their future together. She dropped to her knees in front of him, yanking on his shirt, desperate for the feel of him under her hands. She managed the first couple of buttons and then just pulled the whole thing over his head. Her blouse hit the floor next to his shirt.

Cal let her have her way, shoving at his clothes, then hers. She believed him. When he’d never given her any reason to in the past. He’d lied back then and hid things from her and offered up the worst kind of betrayal. And she’d taken him back, taken him into her bed and her heart again. It was all he could think about as he laid her down on and crawled between her wide-spread legs, as he rolled the condom on and lowered himself over her.

He entered her slowly, watching her face and the way she dropped her head back and arched into his entry. He thrust hard into her just to hear the sound she made when he was fully seated. God he loved her. He pulled back and then came at her again a little harder, and then again and again, building the pressure between them until he was sweating from the effort and she was crying out so loud he was sure the whole house heard her.

When he finally let loose, rocking deep into her, it did feel like he might die. There was no other moment more perfect than being inside Lucy. He’d live inside her if he could.

Her hot breath blew on his cheek as he lay on top of her. He knew she was looking at him, but he couldn’t quite meet her gaze yet. The rawness of being inside her, of pressing himself into her, was still too new. He needed another moment before he could look into her eyes without tearing his heart out of his chest and laying it at her feet.

When he had control again, he turned his head to look at her. Her face was pink, her full lips were red, and her tear-filled eyes were so blue they rivaled a winter sky.

“I won’t screw this up,” he told her, his voice as scraped out as he was.

“I know.” She smiled at him even as the last tear slid down her cheek and into her hair. “Will you help me move my things across the hall? I want to sleep with my husband in our bed. Tonight.”

*****

Cal lay in bed that night, listening to his wife wash her face and brush her teeth in the bathroom, feeling like the luckiest man in the world. She trusted him. She finally trusted him. Ironically it had taken another woman’s lipstick on him to do it. No more walking across the hall to knock on her door and the sickening feeling low in his stomach at the thought that she might not let him in. But now, now he didn’t have to worry.

They’d spent the rest of the evening moving her things and then played with their daughter on the big bed before reading her a story and putting her to sleep for the night. It had felt real and right. They were a family in every sense of the word. He stacked his hands under his head and stared up at the ceiling he hadn’t seen in weeks, not exactly sure how he’d accomplished it.

Lucy came out of the bathroom dressed in some kind of flimsy see-through thing that had him sitting up in bed so he could get a better look. She wasn’t wearing a damn thing underneath.

“What do you think?” She spun for him, and the fabric flew out around her.

He had trouble forming any thoughts except for ones he couldn’t repeat. It was like someone had wrapped all of his favorite things in gauze so that he couldn’t quite see them.

“It was a gift from Mi.” She held the dress out at the sides, looking a little unsure. “I was supposed to wear it for our wedding night.”

“We can pretend tonight’s our wedding night.”

“But do you like it?”

“It’s a tease. Come here and let me rip it off you.”

She laughed. “Don’t you dare tear it. It’s too beautiful.”

“Then you better take it off before you climb up here, darlin’, because I can’t be responsible for my actions once your knee hits the mattress.”

She looked down at herself, smoothing her hands over her body, and then she lifted the skirt and pulled the whole thing over her head. Instead of joining him, she went into the closet.

He strained to keep her fine ass in view. “Where are you going?”

“To hang it up. I don’t want it ruined.”

She came back out wearing nothing but the jewelry he’d given her. He decided right then and there that he’d buy her a whole shop full of jewels if she came to bed dressed just like that every night.

She climbed up next to him, which was a bit of a struggle for her. He made a note to get a step for her or else buy a whole new bed she didn’t have to strain herself to get into. The only exerting he wanted her to do in bed was with him. She straddled him and flipped her hair back over her shoulders so that her breasts were fully exposed.

“I was thinking,” she said, “that we could try option number two.” She pulled a scarf from underneath one of the pillows and wrapped it in her fists, tugging on it to make it snap.

He ran his hands up her thighs. “Whatever that option is, I’m on board.”

“It’s the binding option, the one where I tie you up.”

“However you want me, wherever you want me, I’m there.”

She looked at the carved wooden headboard with a frown. “There’s no place to tie your hands to.”

“Hmm, that is a problem. What if you tied my hands together and I have to keep them above my head no matter what? And then tomorrow I’ll have a new bed delivered with a step for you to climb up and a wrought-iron headboard you can tie me up to any time you like.”

“That seems awfully extreme for just the one option.”

While she’d been deciding what to do, his hands had wandered up her thighs to her breasts, and he rolled her nipples between his fingers. She moaned and arched her back.

“If you’ve got your heart dead set on that option, then there’s only one thing to do—buy a new bed.” He leaned up and replaced one of his hands with his mouth.

“We don’t…ooohhh…need a new bed.” She fell forward, catching herself with one hand on the headboard, giving him better access.

He could’ve spent all night on her breasts. They were so sensitive that one touch had her rubbing herself against him. He could feel her slickness, smell her heat as she moved. He barely touched her, and yet she was so ready for him. He drifted a hand down her back to her ass and slipped a finger into her from behind. She moved up and down, pleasuring herself on his hand. With his other hand he slid a finger in from the front. She went wild then, bucking up and down. He added two more fingers, and she groaned, her breasts jiggling with her movements. He leaned up and caught her nipple between his lips and sucked hard.

She came on a long, low moan, her head back, lips parted, her hair a wild mess around her. He released her nipple and laid back to watch as her orgasm rolled through her. She was so goddamned beautiful he could hardly believe she was his.

She collapsed onto his chest as her orgasm faded. “I’m never, ever going to tie your hands up. They’re too good. That thing you just did with them. Oh, my God.”

“I don’t know about that. That no-hands option we tried a while back was pretty damn great.”

“This was better.”

“I’m not done with you yet, Mrs. Sellers. This is our wedding night.” He rolled them so that he was on top. “We have to consummate our marriage to make it legal and binding.”

“Mmm, binding.”

He adjusted the pendant he’d given her so that it fell between her breasts. “We’ll get to the binding. But first I want to make love to my wife. This would be option number thirty-seven.”

She ran her hands into his hair. “And what happens in this option?”

“This is the option where I ruin you for all other men.”

“That might have already happened about three minutes ago.”

“That was nothing. Just an appetizer.”

He kissed her as he’d wanted to on their wedding day, sealing their vows. And then changed it, kissing her deep and long. Running a hand down her body, he mapped her curves, caressing her waist as it dipped in and her hip as it flared out. Long, slow movements down then up her leg. He repeated the motion over and over, his hand skimming her inner thigh and the underside of her breast, but never giving her what she wanted.

Her hands were all over him, relearning him as he was her. He kissed a trail along her jaw and down her neck. She shifted, nestling him between her legs. He wanted to go slow, but she had her hand on his ass and her knees bent so she was wide open. She kissed him like she more than wanted him, she needed him.

He broke the kiss and looked down at her. Her eyes were so blue, bluer than the stones between her breasts, and she was smiling up at him. No hesitation, no fear, she was his Lucy once again. He bent and kissed the slope of each of her breasts, gliding his tongue in circles until he was tracing around her nipples. She held his head in her hands, making little moaning sounds. He pulled her nipples into his mouth, one and then the other. By the time he glanced up at her face, she was squirming under him.

She grabbed the condom off the nightstand and rolled it on, taking her time about it. He’d get her back for that. While she was busy torturing him, he slid two fingers into her. She sucked in a breath. He gently stroked her clit, easing her legs wider apart. He kissed her, mimicking the thrusts of his hand. She clutched at him, and he knew she was close so he slowed down.

This wasn’t going to be one of their mad couplings. He wanted to show her with his body what he felt for her and how she made him feel when he was with her, inside her. She gripped his ass and tilted her hips, trying to get him to hurry it along, but he kept up the slow, agonizing pace until he felt her give over to it. Her head dropped back, exposing her neck for him to kiss, so he obliged her.