Worth the Risk: A Contemporary Romance Bundle, page 24
It was pure ecstasy.
Arden came, thighs locking in orgasmic pleasure against Shane’s sides. Her hands sought to steady herself and her fingers clenched on his smooth, muscled chest. She bent forward, hair a curtain in front of her face, and he reached for her with his mouth.
He kissed her, lips mashing, teeth clicking, tongues slicing like swords. She kissed him back the same way.
He thrust upward and filled her, while he cried her name in one long moan that made her answer his. The ripples of her orgasm made her body jerk, and he took his hand from her center to give her release, while he moved inside for a few final strokes.
Arden let her body fall on top of his. Their breath mingled. The beat of his heart echoed in her chest. His lips pressed on her forehead, his arms tightened around her, and Arden shifted to move to his side. Her head again found the curve of his shoulder.
“Just a minute,” Shane said and sat up to take care of what he needed to. He lay back and curled his arm around her to bring her back to his shoulder.
They lay in silence for a few moments, so long Arden felt the night creeping up on her. Her eyes grew heavy and threatened to close. Shane’s soft breathing soothed her, warm on her face.
“I’m sorry,” he said, which made her eyes fly open.
“Sorry? Why?” She tipped her head to look upward, but was unwilling to move enough to see his face.
He tilted his head, and she glimpsed his eye and the curve of his smile. “I wanted it to be a little gentler for you. You know. With a little more finesse.”
Hearing him use the word finesse made her feel suddenly tender toward him. Protective. Arden slid up to kiss his temple and run her fingers through his thick, dark hair.
“It was great,” she assured him. “My toes are still curled.”
That made him laugh and he hugged her. Then they laughed together until the bed shook, and Arden curled in Shane’s arms to sleep.
Chapter 9
The smell of something delicious woke her in the morning, and she rolled over in the tangled sheets to find the unoccupied pillow staring at her. For the first time in a long while though, the pillow held the indent of another head, a stray dark hair, the scent of a man. The bed beside her was vacant, but it was no longer empty.
Arden smiled and stretched sore muscles and languid, sated limbs. She got out of bed, threw on a robe, and padded down to the kitchen.
“Something smells good,” she greeted.
Shane turned from the stove, spatula in hand, and pointed it at the table. “Coffee’s ready. Pancakes will be done in a minute.”
“Pancakes? I’m impressed.”
He expertly flipped one golden cake and slid another onto a plate already heaped high with the savory fare. “Don’t be. Pancakes and tuna fish sandwiches are about the only cooking I can do.”
“Anything I haven’t had to cook is great with me.” Arden helped herself to a mug of coffee and slid into a chair, not sure what else to do. It felt odd to be sitting in her own kitchen while someone served her. Pleasant, but odd. She was used to bustling around, pouring milk, wiping spills, fetching silverware.
“Jason never cooked,” she spoke up, unaware her thoughts had formed into words until she heard them. “He was a whiz with the garbage and mowing the lawn, but he never cooked.”
She stared down at the wooden kitchen table, a flea market find she and Jason had stripped and refinished together the first year they were married. She traced a long groove, a scratch they hadn’t been able to sand out. The stain had covered the lighter-colored scar, but it would always be there.
Like her husband. She could cover up his memory, but it would always be with her.
She looked up to see Shane staring at her. He put his own coffee on the table, along with the plate of pancakes. Without a word, he slid into the chair next to her and took both her hands in his.
“Do you want to talk about him?”
Arden shook her head and squeezed his fingers. “Not really. Not if you mean do I want to give a long, heartfelt speech about him and our life together, and how his death affected me, how I’m still healing, blah blah blah, yadda yadda yadda. No.”
That sounded harsher than she’d meant it, and unfair. She squeezed his fingers again. “I mean that I don’t want to have ‘a talk’ like they do in the movies, where everything gets all tied up in a neat package and the heroine moves on to a new lover, fully content to leave her past behind. Life’s not like that, Shane.”
He squeezed back and dropped her hands to serve them both food. “I know. I just meant if you wanted to talk about him, that was okay with me.”
“I shouldn’t have been so sensitive.” Arden forked a bite of pancake, but didn’t eat it. “I just want you to know that...well, I’m not going to just turn off that part of my life. I have the girls. I have memories. I have things I shared with Jason.”
His handsome face showed little expression, and Arden’s heart thumped. She’d said too much. She’d either frightened him or pissed him off.
“Maybe I should go,” Shane said. “Give you some time alone.”
That wasn’t what she wanted. She’d been alone too long, but Arden wasn’t about to insist he stay if he didn’t want to. She unlinked her fingers from his and put them flat on the table next to her plate of perfect pancakes. She kept her eyes on the table’s scratch as she nodded.
“If you need to get going—”
Shane stood. “I have some things I need to do today, yeah. I’ll give you a call later, okay?”
“Sure. Great.”
He hesitated, then bent to kiss the top of her head. Arden didn’t look up as he left the kitchen. She heard the front door close. She stared at her pancakes for so long they got cold, then she got up and put them in the garbage. She had no appetite for them.
With the girls in a cartoon-induced stupor, Arden refilled Lida’s mug and offered a plate of chocolate chip cookies.
“What did you do, bake every recipe in the cookbook?” Lida took a cookie and bit into it with a low moan of appreciation. “Awesome, Arden.”
“The girls like to bake. I promised them we’d make a cake. We got a little carried away.” She sat down and bit into a warm, fudgey cookie, but not even the sweet chocolate could entirely chase away the bitterness left in her mouth from the morning.
Lida wiped her mouth free of crumbs and stared at Arden. “You did it with him, didn’t you? Last night. You and Shane Donner got it on.”
“Are you psychic?” Arden gaped at Lida. “How did you know?”
Lida glanced toward the living room, where the girls lay on the floor, sprawled on the huge cushions. “Guilty baking. Dead giveaway. You banged Shane Donner and now you feel guilty, so to compensate, you let your kids talk you into baking. Honey, I’ve been there, only for me, it’s playing video games.”
Arden shook her head and warmed her chilly fingers on her coffee mug. “First of all, I did not ‘bang’ anyone.”
Lida raised an eyebrow and took another cookie. “What’d you do? Make looooove?”
She drew out the word in a sappy tone of voice that made Arden laugh.
“Not exactly.”
“I’d say something else, but I don’t want to curse in front of your kids.” Lida laughed. “It was good, right?”
Arden sighed. “Yes. Great. Fabulous.”
Lida leaned across the table. “So why the long face and guilty baking?”
Arden relayed the morning’s conversation. “And last night, he said he wanted more than just sex. He wanted flowers and walks in the park.”
Lida, who knew all about Arden’s previous argument with Shane, nodded. “Smart guy.”
“But this morning, I think he changed his mind. Or maybe he thinks I did. I don’t know. He asked me if I wanted to talk about Jason, and I overreacted a little.”
“Well, what do you want?” Lida asked. “Do you want walks in the park and flowers from Shane? Or just hot monkey love?”
Arden looked to where her daughters howled with laughter at the cartoon’s antics. “I don’t know, Lida. I think I’m ready to move on. I mean, to think about it anyway. I feel like I’m done mourning Jay, you know? And I don’t want to spend the rest of my life alone. I want the girls to have a daddy—”
The tears came without warning, sliding down her cheeks and making her voice hoarse. Arden took a moment to wipe her face and clear her throat. Lida’s eyes had welled with sympathetic tears, and Arden laughed to dispel them.
“More waterworks. Sorry.”
“Don’t be sorry.” Lida handed her another cookie. “Here. Have a cookie. I promise you, by the time you’re done eating it, you’ll feel better.”
Arden took the cookie, but didn’t eat it. “I want to fall in love again, Lida. But I don’t know if it’s going to be with Shane.”
Lida shrugged. “Do you think anybody knows that? If we all knew who we’d fall in love with, why would anybody ever bother to date? I think you need to ask yourself if you’re willing to find out.”
Arden crumbled her cookie onto the plate. “This was easier when it was just about sex.”
“Screaming hot sex,” Lida corrected with a smile. “And you don’t think it’s just that with him?”
Arden shook her head, forcing herself to admit something aloud she’d not even admitted to herself. “I don’t think it ever was. If it was just about sex, I’d have slept with him three weeks ago. Or slept with Philip. That would’ve been easier.”
“Nothing about sex is ever easy.”
Arden sighed. “Don’t I know it.”
“You’re wasting that cookie,” Lida told her.
Arden nodded toward the counter, where three more plates sat. “I think I can spare one.”
Lida grinned when she saw the cornucopia of chocolate. “Damn, girl. That must have been some hot, hot loving!”
A shiver ran through Arden at the memory. “It sure was.”
Lida leaned forward again to look into Arden’s eyes. “Your body might be easily led astray, but your heart knows what it wants. Listen to it, Arden.”
Good advice, Arden thought, if she was brave enough to take it.
Shane didn’t call her until Tuesday afternoon, and by that time Arden had convinced herself he wasn’t going to. She’d put her fingers to the phone to dial his number a dozen times on Monday, but had never done it. She hadn’t logged on to her instant messaging account either, afraid to see his name show up on her friends list and know he was ignoring her. When the phone rang at the shop, she answered it with a mouth full of pins, her mind full of the dress she was sewing and the idea she had for a new pattern.
“Arden?”
Shane’s voice filled her with warmth, like gooey caramel. She spit out the pins. “Hi.”
“I figured you’d be here, not at home.”
“Here I am. I’m here a lot,” she added, talking too fast but unable to stop herself. “It’s my, you know. Job.”
Even through the phone she sensed an awkwardness to their conversation that she didn’t like. Shane’s breathing filled her ear. Heat flared inside her at the memory of the way his breath had caressed her.
“Can I take you to lunch?”
She looked at the clock, already knowing she was going to say yes. “I only have an hour, I have an appointment—”
“I’ll come to you.”
Shane showed up in ten minutes, grease-spotted paper sacks in one hand and a paper tray of specialty coffees in the other. Lunch turned out to be delicious grilled sandwiches and homemade fries from the coffee shop down the street, and though Arden always promised herself she’d limit herself to just half a sandwich from that place, she ended up eating the whole thing.
“So. Freaking. Good.” She wiped the corner of her mouth with her pinky, catching a glob of dressing and tucking it into her mouth. Focusing on the food was an easy way to keep from blurting out an apology for what she’d said the morning “after.” Or from diving across her desk and tackling him for a little naked time right then and there.
“Love their stuff. I told you, pancakes and tuna are the extent of my kitchen skills. I’d starve if it weren’t for take-out or my mom’s leftovers.”
Arden tilted her head as she sipped from her coffee drink. She’d never met Shane’s family back in the day—they’d spent hours together fucking, but introductions to family and friends had never come up. It had all ended before that could seem important. Still, Annville and its neighbors were all small towns. She’d heard things.
“Your mom still lives in Palmyra?”
He smiled. “Yeah. She got remarried a few years after my dad died.”
“Oh...I’m sorry. I mean about your dad, not about your mom getting remarried. Unless that’s a bad thing?” Arden bit down on her tongue to keep herself from more word-vomit. She hadn’t even known his dad had passed away and felt doubly stupid for it.
“No. It’s a good thing. Ken’s a good guy. He’s not my dad or anything, but he’s good to my mom.” Shane shrugged and dipped a last few fries into some horseradish sauce.
“That’s good.”
“Ken was smart, made sure I knew he wasn’t trying to replace my dad or anything like that. He was...respectful, I guess you could say. He did it the right way, not like some guys who go in and try to make everything fit around them. You can’t ever replace anyone’s father.”
Arden focused her attention on her napkin, wiping her fingers and crumpling up her trash to toss in the pail to give her a reason not to look at him so she wouldn’t give away how close to tears she suddenly found herself. Was he trying to tell her something?
“No. I guess you can’t.”
“Anyway, I was a grown-up. Mostly. Sort of.” His smile was a little tilted, but he didn’t drop his gaze. “Not like your kids. It must’ve been really hard for them.”
She thought about that. “It’s been hard for all of us. I used to be afraid they were so young they’d forget him, you know? And I see it in the way they talk about him sometimes. More like a story they’ve been told over and over than something real to them. It hurts, but maybe it’s a blessing, too, you know? That they have this happy story to remember...”
She trailed off with a shrug.
“My dad died right before I met you.” Shane looked up at her, gaze steady. “And I won’t try to say it’s why I was such a colossal asshole, but...”
She held up a hand. “Say no more. That was a long time ago. And I’d say losing your dad entitled you to being a bit of a prick. I just wish that I’d known.”
“Do you?”
He shook his head a little. “Would it have made a difference? Would you have given me another chance?”
A few minutes ago she’d had too many words tumbling over her tongue. Now she could barely think of more than two to string into a sentence. Giving Shane another chance back then would’ve changed everything that had happened in her life...
“It’s okay. You don’t have to answer that.” He laughed and scooted his chair a little bit closer to her. “You can’t change the past. And I really was a jerk. You remember that night I showed up at your place in the rain?”
“How could I forget?” Their knees bumped. “It was the last time I saw you.”
“I already knew I’d blown it with you. You’d started seeing that guy —”
“The guy I married.”
Shane paused. Nodded. “Yeah. Your husband. You’d already started seeing him, and I could tell by the way you talked about him that it was serious.”
“I never talked about Jason with you,” Arden said softly.
His grin looked a little more normal this time. “I know. That’s how I knew it was serious. If you were just playing, trying to make me jealous or something, I figured you’d have told me everything you could. Anyway, I knew you were serious about him, and I knew it was my own fault for not telling you how I felt about you before that. In the movies when the guy shows up in the middle of the night and the rain, the girl always takes him back, you know?”
“In the movies, she’s always in love with that guy, just waiting for him.” She swallowed hard against a surge of emotion threatening to close her throat, steal her voice. “But...I wasn’t in love with you, Shane. And it was probably one of the worst nights of my life having to tell you that.”
“It was a pretty big downer for me too,” he said, then laughed, and reached for her hand. His thumb stroked gently over the back of it. “I knew it was too late. And hell...I didn’t know anything about love back then. I just wanted something I couldn’t have and didn’t realize how much until I didn’t have it anymore.”
Their fingers linked. She squeezed gently. “Just because I didn’t love you didn’t mean I couldn’t have. It just means...I didn’t. And to be fair, Shane, you weren’t really in love with me either.”
He laughed a little louder at that, and she didn’t miss the way his gaze finally cut from hers. “Maybe not. It was a long time ago.”
She squeezed his hand again. “I have to tell you something, and it’s the truth. I never stopped thinking about you, either.”
He looked at her, but said nothing.
Arden drew in a breath. Mistakes were useless if you couldn’t learn from them, and she’d had plenty of time to think about all the ones she’d made with Shane. No matter what happened...or didn’t happen, she wasn’t going to make the same mistakes twice.
“There was so much I should’ve told you back then. Things you never asked and I was afraid to say because I figured...well, you know, I believed you when you said you didn’t want something real from me. And I was afraid of what you’d do if I told you I did, or at least that I was willing to give it a try.”
“You were afraid I’d say no.”
“Maybe,” she said, leaning just a little closer, “I was afraid you’d say yes.”
The kiss was brief and sweet and tasted just a little of horseradish. She cupped his cheek for a second when she pulled away. Looked into his eyes.
