We Are Made of Stardust - Peaches Monroe #1 (23 page)

“You’re so beautiful right now. You’re my princess. You’re my girl, now ride me. Ride me all the way home.”

I growled again.

“Call my name,” he said.

His chest glistened with sweat, and I could feel his pulse against mine, his skin sticking then sliding against mine.

My ass started to slap against his skin on each down-thrust, a naughty, spanking sound.

My toes curled and my heart jumped up as I started to climax. “Lionheart,” I said.

“Yes.”

“Lionheart!” I dug my fingertips into his chest.

“Yes!” He was already coming himself, his cock shaking and pulsating inside me.

“Oh, Lionheart!”

I fell apart, my orgasm blossoming everywhere at once, from my bones to my skin, especially my skin.

My hands slipped on his chest, sliding off the sides and to the bed below as my arms weakened and collapsed with sweet relief.

He thrust once more, his body strong and compact beneath me. Dalton Deangelo was no pony; he was a stallion.

I whimpered as a second, smaller detonation leveled me completely. My head found a resting spot on his shoulder, my lips nearly touching his neck.

We both stopped moving, and I stared at his ear with newfound curiosity.

He had the handsomest ears. The way the cartilage curled around, it was like that Golden Mean perfect swirl thing you can find in all the most famous works of art.

My bra was soaked through, and our chests were stuck together as readily as two sides of a licked envelope. I didn’t dare move and feel the grossness. Normally, I wouldn’t have rested my body weight on top of a guy, but this time, it was the furthest thing from my mind. I just stared at the swirling contours of his ear, my mind blank.

His chest rose with a deeper breath, and then rumbled with the tremor of his voice as he said, “What are you thinking about?”

“You have a really cute ear.”

Without missing a beat, he said, “Yes, that’s my good ear. The other one isn’t quite as nice.”

I started to chuckle, which made him gasp and groan, because a certain part of his anatomy was losing its rigid structure and being squeezed out of a very satisfied Miss Kitty.

He rolled us to the side and I pulled away, the room’s air cool on my glistening front. The sensation of the side of my stomach touching the sheets made me aware of my floppiness, so I kept rolling, onto my back. With my bra on, my breasts weren’t headed for my armpits, so this was the most flattering pose.

Even though I was still self-conscious, I felt more comfortable in the nude around Dalton than I ever had with another guy. Not that there had been many guys, but I’d done a thing or two, some of them with ice cream.

He grabbed my robe and excused himself to the washroom for a moment, then came back and stretched out alongside me. His panther-like body made everything he was touching look better. Even me.

He took my hand in his and raised it to kiss my knuckles, a sweet smile on his face. He tugged me toward him, and I rolled back onto my side, floppiness be damned.

This is what mornings are like in heaven
, I thought.

“This is nice,” I said.

“I feel so relaxed, but I don’t dare fall asleep or you’ll make like Cinderella and disappear on me.”

“This is my house. Where would I go?”

I reached over and traced the contours of his hipbone with my fingertip. He twitched, like he couldn’t decide if he was ticklish in that spot or not. I kept tracing along the hollow, then looped up around his navel. His skin was so smooth and firm, his body breathtaking in its beauty.

As I was admiring him, he reached around my shoulder and unhooked my bra, then pulled it away. My girls slipped down without the support. Usually, being naked with a guy in a room full of sunshine, I would have reached for a sheet to provide some cover, but this time I didn’t.

He reached over and palmed the bottom of one breast, lifting as though curious about the heft. My nipple hardened at his touch, sending a pulse of desire down the core of me.

“You’re so feminine,” he whispered. “Like the pure embodiment of femininity.”

I ran my finger up the valley of his chest, enjoying how perfectly suited to my fingertip the shape was.

“And you’re so masculine,” I said.

“Thanks, but I wasn’t fishing for a compliment. I meant what I said.”

His words gave me one of those smiles you feel all the way to the back of your head, like an ultra-tight bun.

Maybe his god-like body was why I didn’t feel more self-conscious. Even if he slept with really attractive women, if they were mere mortals, they couldn’t compare to Dalton’s beauty. So what if my thigh was the same circumference as his waist? He and I were simply not in competition with each other. We were in beautiful contrast.

~

We lay in bed together for a while, neither asleep nor awake, but somewhere in the middle.

I woke up with a start when the bathroom door slammed and the shower turned on. Shayla was awake. It was still Saturday, right?

A handsome man was snuggled up next to me, a streak of sunshine across his muscular calf, turning the dark brown hair golden. It was nearly one o’clock.

He stirred next to me and groggily threw one tanned arm over me.

I whispered, “You can stay sleeping for a bit, but I’m going to get started making some lunch.”

He grumbled, “Breakfast.”

“It’s after one.”

“Scrambled eggs and ketchup?”

I told him I would do my best, though I suspected we had neither item in the kitchen. Had he asked for tofu hot dogs and chipotle-infused mayonnaise, that I could have provided. I quickly pulled on my clothes and headed downstairs.

Nope, no eggs in the kitchen.*

*Except for chocolate ones.

Off I went on a quick jaunt to the corner store, three blocks away, on Spider Avenue.

On my way into Moody’s News & Milk, I spotted a headline on a copy of
The Beaver Daily
that caught my eye:
Hollywood Loots Local Treasures
.

A lady with a toddler was coming in behind me, so I held the door open for her. She thanked me, and scooped the one and only copy of
The Beaver Daily
left on the newsstand. I quickly assessed my need for local news and decided not to fight her for it, since I had my own inside scoop, naked in my bed.

The woman gasped audibly.

I turned to see what the fuss was about. “What does it say?”

She covered her mouth with her hand and laughed, the newspaper shaking in her hand. Her toddler wandered off to rearrange the gum and candy on the toddler-height shelf near the checkout.

“I get it now,” she said. “Beaver-Daily. Not Beaverdale Daily. It’s like Beaverdale-y.”

Ah, so she was just cottoning onto the pun-like name of our local paper.

“All part of the charm. We’re a charming town. Chock full of charm,” I said.

“I’ve lived here for five years. I even wrote a big article about the town a year ago for
Small Town Life in America
, but I missed that detail.”

I nodded politely and went off to locate the items I’d come there for: ketchup and farm-fresh local eggs. Even though Dalton would probably frown at the carbohydrates, I picked up a loaf of bread as well.

As I paid for my things, I got the sense the woman was peeking at me over the newspaper she was reading. Her kid was running amok, two fists full of candy. I paid for my stuff and got out of there, eager to share my first breakfast with a certain sexy actor.

The woman watched me all the way to the door, and I didn’t think much of it, until…

… I turned the last corner before my house and nearly ran into a film crew, swarming around a big-haired woman with too much makeup.

With horror, I realized the woman with the snooty expression was the same one who had chased Dalton into Peachtree Books exactly one week earlier.
We. Hate. Her.

Something crashed and there was the sound of terra cotta breaking. Not my fucking geraniums.

I wasn’t wearing any sleeves, but I pushed them up anyway and prepared to kick some serious ass.

“This is private property!” I yelled into the teeming mass of them.

Nobody paid me any attention.

I cleared my throat, set down my grocery bag, and yelled, “GET OFF MY LAWN!”

A couple heads turned, but nobody got off my lawn. The guy with the camera who was standing on my steps took another step up and rang the doorbell.
My doorbell.

Well, I sure showed them, because I wasn’t in my house. Hah!

I picked up my grocery bag and was about to back away and sneak around to the alley, to go in the back door, when I realized the door of my house was opening.

It opened slowly. So slowly.

My eyes widened and my mouth dropped.

Shayla stood in the doorway, wearing the tiniest little tank top, and the pair of men’s boxer shorts she usually slept in.

OH MY GOD we’re doing a
Notting Hill.

The crewmen who were back by the van, close to me, let out some appreciative chuckles and other noises at the sight of Shayla, generally giving their approval.

Shayla didn’t back away from the open door, but stood her ground. She also raised one toned arm and ran it back through her raven-black hair like a professional swimsuit model on a cover shoot.

The big-haired reporter woman jumped up the steps and stood next to her, a microphone held between them.

The woman said, “How long have you been dating Dalton Deangelo?”

Shayla gave the woman a coy look. “Who?”

“He’s here right now, isn’t he?”

Shayla looked down over the crew and made eye contact with me. I shook my head, no. He’d been trying to avoid them for a reason. Furthermore, and I cannot stress this too much,
we hate that reporter woman
. Hate her!

“Nope, he’s not here,” Shayla said.

Now, if you play poker, you know many people have a tell, a physical sign that reveals they’re bluffing. Some people rub their nose, while others might give too much eye contact, giggle, or sweat. Shayla does all of the aforementioned things.

Sweating profusely, she giggled and made aggressive eye contact with the reporter, then stared blankly at the camera.

Spoiler alert: the reporter lady didn’t believe a word.

“Would you say you’re friends?” the woman asked.

“I don’t know.”

“Keeping things casual?”

“Um…” Shayla’s forehead glistened as she rubbed her nose, coughed, and gave me a wild-eyed, pleading look.

I elbowed my way through the crowd, saying, “Shay, get in the house and put a shirt on.”

The reporter turned and stopped me on my own steps, microphone waggling in my face and tapping against my lips and chin in her excitement.

I shoved the microphone to the side with one hand and said, “Jeez, buy a girl dinner first.”

“And are you the mother?” the report asked.

The nerve! Something shifted in the universe, and everything took on a red tinge. Was I the mother? As in Shayla’s mother? Oh, hell, no. In the words of an eloquent comic book hero, HULK SMASH!

“Of course not,” I snapped. “I’m the sassy best friend with the good advice and a soft shoulder to cry on. Now get off my porch before I break my foot off in your ass.”

She stepped back, looking genuinely frightened, but now she was blocking my front door. She was also reading something from her cell phone, and holding one palm up at me, like she was the traffic cop of my damn porch.

“Seriously, lady?”

“Two questions,” she said.

I looked to Shayla for advice, but she’d already disappeared into the house, much to the disappointment of the leering film crew.

“Sure,” I said. “Go ahead and ask.”

She tucked the phone away, a devious look on her face. “First, isn’t this gorgeous weather we’re having today?”

I slowly turned to the side, looking beyond the camera shoved in my face, at the blue sky. “Yes,” I said. “It’s very nice, if you like that sort of thing.”

“Second,” she said, sucking up air with a deep breath. “I understand you’re sleeping with Dalton Deangelo. How would you describe sex with him?”

I dropped my grocery bag on the porch and raced away from her, down the porch stairs. I knew how to deal with people like this, thanks to Dalton.

I jumped over the flowers, cranked the brass tap connected to the house’s water to fill the hose, then grabbed the hose by the sprayer and sent an arc of water right into the chest of the nearest guy. He had been taking still photos with a camera, but now he held his arms high over his head, yelling, “Not the camera, not the camera!”

“How about the face?”

“Huh?”

I blasted him in the face with the water, then turned on the rest of the crew.

The big-haired woman was not my favorite person at the moment, but I’ll say this: the broad could run and dodge a good hosing. She moved like a movie action hero evading slow-motion bullets.

Within seconds, the lot of them were packed up in their nearby van. I kept the water trained on the vehicle until they pulled away. And then, since I was already in a watering mood, I took care of the potted red geraniums that hadn’t yet been destroyed.

After a little spontaneous gardening, I went inside the house and said, “Who wants scrambled eggs?”

Dalton was walking down the stairs, fully dressed but with scruffy bedhead hair.

Dalton said, “Did that just happen, or was I having a vivid dream about you threatening Brooke Summer with foot-related violence?”

Shayla, who was leaning against the back of our front room sofa, said, “Oh! Brooke Summer. Yeah. I knew I recognized her. Didn’t she leave that one show to have her own show, where she visits celebrities at home unexpectedly?”

Dalton ran his fingers through his dark hair, looking all cute and sleepy and handsome. “I thought her show was all fake, but I guess if today is any indication, she really does ambush people.” He frowned, looking concerned. “Shayla, I’m sorry you got caught up in this. Just pray the producers and editors find the footage of you in your underwear boring and don’t run it.”

She crossed her arms over her chest and started edging around us, toward the stairs. “They can’t do that. I never signed a release.”