What I Love About You (16 page)

He’d get her to say it when they were alone. Maybe while he was pulling that dress over her head. “How do you feel?” He slid his hand to her shoulder.

“I have a little headache, but I’m okay. I can’t believe I fainted.”

“I brought you juice and an energy bar.” Stella stepped forward and handed over a cold bottle and a PowerBar.

“Thanks.” Natalie ripped off the wrapper. “I’m starving. Carla burned Thanksgiving.”

Blake unscrewed the bottle cap. “Thanks, Stella.” He handed the juice to Natalie and introduced the two women. Then he stood and turned to his brother. Their whole lives, people had mistaken them. Most of the time they laughed about it. This was not one of those times. “Natalie, you’ve met my brother, Beau. He can be a real dick.”

“Karma’s a bitch,” Beau said through a big grin. He stepped forward and reached for Natalie’s hand.

Normally Blake would agree. When he’d first met Stella, he’d let her think he was Beau, but he hadn’t made her faint.

“Hello.” Natalie shook Beau’s hand and swung her feet to the floor. “I’m sorry I fainted on you.” She looked down at her legs. “And obviously made a mess.”

“Sorry I made you faint. That’s never happened before.”

“I think it was seeing both you and your brother at the same time. My brain just couldn’t accept two Blakes without a little forewarning.” She took a bite as her gaze moved from one brother to the other. Trying to pick out the differences.

Stella laughed and folded her arms over her ULV sweatshirt. “The first time I met Blake, I thought he was Beau’s clone.”

Blake didn’t really know Stella. He’d met her only a few times. What he did know he liked, and he hoped to get to know her better in the future. Like tomorrow. He had different plans for tonight.

“I thought you were spending Thanksgiving in San Diego.”

Blake glanced at Beau, then sat on the couch next to Natalie. “That was the plan until Beau punched my dad in the head. Needless to say, that put a damper on the holiday.” And with the holiday ruined, the three of them had hopped an early morning flight to Idaho.

Beau crossed his arms over his chest and rocked back on his heels. “I’m not going to apologize for that. He came on to Stella.”

Stella blushed and threaded her arm through Beau’s. “I could have handled it myself. I’ve handled a lot of drunk men in my lifetime.”

“You don’t have to now. That’s my job.”

Blake didn’t know how he would have handled the old man if it had been Natalie. He would have been pissed, but he wouldn’t have hit him. That’s where he was different from his brother. He understood alcoholism and Beau did not. “He always comes on to women.”

“Then someone should have knocked him out years ago.”

Beau was also less forgiving than Blake. “Finish your orange juice.” He turned to Natalie. “Then we need to get you cleaned up. You smell like a winery and probably have glass in your stockings.”

“How often do you drink with my brother?” Beau had discovered his bottle of Johnnie Walker and assumed Blake had relapsed.

“She doesn’t drink with me, Beau.” He stood and waited for Natalie to lower the juice before he reached for her hand. “Don’t grill her. She’s been through enough today.”

Beau turned to him and he didn’t need to say a thing. His expression told Blake that he was going to let it go—for now—but they would talk about it later.

Natalie set the half-empty bottle of juice on the end table and stood. “It was nice to meet you, Stella and Beau.”

“You have glass and wine in your shoes.” Blake looked down into her face and her pink mouth he’d kissed before he’d left town. He missed her mouth and the rest of her, too. He wasn’t surprised that he’d missed her. Whenever he traveled to third-world countries, he missed people more than things he’d left behind. What did surprise him was how much he’d missed her. How much he’d thought about her. “You have to strip out of those hose before we go anywhere.”

“Right here?”

“We’ll leave,” Beau volunteered, and put his hand on the small of Stella’s back. “We were going to check out the lake at half-time anyway.”

Blake waited until he heard the back door shut before he said, “Pull your dress up.”

Natalie’s gaze darted to the left where his brother and Stella had disappeared before she lowered her hands to the outsides of her hips. Her fingers gathered the sweater material, raising it up her thighs, inch by agonizing inch. She looked up into his face and tried to smile, and he went from semi-erect to full-blown. “Sorry about the broken glass on your porch.” Her fingers stopped. Obviously she couldn’t talk and pull her dress up at the same time. “I’ll clean it up.”

“I don’t give a fuck about that.” He reached beneath the bottom of her dress and hooked his thumbs in the waistband of her panty hose. God, he hated panty hose. They always got in his way and slowed him down. He yanked them down and took her pink panties with them. He went from full-blown to painfully hard.

“Blake!” She grabbed her underwear and pulled it up.

“Don’t waste your time pulling those up,” he said as he got down on one knee. “I’m just going to take them right back off.” He helped her out of the hose, then balled them up and tossed them on top of her shoes. He ran his hands over her smooth shins and calves looking for small cuts. “Do you feel any slivers of glass?” When she didn’t answer, he looked up at her. He looked up past her bare thighs and the pink triangle of her panties. Up her bunched dress about her waist to her face. Her lips were parted and her blue eyes were warm and wanting. Wanting what he wanted, too. He sat back on his heels and slid his hands to the backs of her thighs. “Did you behave while I was gone?” he asked.

She nodded. “I waited for you to get back to act up.”

“I appreciate that.” He leaned forward and kissed her flat belly just above her panties.

“We can’t do this here. Your brother might come back.”

She didn’t step away or drop her dress and his kiss turned to a smile. He slid his face a little farther south and pressed his open mouth in the center of the pink triangle.

“Blake, we can’t do this here. Take me home.” She ran her fingers through his hair and held the sides of his head in her palms. “Take me to bed.”

He planned on it, but first he wanted to make sure she didn’t change her mind. He pulled down her panties and stuck his hand between her legs. She had a landing strip of pubic hair he hadn’t noticed the other night, but he hadn’t been this close to her pretty little box. She was already wet against his hand. He brushed the tips of his fingers upward and kissed next to her strip.

“I’m going to pass out again,” she whispered.

He couldn’t have that. He pulled her panties back up her thighs and stood. If he didn’t stop he’d forget he had a bedroom upstairs. “What did you say to my brother when you thought it was me?”

She dropped the end of her dress and he thought she might balk again. “I said I want some hot monkey love.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and said next to his ear, “I said I want to get you naked and eat off your menu.”

“Holy Jesus.” The air left his lungs like he got hit in the chest.

“Let’s go, big fella.”

Blake rarely had to be told twice, and this was not one of those rare occasions. He took her hand, then walked behind her as they moved toward the front of the house. He not only had a bedroom with a big bouncy bed, he had a four-person spa tub.

“I don’t have shoes.”

“You don’t need shoes.” He put his hands on her waist and steered her toward the stairs and up the first few steps.

“Where are we going?”

“Up. I’m going to put you in my tub and clean you up. Then I’m going to take advantage of you being naked.” There was no way he was going to wait until they walked to her house to jump on Natalie. He didn’t want to give her a chance to change her mind or decide she wanted another quickie.

Chapter Thirteen

Natalie stood on a big white throw rug and ran her hands all over Blake’s arms and shoulders. Her bare breasts and stomach were glued to his chest and belly, and his hard muscles and tight skin threw off heat like he was set on simmer. His hot, wet tongue swept the inside of her mouth as his erection pressed into her through the thin fabric of his underwear and hers. Water ran full blast in the spa tub and their clothes were scattered across the bathroom and Blake’s bedroom beyond.

Before today, she’d only had glimpses of Blake’s body. She’d tried not to look the night she’d brought Sparky back, or the other night when she’d been preoccupied with her own pleasure. She hadn’t stood back and appreciated the full impact of his beautiful body. She’d let her imagination fill in some of the blanks. Her mind had not lived up to the living flesh, and she pulled back from his kiss to slide her hands over the defined ridges and hard contours of his chest and abdomen. He reached for her, but she stepped out of his grasp. He dropped his hands to his side and looked down at her through eyes drowsy with lust.

“Come here, Natalie.”

She shook her head and placed her hand over his heavy heartbeat. She watched her fingertips slip down his chest. His pecs bunched. “I like touching you,” she said. “I want to touch you all over.”

“God, yes.” He sucked in a breath. “Please.”

She touched his hard chest and the ladder of muscles on his stomach. She loved him. Loved him with her heart and body and deep down in her soul. She wasn’t falling in love, she was there. Standing in the middle of a feeling so strong it made her hands shake, her chest squeeze, and her throat choke with emotion. Her fingers followed his dark blond happy trail past his navel to his lower belly.

“What’s Hosea 8:7?”

“ ‘For they have sown the wind,’ ” he answered, his voice tight from holding his breath. “ ‘And they shall reap the whirlwind.’ ”

She reached into the pouch of Blake’s boxer briefs. “Are you the whirlwind?”

“Something like that.”

Blake inhaled deeply as she pulled him out of his underwear, huge and hard and hot in her palm. The other night she hadn’t seen his penis, only felt it deep inside, but that was the difference between a quickie and making love. A quickie was just about getting satisfaction. Making love was more. It was giving and sharing and connecting with more than just a man’s body. “Maybe I’m the whirlwind.”

“You’re going to reap the whirlwind in about five minutes,” he said on a tortured breath as she rubbed her thumb along the corded vein just beneath the bulging head. It had been a long time since she’d stood before a man she loved and held his ridged penis in her hand. A long time since she’d felt the power of her touch over him.

She slipped her palm up and down his thick shaft and squeezed her thighs together against the heat and liquid between her legs. It had been a long time since she’d loved giving pleasure to a man. A long time since she’d loved giving pleasure to the man she loved.

She kissed his chest and stomach and slid to her knees to kiss his tattoo. Just above the line of his blond pubic hair, she sucked his skin into her mouth.

“Natalie, Jesus.” He ran his fingers through her hair and held it from her face. “What are you planning down there?”

“An in-depth lesson on oral sex.” She turned her mouth and licked the clear bead resting in the spongy cleft of his erection. She brushed her lips across him and he sucked in a breath between his teeth. Just because it had been a long time since she’d knelt in front of a naked man didn’t mean she didn’t know how to make his knees buckle and bend him to her will. She had all the power. “Tell me I’m the whirlwind.”

“
I’m
the whirlwind.”

She tickled the sensitive spot on his shaft with her tongue. Then she pulled back and looked up at him. “Natalie 11:28,” she said, referring to the date. “She who blows a reaper shall be called the whirlwind.”

His smoky eyes looked down at her, all shiny and hot with lust. “You can be called anything you want. Reaper, whirlwind, fucking Queen of England.”

“Whirlwind is good.” She smiled, then slid him into her mouth, taking as much as possible. His fingers tangled in her hair as she alternately sucked him hard and caressed the sensitive vein beneath the head of his penis with her tongue. She moved one hand up and down his long shaft and lightly squeezed his testicles with the other.

“That feels good, Natalie.” He tilted his head back. “So fucking good.”

She worked him over, loving the taste and texture of him in her mouth. Losing herself in the pleasure of his body. She loved the power of it and how much it turned her on. She took him deeper, heard his deep groan mix with the sound of water splashing in the tub. She loved how she turned him on with her mouth and hand.

“Stop.”

She sucked him harder and pressed her thumb into the corded flesh beneath the head of his penis. “Stop,” he repeated, but he didn’t push her away. Instead, he groaned from deep in his gut and made that sound when he orgasmed. A sexy, guttural “uhhhn.” She stayed with him as he locked his knees and curled his hands in her hair. When he was through, she lifted her face and looked up at him. His lips were parted as he sucked air in and out of his lungs. Without a word, she lifted her thumb, and his warm semen splashed across her breasts.

“Sweet baby Jesus.” He sank to his knees in front of her.

“I’m your whirlwind.” She wrapped her arms around his neck and whispered in his ear.

“You sucked the whirlwind right out of me.”

“When you get your strength back, clean me up and take advantage of me.” She expected it to take him a few minutes, if not a half hour, but Blake had hidden reserves. Lots of stored-up energy.

He picked her up and put her in the tub. The water lapped and swirled about the bottoms of her breast as he washed his ejaculate from her skin. He soaped her nipples and drove her crazy with the teasing touches of his hands and mouth. She sat back as he soaped up her shins and calves and slid his hands up her thighs. He pressed his thumbs into her slick crotch and touched her until she was more than ready to have him deep inside.

Blake’s energy reserves lasted as she straddled his hips and placed her palms on the sides of his face. His hands grabbed her hips and she looked into his eyes as he lowered her onto his thick erection. The tips of her breasts brushed his chest and she watched the need for her flicker and shine in his eyes. With him hot and deep and filling her body, it was more than just sex. She moved, rocking her hips and kissing his neck and his throat, running her hands all over him. She made love to him with her body and every pulsing beat of her heart. His steady breath brushed her cheek as he steadily pumped into her, stroking her inside walls. She pulled back to look into his eyes, deep gray with lust and need. She placed both hands on the sides of his face. She sucked in his breath, and he sucked in hers as she stared into his soul. She shared her heart and body. Her love worked a shudder free from deep in her own soul. She hugged him tight against the almost violent orgasm spreading through her, grabbing her heart and clenching her stomach, and feeling as if she might implode. She hugged him against her heart. Against the emotion she couldn’t keep inside. Against the love that changed her life and blew her world apart.

Blake couldn’t recall the last time he’d spent the night in a woman’s bed. Completely sober. Whether it was a few beers or a few bottles of Johnnie, he’d always had something in his hand besides a woman.

Against his throat, Natalie’s soft blond hair tickled his skin. She lay butt to nuts, or as she had preferred, spooning, in her girly bed with mounds of pillows and ruffles and lace. Her soft, even breathing brushed across his biceps and gently raised her breasts. They were both worn out from a sexual trifecta that had started in his bathroom; moved to her kitchen while she cooked a meal of steak, salad, and Poppin’ Fresh croissants; and ended in Natalie’s bed. A woman’s even breathing was usually his cue to slip from bed, grab his clothes, and head out. It was around midnight, and the only light entering the room was from a crack in the bathroom door. He could easily go. Leave without stirring a hair on her head. He was stealthy as hell, gone in a puff of smoke.

He buried his nose in the top of her blond hair. She smelled like clean sunshine, and he pulled her tighter against his chest. He didn’t know if it was sobriety or the fact that he hadn’t had sex for months, but the sex with Natalie was better than he’d had in a long time, if ever. She was gorgeous and hot and he’d been trying to get her naked for weeks. After the quickie in her living room, he’d definitely wanted more, but he’d never guessed that behind her beautiful face and proper facade she gave fantasy blow jobs. The kind a man dreamed about but never actually got. The kind where a woman moaned and sucked and acted like she couldn’t get enough of him in her mouth.

“I’m your whirlwind,” she’d said. He didn’t know about that, but he did know she turned his head around. He talked to her about things he’d not even mentioned to Beau yet.

“Why did your brother want to know if I drink with you?” she’d asked as they’d sat at the kitchen table eating like they were ravenous after having ravenous sex against the refrigerator.

It wasn’t a secret. He’d had a problem and dealt with it. “Because I spent two months in a rehab last summer.”

She’d slowly chewed, then swallowed. “Why were you in rehab?”

“Alcohol. I was drinking too much.” Just because it wasn’t a secret didn’t mean he wanted to talk about it. He’d had a few white-knuckle hours at his father’s house, which Blake suspected contributed to Beau punching their dad.

“How much is too much?” She gazed at him with those dark blue eyes of her. Damn, she liked to pry.

“More than was good for me and less than my dad. My old man drinks beer from noon until five, then switches to whiskey until he passes out.” That had been his routine for years, and he had no interest in disrupting his routine. He said he was too old to stop, but he’d promised Beau that if “his boys” spent Thanksgiving with him, he’d stay sober. He’d even locked up his sauce in his gun safe. He’d lasted two hours before he began sneaking out to the garage. By the time the old man came on to Stella, he’d been tanked and Beau had decked him.

“That’s a shame your father couldn’t stay sober for you.” She reached for a glass of water. “My mom’s addicted to her fifth wheel and she couldn’t even make it up here for Thanksgiving. She’ll probably miss Christmas, too.” She raised the glass. “Granted, they aren’t in the same league, but both parents miss out, I think.” She took a drink and swallowed. “How many days have you been sober?”

“One hundred and nineteen,” he answered without hesitation.

A wrinkle pulled at her brows as she licked a droplet of water from the bow of her top lip. “Then why do you have a bottle of Johnnie Walker in your wine cellar?”

That was the same question Beau had for him. “To remind myself that I can control it. Same reason I shoot photos of it.”

She looked at him for several heartbeats. “You don’t go to meetings?”

“I don’t need meetings. I don’t need to go to a shrink at the VA, either.” He’d looked up from his salad. “I have everything under control.”

She looked back at him, and he should have known she would not let it go. “What’s everything?”

He was having a good time. He liked Natalie. Talking about his addiction and flashbacks wasn’t a good time. “Never mind.”

She put down her fork and leaned slightly toward him. Her eyes stared into his like she meant business. “Blake, my life is an open book. I don’t have any secrets. Every embarrassing thing that has happened to me is out there for the world to see. Your life cannot be worse than being married to a man who embezzled half the town blind. There are those who still think I had something to do with it. Sometimes shit happens that isn’t our fault.” She picked up her fork and stabbed a carrot in her salad. “And sometimes it is our fault, like the time when I drove my mother’s Chrysler Town and County through Howdy’s Trading Post. His display of Jesus bobble heads flew everywhere.”

He tried not to laugh. “Foot slip?”

“Wasp. It was buzzing around my head and I was slapping at it and screaming and I missed the turn on Shore Lane and ran into Howdy’s. Thank goodness Howdy’s never has much business or I could have ended up with more than a ticket, five thousand dollars in restitution, and a Buddy Christ bobble head stuck in the grille.” She raised the fork and asked one more time before she took a bite, “What is your everything?”

“I have occasional flashbacks,” he confessed, because talking about those was easier than talking about booze.

She chewed. “How occasional?”

“It’s only happened about four times, and it’s not a big deal. Something like a noise or a smell will make me disoriented for several seconds, and I feel like I’m standing on a roof in Ramadi or crouched behind a rock in the Hindu Kush.” This was the part he’d never mentioned to anyone. Not the shrink in rehab or his brother. Although he suspected Beau guessed. “For a few seconds I feel stuck between what is real and what isn’t.”

“And you feel helpless.” It was a statement. Not a question.

He wasn’t helpless. “I have it under control.” Like his addiction.

“What do you do when you have a flashback?”

“Do?” He was getting annoyed and wished he wouldn’t have mentioned it. Now she was going to think he had PTSD and would shoot up the joint. “You don’t have to worry that I’ll strip off my clothes and run down the streets, drooling, and shooting at phantom targets.”

“I wasn’t worried. You should give me a little more credit than that.” She frowned at him. “What you describe sounds a little like the anxiety I used to have shortly after Michael was arrested. My biggest trigger was the sound of the CBS News. I’d hear that
bing-bong-bing
and my heart would start booming in my chest. My face would get really hot, and I’d pace and pace and pace, and I’d think I was having a heart attack. I really did think I was going to die.” She picked up her knife and cut off a small piece of steak. “I was diagnosed with extreme anxiety due to stress, but I was pregnant and couldn’t take drugs. So I went to a therapist who taught me how to talk myself out of a full-blown attack.”