- TEN -
RAEGAN –
I felt them hovering over my sleeping body and their hands scooping me up out of my slumber. I tried to make sense of my odd surroundings. What had happened to my warm sheets? Why were my feet dangling in the air? A pressure in my ribs became overwhelmingly painful.
A hand pushed into my mouth, while more hands quickly secured a piece of cloth around my eyes. The darkened bedroom was entirely masked and the feeling was suffocating. I distinctly felt a hand slide tightly around my stomach and I jolted, finally realizing that I wasn’t in my bed anymore. This wasn’t right.
I sucked in a lungful of air so I could let it go in an ear-splitting scream, but then I felt a soft touch brush down the side of my face.
“Rae,” I heard a deep voice whisper. “Rae, you’re having a nightmare.”
I jerked away, but then a warm body slid in behind mine and I recognized that my body was still safely in bed. I wasn’t being taken. They weren’t back for us. It was just a dream. I had to repeat all of these phrases over and over until my brain believed them to be true.
Lane’s body wrapped around me from behind, every inch of my back molded to his front. Our legs entwined, allowing us to be as close as possible. His hand threaded through my hair and my rapid heartbeats began to slow down.
“Sleep, Rae, I’m right here. I’ll never let anyone hurt you again. Sleep baby, I’ve got you now,” he whispered.
A protest was on my lips. I couldn’t help but think about the children lying next to us, but his warm, comforting arms squelched any thoughts of leaving. So I slept, knowing my body was safe. It was my heart I was beginning to worry about.
~~~~~~~
We had been in the New York apartment for two weeks and we still hadn’t spoken about where we were going from here. Or even if we would go together. I knew that neither Lane nor I wanted to stay in this apartment, but it was convenient. And I didn’t think that either of us wanted to face the real world just yet.
A week into our stay, Lane finally started working again. He logged in remotely from the computer and made phone calls a couple of hours a day. He informed me that his boss, Jace, would be okay with him taking off as much time as he needed, but he hated the idea of not doing his part.
Apparently, Jace had really helped him out and they seemed to have a mutual respect for each other. I assumed Lane valued Jace for being a good husband to his friend, Audrey. I couldn’t explain my jealousy over a girl I had never met, but it made me feel a smidge better to hear that she was married. Quite happily married, at that. I had to admit though that I still wondered about Lane and Audrey, because they spoke on the phone more than any “friends” I had ever been around.
I was beginning to think that I had been the only one feeling the pull between the two of us—that maybe it was just all in my head. Every day it seemed to get a little bit stronger for me. A smile here. A brief touch there. But Lane never made any advances nor did he say anything, so I constantly questioned what I was feeling.
Could it just be that I hadn’t had any attention for the past four years and now even the smallest amount felt like the greatest thing in the world? Could I be imagining the sensations that shot straight between my thighs when he winked at me from across the living room? Or the thrill I felt when I saw that smile he gave me every time we woke up early in the morning.
That was another thing. He was now sleeping in the bed with us every night. Kate wouldn’t have it any other way, and I couldn’t blame him for falling for those pleading blue eyes. But he also still crawled in behind me late at night, claiming I was having bad dreams. Some nights they were excruciating and I craved his comfort, but there were other nights when I woke and didn’t remember having any nightmares. Regardless, before the sun came up the next morning, he would always move back to his side and it wreaked havoc on my heart to see him sprawled out on his back, so close yet so far. The morning sun would dance across his blonde hair and scream for me to run my fingers through it and beg for him to come back to my side of the bed.
We never spoke of our late-night cuddle sessions. It was as if they were a secret, even to us—something we only indulged in when the nighttime could conceal our desires. I thought it was all in my imagination until last night.
Lane and I had been in the kitchen cleaning up after dinner and the kids were playing in Kate’s old nursery. They certainly had no qualms about that room or playing with toys that were meant for children much younger than they were. It was all new and that’s what they cared about.
After I’d put the last plate on the wooden drying rack, I reached for the dishtowel and wiped my hands dry. Lane was washing down the countertops, so I leaned up against the sink to watch his muscles move underneath his cotton shirt. It was a hobby I had picked up lately. He’d gotten his stitches taken out a few days ago and had already started trying to work out again.
Now he tortured me daily with extremely slow pull-ups from a bar that extended across the hallway from one wall to the next. He also made me suffer every time I had to watch him do a zillion sit-ups on the living room floor. And when he did his push-ups and was forced to only use one arm when his shoulder hurt, I wanted to lick all of the sweat off of his heated skin. He never looked at me during his workouts, but I knew he felt my eyes on him, which only heated my skin more.
He probably thought I was the biggest creeper ever, but I just couldn’t make myself look anywhere else. I couldn’t apologize either; my body had been on fire for two weeks now. Soon the flames would either kill me or I would have to find a way to quench them.
With my hip pressed into the countertop, I watched Lane toss his towel into the laundry room. He turned and looked down at me, and I observed something flicker intensely in his hazel eyes. Before I could blink, he leaned in and slammed his lips against mine.
The approach had been quick and shocking, but the kiss was slow and smooth. He didn’t try and force his tongue in or to open my mouth any further, but he did coax me to move against his lips and follow his rhythm. The fire inside of me was a full-on inferno at that point. Just as I started to reach out for his head, he pulled back, breathing harshly against my lips.
“Tell me I didn’t just f*ck up,” he pleaded. “Tell me you wanted me to do that as much as I needed to.”
Why were we talking? The flames inside of me were increasing in intensity and burning me from the inside out. I was a full-on forest fire. I grabbed his neck and pulled him toward me forcefully. I had never been the dominant one in my relationships. But when a girl has been starving for affection as long as I have, it looks like she’ll do things she never thought herself capable of.
Lane groaned into my mouth when our lips touched again. I gave him back the control but let my hands stay in the hair on the back of his head. The height difference between us was vast, but he leaned forward enough for me to hold on tight. His tongue dashed into my mouth without invitation and I tangled it with mine. His hands latched onto my hips and I pressed further into his body.
God, I craved the feeling of his bare skin against mine.
We stayed in the kitchen for who knows how long, just exploring each other’s mouths, and I prayed he would take me right there. His hard body against mine and nothing in between.
Hours. Minutes. Or maybe it had only been mere seconds later when he pulled back and placed three slow, little kisses on the corners of my lips. Then he turned away and marched out of the kitchen without saying a word.
I would have thought the kisses had been drummed up by my overactive imagination at that point, but I had the swollen lips to prove it. I had felt his body pressed up against mine, and I never even knew a feeling like the one he created within me was possible. I wanted more.
LANE -
After breakfast, I settled Kate and Braden on the couch with an extra-thick fleece blanket tucked around them and then finally made my way down the hall. I’d put some comical penguin movie on the television for them, although I could have turned on the news and they would have zoned out just the same. The TV was such a new concept for them that maybe I shouldn’t have introduced it—maybe I should have taken advantage of the rare opportunity.
With a shrug, I decided to let them just be little kids who liked to watch cartoons. Plus, a steaming hot shower was calling my name. I needed the kind that would leave me tender and blazing-red afterward, yet calmer. I needed the reassurance that I could do this. I’d wondered for so long if I would even be able to see her again and hadn’t allowed myself to think about whether or not I could do this dad thing. Doubts were raining heavily on me, and I needed to clear them before I saw Kate’s sweet little eyes looking up at me all day—counting on me to be the strong one.
Just like my dad said Raegan had actually been a tremendous help, with the transition. Whenever I was feeling like taking on this parenting gig solo was a heavy, suffocating fog and I wouldn’t be any good at it, she would stroke my arm knowingly. With just that touch, she would reassure me that I was very much capable.
Just to lump more onto my already full plate, I couldn’t get the thought of Raegan’s lips on mine out of my head. Last night, I had felt her eyes burning into the skin on my back. I’d often caught her staring at me with raw, naked lust, and I knew I could only take it for so much longer. Add that to the fact that she had a knockout chest and toned legs, and she had me at the end of my rope.
I’ve been trying to hold back because we have kids to think about but f*ck, if she kept looking at me like she did last night, I would snap. I had only tasted her mouth, but now that I had sampled the pure honey, I wanted the whole jar.
I pushed the bedroom door open and jolted to a stop when I saw Raegan sitting on the edge of the bed… completely topless. Possibly completely naked but my gray towel was wrapped around her little waist. She stared out the window as she brushed her dripping wet hair, the teasing drops sliding down her freshly bathed body. I knew I should have looked away. Every ounce of propriety my mother had taught me was reprimanding me for not being a gentleman and averting my gaze.
Screw the shower, my body was already heating up on its own. The curves of her figure and the porcelain glow of her skin was the stuff angels were made of. My index finger twitched to glide down the line of her back and over the tips of her perfect breasts. This girl was all f*cking woman.
I heard a small gasp and then she said, “Lane, I’m so sorry.” I silently groaned when she pulled the towel up to cover herself.
Her words finally permeated my stupefied brain and a small smile cracked my lips. “You’re apologizing to me?” Wasn’t I the one who was intruding on her?
“This is your bedroom. I should have gotten ready in the guest bath. I’m sorry.”
I smiled at the blush on her cheeks. I seemed my little temptress hadn’t woken up yet. The girl who had been seducing me with her eyes for the past two weeks was feeling shy about me seeing her breasts?
My prying gaze still hadn’t left her chest, even though it was now covered, much to my regret. I wondered what my face looked like right then. All I wanted to do was place my finger in the space between her tits and gently tug down that oppressive towel.
I forced my feet to begin their reluctant trek toward the bathroom. Luckily, I had to walk right past her on my way, which allowed my eyes a few more moments to try and recreate what I’d witnessed when I first walked in.
“Lane...” she breathed out harshly. I immediately looked at her face and spotted the flush creeping up her cheeks again. “Don’t act like you haven’t seen hundreds of these before.” She gestured with a sweeping motion across her chest. My feet immediately halted their forward motion, and I stood towering over her small frame seated on the bed.
“Hundreds? Give me a little more credit than that. I haven’t been with hundreds of women, babe.” I smirked when her breath caught at my endearment. “Let’s go ahead and make this real f*cking clear right now. No matter how many I have seen, I have never seen these.” I couldn’t stop my finger when it touched the dip in her throat and trailed lazily down her heated skin. Seriously, it had a mind of its own. “And these are phenomenal.”
Infinitesimally, she moved back to lean on her hands that were situated behind her. Opening herself up. To me. F*ck. Her chest rose and fell faster as my finger hauled the gray cotton towel down to reveal what I was dying to get my hands on. I knelt down on the ground in between her legs and looked up into her emerald eyes. They darkened and she didn’t warn me off. Hell, that was a green light if I had ever seen one.
Still looking up at her, I moved forward until my mouth was a fraction of an inch from her perfectly rounded breasts. I wanted my tongue to be the first thing that touched those and then my hands could have their turn at the feel of her smooth skin.
She gazed down at me through heavy eyelids. Her breathing picked up in speed, moving her chest even closer to my mouth. My heart pounded loudly in my ears and besides her breathing, it was the only thing I could hear in this bedroom filled with late-morning light.
In one long leisurely motion, I ran the flat side of my tongue from the underside of her breast and over her nipple to the top, where I placed a lingering kiss. It almost pained me to lift my mouth away from her skin, but I did it to gauge her reaction.
A quick stream of air departed her lungs as if she had been holding her breath that whole time. She looked into my eyes as I stared into her scorching green ones. I didn’t realize she had moved her arms, but now I recognized the sweet, stinging feeling of her fingernails in my biceps.
“Please... please, do it again...” she breathlessly whispered. She moved her chest just marginally and directed her opposite, untouched breast closer to my lips.
“God, you’re beautiful,” I whispered into her skin before my tongue gave it the identical attention as its partner. My lips finished their prolonged caress on the top swell, and then my eyes peered up to see her head thrown back and her mouth opened in complete bliss. F*ck, I could get that reaction with just a little tongue-play?
A groan ripped up my throat, as her name fervently flew out of my mouth. I instantly pushed her back by her shoulders, and when she was flat against my mattress, my lips hungrily claimed her breasts again. I couldn’t decide which one to give more attention to, so while my mouth was enjoying one, my hand grasped the heavy weight of the other.
The bulk of my body covered hers and her hands gripped my back, holding me with all of her little might. There was so much more to explore, but I had just been introduced to this area and I wanted to be well acquainted before I had to move on. My tongue flicked across her nipples at a rapid speed and she began to whimper. Her eyes were squeezed shut and her nails scratched wildly down my shirt-covered back.
Her legs began to quiver, grinding into me in all the right places. My tongue and fingers continued their torment, and soon she lifted her arms and grabbed for the comforter above her head in a clenching grasp. The movement only abetted me by forcing her back to arch, which caused her chest to push closer to my needy mouth.
All of a sudden it had become a relentless pursuit for me, and I was not going to back down until I got what I was after. Her hands twisted and squeezed my white quilt above her head, almost as if she needed to release aggression somewhere else besides my back.
Without removing my mouth, I reached up and laced my fingers through hers and she moaned shamelessly. Her body shook underneath me and then locked up, rigid as a f*cking board.
“Ohmygod... Lane...” Her words were barely audible. When I looked up at her face, her mouth was gaped open and a silent scream tore from her body.
She finally came down from the high and I growled, “Holy shit, woman. That was the hottest damn thing in the world.” My face nestled into her neck while I squeezed her fingers that were still above her head. “Oh, the things I could do to you.”
I lifted my body and looked directly down at her beautiful face. My eyes zeroed in on her swollen bottom lip; she must have bitten it while I wasn’t looking. I examined every centimeter of her soft, pink lips and imagined what they would feel like on places other than my mouth.
Just then I heard an unfamiliar noise. I lifted up a bit to focus on the sound and it trailed into my bedroom again. The high trill of laughter saturated my lust and caused me to snap back to reality—our reality. I realized that Raegan hadn't heard it because, solely focused on me, she was trying to lean in for my lips.
Kate’s sweet laugh hit me again, and I quickly comprehended where I was and what I was doing. I jumped backward off the bed and tried not to focus on Raegan spread out like a gift from God.
“Shit, Rae,” I groaned while I ran my hands down my face. My hands that now smelled like her. “Shit, what are we doing? What am I doing? I’m so f*cking sorry... I shouldn’t have done that. I’m sorry...”
Before I could see the look on her face—the disappointment toward me—I stomped into the bathroom and slammed the door behind me. My hands tightened forcefully as my fingers dug into my palms. I needed to punch something. I needed to f*cking punch myself. I reared back to pound my fist into the drywall, but I immediately realized what that would sound like to those outside of the bathroom. What if I scared Kate or Braden? So I stood there in the middle of my bathroom, my whole body vibrating with aggression toward myself, breathing in and out unevenly.
What had I been thinking? Here Raegan and I were just trying to help Kate and Braden adjust to a normal life, and I was trying to take advantage of her body. Had it really been that long since I’d had sex? It sure felt like it, but that wasn’t a good excuse. I couldn’t screw up our friendly relationship, because somehow I would f*ck it up and she wouldn’t be able to stay. Right now, Kate couldn’t handle having Raegan and Braden, the two most important people in her life, taken away. Hell, I couldn’t fathom them leaving either.
Turned out I needed that flaming-hot shower after all. My fingers were still tingling from the feel of her soft skin underneath me. When I headed toward the shower stall, I spotted Rae’s white cotton bra and matching panties lying on the floor. Shit. My throbbing need should have diminished, knowing that my own mother had purchased those for her, but it didn’t. It didn’t help one f*cking bit.
My clothes hit the ground before the boiling spray of the shower had a chance to beat the cold tiles. When I stepped in, I had that first quick instant where my body felt like it was in a tub of ice water, but then my sensory receptors caught up with my brain and I jumped back from the intense heat. The extreme temperatures didn’t help my situation at all though so I reached down, stroked my length, and thought about a pair of eyes so green the Emerald Isle should be envious.