She felt him inside of her—just as hard as he’d been minutes before.
And then they were locked in yet another wonderful embrace, and he was doing it to her all over again, and somehow it was just as amazing and special as it had been the first time.
When they finished once more, the two of them were exhausted. Red rinsed off and then stepped out of the shower—the water had grown cool by now.
“I’ll be out as quickly as I can,” she told him, feeling rushed after spending so much time doing everything but washing. Nicole didn’t mind, she found herself smiling and shaking her head at their adolescent display of lust.
Not to mention the noise that had come from the master bath. She could only hope that with a house this size, his mother had likely not been within range to hear the two of them in action.
She finished showering as quickly as possible, put on a navy halter-top, white skirt, and a pair of navy and white striped wedge sandals. She quickly towel dried her hair, and finding it still damp, tied it back into a twist.
When Nicole came downstairs, Red and his mother were in the kitchen, drinking glasses of fresh lemonade made by Chef Roland.
“Thirsty?” Red asked.
“I’m okay, thanks,” Nicole said, as Erica’s gaze followed her movements.
“I’d sure be thirsty if I were you,” Erica said, smiling a secretive, knowing smile. She drank deeply from her glass of pink lemonade. Pieces of fruit swirled in the glass.
Nicole decided to ignore the older woman’s jibes, and instead turned to Red. “So, where are we eating today?”
“I thought we could go to The Union League Café,” he said. “I’ve been there once or twice in the last year, and it’s pretty incredible.”
Erica shrugged. “Isn’t it rather dull?”
“What’s that?” he asked, his tone getting that unnatural sharpness that he seemed to acquire when dealing with his mother.
Nicole fidgeted over by one of the islands, watching the two of them as if she were a spectator at a tennis match.
“It just seems dull,” his mother said. “This life you live. Wining and dining women, eating out at fancy restaurants, driving in limousines and fancy jets. Don’t you get bored?”
“Not really,” he said. “And I don’t wine and dine women. Just one woman,” he said, his eyes locking on Nicole’s. She smiled, tried to let him know she didn’t care that his mother made those comments.
The truth was, Erica’s constant little quips were starting to get under her skin a little bit.
Erica grinned knowingly. “Well, I can see why you’ve stuck with her,” she said. “From the sound of it, she lets you do anything and everything you want to her. Regardless of the hour of day, the company you’ve got in your home, or even if she’s in the toilet. She seems to make sure you can satisfy your beastly urges at any given moment.”
Nicole’s eyes narrowed and she felt a chill run up her spine. “I hope you got a good earful,” she said, instantly regretting it when she saw the cold look of triumph cross his mother’s face.
This outburst was exactly what Erica Jameson had been waiting for—what she’d been slowly digging for all morning. And now Nicole had delivered it to her on a silver platter.
“I did get a good earful, as a matter of fact,” Erica said, placing her glass on the breakfast nook and walking to the center of the kitchen like she was on stage for act three of Venus in Fur. “How lovely to come to my son’s home for a visit and be treated to the carnal grunts and cries of what sounded like two dogs in heat.”
Red’s face was pale and he looked sick to his stomach at what she was saying. “I’m sorry if we offended you,” he said to her.
“I never claimed to be offended,” Erica replied, putting one hand on her stomach. “I was just appalled and shaken. At first I thought someone might have been hurt, so I ran upstairs to ask if you needed help. I am a nurse after all.”
Red and Nicole exchanged glances. Both of them were embarrassed, and Nicole suddenly felt like a teenager who’d been caught being naughty under the stairwell at school.
“I’m sorry you heard that,” Nicole said, “but it was an honest mistake—an accident. I don’t think we need to hear a lecture.”
Erica rolled her eyes. “Oh, no, of course not. Far be it for me—a woman in her fifties—to give advice to her thirty-two year old son and his twenty-two year old girlfriend.”
“Fiancé,” Red corrected her.
“I misspoke. I should have said, ‘your twenty-two year old fiancé who seems to be an expert in and out of the bedroom.’ If she’s managed to keep your roving eye still for even a minute, she must have the all the wisdom of an aging prostitute contained in that young body of hers.”
“Get out,” Red said, his voice almost shaking with rage.
“What did you say?” his mother asked, her eyes so wide she looked like a cartoon version of herself.