Falling Into Forever Page 18

  “It’s your house too. You tell him this is a Tanner tradition. If he doesn’t like it, he can get lost.”

  “Mom, it’s his house.”

  “And yours. By the way, his rude uncle Victor should probably be invited too.”

  “If he’s rude, why do you want him there?”

  “Aren’t we making amends?”

  I shook my head. “Not that I was aware of. Last time we talked about it, you were planning some sort of frosting assault on the bookstore windows.”

  “I think I’m a bigger person than that.” Mom refused to meet my eyes.

  “Since when?” I stared at my mother. She was hiding something, and I was very curious about what exactly it was.

  “Just plan dinner, Addie. I’ll bring a roast. We’ll be there at six.”

  “Um. Okay.” With that strange conversation echoing in my mind, I trudged up the hill toward the house. The yard had been trimmed and cleared, and with all the new windows gleaming with light from inside the house, it looked much less creepy and haunted than it used to. I slipped inside the gates, which we now left open most of the time, and took the path around the house to the kitchen door.

  I let myself in with my key, and stopped for a moment to admire the new, modern kitchen we’d installed. The countertops were a light milky quartz and the angled glass subway tiles of the backsplash gave a nice contrast in a gleaming green. The gas grill had been built under a copper hood, and the cabinets were all painted a very dark forest green that looked almost black in certain light. The wide plank tile flooring set it all off perfectly, and the new pendants hanging over the island looked wonderful. We’d done a good job.

  “That you?” Michael’s voice came from the dining room. A little thrill went through me before I remembered that Michael was not my biggest fan.

  “Yes, sorry. Just got stalled looking at the kitchen.”

  Michael appeared in the doorway, looking sexier than ever with his flannel sleeves rolled up and his hair gleaming coppery in the kitchen lights. “Looks good, doesn’t it?”

  “Yes,” I agreed, pleased that suddenly we seemed to be talking again. “We did a good job, I think.” This was the most we’d spoken since the ill-fated kiss, and I was trying hard to stay on neutral ground, to keep my voice steady, not to scare him away. I’d missed him so much, even the attention he was giving me now felt like a gift.

  “You chose all the fixtures and colors,” he said. “You have great taste. I wasn’t sure about the green, but I really think it works.”

  I ventured a look at his face, our eyes meeting for a brief second. I thought maybe I glimpsed a longing there that matched my own. “Thanks,” I managed as a spark lit me up inside.

  “I’ve got dinner, if you want some,” Michael said. “Ordered some Thai food.”

  The Thai place was in Center County, so he must have driven to get it, or paid a delivery driver a ridiculous amount to bring it. “If you’re sure?”

  “Yeah, I got way too much.”

  “Thanks,” I said, dropping my things in the mud room by the back stairs and following him to the dining room. Were we finally moving past the kiss?

  I sat as Michael filled a plate for me and then set it in front of me before sitting across the table.

  For a few minutes, neither of us said anything, and the silence of the old house—which wasn’t really silent—filled the space around us.

  But then Michael began apologizing. “Listen, Addie. I owe you an apology.”

  “What? No you don’t.”

  “I should never have made assumptions. You know, the other night.”

  Was he talking about the kiss? I shook my head, confused.

  “I got carried away, is all. Things were so easy with us, and I just . . . I guess it’s been a while since I’d spent time with anyone, you know, really had anyone to talk to. And I let myself get carried away with it.

  “I realize, of course, that I’m just this small-town hick, that there’s nothing here that would be . . .” he trailed off for a minute. “That would be good enough for you.”

  “What are you talking about?” I asked, starting to really dislike the way this apology was going. Why would he think so little of himself? I was the one who’d made the mistake, and it had nothing to do with where he lived or who he was.

  “I know you’re too good for a guy like me,” he said. “I’ll just put it plainly so there’s no more weirdness between us, okay?”

  “What?”

  “You and me. You’re this super successful, wildly intelligent, incredibly sexy woman, and I know how stupid it was for a guy like me, a total failure who never even got out of Singletree, to even think you might look twice at him. I should never have let my mind run away with me. I know it was stupid, and—”

  As he delivered the second half of this insane self-deprecating tirade, I stood and rounded the table, wrapping my fingers around his wrist and pulling him to his feet.

  “Stop it, you moronic asshole,” I practically yelled into his face. Michael’s eyes widened in surprise, but I wasn’t finished. “I can’t just sit here and let you say things like that about yourself. For one thing, they’re completely ridiculous, for another, you’d have to be completely insane to believe a single word that’s coming out of your mouth right now!”

  “I . . . what?”

  “You are a successful businessman and a fantastic father! You’re generous and smart, so giving and gracious, and the most incredibly sexy man I’ve ever met, and if you don’t stop putting yourself down, I’m going to prove it to you.” Every cell in my body was firing up thanks to my sudden anger and the proximity of his body.

  Michael was inches from me, since I’d pressed myself up against him to deliver these last words. I couldn’t believe he would discount himself this way, think so little of himself when he was one of the most impressive people I’d ever met.

  He just stared at me for a long second, and then a little glint lit his eye, and he said, “Yeah, I think you’d better prove it.”

  That was all the invitation I needed. I wrapped my arms around his waist and kissed him again for all I was worth. And the memory I’d been savoring of our first kiss did not do him justice. Michael’s kiss now was warm and tender, demanding and hot, and had my body shaking with want and my knees close to buckling beneath me.

  After several very intense minutes, his hands went to my waist and he lifted me up until I was sitting on the gleaming dining room table Filene Easter had left us.

  I wrapped my legs around him, pulling him closer, and then let my hands drift to the flannel shirt. It was soft and worn, and smelled like Michael, but it had to go. I pulled it from him as his mouth found my neck, and I dropped my head back, gasping.

  Michael’s hips were hard between my legs, but I wanted to feel more of him, all of him. I wanted to touch that thick length I’d felt between his legs the last time we’d kissed, and my hands began pulling clothes from his body in a frenzy.

  We undressed each other clumsily, our mouths seeking constant connection as our hands unfastened and pulled and tugged. Finally, I sat atop the dining room table in my bra and panties, and Michael stood before me, shirtless, his jeans unfastened, but sadly, still on. He took a step back, his chest heaving.

  “I’m worried we’re making the same mistake.”

  “I don’t care,” I said, reaching for him.

  “But don’t you . . .”

  I wrapped a hand over his waistband and tugged so hard he nearly crashed into me, stopping himself with a hand on the edge of the table.

  “Take those off,” I demanded, pointing at his pants.

  He complied, and when he stood before me in his boxer briefs, the very tip of an impressively sized cock pushing out the waistband, I nearly exploded with need. I reached for him, and he moved closer, his mouth finding mine again.

  Sensation took over then, words and thoughts giving way to the slide of tongues, the gasp of breath, the slip of hands over flesh. As
he leaned into me, kissing me hard, one of Michael’s hands dipped from my waist down to caress the top of my thigh, stroking and teasing the skin just along the edges of my panties. I writhed, trying to maneuver myself so that his hand would fall where I wanted it, where I needed it.

  And when he finally let his fingers slide over the silk of my panties, gliding over the spot where I ached and yearned to be touched, I let out a very unladylike moan. But Michael must not have been one for ladylike noises, because in the next instant, he was pulling my panties from my body and his fingers were sliding through my slick folds, teasing and circling and finally, pressing right where I wanted them.

  “Oh God,” I heard myself moan, and my own hands landed at that instant on the hard length of him, causing him to bite out a rasping, “fuuuck.”

  I’m not sure how we decided that doing exactly that atop Filene Easter’s gleaming dining room table next to assorted boxes of Pad Thai and curry was a good idea, but I suppose neither of us was really thinking at that point. And soon, Michael was sheathing himself with a condom I dug out of my purse and kneeling over me, his knees braced on the shining wood of the table.

  “Are you sure about this?” he asked, notching himself at my entrance as I writhed beneath him in anticipation.

  I answered by pulling him down to my mouth and arching myself up so that my hips met his, opening me to him. And as he slid in, inch by agonizing inch, I felt myself falling apart and becoming some version of myself I’d never imagined. A woman who has sex with hot younger men atop dining tables.

  “Oh God,” I seemed to keep repeating as I felt myself stretching to accommodate him.

  “You feel so good,” he whispered, his breath sweet against my neck as he began to slide in and out.

  “This. Feels. So. Good,” I agreed, sensations spilling through me that I wasn’t sure I’d ever experienced quite as fully before.

  I forgot the hard surface of the wood behind me, the smell of curry wafting around us. All I felt was Michael, warm and thick and hard. And all I heard was him, telling me how perfect I was, how lucky he felt, how good this was between us.

  I arched and pressed and urged him on, both of us straining for a release that if I was honest, had been building for the past seven weeks between us. And when it came, amid Michael’s hard thrusts and my moans and cries as I tried to take more and more of him, it probably scared the ghosts.

  My body shot off like a rocket, and the aftereffects went on for what felt like hours, laying there on the dining room table with Michael’s hard body over mine, both of us gasping for breath.

  “Holy fuck,” he breathed, rolling to brace his head on one hand, his elbow on the table.

  “Mrs. Easter probably never imagined that going on in her dining room,” I said, giggling.

  Michael frowned then, and his brow wrinkled as he said, “or you know, maybe she did.”

  “What?” I suddenly wondered if he thought Mrs. Easter had used this table the same way.

  “All that stuff she said. About the feud ending, about finding the past and the future in the house. Don’t you think she was playing matchmaker?”

  “She wanted us to have sex in her house?”

  He shrugged, a sleepy smile covering his face. “No, probably not.” He didn’t say anything else, but the thought did echo through my mind. Mrs. Easter been playing matchmaker? Was that what this was really all about?

  Eventually, the table began to feel hard and cold beneath me, and we slid from the surface to clean up and pull our clothes back on. When we’d cleaned up the food and the table without speaking, I stopped Michael in the kitchen and pulled him to face me.

  “That,” I told him, “was amazing. And you are the sexiest and most impressive man I’ve ever met. So I have no idea what exactly is going to happen here, but don’t let me ever hear you questioning that truth again.”

  “If I do though, will you have to teach me another lesson, maybe?” He smiled a wicked smile, and I laughed as we went together upstairs. We brushed our teeth side by side in the bathroom mirror and without a word, we both headed to the master bedroom, where we undressed across from one another and then slid into the soft sheets atop the new mattress and into each other’s arms.

  “I might need a lesson or two now, actually,” Michael said, his breath hot in my ear.

  And for the rest of the night, I showed him over and over exactly how sexy and competent he was.

  25

  Babysitter Fantasies

  Michael

  I could say I’d never imagined I would find myself in bed with Addison Tanner. Only that would be a complete lie. I had imagined it plenty of times, right before telling myself what a ridiculous fantasy it was and how a woman like that would never find herself in that situation with a guy like me.

  But here we were.

  And it wasn’t just the physical truth of the two of us, waking in the gauzy morning light, pressed against each other’s bodies and exchanging sleepy kisses and whispers. The physical was easy enough to write off—it happened. People made mistakes. Hell, I’d been walking proof of that for more than a decade.

  It was the words she’d said the night before. The ones she’d worked so hard to make me hear, to make me believe. That maybe I wasn’t the guy I’d been telling myself I was this whole time. That maybe I did deserve a chance to find happiness for myself. That maybe successfully raising my son wasn’t an all or nothing proposition. There might be room in ensuring his happiness to look after my own. Maybe.

  These thoughts were more than I wanted to consider as the shafts of light reached through the room, drifting languid and soft, just like the two of us in the big king bed we’d had installed.

  “Good morning,” I said, pulling the woman in my arms closer against me, loving the silky warmth of her skin, the softness of her hair against my cheek.

  “Hmm,” she said, wiggling her butt in closer to bend of my hips, putting her smack against my quickly waking morning wood.

  “Sleep okay?” I asked. I wanted to roll her over, claim her again, talk to her in a way that showed I knew where we stood, how things were. But I didn’t know. And in the back of my mind, I feared Addison might wake up and declare the previous night a mistake, just as she’d done the moment we’d kissed.

  But instead, she reached behind her and began to stroke me, soft teasing touches mixed with firm grasps that had me groaning and sent my hands searching her body. As her fingers teased me, my own hand slipped down her soft belly, to the apex of her thighs, where I took my time doing some teasing of my own. Addie moaned and pressed back against me again, turning her head now to find my mouth.

  When I had her writhing in my arms, I flipped her over and braced myself over her, taking a moment just to stare at the face of the beautiful woman beneath me. Was she really here? How was I this lucky?

  “Why are you teasing me?” she whined as the tip of my cock pressed against her entrance.

  “Just trying to wrap my head around the fact that I fucked the babysitter last night,” I said.

  Her mouth formed a little o, and then she poked me in the side, feigning anger. “I was five! I was not your babysitter.”

  “It’s hotter if I think of it that way. You’re the sexy and experienced woman, taking advantage of a younger man,” I suggested.

  She scowled. “I’m not that much older.”

  “It’s just a fantasy,” I told her, though in reality I had all the fantasy I needed right here beneath me. “Let me grab a condom.” I began to roll off of her, but Addie stopped me.

  “No, it’s all right. I’m on the pill.” Then she hesitated. “I mean, if you’re . . .”

  “I honestly haven’t been with anyone in years,” I told her. “But last time I was tested I was clean. And I trust that my hand hasn’t been messing around on me.”

  She slapped my chest playfully, but seconds later, all joking had been put aside as I pressed myself inside her, relishing the feel of every inch of her skin against
mine.

  I hadn’t lied. It had been years. And spending this time with Addison would fuel years more worth of fantasies if it didn’t work out, which I was pretty sure it would not—especially since I was still pretty sure she intended to go back to New York. But that didn’t mean I wouldn’t enjoy every single second of it while it lasted.

  The feeling of her against me, around me, with nothing between us, was the most erotic thing I’d ever experienced. And her breathy moans, the way her nails dug into my skin—it wasn’t my most impressive performance. And so we needed a couple tries to get it right.

  We got out of bed late, and I made coffee in the new kitchen as Addie took a shower. When she came down, I felt almost shy around her, but she came straight into my arms, kissing me like she was mine. And my confidence grew.

  “You going to the store today?” she asked when her hands were wrapped around a mug and she was seated at the new kitchen island.

  “I am,” I said. “As much as I love my cousins, I don’t trust them enough to let them open and close the store every day. For all I know, there’s another Tanner-sponsored flash sale going on right now.”

  Addie’s face darkened at the mention of the feud, and she blew out a long breath. “Can we just agree right now that as far as you and I are concerned, this thing is over?”

  “I’ve got no beef with that at all. But you and I were not the ones invested to begin with.”

  “True, but maybe we can lead by example.”

  “We can try,” I agreed.

  “Speaking of Tanners, did I tell you Lottie would like to have Sunday dinner here?”

  That was new. From what I’d observed, Lottie hated me and everything about this arrangement between me and her oldest daughter. I put down my cup and tried to imagine having Lottie Tanner here for more than a few minutes to check up on us, as she’d done a few times now. It had been uncomfortable. “Uh, no.”