A pang of unrequited need pulsed through her. Her hand twitched—to what, silence the desperation, to touch herself until the sight of him just going about his day brought her arching onto tiptoes in the first orgasm she’d had in months. She almost did. She caught hold of the windowsill in both hands to keep from touching herself.
“Come on, Stace, knock it off,” she whispered, bowing her head as she strove to get the wayward impulse under control. If anything, the throbby need of her pussy grew that much worse. Right up until she lifted her head to look down at him again, only to find him sitting motionless on her porch, staring straight up at her through the second-floor window. Their eyes locked, and her tummy flipped that same twisty motion that had kept her up late last night, painfully aware that the silence of the house did not mean she was alone. Somewhere on the floor below, probably directly under her room, Brock had his big body folded into his own bed. She could practically see him, lying on his back, hands folded behind his bed, scorching his ceiling—the underside ofher floor—with that same hungry stare that had so haunted her dream.
She shivered, but she wasn’t cold. The pressure points of his fingertips echoed in the flesh of her ass, and under the backs of her thighs. As if he were still holding her legs bent over his shoulders while his tongue flicked between the folds of her sex, opening her up so he could drink her in.
Ducking away from the window so he couldn’t see her anymore—so she couldn’t see him either—she rolled her lips to muffle a humiliated moan. Covering her stomach with both hands, she stood there, a victim to her own lust until she heard the muted thud of the axe chopping into its first log.
Wilting, she lay her forehead briefly against the wall. Yeah, she wasn’t at all ready for this. Not for Brock, not for any of it.
Lily roused while Stace was getting dressed. She sat up, flopped over onto her back and rubbed her eyes before whimpering a half-hearted cry.
“I know.” Stace finished tying her too-big sneakers before picking her up. “Let’s get into a fresh diaper and breakfast in our tummy, huh?”
Outside, the steady chopping sound paused while Brock put another log on the chopping block. Like the thumping of her own heady heartbeat, she imagined she could feel the vibrations of each hard sound through the very floorboards under her feet as she wandered downstairs.
She had only to venture as far as the dining room table, the stillness of the house trying once more to convince her she was alone. One peek out the kitchen window told her otherwise. Brock had unzipped his coat. It hung open while he worked, steadily cutting wood to fill up the empty wood-bin on her porch.
He paused to wipe his brow and picked up the chopped wood. She quickly ducked out of the kitchen window when he turned, looking upward toward the second floor.
Lily began to cry, successfully distracting Stace. Digging a fresh diaper and wipes out of her overnight box, she carried Lily into the bathroom and took care of both their needs before venturing back out to the dining room. Another peek out of the window gave Stace a start when she saw Brock’s coat, tossed haphazardly over her porch railing, with the rest of him nowhere in sight. She raised her hand to push the curtain back so she could see further around the back of her cabin when suddenly a short section of tree trunk flew in from the side to plop into the snow near her cabin, bouncing once and rolling the rest of the way until it knocked into the side of the chopping block.
When she craned her head, she spotted Brock at the wood pile behind her house, chucking several large sections of tree trunk as if they weighed nothing at all. She’d barely been able to carry just one of those things yesterday. That he was strong enough to toss them like rings in a child’s game was enough to bring that pulse thumping back to life between her legs.
Shit. She froze when he paused between tosses to wave at her. He’d spotted her.
The instinct to duck back out of sight again felt childish and yet, her face flushed hot, so did waving back. She did it anyway, then quickly drew the curtain so she wouldn’t be tempted to keep standing there, gawking while he worked. Lily made the rest easier. Pulling at the front of Stace’s shirt, she began to cry. Leaving the room entirely, Stace made her way to the couch, sitting down to breastfeed.
She was still there, singing softly as Lily grew milk sleepy against her breast when the front door opened and in walked Brock. He had his coat draped over his arm, and a thin sheen of sweat on his brow, which he was wiping at until he saw her.
His gaze went from her face to her breast, and neither one of them breathed much less moved. It seemed forever before, witha single blink, his gaze shot back to her face. It was like her dream this morning all over again.
He wasn’t looking at her, he was looking into her and she still couldn’t move. Heat licked up through her core, the phantom caresses of his fingers, lips and tongue scalding her senses. If he walked over to her right now, she knew she wouldn’t stop him. If he bent down, she wouldn’t turn her face away. Her lips were already tingling and her heart was pounding against her ribs. She could almost taste the brush of his mouth as he lowered himself to taste her in return, and yet he hadn’t moved. Frozen in the open doorway, he stared at her with such longing.
“Excuse me,” he said thickly.
“Okay,” she replied in kind, sparks dying in disappointment when he backed out of his own house and closed the door to give her privacy. And so she sat there, Lily sucking and dozing on her breast, wishing she were brave enough to go after him.
Chapter 8
The power truck came at eleven, giving Stace the ultimate reason to grab her baby and go home. She left her box on his couch, but she wasn’t really gone. Brock knew that and was happy to know her absence was temporary, and yet the awkwardness of having her here was almost more than he could handle. He’d gotten very little sleep last night, which was ridiculous. It was like his body knew she was in the house, and every part of him had cried all night for him to go and check on her. It was a constant urge, but he’d squashed it, and his punishment for that good behavior was a long, empty night of yearning that refused to let him relax.
He should just check on her. What if she needed something to drink? Something more to eat? Did he really want her to have to go the night, stuck in her bed, too hesitant to come to him and, what? He could all but see her standing in his doorway, wringing each finger one at a time while she plaintively asked, “Daddy, can I have some water?”
Or, “Daddy, my tummy is hungry.”
Or, “Daddy, my Big girl place is needy.”
His Big boy place was pretty damn needy right now too, and it only got worse the longer the night went on. He caught snippets of sleep here and there, but the next time he woke up, there he was again, with her in the forefront in his mind and that low fiery throb filling up his belly and his cock hard as a damn tree trunk, standing so high he tented the blankets that covered him.
Daddy, my Big girl place is needy.Like she even talked like that. Like she’d call him Daddy or know where his room was, or like she would walk right past the kitchen to come ask him for anything at all. Not with that giant ‘I can do it myself’ determination of hers.
And there went his mind, completely ignoring the logic while his imagination locked onto Stace the Little, wringing her fingers and asking for him to slake her Big girl need. He couldn’t stop himself from playing along with that fantasy, torturing himself until he drowsed off to sleep. Touching himself was a rotten substitute for just lifting his blanket and inviting her fantasy-self to crawl in beside him.
Right up until dawn, when he woke up for the last time, fed up with himself and the horniest he’d ever been in his life, and finally crawled out of bed. He was just annoyed enough to want to take a cold shower, but not quite masochist enough to actually do it. Still, he stood for a long time under the hot spray, with his big hands braced on the tile wall, soaking his head, his eyes closed, focusing on the hundreds of tiny runnels of water running down the hard muscled lines of him until it became almost hypnotizing. He lost himself in the soft touch of water, and by the time he finally shut the faucet off, not only was the sun actually peeking up above the trees, but he felt a little normal.
Knowing that wouldn’t last if he stayed in this house, rattling around in the silence, wondering if she slept on her back or her stomach, if she snored or was tossing and turning all nightlong as well. Maybe thinking of him in the same fully adult way that he’d been thinking about her. No, he’d never survive that torture a second time, and he sure as hell couldn’t just stand in the shower all day long. So, he got dressed and went outside to busy himself, cutting the wood she’d need before tonight, and spending as much energy as he had in the hard physical labor of it.
For the first time, his cock wasn’t leading the way. Or at least it hadn’t been, right up until his skin started to tingle and prickle, and he glanced up to see Stace, standing in the window of his spare upstairs bedroom, the one he’d fixed up for the caregiver he was intent on hiring. She looked good, framed behind the glass of his house, with her shoulder-length reddish-brown hair all tussled from sleep and her t-shirt only long enough to touch her navel. He wondered if she’d yet realized how low his windowsill was, how well he could see her from what distance stretched from his cabin to hers, how his gaze kept drifting to the band of pink elastic of her underwear riding high up on her hips. That was all he could see of her panties, just the pinkness of the elastic, but damn if he couldn’t feel the heat he knew he’d find if only he’d been up in that room with her, wrapping his arm around her waist to hold her, with her back against his chest, and the strength of her trembling knees buckling weakly in and out as he let his other hand slip under the elastic and his fingertips searched out the slick wetness of her pussy lips. She’d be so damned warm. So damn wet.
