“Except for the next few weeks, when I’m doing makeup forDuke the Halls 2,” Sunny said cheerfully. “I wear many hats, you know. Mostly while naked.”
Bee and Sunny helped me finish cleaning up and then shepherded me out to the main room of the bar, making lots of noises about getting me back to the hotel and also getting mefully horizontal—orfull Hfor short—on my bed so I could rest. But as the bathroom door was swinging shut behind us, I saw him.
Kallum.
Kallum looking so casually handsome in a zip-up pullover and jeans, his beard a little longer than usual, and his eyes reflecting the flashing lights of the grandma-and-reindeer-themed pinball machine next to him. Kallum searching the room, almost as if he were looking for me, as if all of his attention was bent on finding me.
My heart was swelling, soaring, taking up my whole chestand stomach, and I couldn’t breathe for it, and he was so handsome, and his baby was inside me, and oh my God, this was too much, all so much more complicated than I could have imagined. How was I supposed to tell him calmly and neutrally I was having his child and that we could navigate a platonic coparenting relationship when all I wanted to do was pull him on top of me and bite his neck while he sank that giant dick between my legs and rode me ragged?
Nope! I wasnotready to talk to him tonight, not until I got my feelings in order, and definitely not until I got my unruly vagina in order.
“I, um, need fresh air,” I blurted to Sunny and Bee, and then bolted for the back door of the bar without another word, not caring how strange it must look. I had to get out of thereright nowbefore he saw me. Before he talked to me in that rich baritone, before he told me he loved me again. Before all the feelings I’d been pushing down surged to the surface and I told him I loved him back.
I shoved the creaky old door open and slipped into the quiet alley behind the bar. It was early June and the night was mild—cool enough to feel nice on my flushed cheeks, but warm enough that my thin sweater and jeans kept me comfortable. The fresh mountain air immediately cleared away my sour stomach, and I thanked God and Sunny for that disposable toothbrush, because with zero nausea and a clean, minty mouth, I almost felt like a human again.
I took a deep breath, tilting my face up to the moon and trying to gather the energy to slink off to my hotel room like a good little coward, and then the creaky door opened again.
I turned to see Kallum standing in the alley, his face partly in shadow, his hands jammed into his pockets.
We didn’t speak.
After a long moment, he came forward, slowly, and I backed up until my heel hit the brick wall of the building behind me. He stopped just in front of me, his blue eyes black in the moonlight.
“Winnie,” he said roughly. And then he brought his forehead to mine, his breath coasting across my lips. I was trembling.
He was trembling too.
I can’t fight this, I realized dizzily. It was too much, it was a blitz, a cavalry charge ready to run me right over, and with him so close, so warm, soKallum, I didn’t even want to fight it. I wanted him, and who cared what he’d said in a hallway last spring, he was right here and shaking just to be near me and when I pressed both of my hands to his chest, he made a noise deep in his throat—half plea, half growl.
“Kallum,” I whispered. “Take me back to your hotel room.”
I felt how much he wanted to say yes. I felt him lean forward, felt his arms come tight around my shoulders, felt him shudder like he was already imagining being between my thighs.
Then he ripped himself away, jamming his hands into his hair as he turned back to face me. “No,” he said. “No, I’m not touching you until we get our shit sorted out.”
He was right, but I didn’t care.
“Not even a kiss?” I said, knowing it came out sounding pouty as heck.
Kallum’s face was a study in agony, and I went in for the kill. I bit my lip.
With a rough groan, he was against me again, his hands in my hair and his mouth moving hot and urgent from my lips to my jaw to my neck. I rubbed against him like a cat in heat, and then practically purred in his ear when one of his hands moved from my hair to my breast and gently pressed. I was still a little tender there, but with his hands so large and warm, it still felt good, and the goodness was seeping down to my belly now, down to the ache between my legs, and I knew it was shameless, but I did it anyway. I grabbed Kallum’s hand and guided it to the waistband of my jeans.
“What about this?” I murmured, and he pulled back to look at me.
“Don’t think I don’t know what game you’re playing, Winnie,” he said darkly as his fingers made easy work of the button and zipper. “Don’t think I still won’t win.”
I whimpered as his fingers pushed into my panties and found my clit, circling it until I panted and then sliding his fingers farther down until he could enter me. We both exhaled as he pushed them inside, working expertly until I was chasing his touch, eagerly trying to ride his hand. I hadn’t had the energy to masturbate since I’d left Christmas Notch the first time, and my body was abruptly aware of how long it had been since I’d last had an orgasm. Forever, it felt like, and I needed to pay off my orgasm deficit right the eff now. Ideally with many, many orgasms.
“Fuck, this is hot,” Kallum grunted, his other hand still tangled in my hair.
“Please,” I moaned, not even sure what I was asking for. To come? To be hauled back to his hotel room for a more thorough sexing?
It didn’t matter, though, because Kallum didn’t give me either one. Instead, he waited until I was shiveringrighton the edge of my climax, my feet planted apart, my chest heaving, so wet where Kallum was fingering me that my panties were soaked, and then he pulled his hand free.
I stared at him as he pressed his fingers to my mouth and I obediently sucked them clean, my body in a state of shock. And when he didn’t go back to fingering me—when he instead stepped back and adjusted the very obvious hard-on tenting his jeans—I made a very unladylike splutter.
“You—you—but—”
