Burning Down the Spouse (28 page)

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Authors: Dakota Cassidy

Tags: #Separated Women, #Greek Americans, #Humorous, #Contemporary, #Women Cooks, #General, #Romance, #Humorous Fiction, #Fiction, #Cultural Heritage, #Love Stories

BOOK: Burning Down the Spouse
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He chose to ignore her whimper of protest when he finally, Jesus Christ,
finally
planted his lips on hers. Hard and fast, Nikos drew her mouth to his, fighting the swell of the deepest groan he’d ever experienced, driving its way with force to lodge in his throat.
When she’d walked through the diner’s doors tonight, like some slinky, auburn Tabby, his head had nearly exploded. The trouble all along with Frankie was how hard it was to stay away from her.
No way could he do it now, when her skirt clung to her hips like a second skin and her shimmering top begged him to tear it over her head and bury his lips against her small, firm breasts. His cock throbbed with white-hot heat at the chance to drag his hands through her silky hair, feel her soft skin against his, touch every square inch of her, make her scream when he devoured the heat between her legs with his hungry mouth.
Desire ratcheted up a notch when she realized it was him, and not only did she succumb to his lips on hers, but she willingly parted them to allow his tongue a taste of her own.
He backed her up against the refrigerator, flattening her to the cold steel, driving her tight skirt upward to find the lacy tops of her thigh-high stockings attached to what he considered the sexiest piece of lingerie a woman could wear. A garter belt.
Jesus, this woman was going to be his undoing.
Fire screamed along every nerve he possessed when Frankie lifted her leg, wrapping her ankle around his waist to drive his body so flush against hers, he had to fight not to come.
His breathing rasped when her fingers dug into his scalp, his heart nearly jolted out of his chest when Frankie didn’t stop him from pushing the edge of her shirt up over her breasts to finally, after many a sleepless night, cup them in his hands.
Fuck
, Nikos thought with a vague warning to his overheated body. He had to slow down. He wanted to lavish Frankie with the kind of attention she deserved, in the right setting, one befitting her first encounter outside her marriage.
God damn his conscience when she was so willing—so fucking hot.
He dragged his lips from hers with a grunt. “Frankie, honey. We have to stop,” he murmured against her luscious lips, totally aware his voice was deep with need.
Her head fell back against the fridge, her eyes, amber and sultry, were glazed. “Stop . . .”
Nikos pressed his lips to the top of her head, inhaling the scent of her shampoo, forcing himself to find calm and the reason that went with it. “Not here, honey. There are too many people who could intrude, and if you knew my family, most of whom are out there now, you wouldn’t want that, but if you trust me enough, come with me.”
He backed off, using his hands to push off and away from her, searching her eyes to look for a reaction.
This was her chance to bail. If she had any doubts, he had to give her the opportunity to say no.
It would suck beyond measure, wanting her the way he did, but he’d respect any hesitation on her part.
But then Frankie, as beautiful to him when she was chopping parsley as she was dressed to make a man’s heart jump from his friggin’ chest, smiled. Easy, with a small hint of confidence. “You lead,” she said, husky and laced with matching desire.
Nikos dragged her back to him, lifting her up to settle her at eye level.
Frankie responded by wrapping her legs around his waist.
“You’re sure?”
Her eyes held his, fiery and alive. “Antonakas?”
“Bennett?”
“Make haste.”
CHAPTER ELEVEN
 
From the journal of the “never less reluctant in her life than I am now” ex-trophy wife Frankie Bennett aka Da Vixen: Okay, so boom! All I have to say at this point is I wish someone had told me sooner. For sure, in the waning years of my marriage when my sugar cookies all but went stale in my goody jar, I’d have left Mitch in a nanosecond for just one night like last night with Nikos. I’d have gotten a divorce all right and proper first, but still—leave I would have. And I swear, by all that’s holy, if I ever see Mitch again, I’m going to give him a nuggie for telling me one orgasm was all any decent woman could hope for.
 
Nikos carried Frankie out the back door of the diner and about two hundred feet away to a small cottagelike barn house lit with white twinkling Christmas lights around the windows. A fir wreath hung on the door; red ribbons and silver and gold ornaments swayed against it when he popped the door open with one hand while still holding her against him with the other.
The icy air and reality had begun to sink their sharp talons of anxiety into her gut. When Nikos closed the door behind them, her shock at her surroundings was matched only by her “sex with someone other than Mitch” fear. “This is yours? How did I not know you lived behind the diner?”
Had she ever given thought to Nikos as anything other than a secret fantasy and a real life playa? Had she ever once considered he ate, slept, showered like everyone else?
His hand was tender when he trailed the back of it along her cheek, letting her slide down his body to rest her heeled feet on the floor. The dark green cable-knit sweater he wore made his black eyes darker, if that was possible. “Believe it or not, this was the house my parents lived in when they first came to America, long before Riverbend was more than a blip on the map. I renovated it to suit my needs when I moved out of the city. They actually had the diner built in front of it. They’ve long since moved to the house right back there.”
He pointed out the front window and to the left to the top of a steep hill where an enormous white house with tall white columns spanning the length of it was nestled against the deep purple of the sky.
Turning away from the window, Frankie scanned the rustic interior of the cottage, where braided carpets were scattered across an old barn wood floor and red and taupe plump-cushioned furniture braced by finished logs surrounded a stone fireplace.
The warmth of the fire crackling in it took the chill off, heating her back. “It’s incredible,” she breathed, taking in the pictures hanging on the wall in chunky wooden frames. A collection of single and group photos, solely in black and white, of Cosmos, Adara, Voula, and Barnabas, all smiling, were artfully arranged in clusters.
“Not nearly as incredible as you, Frankie,” Nikos said, tugging her to him once more, the rustle of his black trousers making what she was embarking on a reality.
Her sigh was of completion, and she had no way to hide that, despite the jitters her nerves were expressing. Nikos holding her, fitting her body to his, was like some kind of revelation. A realization that life had color, texture, and dimension.
It frightened and excited her in one simultaneous act like nothing else.
Without letting her go, he walked her backward to an end table also made of finished logs, reaching down to grab hold of a remote. With the press of a button, he clicked on the stereo. Christmas music filtered to her ears in muted surround sound, Bing Crosby’s crooning, mellow and sweet.
Nikos settled her against him, swaying their molded hips while resting his chin on the top of her head. “You’re afraid.”
“Afraid might be a little exaggeration.”
“Okay, you have hesitations.”
Yeah. Of all the retarded things to have after all her mental buildup. “At this moment, yes. Back at the diner? Not so much.”
“That’s because I didn’t give you a chance to have anything. So you wanna talk about them?”
No. She just wanted to leave her head smothered in his hard chest and never talk again. Frankie inhaled, allowing his musky male scent to infiltrate her nostrils. “You’re my boss.” There. She’d said it. It was the one word that always popped up to rudely intrude upon all her midnight musings over Nikos. Things could get sticky if they did this and it didn’t work out—or as unbelievable as the thought was, if it wasn’t all she’d cracked it up to be.
Oh, Christ and a sidecar. What if it sucked? What if he was just hot to look at but not so hot in bed? What if she thought it sucked and he didn’t? What if he thought it sucked and
she
didn’t? What if they wonked each other’s eyeballs crossed and it went terribly wrong and she had to look at him over a ten-pound bag of onions indefinitely until she could find another job?
“Say again?” Nikos prompted.
“I said, you’re my boss . . .”
“Correction. Your slave driver.”
She giggled softly at the laughter in his voice. “Yeah. If this—I mean—if we’re . . . I’ve never done this before. I kind of don’t know the rules for . . . for . . .”
“Engaging in carnal hijinks with your employer,” he finished for her. “So are you asking me if this is a one-night stand?”
No. She wasn’t asking that at all. She didn’t know what she was asking, but now that the subject was all out there . . . “I don’t know what I’m asking. I’m . . . I don’t know.”
“I’m glad you brought it up.”
She pressed a knuckle to his pec and grinned when it flexed against her cheek. “I didn’t bring it up. You did.”
“Right. Well, now that it’s been said, let me be clear.”
Frankie’s eyes scrunched shut, bracing herself for the inevitable “this has to be our little secret” speech. Or maybe it would be the “I’m only in this to get laid” line. She watched MTV. She got it, and she was still willing. In fact, she’d never thought past the point of Nikos’s lips all over her girly parts.
None of this had come into her fantasies. There was never any talk of happily ever afters or commitments or even anything more than drive-by casual sex. There’d only been . . . well, the rutting. The fornication. Jesus, the shallow, emptiness of that thought made her just as bad as Mitch. “Okay, I’m all ears.”
Nikos forced her chin upward with a gentle hand. “I’m not about casual sex. I’ve thought about this for the past month, Frankie. In fact, I’m not at all embarrassed to tell you, I’ve thought about it probably every twenty minutes or so since I first laid eyes on you.”
“Are you sure Simon’s the blind one here?” she teased, hoping to look away from his intense black gaze.
“Don’t do that anymore, Frankie. Stop beating yourself down. It insults my taste in women. So to be clear, I am not, nor will I ever be, the kind of man who only wants to score and move on to the next game. Hear this and hear it loud and clear. It’s long, so settle in.” Nikos tucked her to him, spreading his thick thighs to encompass hers then pulling her arms around his waist.
“I want you. You and all your postdivorce trauma. You and your mussed-up hair in a ponytail with the yellow and blue scrunchie. You and your baggy clothes—which I might add, hid a body I wanted before, but now want all up in mine. I want you and the tossed-aside mess you think you are. I want to get to know you beyond the external things everyone else sees. I really want to know what you find so great about the Go-Go’s, because you put Gail’s iPod on every day at your lunch break and listen to ‘We Got the Beat.’ I find myself astounded at your poor taste in music when there’s so much good Slayer out there to be had. I want to know if you like mustard or ketchup on your hot dog. I want to know if you even like hot dogs. I want to know what brand of toothpaste you use, what kind of soap. I want to know if you’re ever going to decide on a hobby because it seems so important to you. And I won’t deny, I really want to know what else you have on underneath that skirt that’s so tight, you brought me to my knees in it.”
Whoa. Her silence was outweighed only by his while he appeared to wait for her answer. The sharp planes of his face, tight and expectant, made Frankie bite her lip.
The words, when she found them, were slow, though offered in complete honesty with no hidden agendas attached. “Okay, first. Mustard and sometimes relish. Second, whatever’s on sale at CVS that whitens and moisturizes. Third, I can’t choose between raising ant farms as a second income or making furniture out of Hefty bags and beer cans. Lastly, and I’m going to be really truthful when I tell you, I never thought past the actual . . . well, you know. It never occurred to me there’d be anything to talk about but the—”
“So you saw me as just a plaything?”
Well, “plaything” was kinda harsh. Maybe partner in all things sweaty and grunting was more appropriate. “No . . . but . . . it never occurred to me you’d be down with anything else because you can have your pick of women with far less issues than I have. So I never let my imagination go any further . . .” Oh, sweet mother. She could really use a roll of duct tape and an extra pair of hands to wrap around her mouth.
Nikos didn’t stop swaying, his hands never stopped swirling in enticing circles over her back muscles. “Whatever you thought, if it wasn’t along the lines of what I was thinking, like exclusivity and getting to know one another, then all you have to do is say it.”
And so then what? It was over. No gettin’ jiggy wid’ it? Jesus. How had she managed, after the train wreck that was Mitch, to find herself a man, the first one out of the gate after her divorce, who actually had boundaries and morals when all she thought she’d been looking for was a little some-some?

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