Dirty Sexy Knitting (24 page)

She’d done okay, though. Sure, she’d always been a bit prickly with other people, but she hadn’t felt the lack of anything until her father died. Until Dean entered into her life.

Then, emotions had risen from that deep place where she’d always stuffed them, growing bigger and heavier until she found she couldn’t breathe. Those feelings were what she was hoping to burn away.

And as the fire consumed the cardboard, making it smaller and smaller and smaller, she began to feel lighter and lighter and lighter. She curled her fingers into the thick fur of Blackie’s scruff and blinked away the sting the smoke put in her eyes. Her plan was working!

She looked from the fire to Dean’s cool silver gaze, trying to put the past into perspective. “Surely he realized that it wasn’t going to be easy for me.”

He shrugged. “I suppose it was more convenient for him to believe the opposite.”

“De Nile,” she murmured, “not just a river in Egypt, huh?” Her attention returned to the firepit and the satisfy ingly small pile of cinders that the nine feet of hurt and unpleasant memories had become.

Blackie pressed against her leg, and in the well of her belly, something released, a buoyant something that rose to hover in her chest. Her heart. Free?

“Marlys?”

Almost weightless herself, she turned to him, overjoyed to think that perhaps she’d left the past behind her. “Thank you,” she said. “You once told me you’d take my tears away and I think that you just did.”

“Have a little sympathy for your father if you can,” Dean said softly, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear. “I’m sure it’s hell to know you’ve hurt the one you love.”

She froze, the general forgotten as her mind reversed, leaping to last November.
I’m sure it’s hell to know you’ve hurt the one you love.
She saw Dean standing at the front door of her house, the anticipation on his face sliding away as Phil trotted down the stairs. Her palms scraped against her upper arms, her hips, her thighs.

Dean’s eyes narrowed. “Marlys? What’s wrong?”

Without a word, she hurried back on the trail the way they’d come, though certain this new feeling wasn’t something she could leave behind at the park. The past just wasn’t that easy to get rid of, she realized. Because though she might feel the weight had been lifted off her shoulders, she had the distinct sense that the rest of her would never feel clean.

 

 

 

Back at the house, she burst through the front door and headed for her bathroom. With every quarter mile they’d traveled away from the park, the shame of what she’d done in November tightened like a dirty, second skin.
I’m sure it’s hell to know you’ve hurt the one you love.

It was ugly, is what it was, and she needed to wash it away if she could.

Naked, she stepped under the scalding spray of her shower. She lifted her face, letting the needles of water bounce off her flesh, then picked up the bath sponge and doused it in gel soap. The scent bloomed in the steamy air, and she breathed gulps of it, hoping to dispel the olfactory memory of Phil’s Armani cologne.

She scrubbed at her arms and legs, rubbed the sponge in harsh circles against her throat and over her breasts and between her thighs, her eyes squeezed tight as she tried to send the psychic stain on her skin down the shower’s drain.

“Marlys.” A hand clamped over hers.

Eyes flying open, she gasped, shocked to find a fully dressed Dean inside the tiled stall. His expression was grim as he used his free hand to adjust the temperature. “You’ll be parboiled.”

She’d never be clean.

“Get out,” she said, yanking her fingers from his grip. Soap bubbles flew from the sponge. One landed on his chin. Stuck there. Marlys backed against the wall and told herself she wouldn’t touch it. She wouldn’t touch him.

He had no such compunctions. His hand slid behind her neck and she jerked away.

“No! I’m dirty.”

He froze. Then his silver eyes narrowed. “Never,” he said. “Never.”

Without another hesitation, he pulled her into his arms, her naked body against his wet clothes. They scratched her overheated, overabraded skin, and she found herself crying at the tiny hurt. Crying, sobbing, falling apart like she’d never wanted to fall apart, had never allowed herself to fall apart, since she was twelve years old and her father had taken that emotional outlet away.

She hadn’t been fine, she wasn’t fine, she was a basket case who could no longer hold it together. But Dean was doing that for her now, holding her close, holding her so that she wouldn’t shatter into a million pieces of emotional glass.

The catharsis lasted long enough for the water to cool. When she was crying
and
shivering, Dean lifted her legs and carried her like a child out of the shower. With one hand he reached for the towel and wrapped it around her. She watched her hair drip on the tile floor as he set her down on the closed toilet seat.

“Shut your eyes—or at least look away,” he said, with a little smile. “I’ve got to get out of these wet clothes before they shrink while I’m inside them.” She didn’t have the energy to do either. Instead, she huddled under the terry cloth and watched more than six feet of sometimes lean and sometimes bulky muscle emerge from the chrysalis of his saturated clothing.

Another time she might have thought, Wow.

Now she could only reach over and hand him a second towel.

“Don’t cry,” he said, as he tucked it around his waist. “Don’t cry.”

Her trembling fingers confirmed that tears continued to run down her cheeks. He took her wet hand and used it to help her up, then led her into her bedroom. With a quick movement he threw the covers back and then inserted her between them, sliding the towel off her nudity at the same time. When she was covered back up, he rubbed the damp towel over her wet hair.

Drained, she drifted off to his touch.

She awoke to his touch, too. A finger traced the outline of her lips. Without thinking, she opened her mouth and touched the pad with her tongue, tasting him.

The hitch in his breath didn’t pull her into complete wakefulness. Really, it all felt like a dream, the warm color behind her closed eyelids, the warm masculine figure beside her, the warm idea that maybe this was last fall, that time had not passed and she was in bed with Dean like she’d wanted to be since the first time she’d seen him.

“Angel,” he whispered.

He’d called her that then. It only confirmed her muddled thinking that this was real and that maybe the dream was all that came after. That it was perfectly fine for her to turn into him now, that their naked bellies would meet, that her small breasts and tight nipples would poke against the hard, hot wall of his chest, that his erection would poke at that sensitive skin along the inside of her thigh.

Marlys ran her hands through his hair and brought his head down for a kiss. It burned her mouth, burst like liquid fire in her veins, a jolt to her system that didn’t shake her into logic—but into longing.

His tongue thrust hard inside her mouth and she moaned as she took him deeply. His hands slid down her back to her behind and he cupped her in his palms, tilting her so that his penis dragged through the curls at the apex of her thighs.

More heat flashed over her skin.

He moved her again, and she parted her legs so that the smooth head of his erection dragged against her clitoris. She arched into the little kiss of sex-to-sex and they both groaned.

“Do you want me?” he murmured.

“Yes.
Yes
.” Of course she wanted him! She’d always wanted him, and in this fuguelike state she couldn’t recall why she couldn’t have him. “I love you,” she said, because there couldn’t be a reason not to say that either.

His next kiss was tender, but his hands turned urgent. They slid to her breasts, cupping them and rubbing against their taut centers. She whimpered.

His lips slid down her neck and along her collarbone. “I love you, too,” he said, his mouth moving over her heart.

She shivered, trembling at the dual sensations of the reverent echo of his words and the heat of his tongue as it circled a tingling nipple. She squirmed, her legs restless, and he pushed a knee against her sex, letting her ride the rounded base there as he played at her breasts, kissing and tonguing her nipples until she was digging her nails into his hard shoulders.

“Please, Dean. Please.”

He shifted, letting a little air into their heated nest of sheets and blankets, so she snuggled down to root against the wall of his chest until she found one tight point. He gave a satisfying groan and she sucked at it harder, flexing her fingers in his skin like a cat. Then she let one hand drift toward his waist.

Ah. He’d moved to grab a condom, she guessed, because his stiff penis was covered and ready to go. She pushed him on his back and climbed on top, kissing his mouth as she guided him toward the wet and throbbing place where she wanted him.

“Take it easy, angel,” he said, his hand stroking her hip. “Go slow.”

Eager to please him, she followed directions, letting him slide inside her one thick inch at a time. She threw her head back and arched as their bellies once again met. It was a tight fit, a delicious fit, and she rocked against him as her inner muscles became accustomed to his girth and length.

He found her mouth, and held it to his with his palm against the back of her head. Then rocking wasn’t good enough anymore and she had to slide, up and down, clenching and relaxing, following the rhythm that he set with his tongue. She was getting closer, and her movements turned frantic as she could feel the same tension infusing Dean’s body.

His hips lifted toward hers, and he was no longer the object of her lust but the fuel to her fire. His hand slid between their bodies and as he jerked upward, his fingers tweaked the throbbing bud of her clitoris, sending her into orgasm.

Only as her after-shivers died off did she open her eyes. It was Dean beneath her. Dean in her bed. Dean and no dream. Her gaze jerked to the window, and the sycamore there was budding with spring leaves, not silvery bare as it had been in autumn.

Tears stung her eyes again. Oh, God. What had she done? Bad Marlys, she thought. Bad Marlys strikes again.

A frown placed a line between his dark eyebrows. “No. I can see what you’re thinking and nothing’s wrong with this.”

He didn’t know how wrong. He didn’t know how disgusted he’d be with himself—and her—when he found out the truth. She lifted up on her elbows. “Dean . . .”

He caught at the necklace swinging between their bodies. It was the pendant she’d been wearing since he left. “What’s wrong was me,” he said, his fingers curling into a fist around the tear. “I was wrong to think I could take your tears away. But I can help you carry them.” With that, he lifted the pendant over her head and then dropped it over his. The silver tear gleamed against his golden skin and two of her wet ones plopped right down beside it.

How could she tell this man he’d just made the biggest mistake of his life? More tears fell. She pressed her nose with the back of her hand. “But . . . but what can I do for you?”

He reached over to her bedside table, where she saw the condom wrapper and his open wallet. He slid something free of the leather. It was that ragged card she’d seen him holding the day she’d discovered he was back in Malibu. The Ms. M card. “You already did something for me, Marlys. You saved my life.”

Family faces are magic mirrors. Looking at people who belong to us, we see the past, present, and future.

—GAIL LUMET BUCKLEY

 

 

 

 

As Gabe pushed through the door of Malibu & Ewe, he noticed two things, that Cassandra was with a customer and that the customer was looking at him with distinct suspicion. Shit, apparently just another of his admirers.

Hitching the shelving he carried under his arm higher, he ignored both women as he slid the non-soy, extra-shot latté that Cassandra would swear never touched her lips beside the cash register. Then he stomped to the back room, aware of the customer’s disapproval tailing him the entire way.

He dumped his red toolbox on a counter and propped the lumber against it. Then he surveyed the area above the countertop where he was planning to add shelving in order to free up some of the cluttered flat space. He’d strapped on his tool belt and had his tape measure in hand when Cassandra invaded the small room.

Her perfume arrived first, a scent fresh and feminine and that now he smelled on his skin in the mornings. It filled his lungs at night as he breathed her in, his face buried in those luxurious waves of her hair. He played with the stuff as she drifted off to sleep, combing it lightly then wrapping a fistful in his fingers as he closed his eyes and followed her to dreamland.

He’d been sleeping like a baby, his nightmares distant, his conscience quiet, but after this morning’s visit from Noah and Jay, his mood was anything but tranquil. With a quick glance he could tell she knew he was out-of-sorts. There was a frown between her eyebrows and she had her full lips pursed in worry.

He groaned, and reached out an arm to draw her close. “Your mouth drives me crazy,” he said, kissing her as if it had been days instead of hours since he’d last tasted her. There was the faintest hint of coffee on her tongue and he smiled inside, glad he’d brought the latté though he’d never admit to buying it for her just as she’d never admit to drinking it.

The next kiss turned hotter, and as he slanted his head for the perfect fit, she curled her fingers in the low-slung tool belt to keep her balance. His dick reacted to the proximity of her slender fingers and, groaning again, he pushed her away. “Unless you want to do it on this countertop, Froot Loop, you better keep your distance.”

She licked her bottom lip, her blue eyes dazed in a way that never failed to give an extra yank on his libido. “I-I think I want to do it on the countertop,” she said.