Gentlemen Prefer Curves: A Perfect Fit Novel (28 page)

She came, shuddering so hard that her back came off the bed. His manhood twitched between his legs, jealous that it didn’t get to experience her orgasm.

“So sensitive.” He kissed her heartbeat, lifting himself slightly to settle between her welcoming legs. She wrapped them around his waist, rubbing her wetness against his hardness. He slid inside her, unable to take being apart from her anymore, gritting his teeth at the intense sensation of being encased in her wet warmth. “Oh, God, Bell. You feel too damn good.”

“Don’t hold back.” She moved against him. “I need this from you.”

He didn’t hold back. It was impossible. She wouldn’t let him. She wasn’t passive, grabbing onto his hips as she pushed herself toward him, meeting his every thrust. He had been too long without her; being with her now made him realize that he couldn’t go back, he couldn’t half live anymore.

“Carter.” She dug her nails into his skin, and he could feel her orgasm building. It was almost enough to drive him over the edge, but he held on, stroking her slower, kissing her harder, tilting her hips so he could slide deeper into her. She cried out as she came, sinking her teeth into his shoulder. That caused him to explode and lose his breath, his mind, and the little bit of empty space he had in his heart.

“Hell,” she panted. “Or maybe I should be saying heaven and thanking God.” She kissed his shoulder. “That was good. Now be a dear and make me a sandwich.”

He blinked at her, and her mouth bloomed into a beautiful full smile. This is what he loved about her. She could be so serious, so intense in her lovemaking, but then she could be playful and sweet. The only woman he knew who could make him smile so much. He kissed the corner of her mouth, to thank her for that, to thank her for giving him back something he had been missing for so long. He would do anything to keep her that way. “I’ll make you a sandwich.” He kissed the other side of her mouth. “Just as long as you promise me you’ll eat it naked.”

“Of course I’m going to eat it naked. Make sure you make yourself one, too. You’re going to need sustenance, because we’re going to do that again, but this time a little faster.”

He rolled onto his back, taking her with him, loving the feel of her soft weight on top of him. “I’m not a machine, you know. I need time to recover.”

She lifted her chest away from his so that she could look down at him. “I know very well that you are a man. If I wanted a machine I could use the one in my dresser drawer.”

He cupped her breast, rubbing his thumb across her nipple. “You have one?”

“I call him Elvis. What did you think I did without you?”

“Cry?”

She smiled at him and then lowered her mouth to his. He could feel himself hardening again.

“I want to be in charge this time,” she said against his mouth.

“I thought you were in charge the last time.”

“I’m sorry”—she slid her lips along his jawline, kissing every inch—“but you’re really going to have to suffer this time. But I’ll be nice.” She kissed her way down his neck to the hollow of his throat, where she licked him. “I’ll give you plenty of time to recover.” She glanced at the clock. “Is three minutes enough? Think you can make and eat a sandwich in that time?”

“Forget the damn sandwich.” He guided himself into her. “I’m ready for my punishment now.”

*   *   *

The sun on her face woke Belinda from a deep sleep. It wasn’t the man wrapped around her with his hand on her breast and his lips on her ear.

“I don’t want to get up,” he said, his voice rough with sleep.

She said nothing to that, but she agreed. She didn’t want the night to be over.

He kissed the back of her neck. “I would try to make love to you again, but I think you took everything I got, girl.” He gave her bottom a little smack. “It’s going to take me three days to recover from last night.”

“Only three?” She turned in his arms to find him smiling at her. “I must not have tried hard enough. I was hoping it was going to be at least a week.”

He laughed, the sound of his soft chuckle sending tingles along her skin. “Thank you,” he said, giving her a long slow kiss.

“What’s your favorite color?” Belinda found herself asking Carter when their kiss broke, not wanting their night to be over yet.

He looked at her for a moment as if he was trying to determine if she was serious.

“I could say the green of your eyes or the red of your hair, but you would say that I was full of shit so I’m going to stick with blue.” He gave her an easy smile. “But I really don’t have a favorite color.”

“I like to wear a lot of colors. So I don’t really have one, either,” she told him. “I think every color has its place. Like sunflowers are supposed to be yellow, because yellow makes you happy and they wouldn’t look right in purple. And strawberries are supposed to be red to make them look so succulent and little girls should wear baby pink because it’s the only color that can capture their sweetness. You must think I sound like a crazy person.”

“I don’t,” he said seriously after a moment. He was staring at her mouth intently, which not only caused tingles to go up her spine, but made her wonder if he was paying attention to her rambling. “Each color does have a place. They are supposed to make you feel. Can you imagine how shitty life would be if we only saw in black and white?”

“I think it would be shitty only if we saw color and then it was taken away. We wouldn’t know how beautiful color was in the first place, so we wouldn’t know what we were missing. Take dogs, for instance. They don’t see color like we do, but they’re not any less happy for it. My aunt Mimi’s dog has just about the best damn life I have ever seen. I would gladly trade places with him. She takes him for weekly massages. Can you believe that? I’m pretty sure he doesn’t give two shits about the subtle differences between plum and eggplant.”

“No.” He grinned. “Probably not. I wouldn’t care so much, either, if I hadn’t taken a class in color psychology when I was getting my degree. I thought it was total bullshit until I had to redesign a school based on it.”

“That have classes on that?”

“Yeah. It was interesting, too. We learned that white always makes people think of innocence and purity, that purple sparks people’s imaginations, and red inspires passion. At the school we did we had the cafeteria painted powder blue because that color is supposed to make a person feel tranquil. Before it was painted red and purple and the principal told us that the kids were nuts after lunch. But with the blue they calmed down. Purple and red are great colors, but three hundred passionate and imaginative kids in a cafeteria wasn’t working.”

“Oh, boy. I can only imagine.”

Carter’s eyes made a quick sweep over her face. “I think that’s why I’m so damn drawn to you. There are so many colors on you to look at.” He stroked his thumb across her cheek. “Red hair, and green eyes, and this warm tan skin. I feel a whole bunch of things when I look at you.”

She blushed.

Damn it.

“You’re good, Lancaster.” She inched closer to him even though there was hardly any space between them. “I think you must have been reading up on how to pick up ladies because that BS was just too smooth.”

“Took an online class,” he said without missing a beat. “It’s called How to Hit on Your Estranged Wife. I did surprisingly well.”

“Of course you did. You were always a smarty-pants in school, weren’t you?”

He nodded. “Did you like school? For some reason I always get the feeling you didn’t.”

“It was hard for me,” she admitted to him for the first time. “I wasn’t smart. I was average. I had to work really hard to get Bs. It didn’t help that I was best friends with Ellis, who is a freaky genius. I just didn’t understand why we had to learn so much stupid math and science, when there was all that art and music and drama out there. I’ve used the color wheel many times since I left high school but I never once had to find X.”

“You’re creative.” He stroked his hand down her hair. “You can’t paint for shit, but you’re one of the most creative people I know. That doesn’t mean you’re not smart. You’re one of the smartest people I know. I wouldn’t have married you if you weren’t,” he said with absolutely no trace of humor.

“Stop picking on my painting skills,” she said, trying to ignore the achy feeling in her chest upon hearing those words. She had always felt like such a screwup. But maybe she wasn’t. Not in all ways.

“I hated school, too.” He shrugged. “It wasn’t hard for me, but I hated it all the same.”

“That’s because you were away from home.” She felt sorry for the boy he was. His young life had been a lonely one, and it changed how she thought of him. “Don’t you think it would have been different if you got to go to school at home?”

“I’m not sure. My parents’ house never felt comfortable to me. For so long I thought I was a misfit because I couldn’t seem to make a connection with either one of them. I thought home was supposed to give me this certain feeling, but it didn’t. It wasn’t until I came to Durant when I was in college that I got that feeling.”

“It was Steven’s family who gave you that feeling. Why didn’t you stay in Durant then? Steven was here. He never left this place. You could have been his partner years ago.”

“I went back to San Francisco because I had to. My family expected it from me.” He turned to look at her. “Why did you run after college? You love it here. I can tell. Why did you leave it?”

Run.
It was the right word to use. She certainly had run away from this place.

“I guess I was trying to find myself. I think I’m still trying to.”

“You don’t know who you are?” He seemed so surprised by that. She thought he would have figured that out about her a long time ago. “I think you do. I think you are just looking for that thing to fill you up and make you feel whole. I think a lot of people are.”

“Are you still looking for that thing to make you feel whole?” she asked him, needing to know.

“I had to look at my life really hard after Bethany died and I almost lost Ruby in that accident. I could literally lose everything—my job, my money, my house—but the only thing that would truly be a loss is if I didn’t have my kid, my family. That puts things in perspective for me. There are things that I want in my life, but it’s the people that I need.”

Well, damn.

“I need to be here.” She looked away from him, unsure why his words left her feeling so hollow. “But a week in Antigua once in a while wouldn’t be a bad thing.”

“You like Antigua?”

“I’ve never been,” she admitted. “I collect pictures of tropical places. Thailand, Bora-Bora, Mexico. I have a scrapbook that I keep them in. Sometimes when things are gloomy I take them out and look at them. I have this one picture of Antigua at sunset that pulls me every time I look at it.” She sighed. “It seems like the perfect place to be trapped with a hot naked man. Maybe I missed my calling. Maybe I should write romance novels that take place in tropical settings.”

Carter grinned at her again before he leaned over and kissed her cheek. “You’re very cute, Ms. Gordon.”

More warmth spread through her with his kiss. She wanted to live in that moment forever. They were talking. Not arguing. Not rehashing their failed past. They were talking for the first time. She realized that they could. That there could be more to them than passion and sex, and too much emotion.

Give him a chance.

Give yourself a chance to have what you always wanted.

But don’t rush. Just don’t rush.

“Is there a place you’ve always wanted to go, Carter?”

“Yeah, to the Poconos.”

“Say what?”

He laughed, his deep chuckle going through her. “You know, that place with the champagne-glass hot tubs. I’ve always wanted to go there. Take a pretty girl, put on some Barry White, play in the bubbles.”

“Carter, that is so cheesy! But kind of adorable. I thought you were going to say Zurich or Prague or some other place pretentious rich people like to go.”

“Hey, I’m not pretentious and I’ve been to Prague and Zurich when I was a teenager. I really would like to go to Disney World, though. I hear Epcot is damn near magical.”

“Disney World is magical. At least for me. Ellis hates it. I think it has more to do with waiting in line than anything, though. We could go—” She stopped herself, feeling a little bit of insecurity creep up.

But he already seemed to know what she was going to say. “I would like to go with you.” He kissed her softly on the bridge of her nose, and held her closer while they lay in silence for a few minutes. “Just let me know when you’re ready, Bell.”

She was starting to think about the future. Their future together. It scared her. She didn’t want to fail at love again.

“I don’t want to leave this bed, baby, but nature is calling my name.” He rolled away from her, getting out of bed, his beautiful naked body causing her hormones to act up again.

His phone buzzed from her nightstand.

“Can you grab the phone, Bell? It’s probably Ruby.”

He walked into the bathroom, shutting the door behind him as she reached for the phone. “Carter’s phone. Belinda speaking.”

“I wondered how long it would take before you got your hands on him again.”

For a moment Belinda was at a total loss for words. Carter’s mother. Bernadette, the only woman in the world who could make her feel worthless. She hated that she had given her the power to make her feel like shit. She refused to let that happen again.

“Well, hello to you, too, Mommy dearest.”

“He’s fixated on you. I don’t know why, but he is. That’s what this move was about, but I know my son. He doesn’t love you. He only thinks he does. Your relationship didn’t work then and it’s not going to work now. You are simply just not good enough for him. I’m not saying this to be unkind. I’m just telling you the truth.”

“And I’m telling you, you’re an uptight bitch and I simply don’t care what you think.”

Carter walked out of the bathroom then, naked as the day he was born. “What’s the matter?”

She handed him the phone and left her bed. Suddenly she felt damn vulnerable with no clothes on. “It’s your mother.” She found her discarded nightgown on the floor, near his underwear. She tossed his boxers at him.