Secret Kiss (28 page)

“You can, and it’s not.” Lowering himself down, he spoke with authority and assurance. “Just tell me if anything is too much, okay?”

She nodded in agreement. Her chest rose and fell as her breathing grew shallow, and the color on her cheeks darkened.

Turning his attention solely to her center, Adam softly, slowly, ran his index and middle fingers up the silky skin of her puffy, pink lips, stopping at a small patch of dark hair, and then went back down again to the base of her seam. He repeated the movements several times, watching as her feminine folds started to glisten with her juices.

“Is this too much?” he asked, his voice deepening as his eyes lifted to hers.

“No.” She shook her head back and forth, her eyes trained on his hand teasing her between her legs.

“Good, because I like touching you.” He continued rubbing her intimately.

Spreading her folds, he traced around her swollen nub in circles then down her slick opening. Never penetrating her. Never allowing his finger to brush over her sensitized clit.

When she started gasping softly, he pressed his lips to her with the barest of touches. He kissed his way down her center and then up again.

“Is that too much?” he asked, his voice strained with desire.

“No,” she whimpered, her hands clenched in fists, pulling the comforter at her sides.

“Good, because I like tasting you.”

To demonstrate this, Adam covered her sex with his open mouth, curling his tongue around her pleasure nub and flicking it, then flattening his tongue and licking her in suctioning kisses.

Her hips bucked against his mouth, so he was going to back off, thinking that this might be too much, but then her fingers gripped his hair and held him in place. That was all the reassurance he needed. He continued stroking her with his tongue before pressing his middle finger into her tight passage. He’d barely entered her up to his knuckle when her body began convulsing in release.

He kept up his internal massage with the tip of his finger and his wet mouth, suckling the hood of her sex until a rush of liquid heat covered his hand. Her body jerked several times before she fell back onto the mattress, panting as she floated back from her release.

Adam moved up beside her and pulled her into his arms. She came willingly, and he pressed a kissed to the top of her head. An intense wave of feelings washed over him as he held her.

Earlier tonight, he’d seen the insecurity in her eyes when she’d thought he didn’t want to be with her, and it had broken his heart. He’d wanted, more than anything, to put her mind at ease, to tell her how much he felt for her, how much he needed her, but he’d held back. There was so much more that needed to be said before he could even think about telling her that.

When he heard the telltale sounds of her lightly snoring, he smiled to himself. She wanted tonight, and he wanted to give her that. But when they got back home tomorrow, they needed to have a serious talk.

‡

T
ap. Tap. Tap.

Jane couldn’t stop her foot from tapping against the floorboard of the SUV Mike had hired to drive her, Adam, and her grandparents back to Hope Falls.

“You sure you’re okay?” Adam leaned over and asked quietly, his knuckles brushing over her forearm, causing a shiver to run down her arm.

“Mmmhmm.” Jane’s lips were pursed as she nodded twice.

His light-blue eyes momentarily narrowed, searching hers before he turned his attention back to his computer. She and Adam were in the middle seat, and her nana and papa were in the back. The ride had been fairly uneventful since her grandparents had both fallen asleep before they’d even made it to Sacramento. Which was great, except that it had given her way too much time to think.

Last night had been…amazing. After falling asleep in Adam’s arms, she’d woken up in the middle of the night to him kissing her neck while he spooned her from behind. Once she’d fully woken, his hands had explored her body, slipping between her legs then lifting her thigh so that he could slide himself inside her. It had been hot. Like habanero-chili-pepper hot.

Their nightly activities had caused them both to oversleep. When she had woken up only a half hour before their first meeting was scheduled, she’d run around like a crazy person, but Adam had been cool as a cucumber. He’d joined her in the shower; and, that was when she’d realized they didn’t need hours to make love. Nope. He’d gotten the job done within five minutes. It was beyond impressive.

Pushing off the armrest, Jane lifted her knee and gingerly adjusted her hips to sit more comfortably. The marathon sex she and Adam had been having was amazing. The past two days had been incredible, but her body was definitely not used to it. She was sore in places she had no idea she could be sore in. Sadly, she didn’t think that would be an issue after today.

Adam had made it very clear that they needed to talk. He’d told her before they’d left the hotel room this morning. Then he’d repeated the sentiment after their first meeting. He hadn’t left it at that, either. He’d pulled her aside twice more to make sure she understood that he needed to talk to her.

On a scale from one to ten, ten being the worst possible outcome, her imagination was hovering between nine and a half and ten. No one ever wanted to talk about good things. Something was wrong; she just couldn’t figure out what it was.

If mixed signals were dollars, she would be rich.

As serious and determined as Adam was to “talk,” he was also placing his hand on her lower back every time they walked next to each other. Every time they had even a second alone with the slightest bit of privacy, he would lean over and kiss the top of her head or her forehead.

She’d felt his eyes on her all day long too, and every time she had checked to see if he was indeed staring at her, he had been. And not just casually. No. His looks had been so scorching that she was surprised she hadn’t spontaneously combusted.

He’d told her that she was beautiful more times than she could count. He’d said that she smelled like heaven and, her all-time favorite, that he could get drunk off her kisses.

Then, when they had been around clients, he’d been the epitome of professionalism. She was seriously suffering from emotional whiplash. His actions didn’t scream that he wanted to break things off, but he kept insisting that they needed to talk.

Honestly, if he had ovaries, she’d be concerned that he was going to tell her that he was pregnant. Jane grinned at the thought of Adam being knocked up. Then another thought hit her: what if this talk was about the fact that he had a kid. Or kids…
plural
? Glancing to the side, she saw that Adam was concentrating on his computer screen.

Could that be it? Did Adam have children she didn’t know about? It wasn’t like that in and of itself would be a deal breaker, but it was odd that kids had never come up in discussion. She hadn’t thought to ask.

Biting her lip, she looked out the window just in time to see the
Welcome to Hope Falls
sign pass by. Her stomach started flipping like pizza dough in the hands of a chef as nerves zinged around her body. In just a few hours’ time, she’d have all the answers to all the questions she wasn’t even sure she wanted to ask.

Jane had promised Adam that she’d head over to his house after her nana and papa took off later that night. They were going with Nikki’s parents, Sue Ann, Henry Walker—the mayor of Hope Falls—Karina’s grandmother, and several other members of the Bingo/Bridge Club for a card tournament in Lake Tahoe. The group was taking a party bus and going to be staying overnight. It was a little depressing that her grandparents had only been in Hope Falls for less than a week and had already developed a more exciting social life than Jane had in the entire year she’d lived there.

Not that she begrudged her grandparents for having a good time. Seeing them be so active was a huge relief. It also eased some of the guilt she’d been carrying around about having abandoned them when she’d come to live in California.

As they turned the corner to Adam and Jane’s cul-de-sac, she reached back to wake her grandparents, who had been snoring for the last hour.

“We’re home, guys,” she said as gently as possible.

Her papa startled awake. “What? Huh? What the…”

Her nana, on the other hand, opened one eye then the other before stretching her arms over her head with a loud yawn. Then, looking over at her grandpa, she smiled. “Oh my goodness. Walter, we must’ve nodded off.”

Her papa coughed and shook his head. “I was just closing my eyes.”

“Right.” Her nana gave Jane and Adam a knowing wink. “Closing your eyes while you were sawing logs.”

“Me?” Her papa humphed. “You’re the one who snores like a banshee.”

“I do not snore.” Her nana sat up straighter and squared her shoulders as the SUV stopped.

Jane intentionally avoided eye contact with Adam as they all climbed out of the vehicle because she was sure he’d overheard her grandma’s comments about snoring, which were verbatim what she herself had expressed when Adam had accused her of snoring. She walked so fast around the car that she beat the driver to the back to get her luggage.

As she waited for the hatchback to open, Adam moved behind her, his hand resting on her waist as he bent down to her ear and whispered, “Looks like you and your nana are sharing a canoe on your river trip down Denial.”

Jane couldn’t help the smile that broke out on her face as she shook her head, not even trying to verbally rebut his observation. Just before the driver lifted the door, Jane caught Adam’s reflection in the tinted window—he was grinning from ear to ear.

That smile was one of the best things this world had to offer. Not only because of the deep dimples on either side of it, but also because of the light that shined in Adam’s normally serious eyes. It made her wonder what he had been like as a child. She knew he’d had a difficult time growing up, but she wondered how long it had taken for that spark to extinguish.

Her heart sighed as she remembered what he’d told her grandparents at dinner that he wanted to keep Jane smiling for as long as she would let him. That might’ve been something he’d said because he’d been pretending to be her boyfriend, but that really was how she felt about him.

She had a sinking feeling that neither of them would be making each other smile much after their
talk
tonight.

After all of the luggage was out of the back, Adam slipped the driver a tip as he said, “Thanks, man.”

Jane didn’t see how much Adam had given him, but she did see the driver’s face light up when he looked down at his palm. Then, shaking Adam’s hand again, he enthused, “Any time. Any time.”

The exchange was just one more ingredient in the perfection potion that was Adam Dorsey. It’d always been a pet peeve for Jane when people didn’t tip well or treated workers in the service industry poorly. From what Jane had observed over the past two days, Adam was a generous man who treated
everyone
with respect.

Why? Why did he have to be so freakin’ perfect?

As the SUV pulled away, Jane’s grandparents were arguing over whether her papa would be playing the slots later. Between their loud conversation and her own mind spinning like an ice skater with no toe pick, Jane didn’t hear her name being called or notice the name caller until she was standing a few feet away from him.

Eli was on her porch, holding what looked to be a half dozen red roses. “Hey.” He smiled when their eyes finally met.

“Hey,” she repeated automatically before asking quickly, “What are you doing here?”

“I dropped by to see if you wanted to go get that drink?” His eyes scanned the rest of their group.

Oh shit
. Jane had completely forgotten that she’d agreed to have a drink with Eli.

“Hey, man.” Eli nodded in Adam’s direction.

Her nana whispered to her papa, “She has a
date
?”

“I’m Eli.” Eli stepped forward and stretched his hand out to her grandpa.

“Oh, sorry.” Jane knew she was being rude, but in all fairness, she was a little shell-shocked. “Eli, these are my grandparents, Walter and Dolores Marshall.”

“Nice to meet you.” Her papa shook Eli’s hand, and her nana looked at her with her best what’s-going-on-here-young-lady expression.

As her grandparents greeted Eli, a voice sounded behind them.

“Adam.”

All at once, the entire group looked at the woman standing at the end of Jane’s walkway. Jane was momentarily speechless. Never had she seen a woman that beautiful in real life. And she’d met celebrities like Scarlett Johansson, Megan Fox, and Jessica Alba.

This woman looked like a Photoshopped Victoria’s Secret model come to life. She had long, sandy-blonde hair that perfectly framed her angelic face. Her large, green eyes reminded Jane of a cat’s, and her lips would put Angelina Jolie’s to shame. And that was just her face and hair—the body on her defied physics! This woman had somehow managed to corner the market on exotic beauty and the-girl-next-door.

It was a lot to take in.

“Alexis,” Adam spoke, snapping Jane out of the beauty shock she was in.