Page 50 of Cognac Secrets
“Did I hurt you?” I asked, tearing my mouth from hers.
“No,” she said with an almost shy smile.
“Then what?”
That shy smile of hers sharpened into something mischievous and she asked in a playful tone, “You going to keep me out here on the sidewalk all night, or are you going to show me your new house?”
I barked a laugh and asked her slyly, “Just what would you like to see first?”
“The bedroom,” she purred. “Definitely the bedroom.”
I groaned, “My absolute pleasure, baby,” I kissed her soundly again, and led her carefully to the front steps.
She giggled against my mouth, stumbling on the steps as she tried to keep kissing me going up them and I stopped her at the front door.
“The place isn’t finished yet, not by a long shot,” I warned her.
“Okay,” she whispered and swayed just a bit on her feet.
I steadied her with my hands on her hips and smiled kissing her, pulling her against me, and reaching into the pocket of my jacket for the keys.
I think she missed the living area, still pretty much down to the studs, and the kitchen which was just as bad for how fiercely she kissed me.
I led her through the house to the one room that was habitable and complete; the master bedroom suite with its small bathroom – which had also been completed.
We’d worked hard on making this place just habitable enough to give me someplace to bring Sandrine that I could be proud of while the rest of the place was worked on.
I knew I was in deep when it came to her when me and the guys were sitting around having beers after completing the master bathroom off the main bedroom and questions about the kitchen and the rest of the house started coming up. I’d said I’d wanted Sandy’s opinion on some of what they were asking and Hex had stared a hole right through me, while La Croix hid his own smile with his beer.
“Just friends with benefits, huh?” Hex had asked, and the whole lot of them had busted up laughing while I’d sat there and flamed in silence.
Shit, I’d really dimed myself out on how hard I’d caught feelings for her right then… but how anyone could help themselves was fucking beyond me.
She was so many things that appealed to me… beautiful, fine, caring, sweet, optimistic, a light in a really damn dark world despite the way she’d been brought up.
Any time I thought about my fingertips sliding across the shiny, flat, scars of those belt marks across her back I wondered about that.
She wouldn’t talk about it – shut down and retreated far inside herself, lightly changing the subject any time I even remotely tried to talk about her family. Just snapped shut, like slamming her open book closed on my fingers just as I was about to reach some of the good part – which I knew began with a tragedy already, still… I wanted to knoweverythingabout Sandrine Starkweather. I wanted to know how she’d begun and still managed to hold on to her sunny disposition.
She was a guiding light… hell, she was showing me out of the dark. This ethereal will-o'-the-wisp, magical with her good intentions.
I pulled her into my arms in front of the closed bedroom door, the air hanging thick in the narrow hallway with the smell of fresh paint and the tang of sweat and hard work, fresh cut lumber and the overall construction happening within the place.
She giggled against my mouth when it crashed into hers, and I held her tight, swaying with her to music only she could seem to hear. She was always dancing, my dancing queen, her heart filled with joy and like she just couldn’t help herself and had to express it through motion – but the only motion I could think of that I would like to engage her in was the horizontal kind of my body on and inside hers, making her pant, making her hold on to me as I took her on an out-of-body adventure with the pleasure I wrought from her.
“You good baby?” I asked her with a soft tone and a flutter in my stomach I hadn’t felt for averylong time.
She giggled a bit and confessed, “I think I’m a little drunk, but other than that, I’m more than good. I’m feeling just fine,” she smiled and her green eyes sparkled in the dark of the house.
“What’d you even get into, anyway?” I asked chuckling and she giggled again and said, “They got me to try their moonshine.”
I barked a laugh and nodded saying, “For sure, that’ll get you.”
“I didn’t even try all that much!” she cried.
“Ooo-wee! That’s mighty powerful stuff, especially if you aren’t used to drinking.”
“I figured you would keep me safe,” she whispered softly and I pulled her tight against me and promised her right then and there… “Always.”
