I shrieked in surprise and pain, writhing out of his touch and tugging the shirt down into place. “What was that?” I demanded. “That hurt, Baxter!”
“Did it feel real, babe?”
I swallowed as realization of what he’d just proven rifled through me. “Yes,” I whispered.
He kissed me again, briefly and softly. “Didthatfeel real?”
“Yes,” I whispered.
“So…am I a dream?” He closed the space between us again, pressing his erection against my lower belly and core. “Is this whole thing a dream? Or is it real?”
I closed my eyes.Wake up, wake up, wake up, I told myself.When I open my eyes, I’ll be on the jet.
I opened my eyes, carefully and slowly and warily; Baxter stood towering over me, hands grasping the fence spindles beside my face, grinning triumphantly.
“Crap,” I breathed.
He laughed. “I’m as real as they come, Eva.”
“Crap!” I repeated. “I’m such an idiot. I need—I need to go. I have to go. This was a mistake.”
I could still feel his touch. I could still feel the delightful, shivery, erotic quaking of the orgasm, the gentle, skilled circles of his finger around my…around me. His kiss. His lips. His body, hard and powerful, blocking out the world beyond his massive frame. Even at that exact moment I could feel his manhood between us, as improbably massive and hard as the rest of him, and I felt my cheeks flaming from the knowledge that he was aroused because of me, for me.
“Did it feel like a mistake when you came apart in my hands?” he murmured. He pressed against me, and then his lips darted against mine in a tease of a kiss. “Doesthisfeel like a mistake?”
I whimpered again, panicking, overwhelmed, embarrassed, afraid, and most of all…aroused in a way I’d never felt before, and thus confused and terrified at the potency of my need and desire—at the way I wanted him to touch me and do things to me and teach me everything I’d been missing my whole life.
“Yes!” I said, whisper-shouting. “Yes, this whole thing iscrazy. I must have been more drunk than I thought to let you…to do this.”
I ducked under his arm and trotted away, flip-flops slapping noisily against my feet. I expected Baxter to chase me, but when I glanced back at him, he was leaning against the fence with his huge arms crossed over his chest, an amused grin on his lips.
“Eva?” he called, his voice pitched low.
I stopped, turned back to look at him. “What, Baxter?”
He jerked his thumb at a two-story Victorian house kitty-corner across the street, a house that I vaguely recognized. “That’s you, babe.”
Sure enough, a hand-carved and painted wooden sign in the yard announced the property asThe Kingsley’s Rest.
I sighed in frustration. “Crap.”
I had to walk past him to get to it, and he knew it.
I tried to hustle past him, keeping as small a profile as possible, ignoring him completely. Baxter just laughed, a genuine bark of amusement.
“Seriously, Evangeline?” He slung an arm around my middle and hauled me up against him, my arms pinned between us, my hands flat on his chest. Which, admittedly was a very nice and masculine chest, and felt wonderful under my hands. “What’s the problem, honey?”
“What’s theproblem?” I yanked away from him, snagging the bag with my things in it, which I’d forgotten. “Everything! You, partly, but mostly just me being an idiot and a reckless, wanton, irresponsible slut.” I walked away, then.
He jogged few steps to catch up to me. “Whoa, hey now. Them’s fighting’ words, missy,” he drawled in an exaggerated Old West accent.
“I don’t know what that means.”
“It means nothing about what just happened wasbad or wrong, Evangeline. It wasgood. You enjoyed the fuck out of it, and you’re allowed to do whatever the fuck you want to do with whoever the fuck you want to do it…unless you’re married or in a serious relationship. Which you aren’t, are you?”
“No, I’m not married! And I’m not with anyone, although Thomas might have himself convinced otherwise.”
“I don’t give two shits what your boy Thomas thinks. If you say you ain’t with him, that’s all that matters.”
