Page 51 of Holly Jolly Cake Fight
“Why are you so good at this?” she whispered. “At me? I’m forever awful to you. I’m always being rude, and I’m all messed up in my head, can’t trust you even if you say the sky is blue, but . . .” She squeezed him even more tightly. “But you always know just what to say and do.”
“Well, I probably should have told you this already,” Laurin said very gravely, and Candace held her breath as she waited for whatever this horrible revelation might be, “but I have a cat.”
She snorted.
He pecked her lips. “I’m serious. He likes to be petted, but he’ll never tell you that. He’ll hiss and swat, his tail will go nuts, but secretly, he wants pets. You just gotta know how to read all that.”
Candace kissed him back. “So, you’re treating me like a cat, now?”
“If that’s what I need to do to pet you.” The hand on her thigh dipped between her legs to show exactly what he meant by that. He never pushed her panties away, but he didn’t need to. Her world lit up, and she held on tight as he rubbed her there until she was hot and squirmy, craving him in that way that could only ever build up until the need was sated, to the point where she was so desperate to be consumed by him in every way that she was ready to strip, whether he wanted her to or not.
They were still in the kitchen.
She batted his hand away to gather her thoughts back together enough to pant a breathy, “Bedroom.”
He tilted her head so she could see his sly grin over this hard-fought victory as he pressed his finger right back into the damp spot on her panties.
And she had to keep some semblance of control, so she said, “I’m not getting naked in the kitchen,” but her words were whiny and his hand had gone still, torturously so, which meant she had to bear down on it to keep her high going. Still, she said, “We don’t have any curtains out here. Everyone’s probably looking at your bare ass right now.”
Laurin tried to turn the light on in his bedroom, but the faintest whimper from Candace, like she was afraid that asking for that one self-conscious comfort was enough to stop him. In his younger days, most of the women he’d slept with would have stripped in the middle of the street in broad daylight for him, but that didn’t mean he’d never had bashful lovers.
And just because the light was off this time, that didn’t mean that once she got more comfortable with him, he wouldn’t be able to convince her to bake in nothing but an apron for him.
God, he was already planning that far. In his mind, they were in his bakery in the wee hours of the morning, stealing a bit of time between bakes they mixed together to make love on the counter. He didn’t have a fully-formed idea of the future in his head, probably because filling it in would show all the food-safety flaws, but the most tantalizing bits? Every detail fleshed out.
He had to nip that in the bud. He loathed the idea that their only future was in competition with each other, but there were a lot of problems he had no idea how to get past. And they barely knew each other.
But it had been a very long time since another woman had stoked this kind of heat in him.
So instead of turning the light on, he kissed her as he lowered her onto the bed, finally sliding his hands under her shirt to feel the gentle flare of her hips, over the pelvic bone that was perhaps a bit too prominent, to the tapering of her waist. Her stomach was soft and flat, and he forced himself not to think about how well-defined her ribs were as he continued up to deceptively firm biceps and all the way to her delicate hands. He paused there, only nearly divesting her of her shirt and sweater, to lace their fingers together as he kissed her sweet, plush lips. He felther body move beneath his, urging him on even as her tension melted away.
Platitudes raced through his mind, but he kissed his way past them, silencing the praises he knew would raise hackles at this point by trailing his lips down her cheek and her jaw, her neck and her shoulder, down to nuzzle at the full swell of her breasts.
She was beautiful. He didn’t need the lights on to know that. He’d seen enough of her in their time together that he could fill in every creamy inch of her with what his lips and hands felt.
One day, he’d tell her that. One day, he’d tell her of this moment. He’d make it an erotic story as he seduced her, a reenactment that voiced all his thoughts right now, but not tonight.
He had to heal her first, however he was able to. If nothing else, he would have to earn her trust so when he did say everything he wanted to say — so much more than just her beauty — she would believe him. He knew she still had lingering suspicions about how accidental their pairing was. Even now, it made him sick to think that as he finished undressing her, as he lathed his affection upon her nipples, pulling each proud, roughened nub into his mouth and scraping his tongue over it until she moaned her pleasure, she might still be thinking he was put up to this by the network.
His heart clenched, the vessels constricting. He did away with her skirt and panties, thankfully already damp, in a rush and nearly fumbled the condom he retrieved from the nightstand — he’d been confused by the box prominently displayed in the drawer when he first arrived, only to learn later that there was a lot more sex behind the scenes of baking shows than any viewer could have suspected. That slippery little bugger nearly flew out of his fingers in his rush to unroll it down histhrobbing shaft so he could get inside Candace. He needed to feel her clench around him, to hold her in his arms as she held him within her and hope that in this act at least they could fully depend and trust in each other.
“Candace,” he groaned as he made space for himself between her thighs and brought his lips once more to hers. “Candace, I need you now.” There was so much more in his words than he expected her to hear, and that was okay. Her face clenched as she nodded, and he gave her what she clearly wanted as much as he did by thrusting deep within her.
Only, with her startled cry, he realized the tightness in her face wasn’t desperation. Her whimper as he plunged in greedily wasn’t of pleasure but pain, and the arms that went around his shoulders were suffocatingly tight. She hadn’t been desperate, she’d been afraid and too embarrassed to admit it.
He withdrew ever so slowly as the walls of her pussy warred against him, and he hugged her back, albeit gently. “Talk to me,” he urged, rubbing up and down her spine with a firm hand. His heart was on the edge of palpitations, terrified that he’d read every single moment wrong and she didn’t want any of this.
But she only pressed her cheek into his shoulder, and though the pain was evident, so was the comfort she took in his embrace. She did want him. Hopefully, more than she cared to admit. This was purely a physical discomfort. “It’s okay,” she lied, “don’t stop.”
He absolutely stopped. “Not until you tell me what’s wrong.” He knew already, or at least he knew enough. The hold her pussy had on his cock was a fist crushing him.
She sighed. “It’s just been a while, that’s all.”
“How long?” he asked, easing her down and rubbing his hands along her sides. He massaged her as he languidly teased at her entrance, warming her up as he should have done instead of plowing ahead like some stupid kid his first time around. “Candace, I was . . . a slut in my younger days. I won’t lie about that. But even toward the end of my career, I’d lost interest in casual sex, and I was celebrity enough in the circles I ran in that forging a relationship was complicated.” He took a moment to nuzzle at her neck, to push a little deeper, dipping his tip fully into her warmth and taking a breath with her to feel her chest rise into his. “The last time I hurt my leg, I was in a bad place, and every doctor who refused to fix my knee — rightly so — made me more self-destructive. Manon saved my life by getting pregnant with Vivvy, letting me take her. I’m convinced of that. But that wasn’t without complications, either.”
He must have made some pensive sound, some indication of mild distress, because Candace rested her hand on his cheek. His heart swelled as he nudged into it before turning into it to kiss her palm. She was still intoxicatingly snug around him, but her muscles had eased off, so he took a languid, easy pace over her, going only a little deeper each time, giving her the time to stretch to accommodate him.
“I’m not a US citizen, Candace. I’m here legally, I own the bakery withmaman,so you don’t need to worry about me leaving the country or anything, but I’m not Vivvy’s father, either, and that’s caused some difficulties for us. It’s hard to let anyone in anymore. So it’s been almost a year for me.”
