Page 50 of Holly Jolly Cake Fight
Laurin waited patiently, but not passionlessly. He was staring her down, his eyes heavy and intense, his chest rising and falling in slow, deep breaths. The cadence was hypnotizing.
He was flexing his muscles, she realized. Preening for her. Making himself look as tantalizing as possible with the cut lines of his smooth, nearly hairless abs and biceps. She wanted to trace them. With her tongue. She was practically drooling.
“This is an . . . aggressive way to say thank you,” Candace said stupidly. What did that even mean?
“The most important thing in the world to me is my family. I want to show my thanks with something else important to me.” He looked down at himself, then back to Candace. “It’s important to you, too, isn’t it?”
There wasn’t anything wrong with giving sex away freely, but that wasn’t how Candace was. Laurin wasn’t like that, either. This meant something.
She nodded.
Laurin undid his pants but held them together, still studying Candace, still waiting for a cue.
Her tongue glued itself to the roof of her mouth, but she took a step toward him, and it was enough.
Laurin dropped his pants. He wore nothing underneath.
Candace swore under her breath as her eyes slid down from his chest to his flat stomach to the vee of his abdomen and the thin dark line of hair dragging her eyes down, down, down. Laurin knew exactly how hot he was. There was noembarrassment, no shying away under the scrutiny of Candace’s eyes. He stood tall, his shoulders back, letting Candace look as much as she wanted before scooping up his pants, folding them neatly, and tossing them over the back of a chair.
Turning around to do so, of course, so she could see him from all mouth-watering sides. When he turned back, he had a playful smile, and though he was preening like a peacock, his gaze on her was still as intense. This wasn’t arrogance; this was excitement. This was pride.
He had a lot to be proud of.
His cock was thick and standing as proud as the rest of him, straining up from the thatch of dark curls toward his navel. It had been longer since Candace had seen one than she cared to admit, and her ex never would have put himself on display so boldly, but Candace had a feeling this was alotmore than she’d once been used to.
Which made her shrink. She couldn’t help it. She knew exactly how she looked under her clothes, and she didn’t look bad, but she was too pale and gaunt, too bony from stress taking its toll on her diet. In the stark light of day, she couldn’t compare. To top it off, she was woefully inexperienced. She doubted any of Laurin’s former lovers would have been intimidated by his cock, and she didn’t want to embarrass herself by admitting it, but she also didn’t want to be inadequate.
She was going to be inadequate. The thought made her want to run, but the way Laurin was looking at her made her think he was going to catch her if she did and make her face her fears. How many times had he already done that, after all?
She held her ground as he prowled toward her, even fiddled with the button on the collar of her top. She fumbled it, ofcourse. She was such a mess she was unable to get even the first one undone before Laurin had reached her.
And pinned her up against the refrigerator.
And hoisted her up in the air, guiding her knees around his waist as he brought their lips together.
They’d barely done anything yet, but the contact alone, the way his body engulfed hers, was enough to soothe the worst of her doubts. She had her hands on his back, loving how the muscles of his shoulders rippled under the silky flesh. With her skirt pushed back, they were so close, just the thin cotton of her panties a barrier between them. Already he was rubbing against her most sensitive spot, already he had her breathless.
“I’ve wanted you here for so long,” Laurin murmured against her ear. “I’ve wanted to touch you like this.”
Except his hands weren’t even on her skin. They were on her ass, and her skirt still hung there. He had fully exposed himself to her — not just physically, this was certainly more than that — but she was still covered. Protected.
“I should get undressed.”
“Only if you want to.”
Confusion cooled Candace down slightly.
“I don’t want you to do anything that will make you feel uncomfortable,” he clarified with some firm, deep eye contact. He was dead serious.
Candace frowned and draped herself over him, resting her head on his shoulder and feeling very broken. His entire being engulfing hers was a balm, but that didn’t change the fact that the fracture was there at all. “Because of what happened to me?”
“Because I respect you, and this is something I offer you without strings. And it seems like you’ve had mostly bad experiences here. I want to make this a good one. I want you to feel so fucking good it’ll just wash all those other experiences away.”
Candace wasn’t going to cry. He was naked, and his boy-howdy was an eighth of an inch of cotton away from her lady bits, and he was crazy sexy and made her feel more like a woman — a fun, sexy woman — than she had in years, despite how much effort she’d put into being a monster to him. But that was really sweet, and outside of the kitchen, her world was lacking in really sweet these days.
She wasn’t going to cry, but she was going to hug him tightly while she caught her breath and reined in her confidence. She knew this would be better if she were naked, too, but this was safety.
Laurin slid his hand up between her sweater and her shirt to rub her back, unfazed by her crisis. He nuzzled at her shoulder and finally touched her skin, but only her thigh. His breath was heavy, and he rocked against her slowly but deliberately.
