Page 60 of The Parkers' Handsome Holiday
I wiped my mouth with the back of my hand. “Very much.”
She nodded. “I can only imagine. Asher is a well-adjusted little boy. You’re doing a great job with him. You can tell he doesn’t feel like he’s missing out, although I’m sure his mother was a very special woman.”
“She was.”
Lina looked down at her lap. “What happened to her, Cal?”
My chest ached. An empty pit opened up inside me and threatened to swallow me whole. I clenched my jaw and fought down the lump in my throat. “It was a long time ago.”
Lina understood that I couldn’t answer her question. She reached over and put her hand on my knee. “It’s okay. It’s like you said. Life happens, right? And it can be ugly.”
“Yeah,” I said. I studied her. Her full lips, bright cheeks, and light green eyes. Her lashes, dark and full and casting shadows on her cheeks. “I’m just glad there is such a thing as a second chance.”
Before I realized what I was doing, I reached out, took her wrist, and pulled her to me. Her lips parted like she knew what I needed from her. Her lips sealed over mine.
She tasted exactly like she used to. Sweet. Like oranges.
24
LINA
We were kissing.
Oh God. We’re kissing.
Cal’s hand cupped my cheek as his tongue slipped between my lips and explored my mouth with curiosity—and hunger. I opened up to him, completely willing to succumb to his demands, and he pushed me back a bit, forcing me to lean back on one hand.
I didn’t understand how, of all the things I’d done since waking up in the hospital, this felt the most right.
He tasted like champagne and citrus and smelled like pine and sandalwood. His stubble along my cheek gave me goosebumps and shot white-hot sparks of need from my lips to my center, and then down, down to the spot between my legs that had been aching the previous night as I looked at him up on that rooftop.
Desire. Lust. Need.
I gave into it, wrapping my hands in the collar of his shirt and pulling him down on top of me as I laid down on the sofa. He braced himself above me with his tongue still in my mouth. The hand on my cheek moved down my neck, where he traced my jaw with his thumb. Then he was going lower and lower, until he used that same thumb to run along the inside of the waistband of my pajamas.
I giggled into his mouth and held on to his shirt tighter. Then, without meaning to, I whimpered his name.
Cal paused, brushed my hair off my face, and smiled down at me. “You’re so beautiful, Lina. So damn beautiful.”
My cheeks grew hot. I was trapped beneath him, but I didn’t mind. The weight of his body above me and his warmth were reassuring. I wanted him to control me. To put me where he wanted.
To do to me what he wanted.
Whatever he wanted.
But I had no idea how to tell him that. So I decided to show him.
I released his shirt and held his face in my hands, drawing his down to me for more wet, desperate kisses. He moaned softly into my mouth and slid a hand up the inside of my shirt. His fingers crept over my lace bra, and he cupped my breast, giving it a firm squeeze that had me panting beneath him.
How was I so susceptible to his touch?
My skin felt like it was on fire. The place below my belly was burning up, and that tight knot had reformed, but this time much more intensely. The pressure was building by the second, and I knew I needed a release.
“I want you to fuck me,” I whispered.
Cal pinched my bottom lip between his teeth. I moaned. He reached beneath me and unclasped my bra. “I’m going to make you forget your own name.”
I arched an eyebrow at him.
