Page 21 of A Lonely Road (Spruce Hill #2)
Chapter Eighteen
Jake
W e settled into a comfortable rhythm over the following days and, much to my delight, Nora also returned to her little booth in the corner several times that week.
There was something intensely satisfying about being able to look over and speak a thousand words with just a glance.
It was that same pleasure I’d felt when she first started coming in—multiplied by a thousand now that our connection strengthened day by day.
As a bonus, I started counting the number of times I was able to inspire a blush in her cheeks with nothing more than a raised eyebrow.
My current record was three in one evening, but the payback came when she held my gaze and popped a piece of strawberry between her lips. I almost abandoned the bar to drag her into my office then and there.
After we left The Mermaid, our nights were spent together, exploring one another and testing the limits of the hurricane forces between us.
It was a perfect technique for drawing her out from behind her walls, because my intuition about when to press forward and when to back off seemed to reassure her more than words ever could.
Of course, the fact that she trusted me enough to be so responsive was why I was able to read her so well. As a result, I could barely remember a time when I’d been so happy and so fulfilled all at once.
Since I knew that Nora’s shopping trip with Sam was weighing on her nerves, on Thursday night we left the restaurant early to go back to my place.
I’d caught the way Nora eyed the huge bathtub at my house with something pretty damn close to longing, so I asked Sam to pick up some kind of girly bubble bath, which she’d sneakily delivered to me at work the previous day.
Before heading to The Mermaid for my shift, I'd positioned candles around the master bathroom.
Nora cocked a suspicious brow when I told her to stay put downstairs, covered her eyes as instructed when I brought her up, and gave a girlish shriek of sheer delight when I revealed the candlelit bathroom and steaming tub filled with bubbles.
She turned and threw her arms around me, though not before I caught sight of her radiant smile—and, I thought, the sheen of tears in her eyes .
“Oh my god, Jake,” she whispered, “I thought maybe you were leading me to a sex dungeon. Oh, this is beautiful, thank you, thank you, thank you!”
I burst out laughing as I clutched her tight to my chest. “Sex dungeon, huh? I mean, if the lady desires, I’m sure I can adjust my renovation plans. I’ll just need a few extra supplies to make that happen.”
She whacked my shoulder lightly and surreptitiously wiped at her eyes before turning back to survey the scene before us. “This is a pretty big tub,” she mused. “Will you be joining me?”
I started pulling off my shirt before she even finished the question. “Hell yes, but the point of this exercise is relaxation, so don’t go getting all handsy on me.”
Nora’s beautiful laughter echoed off the tiled walls, but when she sank chin-deep into the water, it was her sigh of pure bliss that wound its way around my heart with a gentle squeeze.
I never even used the tub, nor had I really ever expected to, but we stayed in there for almost two hours with nothing more sexual than a game of footsy to accent our soft conversation.
Nora looked so at peace that I was just about willing to add this into our nightly routine.
With her dark hair piled high, her eyes closed, and her head tipped back against the porcelain, I had a tantalizing view of her neck and shoulders.
Only the upper swells of her breasts were visible until the bubbles at last began to collapse on themselves, then I caught the occasional glimpse of deep, rosy pink beneath the water and my mouth went dry .
A sheepish grin tugged at my lips when she caught me staring.
“I was told the point of this exercise was relaxation,” she informed me primly, but the glint in her eye told me she was finished with that portion of the evening.
“I have a very delicate constitution and the water is freezing now,” I protested. “I had to warm myself up somehow, didn’t I? Do you want me to suffer from hypothermia?”
She crawled over to me, sweeping away bubbles with her hand until she was straddling my thighs. “You have a rock solid constitution—among other things, it feels like—so why don’t you let me warm you up?”
With a wide smile, I enthusiastically agreed. Though I was always happy to take the lead whenever she wanted me to, letting Nora guide our lovemaking was a gift in itself. She was as inventive as she was playful, easily coaxing me into trying out whatever it was she had in mind.
So far, she’d never steered us wrong.
Sometimes I thought about her declaration that she wanted nothing from me beyond friendship—especially when she was doing wicked things with her mouth or when she was writhing underneath my own—and I had to keep myself from laughing and ruining the moment.
When we abandoned the tub, though, bubbles dripping down our bodies to join the puddles on the floor, Nora’s limbs wrapped tightly around me, laughter was out of the question .
She was as likely as not to disappear before I awoke, but she lingered in bed with me on Friday morning, welcoming the soothing way my hands stroked over her hair and skin as I woke up to her in my arms. We lay there in the stillness of the morning, listening to the birdsong outside the window as I basked in the warmth of her soft body tucked against my side.
“You know you don’t have to go, if you don’t want to. Shopping with Sam, I mean,” I mumbled sleepily.
Nora seemed to consider it as she traced abstract shapes across the muscles of my abdomen with one finger.
I knew she liked to watch the way they rippled under her hands, to feel her effect on me in such a tangible way.
In fact, she seemed to enjoy seeing my every reaction, just as I enjoyed hers—the woman held nothing back when it came to our time together.
“I do want to go. I think. I’m just even more out of practice with the girls’ day kind of thing than I was with this.” She waved her hand vaguely over our bodies.
“Jesus Christ, Nora, if you’re this good out of practice, it’s a good thing you weren’t in practice. I probably would've died of a heart attack by now.”
She laughed against my shoulder. “That’s not what I meant, you jerk.”
Tugging on a lock of her hair, I waited until she met my eyes and said, “Look, Sam might blow through a room like a tornado, but she’s a good friend.
She may talk your ear off or try to convince you to buy thigh high boots—which would be absolutely fine by me, in case you wondered—but she’s not going to pry into your life.
Not about us, and not about anything else you don’t want to discuss. ”
“Thigh high boots, huh?” she mused, snuggling closer against me. “Well, now I’m looking forward to this shopping trip.”
With a growl, I took her mind off of shopping for the remaining hour before she needed to get ready.
Her peals of laughter bounced around us, dancing like the sunlight coming through the window, until the giggles faded into the soft, throaty moans that made me wish I were the one spending the entire day with her.
Since she insisted on going back to her apartment to shower and dress for the shopping trip, I decided I might as well get some yard work done.
No way would I miss seeing whatever cute outfit she threw together for a day out with my sister, especially knowing how she’d dressed up just for their coffee date.
It was only fair that I get to see it too, or so I told myself as I worked at a snail’s pace so I wouldn’t be caught standing around doing nothing when she came out to meet Sam.
My sister’s red Mustang pulled into Nora’s driveway right on schedule. She gave me a jaunty wave, which I returned with a sardonic smile, then both of us caught sight of Nora coming down the stairs at the same time.
If I’d been able to photograph our matching reactions, I might have laughed at them in the future, but I was too busy trying not to embarrass myself with an epic erection in front of my twin.
“Holy shit,” I whispered.
“Holy shit, indeed,” Sam concurred through the lowered car window. “You are one lucky son of a bitch, no offense to our mother.”
Nora was wearing a cropped, pumpkin-colored blouse with a flouncy floral skirt that made my palms itch to run along the back of her thighs, to hook around her knees the way she liked.
Short black boots left a long stretch of bare leg visible—I was almost willing to rank them higher than the fantasy boots we'd discussed only hours ago.
Her hair was pulled half up, the rest falling in loose, enticing curls around her shoulders.
Sam shot me a sideways glance as she bit back a grin. “If your mouth is watering like a garden hose even after spending all night with her, you must really have it bad, brother.”
“Oh, believe me, I do.”
I gave Nora a smile, one I hoped could convey all the things I had in mind for the minute I got her to myself again, and opened the passenger door of Sam’s car for her.
Before she slid into the seat, my hand sank deep into the hair at the nape of her neck and I bent down to kiss her.
It was a deep, thorough, mind-numbing kiss that left her blushing brilliantly in front of my sister.
“Have fun,” I murmured, winking at her dazed expression as she got in the car.
Sam’s burst of laughter filled the air as I forced myself to back away. Still, I couldn’t quite make my feet lead me into the garage until the Mustang finally disappeared from view at the end of the street.
“You are one lucky son of a bitch.” I repeated my sister’s words in a whisper, let them waft over me, and another tendril of warmth curled around my heart.
Hell, yes, I was.