Page 48 of Now to Forever (Life on the Ledge Duet #2)

Thirty-Three

“I don’t know why we’re at your house,” I murmur into Ford’s mouth. He fumbles to get a key in the door with one hand, refusing to take the other off me.

“I can’t do what I want to do to you on Archie’s floor mattress,” he says, swinging the door open, our lips fused as we tumble into the darkness.

My body curves into his, and just his fingers gripping into the fabric of my dress makes my hips go soft.

The fact I’m still clothed is mostly unbelievable since his hand on my thigh the entire drive home had me burning like a kerosene-soaked bed of charcoal.

When he started sucking on my shoulder, I swerved off the road.

A lamp topples to the floor when we bump into a table, and it pulls us apart with a breathless laugh. Ford flicks on a light; I pick up the lamp.

As excited as I am to see what grown-up Ford can do with that body of his, being in his house is just as intriguing. I’ve dropped Wren off, but I’ve never had a reason to come in. Never let myself get close enough to be invited. And now here I am, ground zero of where Ford and Wren are a family.

It’s a modest ranch house, nothing fancy on the outside, but inside it’s completely updated.

Cozy and lived in. I step out of his grip and start to wander around the living room.

I run my fingers across the back of a sectional couch and wooden coffee table, pausing at every picture covering the walls and bookshelves.

Ford and Wren at all phases of life. Halloween costumes.

Christmas mornings. Wren holding signs of first days of school, Ford receiving awards in different uniforms. A life so different than the one I’ve had.

There are several of him as a kid; one of me, Zeb, and him.

At that one we exchange a look, but the thickness in my throat warns me not to dwell on it.

I pick each of them up and set them down, and he walks behind me, filling in a few times at what I’m looking at.

At one of a little Wren and a woman I don’t recognize, he says, “Riley. Her mom.”

I think of the article and the woman she killed. He got shot and we never talked about it. Now isn’t the time either.

I simply nod, setting it back down. “I have to tell you something,” I say, looking at him. “I’ve been taking Wren to a therapist.”

He smiles gently. “I know. Insurance contacted me about a form filled out wrong. I put the pieces together. She listed me on the paperwork, so they could at least tell me she was going. Figured you’d tell me when I needed to know.”

Relief is instantaneous.

“I can’t tell you why. I promised her. ”

He tucks a strand of hair behind my ear. “Okay.”

I blow out a breath, lips making a raspberry sound, feeling lighter as I look to the bookshelf we’ve stopped at.

“I don’t know why you trust me with her.

I feel like everything I tell her is most definitely the opposite of what I should be saying.

I’m no parent, Ford. There’s a good chance I’m ruining her for life. ”

He chuckles, taking a step as I do. “Scotty, there are a million parenting handbooks out there with a million pieces of advice. The truth is, nobody knows how to do it. Every kid is different. Every damn one. And guess where the book is that teaches you how to deal with a teenager whose mom was an addict and killed a girl?”

I look at him.

“Exactly. None of us know what we’re doing. You’re helping, whether you see it or not, you are.”

“Maybe.” A notebook with birds on the cover grabs my attention. I pick it up and thumb through it. A list, some of the boxes checked. I look at him.

He smiles, almost sheepish. “Birds of the southeast. I’m trying to see them all.”

I laugh softly, setting it back down next to a bird guidebook and a pair of binoculars. “What a strange feeling it is to be jealous of birds,” I tease, rounding the room to stop at a small space of wall. “And I like your house.”

“Mmm.” He rubs his nose against my cheek. “I like you in my house.”

“Really?” The touch of his hands as my back hits the wall nearly makes me melt. “What else do you like? ”

Against my bare shoulder he works lips and tongue across my skin, barely stopping to say, “I like how your nipples look in my shirt you wear to bed.”

Ladies and gentlemen, we are off to the races.

“Silenced again, Viper?” He slides my dress up my hip, leading to me hooking one leg around him.

“No.” My voice is raspy as his mouth moves from my shoulder to jaw. “I’m trying to figure out the virtuous way to tell you that I’m hot and bothered and you’re taking too damn long.”

He growls—a very sexy noise I want to record for every lonely night I ever have—and lifts me up, my dress bunching around my waist as he presses his lips to mine. He carries me down the hall, stopping to kick open a door.

When we cross the threshold of his bedroom, it’s as if it has been charged with pure sex. Like pheromones in the air turn us into animals making us move in a fuck-driven fury.

His shoes, my boots.

His shirt, my dress.

Mouths connected, I unbuckle his belt. He pulls his jeans down.

Steps back, just slightly, looking at me like he’s studying me.

Like he wants to be able to recall the black lace of my bra or the thin strips of my panties.

Learn the freckles on my skin the way some people know constellations in the sky.

He puts his index finger on my sternum, dragging it down between the swell of my breasts to my belly button.

Lower. With just his index finger over the black satin of my panties, he just touches me—near but not on—and he watches me.

Every movement of my muscles. Every rise of my chest.

I reach my hands in the top of his boxers and he stops me.

“I’ve waited too long to rush this, Scotty.”

The slowness he moves thickens the want in the air until it’s so severe, it’s hard to breathe. Hard to think through the anticipation. The aches. The hunger my entire body is experiencing.

Fingers working, he presses into me but not hard enough. I need to feel him. Taste him. Something.

Too fast for him to stop me, I grab the band of his boxers and drag them straight down his legs, dropping to my knees.

“Sco — ” Him in my mouth, the rest of my name turns to a moan on his lips. And though he’s not touching me, his fingers in my hair and him filling my mouth to the point of watering my eyes makes me wonder if I’m going to get off, just like this.

It would be a first, and with him, I’m here for it.

When his hips chase my mouth with more urgency, my lips are on his thighs, his hips. I pause at the bruise on his ribs, touching it gently, licking it then kissing before moving across his chest until I’m standing again, sucking his neck.

His hand slides down.

Low.

Lower.

In.

Pumping.

Hard .

My hips grind his hand .

“This is new,” I say with a gasp.

“And?” He doesn’t stop, just pulls back enough so he can see me while he works. It’s sexy, him watching me as I relearn every move, taste, and sound of him.

Pump. Pump. Pump.

“And,” I grit out, grinding against his hand more uncontrolled and desperate for more friction, “I approve.”

His mouth is back on mine. One hand works, and the other fumbles with my bra.

It’s off; his free hand finds a breast, pinches until I moan. Again. His hardness presses right into my belly and hits my skin like a branding iron, heating me straight to the core.

“I need to taste you.”

Yes, please.

I don’t need to respond; he’s sliding my panties down my legs—fast—directing me to the bed. I comply. He’s on his knees, draping my legs over his shoulders and turning my whimpers into cries when I feel his tongue on my flesh. I am about three breaths away from detonation.

“Holy shit,” I say through gritted teeth as my back arches off the bed and he becomes a sorcerer of eatery with every swipe of his tongue and nip of his teeth.

Then he’s up, kneeling above me, hard and hot. “Are we supposed to use a condom?” he asks, fumbling with a drawer at his nightstand. “I don’t know if I have one. I haven’t been—you know—but . . .” He looks at me, almost panicked .

I laugh; it’s breathy. I kiss him. “I can’t get pregnant.” He stills for a split second before I add, “And you could be covered with syphilis and you’d still be given access.”

He responds by way of pressing all of him against all of me. And while everything has been frantic and urgent, everything now is like we’re moving through honey. Every touch slow, every move on purpose. Our flavors on our lips come together to make a taste that is so very distinctly us.

“You ready?” he asks, so sincere—so consuming—once again it’s hard to breathe.

I nod from beneath him, tilt my hips at the same time there’s a hitch of his, and he’s in. Stretching. Making my fingernails dig into his back.

“God, Scotty,” he groans as he moves between kisses. “You feel so damn good.”

I pull my mouth from his to watch where we connect, falling into an erotic trance of him.

Us. The tension working the muscles of his arms and neck as he hovers over me.

The movement of his chest and stomach as his spine undulates all of him in and out of me.

The light from the window as it paints his silhouette.

It’s perfection. He is. Every damn inch of him.

Then there’s a shift; he’s close. His movements are less controlled with every thrust, and his jaw is in a permanent clench.

Breaths shaky. His lids go heavy, dark in the dim light.

And with the swelling pleasure building, there’s a familiar pang of desperate panic shooting through me I can’t ignore.

I smash my mouth against his then push my palms into his chest. He pulls back but follows my lead, repositioning himself behind me when I get on my hands and knees.

He stills, tracing his fingers down the length of my spine.

He sees.

Not now.

I look over my shoulder, and his eyes meet mine.

“No,” I demand. “Don’t stop.”

Hands at the crease of my hips, he nods and does what I need him to: holds me tight and fucks me hard. He slams me to the hilt, one, two, three more times, drawing all my attention inward to that glorious spot he’s hitting until I shatter with a cry, wave after pleasurable wave rolling through me.

He doesn’t stop. On the contrary, me hitting a peak prompts him forward with a new sense of urgency, amplifying every sensation as he drives into me.

His fingers dig deeper into my skin and every thrust hits harder than the last until he finishes with a slew of sworn words that come off his tongue like a prayer.

He empties, holding on to me the whole time, and we crash to the bed to the soundtrack of strangled breaths and soft laughs, two puddles of satiated bliss.

Grown man Ford Callahan absolutely lived up to every battery-operated fantasy I’ve conjured up about him.

On my belly with a sheet over my legs, I fold my arms under my cheek and face him. He’s on his back, one arm bent behind his head, the other resting across his chest, rising and falling with the cadence of his breath .

He looks at me, sexy smile on his talented mouth. “You’re louder than I remember,” he says.

“Really?” I hum, satisfied drawl in my voice. “You didn’t seem to mind.”

He rolls on his side, sheet draped across his beautiful body as he runs a finger up and down the music notes of my spine. The same as Zeb’s. The same as his. “You didn’t tell me about these.”

“Girl needs some secrets.” He makes an agreeable sound but says nothing, continuing the hypnotizing movement. “He ever tell you why he got them on his back?” I ask. He shakes his head. “He said, ‘ Keep the things you love at your back and they’ll never break your heart .’”

He laughs softly. “That’s either incredibly insightful or terribly tragic.”

“That was him, right?” I say with a laugh of my own. “He probably just got a drunk tattoo and made that up later.”

He puffs a soft laugh, moving his fingers from my spine to my shoulder. “How long have you known you couldn’t get pregnant?”

“Umm.” I turn my head away from him, propping my chin on my folded arms, looking at the wood grain lines of his headboard. “I actually got pregnant once. A careless thing.” I clear my throat. “I got an infection and scar tissue kind of took over after that.”

His hand stills. “God, Scotty. I’m sorry.”

I force myself to look at him and speak around the boulder in my throat. “It’s fine. I wouldn’t have made any kind of mom, anyway.”

His mouth moves like he wants to speak, so I silence him by propping myself up and kissing him. When I start to pull away, he pulls me back, making it last longer. A sweet tangling of our lips and rubbing of our tongues.

“You’re more beautiful now than you were twenty years ago,” he says when we finally pull apart, his hands going to my hair.

I grin. “Liar.”

“Maybe,” he says, slight smile on his lips. “A liar in love sees what he wants, I guess.”

My head jerks back. Between the sincere look in his eyes and what he’s just said, a five-alarm siren blares through me, and my throat pinches so tightly I wonder if I’ll black out.

He loves me.

I peck one quick kiss on his lips and pull out of his arms, swinging my legs out of bed and working to find my clothes strewn about the floor and tangled in the sheets.

“What are you doing?” he asks, brow furrowed.

“Um.” I focus on sliding my panties up my legs, ignoring the fact my thighs are still slick with him. “I, uh, have to get going.”

“Going?” He sits up fully, watching me pull my dress overhead. “Why?”

Because you just said that and I’m freaking out.

“Molly, for one,” I say, tugging a boot on.

“The dog that essentially takes care of herself?” he asks, not hiding his irritation.

“The one and only.” I force a smile, shoving my foot into my other boot and sitting on the edge of the bed next to him. “But, I liked this. Tonight. This. You. A lot, really. Even better than without touching. ”

When I grin, he doesn’t.

“You’re leaving and aren’t coming back?”

“Uh.” I look away from him. “Not tonight, no. Tomorrow I have an LL thing. But after?”

He nods slightly, as if still processing, and looks away from me. When he says, “Maybe,” I know I’ve hurt him, and I hate myself. But I can’t change that here, not now. Not with the way he’s looking at me and making me feel.

I lean in and kiss him lightly. He doesn’t move to make it last or follow me out when I stand. I’m in the doorway when he says, “Give me something real right now.”

I take in how beautiful he is in his bed and wish so badly I was lying naked next to him. “I wish I didn’t have to go.”

Before he can say anything or try to convince me otherwise, I go, stopping only in the living room to thumb through one of the books and snap a picture.

Alone in a lumpy bed on the floor, I spend the entire night wishing I knew how to stay.