Page 38 of Not Quite Perfect

Sixteen

David

Victoria’s feetwere in my lap, my fingers digging into her arches. From the other end of the couch, she let out a long, satisfied moan, the sound going straight to my cock. “Right there.”

It had been three weeks since that difficult conversation around her kitchen table. As much as I loved her and wanted desperately to hear her say the same, I wasn’t going to pressure her. With words, or with my body. Not that I didn’t want to sink into Victoria every chance I got, but she’d wanted to take things slow … so that’s what we were going to do.

The way I figured, she was my forever so I had all the time in the world.

“I don’t know why you insist on wearing those heels,” I said as I massaged the balls of her feet.

“I have to,” she said, dropping her head back in bliss. “I’m short, and these guys think that means they can intimidate me. The heels are part of my arsenal.”

I glanced toward the door where she’d kicked them off she second she’d stepped over the threshold. Shiny and black, the spikes were at least four inches long. “They certainly look like something you’d find in an arsenal.”

She raised her head and smirked. “Maybe next time I’ll just take one off and threaten that asshole with it.”

Victoria had been chasing after one of the candidates for mayor for over a week, but he was avoiding her … and every other reporter in a one-hundred mile radius. With a population of around seventy-five thousand, Rocky Cove wasn’t abigcity. Our mayoral races usually consisted of bake sale appearances, kissing babies, and ribbon-cutting ceremonies. But things had gone off the rails a couple of weeks ago when it was revealed that the incumbent’s closest competitor was, in fact, his secret love child from an affair he’d had nearly four decades ago.

“The man is a lying, cheating bastard, and the public needs to know. If he’s been lying about this, what else has he been covering up?” She sat up and pulled her feet from my lap, curling them underneath her. “What kind of man thinks it’s okay to have two families?”

“He can kiss the mayorship goodbye, that’s for sure.”

Her eyes flashed with indignation, her cheeks flushing as she pushed up onto her knees. “That’s just it. Even knowing he’s a duplicitous snake in the grass, he’sstillleading in the polls! I talked to one lady who told me that even though she was angry about what he’d done to his wife, she was still voting for him because his son only seemed out for revenge. And then she accused me of writing fake news!”

I took hold of Victoria’s hand and pulled her down into my lap. One thing I’d learned the last couple of weeks was that once she got going, she was a force of nature to be reckoned with. She believed in fairness, justice, and the American dream. And she wasn’t afraid to fight for what she believed in, either.

But because it was herliteraljob to be impartial, she couldn’t always say what was in her heart. And when that happened, her emotions built up until they overflowed, like a sponge that had reached its saturation point.

If I was being honest, it made me love her even more. In these moments when it was just the two of us and she unburdened herself to me, there was a vulnerability about her that she didn’t show the rest of world. I counted myself lucky that she felt comfortable enough to let me see her with her guard down.

Unfortunately, her big, generous heart also meant that sometimes she got so worked up that frequently she couldn’t eat or sleep, and she’d recently confessed to wishing she wasn’t quite so emotional.

I didn’t know what to say to make it better. The only thing I could do was be there as her sounding board. That, and try to help her relax. But no amount of foot massages was going to ease the type of tension she’d built up these past couple of weeks.

She’d said she wanted to hold off having sex, but she’d never said anything about kissing.

“Shh, I got you.” I petted her hair away from her face and kissed her pursed lips. She was strung tight like a bow, but as my mouth crested softly over hers, I felt Victoria begin to relax, her limbs going liquid and her body melting into mine.

She hummed low in the back of her throat, and the vibrations sent a jolt of electricity from my lips, to my heart, and then straight to my cock, which was growing thick and heavy behind my jeans.

I eased her down and settled into the vee of her spread thighs. When I nibbled on her lips, she sighed, her mouth opening to me. I licked my way inside, my tongue rolling against hers, as Victoria’s arms came around my neck and her fingers tunneled into my hair.

After an eternity of drowning in her kisses, I pulled back, careful not to push things too far. I wanted Victoria as much as I wanted my next breath, but she’d been clear. I needed to rein it in.

“Hey,” she breathed out, her eyes half-lidded with desire.

“Hey.” I dropped a quick kiss to the tip of her nose. It was a compulsion. I simply had to have my lips on this woman.

“Why’d you stop?”

“You said you wanted to take things slow.”

She chewed on her lip, as if considering the veracity of my statement. “I did?”

“You did.”

“That doesn’t sound like me at all,” she answered playfully, her fingers brushing a sensual path over the nape of my neck.

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