Page 26 of Bad Seed
The movement of her fingers draws me in as she rests them on her chest. She softly drums the tips right against her bare skin and licks her lips.
“Your dress,” I whisper, fighting with all my animal urges to look away.
“What about it?”
I rise out of my seat and slide around the stone table. “We never did solve the spaghetti problem.”
Her eyes open wide. “Why? Did I get something on it?” She stares down at her immaculate chest, hunting for any hint of a stain.
I slip in behind her. The scent of coconut and ginger wafts off of her and sings in my soul. As I grip onto the table in front of her, I lean closer. Sadie abandons her hunt for the stain and tips her head back.
Fuck. Her cleavage from this angle causes my cock to jump. I dig in to the table to keep from grabbing her breasts. Tipping lower, I nearly bend over her. Sadie keeps leaning back to see me.
“Oh,” I sputter. Her shoulders brush up my hard cock, and the way she bites her lip at my reaction only engorges it more. Fighting back for control, I lift one hand from the table and tease the tie keeping her dress together.
The string catches between my fingers, ready to be pulled. She’s breathing deeper, her wondrous eyes gazing up at me. “It’s the something under it I care about,” I whisper. “How does option three sound?”
“Yes!” she cries out, lifting her chest. The tie pulls, undoing the bow. I reach for her freeing breast, my lips parting to taste hers. Sadie swoops her hand over my jaw, her eyes closing tight.
A scream cuts through the still air.
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CHAPTER TEN
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SADIE
The heat of his lips glances across mine. Floating outside my body, I dare to run my finger under his jaw and strain my head back for a kiss.
“What was that?”
I go from being surrounded by a man to cold night air. Blinking in shock at the lack of him roving down my dress, I twist in my seat. Aubry’s perched on the edge of the water staring down into the valley. The easy tenderness of his body has snapped into a brittle bar of iron. He looks about to challenge the whole of the earth to a fight.
Another howl cuts the air. He yanks his head up, hunting for it. “There it is again. Sounds like someone’s nails are being ripped out.”
Weirdly specific analogy, but I know exactly what it is. And he doesn’t. I walk across the lawn, doing my best in the grass with my heels, but it’s not easy going. He’s resumed his pacing, his hand clenching as if he expects to put something in it. “Aubry…”
Damn it.I kick off my heels and reach him just as he stops pacing.
“If this is their idea of a—”
I brush his shoulder, and he spins around. His dark eyes burn in the shadows, the glow of the pool light reflecting a purple haze deep within. The arms of his shirt strain, molding with his hard biceps and the buttons look about to break.
In my calmest voice, I tell him, “It’s coyotes.”
“Coyotes?” He gulps as if he really feared someone was being tortured out there. And he was going to rush to her aid, dangerous men be damned.
“Every autumn they hang out in the valley. You can hear them howling from miles away.”
Aubry takes a deep breath. His fists open and he stares back into the speckled lights of Loomis. “Coyotes.”
“I’m surprised you haven’t heard them.”
“I spend most of my nights…” He gulps then glances my way. Fiddling with his fingers, he hunches his shoulders and stops talking.
“Most of your nights what?”
