Page 39 of Don't Call Me Sweetheart

That was the only way to describe how I felt right now, driving Kate home from a date where I had acted like a damn caveman—even though, thank god, she had no idea that I had been a hairsbreadth from clubbing Steven on the head and tossing her over my shoulder. I certainly wasn’t going to enlighten her either.

I detested mess in any case, but a thousand times more when the mess was me. I preferred simple, straightforward emotions. Uncomplicated. Anger at a driver cutting me off, for example. The happiness of a first sip of coffee made exactly how I liked it. Sadness when a character I liked died in a book.

Love was never simple. It was never uncomplicated. It always came with a host of emotions that churned like white water.

It wasn’t that I loved Kate. I didn’t. But I liked her. A lot. Enough that it already felt like a little too much. Enough that it felt messy.

But maybe…maybe that was a good thing. Maybe messy was what I needed to practice. I wanted marriage and kids, which were nothing if not messy, and anyone who said otherwise was a damn liar. I had seen enough television shows, read enough books, sat through enough parent-teacher conferences to know that much.

I could practice messy now, with low stakes. How messy could it really get anyway? The relationship would be over in a couple months. Done and dusted before the holiday season. The pre-agreed-to breakup was like a safety net.

I pulled into Kate’s driveway. When she unbuckled her seat belt, I did likewise, cutting the engine.

“I’ll walk you to your door,” I said. When she shook her head, I gave her a questioning look. “No? I’m not angling for an invitation to come in. I know Jessica is home.”

“It’s not that.” She paused. “Well, I guess it kind of is that. Sort of anyway.” She turned to me, her brown eyes deep and fathomless in the dark night. “I want a kiss good night, and I don’t want it to be on the front porch where Jessica might see us.”

I damn near swallowed my tongue.

“You know that kiss at Kiss Our Axes? It was just for show.” She stroked her fingers lightly over the back of my hand then up my forearm, drawing nervous little patterns and leaving a trail of sparks everywhere she touched. “We had something to prove.”

I nodded. She wasn’t wrong. It was just that what she wanted to prove and what I wanted to prove were probably very different things.

“I want the opposite of that now. I want a kiss that’s just for us.”

“That,” I said, “is a very good idea.”

I reached out, wrapping my hand around the back of her head, and pulled her closer. And gave her exactly what she asked for. Because this kiss wasn’t like the kiss I had given her when we had an audience. It wasn’t closed-lipped and chaste. This one had tongue and teeth and heat. It was a kiss that unleashed the tornado that had whipped my insides ever since a man had had the audacity to look at Kate like she belonged to someone else.

Mine, said that stupid voice inside my head.

But I pushed it back. People belonged to each other. That was how relationships worked. And if Kate was mine, then that meant I was hers. I had never belonged to anyone before—at least, not to anyone who meant to keep me. I had been given away more times than I cared to count.

That wasn’t going to happen here.

I wouldn’t allow it.

Kate dragged her fingers down my jawline, still smooth from my pre-date shave, brushing her thumb beneath my lower lip as she angled her mouth against mine. I lost all cognitive abilities, my brain functions overridden by the overwhelming physical need to have her closer.

Maybe she felt the same way, because she scrambled awkwardly over the console to settle on my lap, her legs straddling my hips. But even that wasn’t enough, not nearly, not with the swaths of her skirt wadded up between us, keeping us frustratingly apart just where I wanted to be closest to her. I grabbed handfuls of fabric and pushed them up the warm, silky skin of her thighs. She shifted in response, eagerly rocking herself against the hard ridge in my pants, making us both groan with want.

I flexed my hips greedily, wanting more, and she obliged, grinding against me, nearly sending me over the edge. It would be so easy to let her find her pleasure just like this, let her grind herself against me until she came.

But I didn’t want her to take her pleasure. Not this time anyway. Any other time, I would be more than happy to let her use me however she wanted. But this time…this time, I wanted to give it to her. I was only the second man she had ever slept with and, damn it all, I wanted to give her an orgasm. With purpose.

“I’ve got an idea,” I whispered against her neck, then sucked gently at the sensitive skin there, not hard enough to leave a mark, even though a part of me wanted to brand her for everyone to see. “Back seat.”

“Yes,” she breathed. The first of many yeses to come, I hoped.

She clambered into the back seat, laughing, and I followed. She lolled against the door, trying to make space for me, one leg propped up on the seat, the other stretched out and dangling. I wasted no time in pushing her skirt up around her waist, then dragged her underwear down her legs and tossed it to the floor.

Unable to resist, I sat back and looked at her. Moonlight bathed her pale thighs in a silvery glow, a dark shadow at their apex that made my mouth water. I leaned forward, kissed her knee, then trailed my lips farther up her thigh, listening as her breathing changed to heavy pants, until I finally reached that shadow. Her breathing stopped altogether, and she stiffened beneath my hands.

I pulled back. “No?” I asked. “You don’t like that?” Some women didn’t. I hadn’t met those women, but I had heard mention of their existence. From men, mostly, which made me wonder if it was a conspiracy.

She shifted restlessly, blinking up at me in befuddlement. Color flooded her cheeks. “I don’t…I don’t know.” She cleared her throat. “I haven’t… No one has ever done that. Gone down on me, I mean.”

I frowned. As much as I enjoyed the idea of being her first for something, anything, it bothered me at the same time. Kate wasn’t a virgin. She had been married. And dammit, her husband should have done this for her. A man should know what his wife tasted like. It was his loss that he had gone to the grave never having that pleasure.

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