Chapter Thirty-Five
H e kissed me .
On the lips. In front of Nash.
Then he smiled. Unguarded and perfect and breathtaking.
Nash said nothing, but he smiled, then squirmed in Preston’s arms, and Preston tossed him in the air. Grinning with delight, Nash held his nose and dropped into water before surfacing and asking for more.
Preston threw him so many more times, I lost count.
We swam, we floated, we watched Nash do endless cannonballs. Three hours later, Nash climbed out of the pool and lay facedown next to me on the padded lounge chair that was more comfortable than my couch at home.
I brushed his wet hair back. “He’s going to sleep well tonight.”
“I don’t think he’ll stay awake till sunset.” Preston’s deep voice floated around me as he got out of the pool and glanced at Nash’s already closed eyes.
I laughed. “Probably not.” Sitting up, I reached for a towel and draped it over him before pulling him onto my lap. Smiling down at my sweet boy who was falling asleep, I kissed his forehead, then looked up at Preston as water dripped off his unbelievably sexy body. “Thank you for today, for bringing us here.” Nash and I needed this. I couldn’t remember the last time we’d gone swimming.
Rubbing a towel over his dark hair and chest, he stilled. Staring down at me for a moment, his gaze coasted between me and Nash, then he took in the full length of my body before meeting my eyes again. “You belong here.”
Suddenly shy, no idea how to respond to that, I glanced at Nash. “We should feed him.”
He nodded. “I’ll make lunch.” Draping his towel over his lounger, his muscles and inked skin glistened in the bright sunlight.
The sheer size and strength of him made my mouth water, and I tried for the thousandth time today not to stare at him.
“Thank you.” Despite the butterflies taking up residence in my stomach all day, I was hungry, and I knew Nash was probably starving.
Leaning over, as natural as if he were his son, he reached for Nash. “Let’s get him out of the sun. He’ll be more comfortable on the couch.” He picked him up.
Nash wrapped his tiny hands around Preston’s neck like he had a hundred times in the pool earlier, except this time, he put his head on Preston’s chest.
My heart swelled, and his kiss in the pool earlier played on repeat in my mind. So did his words upstairs and his seductive, dominant promises. I fought a shiver at the mere memory of it as he carried Nash through the open sliders. I didn’t think I’d ever seen anything sexier than a man as ripped and as inked as Preston holding my child.
I followed him inside in nothing more than my bikini.
My hips were too full, my legs weren’t what they’d been in high school, and my stomach had every marking of a woman’s body who’d given birth, but since the first moment I’d walked out on his lanai, Preston had made me feel nothing except beautiful.
His heated stare made me feel desired, and his covert touches all morning had driven anticipation to a whole new level I wasn’t prepared for. His hands on my waist, a finger skimming down my back, a brush against the side of my breast and, when Nash wasn’t looking, he’d touched his lips to the few freckles I had on my shoulders.
There was no denying it.
I wanted Preston Vos. Bad.
And I wanted everything he was hinting at.
But I was still holding a part of me back. I didn’t come by trust easily, and my instincts were telling me he was hiding something. And if I was being honest, I was almost waiting for the other shoe to drop. After so many years and so much time on my own and so much stress of raising a child with a disability, I didn’t know if all of this was too good to be true.
It felt too easy.
All of these thoughts jumbled in my head as I watched Preston lay Nash down on the couch and cover him with a blanket, then turn on the TV to a cartoon channel. As if he were expecting us to come over today, the closed caption setting was already turned on, and Nash settled in like being here was as natural as breathing.
Preston took my hand and wordlessly led us to the kitchen, pulling out a counter stool for me to sit.
Mesmerized by him, I watched as he took items out of the fridge. “Can I help?”
“No, thank you. Something to drink?” He set sandwich fixings on the island counter.
A thought occurred to me. “Do you drink?”
“Not alcohol.”
“Coffee?” He’d made me one this morning, but he hadn’t had one. And at his warehouse place, he’d served us juice. God, that seemed like a lifetime ago.
“No caffeine.” He spread the meat, cheese, bread, lettuce, tomato and pickles out like an assembly line.
An unladylike snort came out. “You’re not making me feel very good about my life choices.” As soon as the stupid words left my mouth, I regretted them.
He didn’t seem to pick up on my faux pas. “I have beer, wine, coffee, juice, milk, and water.” Serious, but also casual, he rattled off the choices he had to offer. “Have whatever you like.”
“No Diet Coke?” I joked.
He looked up. “You drink diet soda?”
Heat touched my cheeks. “I was teasing but, yes, on occasion. At work I’ll grab one from the vending machines if I’m burnt out on coffee.”
He nodded once in the way I was beginning to get used to. Short, precise, it was his version of a nonverbal affirmation. “I’ll get some.”
His cell phone, sitting on the kitchen counter next to him, vibrated. Picking it up, he casually glanced at a text, but then he frowned.
“Everything okay?”
“Yes.” Swiping across the screen, he deleted the text, then turned the ringer off and placed the phone facedown on the counter.
“So the beer and wine and coffee, who is that for?” I dared to ask.
He didn’t hesitate. “You.”
“No one else?” I didn’t bother to ask how he knew I drank beer or wine on occasion. He’d shown up enough times while I was at the grocery store.
Taking plates out of a cupboard, he paused to look at me. “No one else has been inside this house since I bought it besides you and Nash, my housekeeper and a few delivery personal.”
I liked that way more than I should. I looked behind me at the huge open-plan living space. “Did you buy it already decorated?” It was so modern and so damn expensive, but it was also comfortable, and the open-plan space was perfectly divided by groupings of furniture in whites, creams, and beiges. And the hard finishes were all either white or a light wood or chrome. It was masculine, but also warm and inviting.
“I purchased all of the furniture, but the house came with all of the finishes.”
“You did a great job.”
“I had some help from a designer,” he admitted.
I let loose with the stupid half scoff, half snort thing again. “That wasn’t cheap.”
He didn’t comment. He took watermelon and apples and blueberries out of the fridge, which was indeed a large cupboard-looking door as Nash had said earlier.
I felt like an ass. “Sorry.”
He washed the apples. “For?”
“Bringing up money.”
He poured the blueberries into a colander and rinsed them. “Do we need to talk about it?”
“Other than you have it and I don’t?” I laughed uncomfortably. “No.” Maybe. I didn’t know. Did I want to know how he afforded this place?
He didn’t reply. He frowned as he rinsed the small, round watermelon and set it on a cutting board.
We fell into a silence I wasn’t sure how to interpret as I sat on his expensive stool in my sale rack bikini and he stood in his kitchen in his board shorts, making us food.
His long fingers, graceful but precise, cut the fruit and assembled the sandwiches with the same precision as he’d touched my body, and it made jealous curiosity surge.
I broke the silence.
“Have you had a lot of girlfriends?” He knew what he was doing in the bedroom, like really knew.
He glanced over at Nash curled up on the couch before his eyes met mine. “I’ve never had a girlfriend.”
I loved how he made eye contact with me all the time now, but I didn’t know if his answer upset or relieved me. He certainly hadn’t been celibate for the past seven years, but I wasn’t about to ask details, so I changed the subject. “Nash still prefers just cheese and bread on his sandwiches, and he likes his crusts cut off.”
He nodded and picked up the knife after putting a slice of cheese between two slices of bread. Deftly slicing the edges of the bread, he circled back to the subject I’d tried to steer away from. “If you’re asking how many women I’ve had sex with, it’s not many.”
Heat flushed my face. “I wasn’t asking.” Did I have a right to ask? Did I really want to know? And why did anything related to Preston Vos and sex make me blush? I was almost thirty years old and a nurse. I’d seen enough and lived through enough to not turn into a blithering idiot around the subject matter.
“I told you that you can ask me anything.”
I said the first thing that came to mind that would change the subject. “You make eye contact with me now, a lot.”
He looked up from the sandwiches. “Is that a question?”
My traitorous cheeks flamed again under his scrutiny. “I like it.”
“I like looking at you.” No smile, his intense stare unwavering, he held my gaze as he reached across the island and brushed his thumb over my bottom lip. “I like touching you.”
My nipples hardened and my pussy clenched. I sucked in a breath. “I like when you do both of those things,” I quietly admitted.
A ghost of a smile hinted at the corner of his mouth, then he went back to plating the food. “You never told me what you would like to drink.”
Ready for an adult party that wasn’t about to happen with an awake six-year-old, my nerves zinged around my body, and I hopped off the stool. “Water’s fine. I’ll grab it.” I walked toward the fridge and opened the ridiculously huge door that was literally twice the width of my fridge at home. Praying the cold air would tame my fucking libido, I sucked in a deep breath. “What can I get you?” Not surprisingly, everything inside was perfectly aligned and organized. I reached for the bottled water.
Two huge, tattooed arms encircled my waist, and his warm chest hit my back. Curving his body around mine, he brought his lips to my ear and whispered, “Eleven.”
A shock wave of need shot through my body as the warm scent of his skin, mixed with sun and pool, surrounded me. Everything Preston filled my head, and I wanted him inside me. So fucking bad.
“Eleven what?” I barely remembered to ask as cold fridge air mixed with raging hot desire and peaked my nipples to the point of pain.
“I’ve slept with eleven women.”
My muscles went stiff with unwarranted jealously, and I tried to remind myself that he didn’t have a kid with another woman. At least, not that I knew of. “I didn’t ask.”
“I’m telling you. They meant nothing. Do you know my favorite number?”
The jealously eased a fraction as my head spun to keep up with his brand of conversation while my body ached with need. “No.”
“Twelve.” Deep and seductive, his voice sank into my soul as one of his hands coasted down my stomach and slipped inside my bikini bottoms. “You’re going to be my number twelve.” Holding me against his giant cock, he gently stroked over my heat. “But the count stops there. You’re the last woman I will ever fuck.” He stroked my clit once. “And I’m the only man who will ever be inside your body again.”
Oh my God.