Chapter 41
Marc
One celebratory peach cobbler, three strong coffees, and five days later, I still couldn’t believe this was actually happening.
Alex was here and planning to stay for a while.
The shop was already being repaired. And James…
James, I sighed wistfully to myself as my gaze sought him out once more.
James said he loved me. He hadn’t reenlisted after all. He wanted to stay here with me.
“Hey lazy bones. Quit with the lollygagging. You can ogle your boyfriend later,” Alex said as she walked by me carrying an armful of metal yard critters. Joy blossomed in my chest bigger than a mammoth sunflower, and I shot her a grin.
“But what if I want him to ogle me now?” James captured me in a hug from behind that lifted my feet off the floor.
He also scared the living daylights out of me and I let out a mortifying squeal.
Don’t mind me, just a former specialist in the Army with no proximity awareness.
“You. Are. So. Fucking. Cute,” he said with a laugh as he put me down, punctuating each word with a kiss on any part of my face he could reach.
Alex shook her head, but her grin was huge, and I shoved James off with a fake scowl. “Are you trying to give me a heart attack?”
“Never, baby boy. All I’m interested in doing to your heart is stealing it.”
What melted faster than a chocolate bar left on the dash? Whatever it was, that was me. An instant puddle of lovestruck goo. “You can’t steal something you already have or that was given freely.”
His teasing smile softened into something much sweeter and light. The way he looked at me had my heart fluttering like a butterfly circling the prettiest flower in the garden. “I love you so much, Tulip.”
“I love you too, Honeysuckle,” I said, wrapping my arms around his neck and tugging him down for a kiss. Unfortunately, it didn’t stop him from snickering against my mouth. “Shut your face.”
“Not my fault you gave me a flower name with ‘suck’ in it.” He waggled his eyebrows at me, and I caught my sister rolling her eyes in the background. “I can only imagine why.”
Mirroring my twin, I rolled my eyes. “Imagine all you like. That’s not why. You became my Honeysuckle when I realized how sweet you are inside. It just had to be pulled out slowly.” He blinked at me, looking a little stunned, and I did a mental victory dance. “Does this mean I win at flirting?”
His full laugh rolled over me, enveloping me in warmth and happiness.
“Considering you made at least two accidental dick jokes? Debatable, but I’ll let you have it.
Besides, as far as I’m concerned, you lied to me about being terrible at flirting.
You’ve been expert level with me practically since I showed up at your door. ”
I snorted, not buying that for a second. But, hey, if he liked my weird penguin-style of flirting, you wouldn’t catch me arguing. “And you say I’m too much.”
“You’re both too much!” Alex hollered from the opposite side of the store where her iron lizards looked like they were having a little too much fun.
James and I looked at each other and shrugged. Then he tugged me flush against him and sealed our mouths together. Yeah, we were extra as fuck and I wouldn’t have it any other way. His tongue slipped past my lips, prompting me to release a small moan as I met his exploration.
“Alright, that’s enough, you two. If you’re going to be doing that, then you need to get a room that’s not one I’m in.
Marc and I may share everything, but that doesn’t mean I want to see it firsthand.
” Alex huffed, and I didn’t have to see her to know she’d crossed her arms and was giving us the stink eye.
Naturally, I continued kissing James a little longer to mess with her.
“God, the things I want to do with you, Sarge.”
James let out a deep groan that I felt more than heard. “Not the place, baby boy,” he whispered, his lips brushing lightly over mine with each word.
“Maybe not now.” I pulled away from him with a wink and loved the unbridled lust simmering in his eyes as he watched me. Not so subtly rearranging myself, I turned to face the front of the store, where shock slapped me in the face with the force of a hurricane gale. “Margaret?”
Her mouth opened and closed, then she swallowed thickly, her gaze jumping between me and James.
As much as I’d love to give my sister and my boyfriend shit for not giving me a heads-up, it wasn’t like they could have seen her coming with the windows still being boarded.
There was only the door cut out, and that had only been propped open to help with airflow.
“Oh, hey! Good to see you again,” James said cheerfully as he stepped up and threw an arm over my shoulders. “What brings you in?” I shot him a glare. What was it with him and trying to get this woman to stick around?
She opened her mouth, and a squeak came out. She promptly closed it and cleared her throat, not that it made any difference to how strained her voice was when she spoke. “I finished helping Mama at the church and thought I’d swing by to offer my services.”
“Well, well, well. If it isn’t Margaret May,” Alex said behind me, her voice getting louder as she moved closer.
Margaret cleared her throat again and dropped her gaze to the floor. “Alex. I didn’t realize you were back in town.”
“Just passing through to lend a helping hand.” Alex stepped in front of me like a living wall of interference. “What do you say you come with me? I’m sure I can make use of your… services.”
James swallowed a laugh, nearly choking on it—and it would serve him right—as Alex looped her arm through a stunned Margaret’s with a beaming grin.
Then she proceeded to escort her past us toward the back of the shop.
I shot her a look when she was even with me, and she gave me her usual fake-innocent face.
“What?” she asked under her breath. “It’s not like she even knows it was a double entendre.”
“What was that?” Margaret asked, her head swivelling to look at me and James with wide eyes.
Alex patted her arm and gave her a placating smile. “Nothing, Thistle.” Margaret frowned, but I doubt she understood the meaning behind the flower.
James waited until they were well and truly in the back of the shop before turning to me with a chuckle. “So what’s the story with Little Miss May?”
“Raised by a hyper-religious family, an obnoxious, overbearing mother—basically every Southern Baptist stereotype rolled into one.” I let out a heavy sigh.
“And?” he prompted with a teasing glint in his eye.
“And she’s been chasing me since I first set foot in Fairhope.”
He pulled me back to him, wrapping his enormous arms around my waist. “Someone should tell her you’re taken.”
“I’m pretty sure she knows now,” I grumbled.
“While I was never interested in her, I don’t hold any real animosity.
Honestly, I’m a little more worried about what Alex will do to her.
They’ve been at odds for as long as Margaret has been chasing me.
” I shook my head, wondering if I needed to go back there and rescue her from my mostly well-meaning twin.
James gently moved my face with his finger so I was looking at him instead of toward the back where Alex was doing God only knew to torture Margaret. “You know what I think?”
“What?”
“I think Miss Maragret is a fully grown woman and can take care of herself.” Okay, he had a point, but he also didn’t know Alex like I did or their rocky history.
There was a reason Alex had dubbed her “Thistle.” “I also think that they’re going to be busy for a while, and we have the front of the shop to ourselves.
Or, to put it another way: a room without Alex in it.
” He couldn’t possibly mean what I thought he meant.
Then again, his eyebrows were arched suggestively.
“I wouldn’t mind showing you why you subconsciously gave me a flower name with ‘suck’ in it. ”
“You’re something else,” I said as he unwrapped his arms from around me in order to grab my hand and lead me to the nearest wall. I darted a look toward the curtain separating the front of the shop from the back. “You can’t be serious.”
He crowded me against the wall. “I assure you I am very serious.”
“What if they come up here?” I argued in a whisper, not interested in examining how fucking hard I already was.
Being the evil man that he secretly was, he palmed my dick.
“Then I guess you’ll have to be extra quiet so they don’t come to investigate.
” He flicked open my fly with expert precision and sank to his knees.
I watched in baffled amazement as he pulled my erection free and slowly stroked it to full hardness.
Not that I needed much help. “Besides, flower names are earned, right?” he asked with a wink.
Before I could come up with a legitimate reason why this was a very bad idea, he swallowed me down.
I clamped a hand over my mouth to muffle the instant groan of pleasure that ripped through me, and my hips reflexively bucked.
James’ moan vibrated against my dick and stars danced behind my eyes.
Pretty as the stars were, they’d never beat the coastal blue swimming in his eyes.
When I was mostly sure another loud, obscene sound wouldn’t escape, I uncovered my mouth so I could bury both of my hands in his wonderfully curly copper hair.
I thrust into his mouth as deep as I dared, stopping shy of gagging him, even though I knew how much he loved it.
That sound would definitely draw the other two from the back to check on us.
I was doing a fairly good job of keeping quiet, so of course, he sucked harder and a gasp slipped out.
“Fuck, James,” I hissed. “You win. Your expert sucking abilities can be part of the reason your flower name is Honeysuckle.” The words were a bit of a garbled mess, but given his throaty chuckle—which was not helping on the quiet front at all—he got the idea.
Sooner than I would have liked, my orgasm barrelled through me, leaving me shaking, spent, and already hungry for more of him.
I was barely even aware of him tucking me away and putting me back to rights.
“God, I love you,” I panted as I struggled to regain my breath.
He pulled himself back to his feet, wearing a self-satisfied smirk.
“Love you too, my budding exhibitionist.” Before I could put enough brain cells together to respond, he captured my mouth with a kiss I gladly dissolved into, that got deeper and deeper until we were practically rutting against each other.
“What about you?” I asked when he let me up for air.
“You can take care of me later.” The glint in his eyes, paired with his wicked smile, said he had ideas on how that would happen.
“Mmm, but what if I want to take care of you now?” I countered like he had earlier.
He gave me a more sedate kiss. “For what I have in mind, baby boy, we’ll need to be upstairs.”
“And?”
He chuckled and took a step back. “And we’ll have to go past your sister and Margaret to get to the stairs. And they’ll know exactly why we’re going upstairs. I know Alex won’t care—”
“She’ll probably play fanfare on her phone,” I interjected.
“But Margaret already looks a little scandalized from the kiss she witnessed earlier.”
I snorted and grabbed his hand, already tugging him toward the back of the shop and the stairs. “Maybe, but she’s Alex’s problem now. So we’re going to go upstairs to our apartment, where you’re going to fuck me until I get hard again.”
“Oh yeah? Then what?”
I paused to look at him. He was so ridiculously handsome that I couldn’t help myself from snaring him with another kiss.
“Then I’m going to fuck you.” I stole another quick kiss, then tugged us through the dividing curtain, where I promptly ran into a shell-shocked Margaret.
“Oops. Sorry, Margaret. We’ll have to catch up another time.
” We lingered just long enough to watch her mouth fall open, and a bright rose-red darken her cheeks.
Then we were racing up the stairs to the backdrop of Alex’s cackling.