Chapter 9
Shelly
When I came out of the bathroom, Amos wasn’t at our table.
I stopped in the doorway and scanned the coffee shop, confused for a second.
Then I heard Holt’s voice drift over the low murmur of conversation. “We’ve got a special guest tonight.”
And there was Amos, sitting on the edge of the little stage with a microphone stand pulled close, his big frame folded onto the wooden stool. He caught my eye across the room.
“This one’s for a very special woman in my life,” his voice carried easily through the coffee shop. “Shelly-Rae Anderson. This is for you, darlin’.”
My hand went to my chest before I could stop it.
Holt played the opening notes as Amos sang If You Don’t Know Me By Now by Simply Red.
His voice low and unhurried, his eyes latched onto mine, and everyone else in the room disappeared.
I stood in the doorway and couldn’t move.
Amos hadn’t transformed over the last thirty days. He’d just shown me more of the man he already was.
That was the thing I kept turning over in my head as I watched him.
I’d spent a month learning about the man hiding inside him that most people never got to see.
The quiet Amos, who held my hand without thinking about it.
The tender Amos, who helped his mom wash dishes after our Sunday dinner.
The serious Amos, who’d looked me dead in the eye and said I do matter. That he did notice me. That he’d always noticed me.
I’d been so busy waiting for him to break my heart that I hadn’t noticed how much he’d let me in.
When the last note faded, the small crowd in the coffee shop clapped, and Amos gave a modest little nod, ducking his head almost shyly, and climbed off the stage.
He crossed the room to me with his hands in his pockets and a grin tugging at the corner of his mouth.
“Is it time to couch cuddle yet?”
I laughed, and it came out a little unsteady. “Yeah,” I said. “I think it is.”
I took his hand and led him out into the cool night air. My apartment was right upstairs.
“Where did you learn that song?”
“Simply Red is my mom’s favorite band. I grew up listening to those songs.”
As I unlocked my front door, silence greeted us.
We had the whole apartment to ourselves.
“Mina’s, uh, spending the night at a friend’s place,” I told him nervously.
“Really. Does that affect the no men after ten rule?”
I laughed lightly. “Maybe. It depends on how the evening goes.”
We settled onto my couch the way we always did.
Amos stretched out with his back against the armrest, and I tucked in against his chest, his arm wrapping around me, his chin resting on top of my curls.
He smelled like the logging camp, as usual. I loved that scent. If I could bottle it up, I would, because it reminded me so much of him.
His thumb moved in slow circles against my arm, easy and comfortable.
We talked about nothing for a while, the way we always did when the night grew late.
The new shipment of books I’d been unpacking at Bookish, and about the unplanned trip he’d taken with Zane a few days ago to steal Mallory’s dog back.
His hand drifted up to my hair and he started working his fingers gently through my curls, and I felt myself go soft all the way through.
His momma’s Sunday roast, which was hella good.
“Amos,” I said quietly.
“Mm.”
I sat up a little and turned to look at him. His eyes were half-lidded and warm, his beard slightly rumpled from where I’d been leaning against him. He looked devastatingly handsome and completely unaware of what he did to me just by existing.
“Do you think your mom really liked me?”
He kissed my hand. “My mom wishes we were real so badly that she threatened to disown me if I don’t figure out how to make you my girlfriend. I only have a week left to trick you into it.”
I flushed. I never knew when he was being serious. But… I was also surprised he’d told his mom we were fake-dating. “So she knows about our agreement?”
“Yeah. Can’t lie to momma. That’s a rule in life.”
That made him a good man. My heart warmed in his direction.
“Who else did you tell?”
He shrugged. “Zane. And Hall. And the guys, of course.”
By that he meant Nolan, Cedar, and Brady. I’d told their other halves, Hope, Jenna, and Kelly. We all played pool at the Bear Den every Friday, and we were all close.
“I’ve been thinking about tonight’s lesson,” I said.
One dark brow lifted. “Yeah?”
“There’s a kind of kiss a boyfriend gives his girlfriend at the end of a perfect date.” I kept my voice careful, as if I were discussing something academic. “It’s not a crazy, desperate kiss. It’s more like an I-have-feelings-for-you kiss.”
He considered that for a moment. “There’s a difference?”
“Yeah,” I said. “There’s a big difference.”
His eyes dropped to my mouth. “Do you want to show me?”
I meant to keep it light. I leaned in slowly and pressed my lips to his, and for a moment it was exactly what I’d described, gentle and warm, full of love.
But then Amos made a low growl, and his hands settled around my waist, pulling me closer without any apparent thought about it, and the kiss shifted into something neither of us had planned.
It lingered the way only honest things linger, slow and deep and aching, his lips moving against mine like he was trying to say something he hadn’t found words for yet.
When we finally pulled apart, the air between us felt thick and charged, and I was breathing harder than I should have been from a fake-dating lesson.
Amos looked at me for a long moment, his hands still on my waist.
He was quiet for a beat, his thumb tracing a slow path along my hip. “I think there’s one more lesson you haven’t taught me yet, Shelly Bear.”
“Is that right?”
“How to make love to a woman.” His eyes were steady on mine, completely serious. “I think that should be your final lesson for me.”
The last month had been full of yearning. And my vibrator had been getting a serious workout. But it couldn’t compare to the feel of the real man.
And this is when he breaks my heart.
Every sensible part of me knew it was a terrible idea, but I took his hand and led him to my bedroom anyway.
We both stripped off our clothes slowly, and the moment felt wondrous, seeing him bare before me again.
He picked me up as if I weighed nothing and laid me gently in the center of the bed, then spread my thighs with careful hands and looked up at me from between them.
“I didn’t get enough time doing this last time,” he rumbled as he dipped his mouth between my legs.
This was no rodeo ride.
Amos was soft and exploratory, his tongue tracing through my folds with long, deliberate strokes, learning me the way you learn something you intend to keep.
He found the places that made me gasp and stayed there, unhurried, his big hands resting on the inside of my thighs, holding me open and grounded at the same time.
As he lapped me up, I felt worshipped. Like every inch of me was something he’d been waiting to get his mouth on.
And he was in absolutely no rush to finish.
He worked me slowly toward the edge, reading every sound I made, adjusting with a patience that made me feel like I was the only thing in the world that mattered to him right now.
“Oh, Amos. I don’t think I need to teach you a thing.”
He already knew how to make love to a woman… how to make love to me.
When I finally came my peak rolled through me in long, deep waves, my fingers twisted into his dark hair, his name breaking apart in my throat.
He kissed his way back up and settled over me, his weight warm and solid as his thick cock pulsed against my entrance.
Then something serious landed on his face. “I didn’t bring a condom.”
That knowledge flitted around my chest. “Don’t you keep them on you at all times?”
“I didn’t think we were going to… they’re down in my truck.”
Which was parked four blocks away.
“Do you regularly…”
He knew what I was asking. “No. I never have before. But with you… I would.”
I was no innocent virgin.
And I knew what he was saying.
His lips curled up at the edges. “If I were ever going to make an accidental baby with anyone, I’d want it to be with you, Shelly Bear. But I can also just jog down to my truck.”
The idea of it gripped me.
Amos was the reason I hadn’t wanted to date Hunter.
And he was the reason I’d broken up with Tucker.
In this magical moment, with the whole night spread before us, and his cock saying hello to me, it felt like a perfect idea.
His expression changed, and he looked absolutely devastatingly handsome.
Amos rumbled, “Or we can see if the universe thinks we should be together. If you get pregnant, you have to marry me.”
My mouth dropped open, and I couldn’t even speak. I just nodded and gripped him tighter, pulsing my hips towards him.
Our eyes were locked on each other, and I suddenly knew this was more than just sex.
Amos Nelson was about to make love to me.
And when he finally pushed inside me, it was slow and deep and so full of intention that my heart cracked open.
The slide of our bodies with no barriers between us was perfection. I’d never felt more connected to the man.
He moved in long, unhurried strokes that built steadily, watching me the whole time, open and unguarded in a way I’d never seen on him before.
“Shelly,” he murmured as his strokes built, our bodies discovering each other again after far too long apart. “I think I…”
The feel of his cock inside me was heaven, and all I wanted was for this moment to last forever. No man had ever held me like this, attuned my body to his.
Making love to Amos was going to destroy me and the last remnants of my heart.
It was on the tip of my tongue to whisper out, Don’t leave me. Stay with me forever.
But I didn’t know how to give voice to those words.
So I pulled him closer and tried to tell him with my body instead.
He may have understood because he buried himself deeper until we were no longer two separate creatures. We joined together as one, and I didn’t think we’d ever be able to split back into two again.
My second orgasm built, slow and inevitable.
But this time it wasn’t the frantic fuck of our first night together.
It was love.
It was need.
It was surrender.
I love you, Amos Nelson. I love you.
Then I crested and clenched around him, crying out with all the heat and hunger in my heart.
He groaned against my throat and lost his careful rhythm, his hips snapping forward as he followed me over the edge, his whole body shuddering as he spilled into me with a ragged, helpless sound.
We lay tangled together afterward, both breathing hard, neither of us moving.
After a moment, Amos lifted his head. “Shell.”
“Yeah?”
Then he looked at me with the most sincere eyes I had ever seen on him, stripped of every trace of swagger or performance, and said quietly, “If I didn’t get you pregnant, can I keep trying until I do?”
He held my gaze. He didn’t laugh, didn’t wink, didn’t give me anything to hide behind.
I had absolutely no idea if he was joking, but I was suddenly certain he wasn’t.
Not after the risk we’d just taken.
The line between Amos and the man he’d been pretending to be for thirty days had blurred so completely that I couldn’t find it anymore, and I wasn’t sure I wanted to.
He tucked me against his chest and pulled the blanket up over us both, and I listened to his heartbeat slow while the apartment settled into quiet around us.
And he held me like that for the rest of the night.
Giving me the perfect bed-cuddle.