14. DIANE
CHAPTER 14
DIANE
I’m not sure if he’s doing it on purpose too, but Sam and I manage to avoid each other for the next few days. It hasn’t been easy to share a room with a guy with the face and body of Henry Cavill and the brains of Neil deGrasse Tyson, but I keep telling myself that it’s for the best. After all, if he found out who I really am, I’d lose what I have here: a seemingly endless supply of content subjects and, even more, the feeling of being a part of the kind of family I’ve always wanted.
In any case, after the first morning, he’s up and out before me. For three nights straight, he’s either asleep when I return to the room or gets in long after I’m dreaming about him. Some mornings it’s hard to tell if he’s been there at all.
It doesn’t stop me from wishing he’d kiss me again. Wondering if we could make love quietly enough to avoid waking the rest of the household.
Without things getting messy between us.
But instead of acting on those fantasies, I keep busy with shooting and editing content. When I do see him again, he walks in on Ethel and me. I’ve been helping her with a secret project, which is just adorable.
“What is that?” Sam asks from the doorway of the parlor.
Ethel slams the laptop shut. “None of your business.”
He narrows his eyes at her, then aims that suspicious glare of his at me. “Are you two doing anything illegal?”
I have to suppress a giggle because Ethel’s videos are about as far from illegal as you can get. “No, we are not.”
“Of course not, Sam. Don’t be ridiculous,” Ethel says with a sniff, even as she shoots a conspiratorial grin my way. “Diane is just teaching me computer things.”
“Then why did you hide it from me?”
She lets that hang in the air for a moment before answering. “Because it’s private, female business.”
Sam may keep most of his emotions under lock and key, but when he’s caught off guard, his face reveals all. Ethel’s fib works. He does not want anything to do with anything in the realm of female business when it comes to his grandmother. “Fine. Well, I’m just heading to bed then.”
“On the couch?” Ethel asks. Something in her tone makes me wonder if she knows exactly where Sam and his dog have been sleeping.
“Yep,” Sam says, shooting me a tight smile. “On the couch. Goodnight.”
I hate to admit it, but I’m eager to be in the bedroom when we’re both awake, so I fake a few yawns and rush Ethel through saving and backing up her work. Sam is indeed on the couch when I pass by on the way upstairs, but by the time I return from the bathroom, he’s in bed. The bed that’s far, far away from mine, eyes closed .
When I set a glass on the bedside table, he says, “See you got your ice water.”
A shiver runs through me at the flood of memories the word ice triggers, but I make myself get in my own bed rather than get on top of him. Like I want to.
“Even though the nights are getting chillier,” he adds, his voice low and inviting.
“You know,” I begin, testing the waters. Having sex with Sam, in a houseful of people that includes his grandmother and his sister, is definitely inadvisable. But also irresistible. “It’d be warmer if we shared a bed.”
Next thing I know, he’s hovering over me in a forearm plank, only a hair’s breadth separating our torsos.
A giggle escapes past my lips. “Well, that wasn’t very hard.”
“I beg to differ,” he says, shifting so that the hard length that seems to have imprinted on my vagina presses closer. “Should I leave?”
Before he can move a millimeter, I wrap my legs around his torso, locking my ankles behind his back. “You should not.”
All the reasons why we shouldn’t do this? I bat them away in favor of reasons we should. “We’re adults. We’re sharing a room. Who cares if we can’t get along in the daylight? If memory serves, we did okay in the dark.”
“Better than okay, if you ask me,” he says, his voice low and growly. Nosing along my jaw toward the space behind my ear, creating goosebumps as he goes, he whispers, “I’ve thought about that night every day for the past nine months.”
“I’ve been mad at you for the past nine months.” He stiffens, separating our torsos, but I dig my fingernails betwee n his shoulder blades to keep him from going too far. “However, I have made so many friends telling the story. Women never get tired of hearing about guys who are assholes.”
Grinning, I slide my hands around to his pecs and run my hands over them appreciatively. He’s not as broad or tall as his brothers, but I love his lean, contoured chest and shoulders. “Helps if the guy is wicked hot and super smart.”
“You think I’m smart?”
I snort. “What, the hotness isn’t in question?”
Dropping his weight on one arm, he uses the other hand to circle one pebbled nipple and then the other through my sleep shirt. “I’ve got evidence that you’re attracted to me.”
“Eh.” I shrug one shoulder. “Maybe I’m just cold.”
“I’m doing my best to warm you up,” he growls. “But I think we need to be skin to skin to optimize the results.”
After we both shed our shirts, he flips us so that he’s on the bottom. Broad palms spread across my back, calluses I don’t remember from our last encounter faintly scratching my skin. The flannel-wearing version of Samuel seems to have all kinds of bonuses.
Reaching a hand between us and inside the waistband of his adorably old-fashioned plaid boxers, I pause before I hit the heat seeking missile he’s packing. “Wait. You don’t have a string of farmer’s daughters pining after you all over the state, do you?”
He looks off to the right, lips twisted to the side like he’s trying to remember. “Only in the southern tier.”
“Why just there?”
“That’s my territory. Or it was. Till I got transferred. ”
I nod slowly as my hand resumes its exploration. “And now they’re all in mourning.”
“To be honest”—he breaks off with a groan as I grip him and run a thumb over his wet tip—“it’s the dog that everyone falls for.”
“Poor you.” I press his length to my cleft, he cups my ass cheeks under my sleep shorts, and we move together, the friction delicious.
“Yeah, he’s the chick magnet. I usually disappoint in comparison.” His hands skate up my sides and cup my breasts, tweaking both nipples with his thumbs. “When I was a suit, it was different.”
I arch into his hands. “But you were an asshole then.”
Sitting up, he pulls me close, cupping the back of my head with one hand and my lower back with the other. “Luckily, I wasn’t very good at it.”
He reaches between us and slides one finger inside me, then another. “You’re very good at this,” I whisper. “Almost an expert.”
“Takes one to know one.”
After that, only nonsense words make it from my brain to my lips as he works me inside and out, hands and mouth seemingly everywhere. And then I’m right on the edge, hanging by a thread. He strokes a spot deep inside I haven’t had the pleasure of meeting, and then he stops my shout-moans with a kiss as I fall, shuddering, on top of him.