Chapter 12
Chapter Twelve
Thom
A couple of days later, Thom, sitting at his dining table, looked up when Felony walked over to the kitchen door, sat down, and whined.
Poppy was finally home. Pulling off his glasses, he closed the lid of his laptop, idly wondering why she was only getting home after eleven when she’d left Solstice Deep at five.
Then again, she was taking the rough mock-up of the town map to Luna for comment, and one glass of wine probably turned into a couple of bottles and a takeout pizza.
They’d yet to discuss Benji’s betrayal, and Thom wondered if they ever would. He was hoping she’d bring it up, but ten days later, Poppy still hadn’t mentioned his brother. He understood her reluctance; he didn’t like talking about Ingrid either.
Then that small, traitorous thought bloomed again, a straggly weed that refused to die.
What if they were only doing this… What if Poppy was only in his bed because of their history, because she’d trusted him as a child and thought she could as an adult?
Because he was safe? Because the real world had been too harsh, and she was pretending that everything was as it had been when they were kids?
Because he was the one she’d always leaned on, and she’d slipped back into habit?
It was exhausting—to be so happy and so suspicious at the same time. He loved being around her, loved having her in his bed, but the thought that he might just be convenient, a patch for her wounded heart, a means of getting back at Benji … well, it made his chest tighten. And ache.
Live in the moment, Sheffield, that’s a bridge you don’t need to cross today. Just enjoy the here and now.
But that was easier said than done.
The door opened, and Poppy, as she always did, bent over to scratch Fel’s ears. He looked as blissed-out as a dog could get. Thom suspected he sported the same look on his face when Poppy got her hands on him…
He blinked. Holy shit, what was she wearing? A gold, teeny-tiny, corseted bodice, a bustle, a fringed short skirt, and a goddamn feather in her hair. Those weren’t the clothes she left home in. He would’ve noticed.
He leaned back in his chair, taking it onto its back feet, folded his arms, and grinned. “What did Luna make you do?” he asked. Because that was the only reasonable explanation.
Poppy walked over to him, and his throat constricted at the sight of her legs in sheer stockings and old-fashioned, ridiculous-looking shoes.
She pulled a face, and her feather wiggled.
God, adorable. “I thought I was going to have a quick chat about my map, then she heard that one of the waitresses for the thank-you dinner for the Halloween Event Committee didn’t rock up.
She shanghaied me into filling in. I’ve been at The Merriweather Theater since six. ”
“Why there and not at one of the restaurants?” he asked, eyeing the way her breasts popped out of that corset. He was a fan…
“It was held in the small antechamber of the theater, the one they’ve converted into a function room.
Apparently, there’s a low-key, keep-it-from-the-tourists lack of cooperation happening between the restaurants in town, and Luna hiring a caterer was a not-so-subtle message to them to get their house in order. ”
Poppy walked around to his side and leaned her butt on the table next to him. Because she was facing him, he placed his hand on her thigh. Stockings … women didn’t wear them nearly enough. “I last waitressed in college and I’m exhausted!”
“It’s hard work,” Thom agreed. “By the way, why are you wincing?”
“Oh, because I left my clothes at Luna’s, and these,” she lifted his foot to show him a sturdy ankle boot, “are killing me. I was offered a lift home, a good thing because I really didn’t want to walk back here.”
“You could’ve called me,” Thom told her.
“I know, but you said you had work to do. Anyway, these shoes look more comfortable than they are.”
“They look ugly.”
Poppy laughed. “They are ugly. They are also over a hundred years old, another reason why I didn’t want to walk so far and for so long in them.” She twisted her ankle this way and that. “Strange to think that someone a long time ago actually wore these clothes and shoes,” she added.
“I hope they’ve been washed since then,” Thom quipped. Smiling, he went to the fridge and pulled out two beers, lifting them in a silent offering. He needed to do something with his hands, mostly to keep them off her.
“Question… Why did you have to dress up as a…”—he gestured to her clothes—“whatever that is?”
“Did you know that The Merriweather Theater was originally a saloon?” she asked. Thom knew her well enough to know that she’d answer his question. Eventually.
“I thought this was a Puritan town?”
“It was when the Salem offshoot arrived, but they loosened up over the decades. And I’m talking back in the late nineteenth century.
Anyway, upstairs from the saloon was a brothel, and the sex workers doubled up as waitresses, and this was what they wore.
Luna thought it would be fun to have the waitresses, in her words, ‘harken back to those days.’”
“She made you dress up as a sex worker?”
“Or a waitress. Luna said that they found a trunkful of performers’ clothes in the theater when they did the renovations.” Poppy took the bottle from him. “I presume this outfit came from there. Luna says that they haven’t been worn because the women were smaller back then.”
“I approve.” He tapped the neck of his bottle against his. “Cheers.”
He took in her tiny waist and flaring hips. “They are pretty damn sexy. Why did corsets go out of fashion?” he asked, his voice deeper, growlier.
“That might be because women passed out in them and they are damn uncomfortable,” Poppy replied, tugging at the top of her corset. “I would be grateful if you could get me out of it, Sheffield.”
“I can do that,” he said.
Walking around her, he stood with his front to her back and looked at the bow holding her laces in place and gently pulled it apart. As the fabric separated, he took in her smooth, creamy back, the bumps in her spine, her surprisingly round hips.
He ran his finger up and down her spine, and when she shivered, he placed his mouth on the ball of her shoulder, leaving it there in a long, open-mouthed kiss.
Poppy dropped her head back to rest it against his and sighed.
He crisscrossed his hands over her torso, then his fingers drifted over her stomach and came up to cup her breasts, his thumbs easily finding her nipples and rubbing them into hard points.
“You have the prettiest body,” he muttered, tracing the line of the now loose fabric of her corset, where her breasts started to swell.
Poppy pushed her hand back and found his thigh, pushing the tips of her fingers into his skin below his jeans. “Yours is better,” she told him. “You were always tall, but you’ve filled out and piled on muscle.”
He didn’t want to talk about his gym routine now. Hell, he couldn’t even remember his routine.
He pushed her hair away and gently kissed her neck, nibbling it and exploring that super-soft skin just below her ear. Pulling the laces at her back loose, he snaked his hand under the corset to find her nipple. She was hard, and he cupped her breast in his hand.
“So fucking gorgeous,” he murmured in her ear.
Needing to see her, to kiss her, he came to stand in front of her.
Placing his hands on her hips, he gently lifted her up on the table.
Then he pushed her thighs apart and stood between her knees.
Holding her thighs and loving the feel of her silk stocking beneath his fingers, he looked at her mouth and slowly lowered his head.
Poppy immediately responded, and he smiled at her eagerness, loving the fact that she was so open and receptive.
But he wanted to savor the moment, to go as slow as he could.
Tracing her lips with his, he swallowed her sigh, smiling when her hands came up to play with his hair, to stroke his shoulders and his back. She pulled his shirt up, and he closed his eyes when her cool hand met his bare skin, loving the way her fingers stroked his skin.
When her hand slipped into the gap between his belt and skin, just above his hip muscles, his restraint gave way, and he plunged his tongue into her mouth, needing to take. And take and take.
Poppy shifted closer and lifted her knee to curl her calf around his leg, and she twisted her tongue around his, also needing to feast.
Dear God, if his kitchen caught fire, he wouldn’t be surprised.
If it meant he could keep doing this with Poppy, he’d light the match himself.
Lifting his hand to hold her face, then the back of her head, he pulled her as close as he could, needing to feel as much of her pressed against him as he could.
He’d never felt this desperate before, never needed a woman so much.
His body loved their chemistry, the way they just seemed to fit together so well.
But while his body was loving the way his evening was going, his mind was in panic-mode. It had pulled the fire alarm and was desperately demanding that he find the closest exit and leave because this woman was goddamn dangerous.
To his self-control. To his emotional distance. To his self-sufficiency.
But that was all for later; right now, he simply needed her. In his arms, and to bury so deep inside her they were practically one.
Thom pulled her corset down and took in her perfect breasts, her nipples a delicious strawberry pink.
He’d had her this morning, but God, he couldn’t wait to taste her again.
Impatient, he pulled the thin fabric further down, and Poppy grabbed his hand and squeezed.
When he met her eyes, frantically praying that she wasn’t about to ask him to stop, she winced.
“Very old fabric, and I don’t want to have to explain how it got ripped. ”