16. Rose #2
“When I called you bossy?”
I lick my dry lips, and he groans in response. He dips his head but stops short of kissing me.
“Earlier. When your brother told me about Waffles.”
He lets out a choked, pained sound. Wincing, he slams his eyes shut. “Not Waffles,” he moans. Cracking open one eyelid, as if afraid of what I’ll say, he asks hesitantly, “How much did he tell you?”
I smile. “All about your one-man search and rescue mission.”
He shuts his eyes again. “He loves to humiliate me with that story. I will murder my brother for his loose lips, but I understand if you no longer want me to kiss you.”
I almost smile at his utter devastation. “I don’t think he meant to do that. It was sweet.”
“Waffles?” He cracks open an eyelid, dark-green gaze wary and a touch hopeful.
I rise on my tiptoes and brush a kiss across his jaw. “You. Please don’t murder your brother. I think he wanted to reassure me that Ben and I are safe with you. Not that he needed to, but it was sweet that he did.”
He lowers his head and lets out a slow, barely audible breath, holding still as I lift my hands to his chest and do something I’ve been fighting a losing battle against for far too long.
I touch.
My fingers slip under the soft navy cotton of his firefighter t-shirt, finding warm, hard skin beneath. “I wanted to do this too,” I whisper, cheeks hot.
He cradles the back of my neck, eyes hooded. “Touch?”
I nod.
Omegas are almost always tactile, more so when we’re close to heat, and our biological need for sex overwhelms us, but the urge to rub up against alphas—that craving for soft and cozy—never truly goes away.
I stifled my body’s needs for the longest time, but they’re still there, a growing ache.
And the men in this house keep stirring all those secret wants right to the surface.
“Then touch, baby.” His eyes slowly drift closed, and he holds still, chiseled washboard abs stiffening under my wandering fingers.
“I love the way you feel.”
“I love your hands on me.”
Cherry and wood smoke curl around me, wrapping me in rich and smoky lushness so addictive that I ache for skin-to-skin, hunger for his hands on me and his lips on me.
“Did you really warn the men at the firehouse not to go walking around shirtless around me?” I whisper a question that’s been eating me up ever since Noah told me.
One side of his mouth curls into a sexy half-smile. “Abso-fucking-lutely. There was only one firefighter I wanted to catch your eye.”
Joel’s warm hand settles at the small of my back, urging me closer. “Yeah?” Hot breath stirs my lips, and my stomach clenches as his head descends.
“Damn right.”
Wanting to tease, I blink up at him innocently. “Noah?”
The growl that rumbles from his chest is nothing less than possessive. He grasps my hips and yanks me hard against him as he claims my mouth in a ferocious kiss.
He controls the pace. It’s hot, it's urgent, and it’s triggering needs in me that have my hands sliding up his back, my nails cutting into his skin as I grind my pussy against the growing bulge in the front of his pants.
The growl he releases into my mouth sets my body to burn another couple of degrees hotter.
With effortless ease, he lifts me to the edge of the counter, pushes my thighs wider apart, and steps between them. We both groan, and then he starts rocking. Through our clothes, we grind against each other. Everything grows more urgent. His kiss. The ache in my pussy. Everything.
I reach for the waistband of his pants, needing them off.
Joel pulls his hips away. Grasping my wrists, he rests his forehead on mine, breathing hard. “That’s a level of touch I don’t think I can handle.”
Cheeks hot, I close my eyes. “Sorry. I didn’t want to stop.”
He brushes a soft kiss across my lips. “I didn’t want to stop you. But I need to touch you too, baby, and the kitchen isn’t the place for all the ways I want to do that.”
I gulp. “You want to touch?”
A kissable grin tugs at the corners of his mouth, and he captures mine in a lingering caress. “Every gorgeous inch of you.”
I’m getting sucked into passion again, my arms looping around his shoulders, when outside, Ben shouts, “I’ll save you!”
I smile against Joel’s lips, and when we break apart, he’s smiling too.
“What is that boy up to?” I mutter. All he has out there for entertainment is a melting popsicle I should get off my backside to clean up and a plastic firefighter's helmet.
Joel kisses me again and steps back. “Let me go check. I’m enjoying pinning you against things and kissing you too much to stop now.” He walks to the window and peers out, chuckling. “That is cute as fuck.”
“What’s he doing?”
He motions for me to come over. “Come and see.”
Curious, I slide off the kitchen counter and walk toward him, straightening my hair.
Taking my hand, he moves me to stand in front of him with my back to his chest, his arms around my waist.
“He’s pretending to be a firefighter,” Joel says, resting his chin on the top of my head.
And sure enough, Ben is wearing his yellow plastic helmet, peering one way then the next, before dropping to the grass and crawling toward an imaginary person in need.
“I’m coming to save you!” he shouts as he crawls.
My smile is so wide, my cheeks actually hurt. “So. Damn. Adorable.”
I want to go grab my cell phone and record this, but some moments, you just have to live through and enjoy. This feels like one of them.
Joel buries a kiss on the top of my hair, then releases me to grin down at me. “How about you grab us a couple of popsicles? I’ll get some paper towels to clean up that mess out there, and we’ll see what other rescues he has planned?”
I grin at him. “That sounds perfect.”
So that’s what we do.
Joel cleans up Ben’s melted popsicle mess, and we sit on the top step of the porch, quietly watching Ben act out his dreams of being a firefighter as we lick our popsicles.