Chapter 24
THE DATING GAMES
Heath
Bedtime with Lav lasts an eternity.
She insists on a bubble bath instead of a regular bath tonight. “Dragon slayers need pampering, Daddy,” she says.
Once she’s out of the bath and I’ve combed her hair and braided it—“I want curly hair tomorrow, Daddy,”—she asks for three extra chapters in the latest Phoebe Moon book that we’ve been reading together.
I finally get her tucked in with the lights off, her white noise machine playing, and her door closed, and then the singing starts.
So.
Much.
Singing.
The clock tells me it’s only 8:45, but it feels like midnight.
I check my email, then curse myself for it when I see my mother-in-law’s name at the top of the list.
Blocking her would be easy, but I need these emails. I need to see how unhinged she is at any given time.
I need to know how much I need to protect my daughter.
Why the fuck can’t my mother-in-law just leave us alone? When will she take the hint?
I forward it to my attorney and ask him to resend the formal notice that they’re not welcome in our lives anymore.
And then I push my in-laws out of my head and try to pass the time playing with the cat, but she’s uninterested in chasing a feather on a string, or in pouncing on the light from a laser pointer, or in doing anything beyond staring at me like she wants me to know that the minute I do what I’ve wanted to do more and more with each passing minute today, she intends to cause chaos.
She still has a few specks of glitter on her face, and Cricket found Pip’s stash of catnip and confirmed it is, in fact, catnip and nothing I need to call the vet about.
I make myself wait another thirty minutes—thirty long, slow, mind-numbing minutes with my anxiety growing exponentially by the second and my cock getting hard as granite.
And finally—finally—I let myself open the door to the basement, hustle down the stairs as quietly as I can hustle down stairs, and knock on Cricket’s door.
Then I knock again.
And once more, this time more urgently.
I’m about to knock a fourth time when the door swings open, and there she is.
Cricket, with her face glowing like she just washed it, a pink terrycloth headband holding her dark hair back from her face, lips glistening.
In silky-looking pink pajama shorts and a matching button-up top.
My heart thumps hard once, and then it breaks into a steady rhythm whispering this is the one.
Everything will be fine.
Happiness is here.
Fucking romantic heart.
“Hey. Everything okay?” Her voice is husky like she’s tired, and I can’t resist anymore.
Can’t hold back.
Can’t stop myself.
I thrust my fingers into her soft hair, take two steps into her apartment while she stumbles backward with me, and then I’m doing what I’ve wanted to do for far longer than I’m willing to admit to myself, and I kiss her.
It’s not smart.
It’s not responsible.
But I have to kiss her before I lose my mind.
She makes a soft squeak, and then she’s wrapped around me, kissing me back, her hands roaming up my arms, over my shoulders, making the skin on my neck pebble up in goosebumps as she strokes up into my hair too.
“You’re not going on a fucking dating app,” I growl against her mouth.
“Okay,” she says back in a breathy whisper, and then I’m kissing her again.
Backing her deeper into the apartment while she parts her lips for me, her minty-fresh tongue touching mine, and I’m gone.
I’m just fucking gone.
Losing myself in Cricket.
This damaged, chaotic, big-hearted, sexy-as-fuck woman who’s invaded my life in ways I’m still not ready for.
My hands roam from her hair down her neck and spine until I’m gripping her thick ass as she presses her belly into my aching hard-on, our tongues tangling and her fingers doing some magic thing to my neck that has my heart thumping wildly and the goosebumps spreading like wildfire over my entire body.
Need.
Her.
Now.
I back her farther into the room until she squeaks into my mouth, and then she’s tumbling backward, pulling me with her as we topple onto the bed.
Her lips are puffy and wet. Her eyes are black holes drawing me deeper and deeper under whatever this spell is that she’s worked on me. Her headband has slid down her forehead.
“You’re not subjecting yourself to any randos who want you for notches in their bedposts,” I growl at her as I push the headband back up into her hair.
Her lips tilt up at the edges as she pants for breath. “Bossy.”
“Not bossy. Right.” Why is her earlobe so delicious? What did she wash her face with? Why do I want to help so badly the next time she gets ready for bed?
She hooks a leg around my hip and makes a soft noise that tells me she likes me nipping at her ears as much as I do.
“We can’t—need rules,” she gasps.
“No randos on dating apps.” Her neck. I have to taste her neck. Suck on it.
Leave a mark.
Mark her as mine.
“For Lav,” she says.
“She doesn’t know.”
“Agreed.”
“And I don’t date. This isn’t formal shit.”
“Okay.”
“Fuck me, what kind of drug are you?”
“Are we fucking?”
My erection pulses along with my heartbeat, but harder and thicker. “Have to get you out of my system.”
She laughs, the sound like musical bells tinkling to announce every holiday and my birthday and rolled into one, with piles of presents and a seven-layer German chocolate cake and all of my favorite coffees.
That’s how Cricket feels.
Like all of my favorite things.
“One-time thing,” I tell her.
She slips a hand under my shirt and trails a single finger up my spine. “If you say so.”
“I don’t date,” I say again.
“Okay.”
“We’re working this out so we can both move on.”
“And then I’ll get on the dating apps.”
I rear up and glare down at her. “You’re not fucking getting on the fucking dating apps.”
She bites her lip, eyes so dark but still dancing. “You like me.”
“Not the point.”
“Why do you like me, Heath?”
Because she’s soft vulnerability and steely determination at the same time.
She’s the sunshine that woke me from a long slumber.
She offers everyone her heart without even realizing she’s doing it, all while looking for where she fits.
Where she belongs.
While helping me realize how I belong too.
Looking for who she is.
Helping me find who I am and who I want to be.
I swallow hard. “Does there have to be a reason?”
“I like you because you’re patient and kind and hot.”
“I’m not fucking patient.”
“No?” She tilts her pelvis and tightens her leg muscles, rubbing my hard-on through our clothes. “If I were a guy, and if I had this kind of boner, I’d be ripping your clothes off instead of talking.”
“Maybe I always have a boner like this.”
She smiles brighter, and just fuck me.
She’s gorgeous.
Those eyes—her hair spilled out beneath her—the way she’s lifting her hand to my cheek and brushing her swollen pink lips against mine—I cannot fucking resist her anymore.
I can’t.
“If you don’t want to see a doctor about that, maybe you could just see me,” she murmurs.
Did I say I was gone?
Because I keep getting more gone.
“I don’t like complicated.” I nip at her lower lip.
“Then don’t complicate it.”
I huff.
She traces my ear while she continues to tease my spine, and I swear I get harder.
“This,” she murmurs, rubbing her pussy harder against my cock, “isn’t complicated. It’s base human nature.”
“I want to base human nature you.”
She giggles, and I am the victorious knight who has slain all of the dragons, sword held high, sunlight reflecting off of my armor as I stand atop the tallest mountain in my kingdom.
I have won the fair maiden.
She’s mine.
She’s all mine.
“I dream about you naked,” I whisper into her neck.
“I daydream about you naked,” she whispers back.
“Cricket—”
I suck a hard breath through my nose.
I have condoms.
Grabbed them today. Two in my back pocket.
I have a raging hard-on.
I have a woman who’s peppering soft kisses against my neck as she whispers, “Yes?”
“I haven’t—for a long time—I don’t know—if I—can.”
I cringe to myself.
Doesn’t matter how much practice I’ve had in life doing and saying the hard things.
Doesn’t matter how many times I ran into danger as an EMT.
Doesn’t matter how many times I slay metaphorical dragons for my daughter.
This?
This is agony.
Admitting that I’m afraid I’ll be a disappointment at sex is far more torture than simply being afraid.
“Your pace,” she whispers back. “Whatever you want. However you want it.”
I lift my head again and look down at her. “Do not—ever—say that to any other man.”
She grins. “Why not? New adventure every time.”
“Fuck,” I groan, and then I’m kissing her again.
Because I need to.
I have to.
She’s the air I’m gasping after surfacing in an ocean of responsibility and fear and pressure and everything that my life has been for the past near-decade.
She peels my shirt up my back, and I shift enough to tear it the rest of the way off, then I’m kissing her again.
Kissing and rolling so she’s beside me, so I can unbutton this silky pink top one-handed while she rolls her pelvis against mine, driving me mad with how much I want to feel her bare pussy against my cock.
I get her buttons opened and push her shirt off her shoulder, and then—
“Fuck, I love your breasts.” I push her onto her back again and feast on her chest, palming one plump, perfect mound and thumbing her nipple while I suck on the other.
They’re perfect.
So damn perfect.
And the gaspy moans and the way she’s grabbed a fistful of my hair to hold me there—
I love knowing she’s enjoying this too.
That she wants me.
She does, doesn’t she?
She wants me?
I’m not just convenient?
“Oh my god, Heath, don’t stop,” she gasps.
She slips a hand under her pajama bottoms, and—
My cock surges, threatening to lose it.
She’s touching her pussy while I play with her breasts.
I grab her wrist. “Mine,” I growl.
“Just—feels—so good,” she gasps. “Want—need—to get off.”
I slide my hand under her shorts too, and my dick is going to kill me.
It’s going to over-dick and murder me from the inside, because he and I—we can’t handle the fact that she’s not wearing underwear.
All I find inside her shorts are soaked curls and slick skin.
“Oh god, yes,” she pants as I slide a finger in all of her glorious wetness, looking for—
“There,” she gasps, thrusting her hips against my hand as I locate her clit.
“There? You sure?”
“M-more.”
More.
Good plan.
More.
All the more.
I shimmy down until I’m tugging her shorts off, showing off that gorgeous pussy with the pink skin teasing me from between her legs, and then—
God, she’s delicious.
“Oh my god, yesssss,” she moans as I lick her.
I’m rusty.
Been a while.
But I take my cues from her body, the writhing and the moans and the way her legs fall open for me, the way she grips my hair and holds me between her thighs while I eat her pussy like it’s dessert.
Because it is.
She’s my dessert.
Her legs tremble, and her moans get higher while I devour her, until she’s suddenly clamping her thighs around my ears.
“I’m coming,” she gasps. “Oh my god, Heath, I’m coming.”
I want to grip my own cock and come with her. I’m leaking precum in my pants and aching so badly for my own release.
But bringing her here, taking her this high—this is its own heady reward.
Giving back to a woman who’s done things for my life that I still don’t fully understand, but that I don’t want to live without.
Her thighs release my head and fall open again.
I trace the hollow at the top of her thigh. “Now I’m looking at your vagina,” I murmur.
She laughs lightly. “Take as much time as you want.”
I glance up at her. “Yeah?”
Her bare breasts rise and fall as she sucks in oxygen, arms splayed to the sides. “I trust you. And thank you.”
There it is again.
Summertime spreading in my chest.
“We’re not done yet,” I tell her.
Her smile inches higher. “Good. Lose your pants. I get to play now. Soon. In a minute. When I catch my breath.”
I crawl back up beside her, and she tilts her head to kiss me.
Home, something nebulous and fleeting whispers in my head.
But I don’t dwell on it because she’s rolling to her side and reaching for the button on my jeans, making quick work of unzipping me too, then she’s pushing the denim over my hips, then shoving my boxers aside to release my cock.
She takes me in her hand and strokes.
My eyes cross.
My breath whooshes out.
And I hear it again.
You’re finally home.