Wicked Flower (6 page)

“I don’t do that with strangers,”
she said, but her voice lied. Yes she would.
With him at
least.
Maybe it was just the words she didn’t like. At any rate, he was
glad she’d said it. Imagining her doing this with anyone but him pissed him
off.

But this wasn’t making love. He
wouldn’t be a dick and lie to her.

“What about this?” he asked and
kissed down her neck until he found the hollow of her throat. He circled the
area with his tongue, over and over, wanting to make up for his crude comment, until
he felt her nails gouge into his back. He didn’t stop and she whimpered.

“Please, you can’t give me an
orgasm,” she said quickly like it was a stipulation she’d failed to mention.

“I assure you, I can. If that’s
what you want.”

“No, that’s not what I mean,” she
said and pulled her neck away.

All of a sudden, Stefan’s arms felt
oddly heavy. What was he doing to this girl? How was this good for her? And
what exactly did she want from him?

But then her fingers left his hip
bone and a second later he felt them cup him. Her grasp started soft and then became
harder, firmer. “Just be nice. Okay?” she asked, killing him with her game. How
did he fuck her and not make her come? There was something he wasn’t getting.

“I promise,” he said, but decided
in that second that being nice to her meant something else. Something the new
him decided to risk and try out. Clearly the air out here had affected him, not
just Will. What he was about to do was crazy, especially when all he wanted was
to hold and fuck and please her.

He kept his mouth on hers while
he dug his hands into his pockets. She was going to have to understand, well
learn fast anyway, that he cherished a woman’s body like he did breathing air.
This stall was too cramped for the ways he’d like to adore her and he was short
on time right this second but he was in town for two weeks and would like to
see her again. “Have dinner with me,” he said into her ear, taking a small
break from their kiss.

Shit. She didn’t answer. Stefan
grabbed for his cell phone which was wedged tight against his wallet in his
back pocket. He wasn’t willing to give up yet.

He nearly had it out when she
unbuttoned the first button of his fly and tried to wedge her hand down the
front of his pants but it was too tight, filled with his cock she’d left
throbbing.

“Dinner?
I, I don’t
know.” She moaned more deeply now. The sex dripping sound surprised him and his
wallet fell to the ground with his phone. Was she really saying yes to crazy
hot bathroom sex but no to dinner with him?

Shit,
that was smooth
.

Distracted, he reached down to
pick them up but she had the same idea. Being shorter, she was closer and got
to his wallet first.

The damn wallet was old and worn
and barely held anything anymore. He’d bought it from an inflight magazine once
on the advice of a flirtatious flight attendant. It was supposed to have lasted
forever. His driver’s license fell out and she grabbed that for him too. She
handed him the wallet and the phone but held onto his ID. That was fine. He
didn’t have anything to hide from her.

“Yes, dinner.
And if you
still want that proof, that too,” he said and kissed her cheek. “I actually
have a house not too far from here. It’s uh, in Moonlight. We could eat, talk.
Have amazing sex.” He ran his fingers up the back of her neck and massaged.
“Whatever you want.”
Why was his heart pounding so hard and
why did she look like she’d like to disappear right now? Her face lost its
pretty pink wash of passion from minutes ago. She’d really wanted him to pound
her in here?

The look in her eyes a second
later branded him. She’d obviously been ripped out of their zone. Dammit, and new-
him
was the ripper. Fuck.

“Stefan
Calderon?” she asked.

His license fell
from her hands to the ground. The kitten was out of the bag and the pussy did
not look happy.

She ran smooth, lightly tanned fingers
over her black hair and her fleshy lips, like she was trying to wipe away his
touch.

That had never
happened before. And damn, it didn’t feel good.

“Yes, that’s me,”
he said. He’d give a million dollars to know what she was thinking and a few
more to be told why.

She backed out
of the bathroom stall so fast, she literally became a bright yellow blur.

What
the hell?
It was all he could think at her abrupt reaction.

“Hey, wait,” he called after her
and leaned down to pick up his license, reading his name and wondering why it
had been so offensive to her. Did she have a thing against musicians? Read one
too many articles about the dick lead singer of Sin Pointe? Been just toying
with him this whole time? Until just then, he was sure she really hadn’t known
who he was.

Just like that,
she was gone.

His lips were swollen from their
kiss,
no doubt he’d left hers just the same. She’d wanted it,
been into it as much as him. He picked up their uneaten licorice and his shades.

At a total loss, Stefan left the
bathroom as a girls basketball team filed in. Half of them eyed him
suspiciously but the others gave him flirty looks he’d rather not have seen on
such young faces.

Stefan kept his eyes alert,
searching out the bright yellow but nothing matched her as he passed through
the crowd. He ran into Will whose hands were full of food and drink and a thin
plastic bag that looked to be filled with CD’s and DVD’s. He sat on a giant
silk flower planter with all his goods.

“Hey man, sorry it took me so long
but the pizza
crew were
fans. They wanted pics and
asked me to sign a few things. They gave me way more pizza than I can eat
alone. So, you’re welcome. And, we should probably get going.”

Stefan glazed over most of what
Will had just said. “Did you see that girl in yellow from pump five come through
here?” He should have gotten her name.

“Nah
man.
Why?”

Stefan looked around some more as
they walked out the truck stop doors to where Will had parked the car.

“You hooked up
with her, didn’t you? Where?
In the bathroom?”

“Not
exactly.”
Stefan wished. “Something spooked her.”

“Shit man, maybe
stranger danger?
Smart girl after all.”

“No, it was more than that. We
were
vibing
. I actually asked her to dinner. Then she
just left.”

Will’s eyebrows shot up. “She
bolted on your dinner invitation? What did you do to her before that?
Had to be something, man.”

“Nothing.
She saw my
driver’s license, said my name,
then
took off.”

It didn’t make sense and he
couldn’t shake the feeling that he’d left her worse off than when he’d found
her. The feeling sank into the pit of his stomach and brought up memories of
how he’d been forced to leave things with his teenage girlfriend twenty years
ago. Mom had jumped so fast to believing Amanda’s parents over him. No matter
how much he’d tried to stand up for
himself
and get Mom
to believe the truth, Mom never took his side. From the moment the Coopers
accused him of getting their daughter pregnant and then not taking
responsibility, Mom’s eyes had never seen him the same way.

“Hey, it just
wasn’t meant to be. She wasn’t your type anyway. What’s gotten into you?”

Will got his attention back but
he was wrong. That one, that woman could have been exactly his type. He’d never
felt that way. Unfortunately, now he’d never know. “Nothing,” he said. “I guess
you’re right, it was nothing.”

With her taste still in his
mouth, Stefan climbed into his car and pulled out of the lot toward his mom’s
house, clenching the steering wheel and picturing what might have been if he
hadn’t tried to be something he sucked at.
Noble.
Let
Jaxon and Marion and
Will
be the good ones. All good
had gotten him just now was gone.

“You
gonna
eat that?” Will asked and pointed at the package of licorice setting on
Stefan’s lap.
“Grape.
Never had that
before.
Is it any good?”

Will’s small talk shouldn’t
surprise Stefan. He’d never given Will any reason to believe that one single
woman could affect him like this.

“I don’t know, I guess,” Stefan
said, sad for the absence of
her
. Why
did he feel like this? “Shit. I’m so screwed.”

“What?” Will asked with a mouth
full of
her
candy,
her
taste,
her
smell.

“Nothing.
It was
nothing.”

“Yeah, you said that already.”

Stefan’s foot hit the gas pedal
hard.

On to the next
hurdle.
Mom’s
.

Chapter Four

Dani sat in her car, pissing off the
horn-happy Volvo owner who wanted her parking space. They honked again and she
continued to ignore them. It was warm out and her tracksuit had already
absorbed too much sweat today.

At some point she’d have to go
inside the drugstore and get the stuff she needed for Mrs. Calderon.

The name made her head throb and
she grabbed it with both hands and rubbed.

How in the world had she not put
two and two together? Granted, she’d never seen him live and in person as a
grown man.
Which was really strange considering her mom and
his mom had been best friends.
Hard as she tried, no memories of him
came to mind. What surprised her was that she couldn’t even remember overhearing
the moms talk about Stefan. There were a handful of pictures he’d been in from
when she was a very little girl and the high school graduation photo that hung
on the wall at his mom’s, but those looked nothing like the lethally sensuous
bear of a man she’d just encountered.

“I’m such a dummy.” Mrs. C’s
well-off son was due to visit, in drives a ritzy Mercedes from Tennessee, and
her first thought wasn’t Stefan Calderon has shown up? Her scalp stretched to
its limits and even her ears felt the tension.

She shook her head at her
thickness.

Well he’d arrived to one hell of
a welcoming committee. Dani sighed and finger massaged her temples.

Making out with him in a public
bathroom? There was no point in lying to herself … she’d have had sex with him.
Not to the point of climaxing but close enough.
If
, she thought.
If she hadn’t
just found out he was Mrs. C’s son. She wouldn’t now that the chaotic situation
had slapped some sense back into her.
Or some embarrassment
and humility.
But back there, in the stall? It would have happened, even
in the face of all the reasons it would have been the worst mistake.

He was a musician who was never
home. Dani was his mom’s caretaker in his absence. She didn’t know much more
about him but that was enough.

Her feelings about that were
mixed to call it lightly. How many times had she thought lowly of him for not
coming around more?
For financing his mom’s care but not
caring enough to come home more often?
But that uncommitted jerk didn’t
sound like the man she’d just spent time with.

Real, significant problems began
to mount the more implications she thought of.

She’d never finished her medical
assistant degree because she’d quit school to care for her own mother. And then
Mom had passed and Mrs. C had fallen, breaking her arm and needing surgery. The
natural option had brought the both of them together. Gina Calderon needed
someone to help her around the house. Her son had sent word that he was going
to hire a live-in caretaker, basically a nanny for seniors. Gina had responded
that she would put his money to good use and hire someone reliable. Two weeks
of post-surgery help around the house had turned into two years and a permanent
live-in situation. One Dani cherished with all her heart.

Oh this was not good.

It hit her hard just then. The
money Mrs. C paid Dani came from her son.

Dani hunched onto the steering wheel
and rolled her forehead over its hard plastic, begging her headache to subside.

Mrs.
C’s son, the one I just degraded myself in front of,
pays
my bills, buys my food, puts gas in my car.

Any sense of “sexy” she’d run
away with from their encounter turned quickly to “dirty”.

As a final reminder of what a
fool she’d just been, Dani’s hands fell to her stomach. The money she saved by
not having to pay rent went directly to the hospital for the self-pay birthing
plan she qualified for.

Someone honked long and loud and
then sped past, presumably to find another spot. Finally, Dani found the wits
to ease her foot off the brake. Her ankle cramped as she stretched it out and
prepared to drag herself into the pharmacy. It hit her just then as she
rummaged for and found Mrs. C’s list of prescriptions to be picked up.