Tools of Engagement Read online

  Turning his back to the house, he leaned down to speak directly above her ear. “I need to be alone with you, Bethany,” he said gruffly. “Need you back underneath me so bad. I can’t believe I’ve only been inside you once.”

  The string attached to all of her erogenous zones pulled taut in a way she’d never experienced. She’d been turned on plenty of times in her life. God knew she’d found the very bottom of internet porn during her self-imposed man hiatus. This was different. Her body was so awake and greedy, she didn’t think it would be possible to deny this man ever again.

  Her skin longed to soak in his heat, to be a victim to his teeth and weight and angst. With him standing so close to her, whispering her nerve endings into a flurry, she wanted this man she trusted to love her body without constraints or rules spoken aloud or time limits.

  No time limits. That would have terrified her before.

  Even now, a finger of apprehension traced up her spine, telling Bethany her worst flaws would show through over the passage of time, but she ignored it.

  Wes studied her face and looked as if he wanted to say something else, but Slade’s voice carried closer and he snapped his mouth shut. A playful twinkle entered his eye, though it didn’t fully eradicate the lust. “Want to mess with him?”

  Lightness blew through her chest. “How?”

  He winked and crouched down, picking up a small stick from the lawn. He checked to make sure the patio guy’s back was turned.

  And then he drew a giant penis in the wet concrete, complete with smiley face.

  “Wes,” Bethany hissed. “I can’t believe you did that.”

  Wes rose and tossed away the stick, then quickly wrapped an arm around her waist to pull her up against his body. He walked around to the side of the house and positioned them behind a pine tree. “Oh, come on. Yes, you can.”

  Trying not to laugh, she hid her face in his shoulder. Slade and the camera crew were slowly making their way to the backyard. They had a matter of seconds before Wes’s handiwork was discovered. Tops. “Oh God. Oh God. They’re going to see it. Smooth it back out. Do something—”

  “If you’ll recall, when we first arrived at Project Doomsday, the backyard was more like a jungle,” came Slade’s voice, his boots scraping to a stop at the very edge of the bedroom entrance. Bethany clutched the front of Wes’s T-shirt and waited, a burst of laughter stuck in her throat. “Thanks to some extreme landscaping and Bethany’s executive decision to save some cash with stamped concrete, the backyard living space is really starting to come together now. I can see the new homeowners enjoying many a margarita—” Slade cut himself off. “Oh. Uhhh. That’s . . . not part of the design.”

  Bethany snort-giggled and Wes shushed her through his own shoulder-shaking laughter.

  “All right,” shouted the director. “Who drew the dick?”

  She lost it, stumbling into Wes and knocking him backward into the side of the house. He caught her, both of them unable to hold back their amusement. At some point, they stopped laughing and just stared at each other, smiles fading. Need washed over her like foamy ocean water warmed by the sun—and it wasn’t the kind of desire that could be delayed or tempered. No. It was big and overwhelming and glorious.

  “I need you,” she breathed. “Right now.”

  His lids hid his eyes momentarily. “Thank God.” He chewed his lip, seeming to consider their options. “You trust me?”

  “Yes,” she said without hesitation.

  A corner of his lips went up, his warm hand caressing the side of her face. “Good.” His touch dropped to Bethany’s wrist and he tugged her into the backyard, right into the throng of interns and cameramen—and Slade—who were gaping at the cement dick. “Wow,” Wes said, stepping over the wet cement onto the set of stairs that led into the bedroom, helping Bethany up behind him. “You people will do anything for ratings.”

  The director glared. “Everyone take lunch,” he muttered. “Can we get this dick cleaned up, please?”

  They jogged side by side down the hallway of the house, both of them bursting at the seams with pent-up laughter. When they reached the bathroom, Wes hustled her inside and locked the door behind them. The new fixtures hadn’t been installed yet, so the only light in the small room came from a sliver beneath the door. And that was a shame, because Bethany wanted to see him. She didn’t want to close her eyes and just get through it, she wanted to revel in them being together like this. Breathless and horny and lacking any shame.

  Wes wasted zero time pinning her to the far wall, their hands knocking together in their haste to get his pants unzipped. Judging that he had that vital part under control, Bethany scrubbed her palms all over his abs, going lower and fondling his beefy erection through his jeans. “Oh my God.”

  “What?” he rasped, stooping down long enough to yank off her yoga pants and panties, casting them aside into the darkness. A foil packet ripped, followed by the sound of latex unrolling. This was happening. They were really doing this. Having sex in a house full of people.

  The illicitness of it only drove her urgency higher.

  Who was she anymore?

  “You just . . .” She responded to his pressing mouth, voice thready with unabashed honesty. “You get so hard so fast.”

  On a muffled groan, Wes boosted Bethany up against the wall. No sooner had she slung her legs around his hips did he clap a hand over her mouth and drive his thick shaft inside of her. Without an ounce of gentleness. Her eyes filled with tears from the sheer pleasure of the rough invasion. Oh, it felt so good. Incredible. She’d been more than ready for him and she loved that he hadn’t made her wait. No games between them. Just giving and taking.

  “Say that again,” Wes demanded at her ear, slowly removing his hand from its position over her mouth.

  “You get so hard so fast,” she said in a rush, biting down on her bottom lip to trap a moan, because he was moving, moving, his hips rolling like a well-oiled machine.

  “That’s right.” He wedged his hands between Bethany and the wall, taking tight hold of her bare butt, grinding into her and holding himself deep. “You’re not complaining about my age anymore, are you, darlin’?”

  “No,” she gasped.

  “No,” he echoed on a groan, pumping his sex into hers slowly, snagging her top lip with his teeth. “The better to serve you with, Bethany.”

  A spasm caught her off guard, her intimate muscles squeezing around him. With enough force to make her suck in a shaking breath. “Don’t stop.” She wrapped her legs tighter around his moving hips. “Please. Please. I’ve never been this wet in my life.”

  Wes growled into the crook of her neck and his drives turned frenzied. “Fuck. You did not just say that to me. I’m going to blow so fast, baby. You have to come. You have to come.”

  Knowing Wes was teetering on the edge just like her was intoxicating. She almost couldn’t withstand the pressure building between her legs, his size increasing every time he entered her. Preparing for release. They were two straining, naked bodies in the dark, desperate as beggars.

  She clawed at his neck, pulled his hair, dug her heels into his thrusting ass. There was no staying still when the huge stalk of his sex was rubbing her clit relentlessly and his finger was brushing the untouched ring of her back entrance, teasing it, jiggling it. God. God.

  Voices passed in the hallway, the floor creaking. Even the bathroom door handle squeaked like someone was trying to turn it and Wes didn’t stop. He fit their mouths together and kissed her like they’d never get another chance. His tongue moved in time with his lower body and it was too much. Sensory overload.

  Wes’s tempo turned bruising and Bethany’s thighs trembled uncontrollably from their perch on his hips. “I’m going to,” she whispered, clinging to his shoulders like a starfish to a rock. “I’m . . . ohhhhhh. Now now now.”

  “Ah Jesus, thank fuck,” he confided hoarsely, slamming into her, relentlessly. “The pussy is too good, baby. I can’t hold it b
ack.”

  “Hard,” she breathed, tunneling her fingers through his hair and yanking his mouth down to hers, gratified by the animalistic way he attacked her lips. Her climax signaled its imminent arrival with hot pulses that grew more and more intense. “Put it in me hard.”

  “Christ. Shut your perfect little mouth, Bethany. I’m trying not to rip the fucking condom,” he gritted, but he pummeled her faster and harder regardless, his lips moving over hers, tasting, their tongues lapping and tangling. His hold on her butt turned brutal, using his grip to yank her down into his drives—and his ferocity flipped a switch inside of her, pleasure pouring into her midsection and flooding lower, pressure building to the point of pain before imploding. “Goddamn,” Wes ground out, pressing her tight to the wall with his hips, his strong frame shaking violently. “God, baby,” he pushed through gritted teeth, breath catching. “Beautiful woman. So beautiful, you know that? You make me come so hard.”

  They kind of just melted off the wall, Wes’s arms coming up around her, his recovery breaths blowing around the hair at her temple. His sex slipped free of her and she immediately missed the connection, but was appeased when his thumb found the base of her neck and massaged circles there, his lips beginning to press kisses to her hairline. Reverently. Anticipating her need for reassurance before it even arose. And that consideration, that caring made the love inside her spout like a geyser.

  It shook her with its strength.

  Say it. Say you love him.

  It had to be too soon to say those words. Eons too soon. They’d barely warmed to the idea of dating each other exclusively. What if she felt more deeply for Wes than Wes felt for her?

  No, it was best to move slower.

  Keep her finger on the pulse of reality and make sure Wes felt the same way about her before she revealed her feelings. Still . . .

  Her heart ached to do something. To express the wild feeling inside of her.

  She couldn’t seem to suppress it.

  “Bethany?”

  “What if you and Laura move in with me?” Thank God for the darkness. As soon as those words came out of her mouth, she felt the magnitude of them and panic crammed like a fist into her throat. His face was probably a mask of utter horror. She couldn’t even hear him breathing. Was he dead? Yes, probably from shock and fear of his bunny being boiled. “I meant like . . . l-like purely as a kind of business arrangement. You need a place to live and, well, you said the court will need to confirm the stability of her living environment and I just thought, you know, my house fits that bill. And I have two extra bedrooms no one is using. It just seems like, I don’t know . . . I don’t know.”

  “A business arrangement,” Wes said slowly.

  Grateful he’d spoken at all, Bethany continued in a rush. “Well, of course. I mean, we’re not like, moving in together. That would be lunacy. This soon . . .”

  Wes was silent for long moments. “I need to see your face while we’re having this conversation, Bethany.”

  Was that a no?

  The possibility of rejection clamped around her windpipe.

  Oh God, she was getting dizzy.

  She slid down the wall and felt around for her underwear and yoga pants, listening to the clang and zip of Wes fastening his jeans, disposing of the condom. The silence was stifling until the roar in her ears filled it. As soon as the door opened, she was going to make an excuse and go spend the afternoon hiding in her closet with a bottle of tequila. What in God’s name had she been thinking?

  Wes beat her to opening the door and his expression turned shocked at whatever he saw on her face. “Oh Jesus,” he chuckled, catching her around the waist before she could flee. “Nope. You’re staying put.”

  “I have to go—”

  “You could, but I’d just chase you down.”

  Her mouth snapped into a straight line and she stared at his shoulder, willing her heart to stop doing cartwheels. “What?”

  “What?” He tipped her chin up so she could witness his incredulity. “You asked me to move in with you and then you called it a business arrangement. About thirty seconds after we burned the fucking world down. Sue me if I can’t figure out where the hell we stand.”

  “I just know I want to help,” she whispered.

  Wes scrutinized her face. “Is that the only reason you want me there?”

  Of course it wasn’t. Not only did she love the man, she adored the child. But exposed and vulnerable, Bethany could only give the slightest shake of her head.

  It must have been enough, because affection kindled in Wes’s eyes. He leaned down and kissed her forehead, saying, “I can work with that.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  The Suffolk County Clerk’s Office was quiet on a Tuesday afternoon. Wes stood outside turning his hat over in his hands, searching the parking lot for his sister. He’d offered to pick her up at the train station, but she’d opted to make her own way there, which made him nervous as hell. She’d agreed to meet him to file the Petition of Guardianship, but she wasn’t reliable on her best day.

  Come on, Becky. Come through just this once.

  When he’d left, Bethany was hard at work on Project Doomsday laying tile in the bathroom, and he’d told the producer he was going out to grab some lunch. It didn’t sit right with him, leaving without telling Bethany where he was going. Hell, he wanted her there. Badly. But she was already a deer in the headlights after her shocking offer to move them into her house yesterday, so he was forcing himself to give her some breathing room. Enough to relax her, but not enough to let her think he was going anywhere.

  Yeah. Bethany Castle definitely had him walking on a tightrope.

  Good thing he didn’t want it any other way.

  The woman was in his blood. He understood her a little more every time she let her guard drop, and those occurrences were becoming more and more frequent. He got the feeling she was terrified of him and magnetized by him, all at once. The same was true for him.

  Love was open-heart surgery without anesthesia.

  But he couldn’t stay alive unless Bethany sewed him up with a shiny new ticker. One that would be bigger and hardier because it contained her love. Until then, he was just fighting for his life on the operating table.

  He started to pace on the sidewalk, twirling his hat around and around on his index finger. He thought of Bethany as he’d left her, covered in grout, a line of concentration between her brows, that sweet tush in the air.

  Okay, love wasn’t all a touch-and-go operation.

  There was the I-see-Jesus sex.

  There was the way she’d become his best friend. The person he confided in.

  The giggle she’d developed for him—just for him—was worth the niggling worry that she would change her mind. That she could move him and Laura into her house and get sick of him. He was trying so hard not to think of Bethany’s house as the fifteenth home he’d lived in, but that’s what it was. The doubt in his gut didn’t much care that the woman he loved resided there. It only wanted to whisper in his ear that living with her would be temporary, like everything else.

  But his heart said trust her. Trust what you feel.

  Lord knew if there was an apartment in Port Jefferson available, he would consider taking it and giving Bethany more time to get used to him. To the fact that he was in this for the long haul. Not only being Laura’s guardian or a Port Jefferson resident, but her man. I am her man. They were on an accelerated timeline and the possessive son of a bitch inside of him liked that, because the sooner it was understood by God and everyone that they were a couple, the sooner he could stop having nightmares about her dropping him for some appropriately aged chump with a seven-figure bank account.

  A growl scraped around in his throat.

  He slapped the hat down on his head and snatched the cell out of his jeans pocket, hitting Bethany’s number on his favorites list. She answered on the second ring, the sound of power drills singing in the background.

  “Hi.�
��

  Damn, she sounded so sweet. Did she miss him? He had been gone almost a full forty minutes, including the drive and the wait.

  Christ. Listen to yourself. You’re a goner.

  “Hey,” he said, willing firmness into his tone. “Is that offer to move in still good?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  His heart got a running start and tackled his lungs. “Good. But let’s get one thing straight, darlin’. I’m not sleeping in my girlfriend’s guest room. You’re getting me in your house and your bed, or nothing at all.”

  Bethany was silent long enough to make him sweat. “I think I can agree to those terms.” Was that a smile in her voice?

  The weight flew from his shoulders. “All right, then.”

  “Wes?”

  “Yeah, baby?”

  “What would you have done if I’d called your bluff?”

  Admiration spread like butter in his chest, his mouth forming a slow smile. “Moved in anyway and seduced you.”

  There was that beautiful giggle. “Oh yeah? How?”

  “Fought with you until you realized you’re crazy about me,” he drawled. “That method seems to work on you like a charm.”

  “You might be right,” she murmured after several beats. “I was thinking you could bring some things tomorrow night after work. I should have the rooms ready by then.”

  “Room, Bethany. Singular.”

  “Oh yeahhh, that’s right. Almost forgot.”

  He relaxed when he heard the cheeky smile in her tone. “Close the bathroom door until I get back. Your butt looks insane in those pants.”

  “Chauvinist.”

  “What’s mine is mine.”

  She groaned, but he heard the door shut.

  “What’s yours is yours, too, Bethany. You going to hang on to me?”

  Wes hung up before she could answer. He was afraid to hear a single note of uncertainty, worried what it would do to him. Hanging up without saying good-bye bothered him, however, so he started to dial her number again—but that was when a shadow darkened his shoes and he looked up to find his sister.

  Slowly, he put away the cell phone. “Are you ready?”