“I don’t care what people think. I’m asking you because I care what you think.”

That meant so much to him, his frame froze solid.

She was detached and had always been that way. Her cadre was small and tight and she didn’t often let people in.

But even if she let you in, even though she was warm and affectionate, it was strange, but she still somehow managed to be distant. Therefore, not always, but sometimes with Emme, you had to search for clues that something you said or did meant something. And since he told her where he was going to take them, he’d been searching. She gave it to him, but he’d also had to look for it.

Except when she told him she missed him, wanted the change in their relationship and, just now, telling him she gave a shit about what he thought.

“So, do you think this reflects on me?” she pushed, feeling the tenseness in his body, her eyes filling with concern she didn’t hide.

He forced his body to relax.

“I think you traded up and that works for me,” he answered and moved to conclude discussion about f**king McFarland by saying with finality, “That’s what I think.”

She studied him a moment before her body melted against his and she smiled, the dimple appearing.

Fucking finally.

“Now can I eat my sandwich?” he asked on a grin.

“I saw the kaleidoscope by your bed,” she whispered.

“Yeah,” he whispered back.

“Just now and when I spent the night before.”

“Yeah,” he repeated.

“I wasn’t a mark.”

Irritation flashed and he gave her a warning squeeze. “Emme, I told you—”

She cut him off, “Just my way of saying I’m sorry, honey. I should have thought about that before and known I was wrong. I just,” she shrugged, “got bad news, reacted and by that I mean flew off the handle. I’m sorry I put you to trouble and lost it with you.” Her head tipped and her eyes lit. “Though, maybe not so sorry, considering how that concluded.”

He’d been worried for hours.

He’d just had his girl, gave her her first orgasm during sex and now they were cool.

So he was over it.

Before he could tell her this, Emme rolled up on her toes, touched her mouth to his, pulled back and asked, “Now, do you take mayo or what?”

Deck looked into her now just inquisitive eyes a second before he burst out laughing.

After he was done, he saw her smiling at him, gave her brief kiss getting a hint of the strawberry of her hair as he did it and liking it. He set her away from him and grabbed the mayo in answer to her question.

He went to the sandwich.

She went out of the open kitchen and he watched her walk to her clothes on the couch.

Then he watched her pick them up and start heading toward his room, Buford following her.

“Emme, where you goin’?”

She turned and looked at him. “Getting dressed then going home.”

He stopped squirting mayo and felt his eyes narrow. “Babe, just put Cletus in the garage.”

“Sorry, right, you probably didn’t have to do that. And her name is Persephone.”

Deck ignored that and stated, “You’re spendin’ the night here.”

Her head tipped to the side. “Why? Dane’s behind bars so I’m safe to go home.”

Why?

“Emme, you’re not spendin’ the night here because I want you safe from McFarland. You’re spending the night here because I want you in my bed.”

Her body froze.

“Oh,” she mouthed as he saw her lips form the word but he didn’t hear it.

Cute.

Little experience and no man had even made her come.

It was up to him to get in there and teach her. Something he liked. Something he looked forward to.

Something he was starting now.

“Have you had dinner?” he asked.

“I was too angry to eat. I thought I would, well…” she threw out a hand, “get something when I got home.”

“You’re not goin’ home so get something here.”

She stood there unmoving before she said, “Okay,” and moved.

Buford followed her.

He probably liked the smell of strawberries too.

She dumped her clothes on the couch, made a sandwich and slid on a stool beside him at the bar.

He swallowed his bite, looked at her and asked gently, “Is my girl good?”

She had her sandwich to her mouth. She took it away, looked at him and replied, “Your girl’s good, honey.”

“Good,” he muttered, bent in, touched his mouth to hers before she took a bite and he went back to the remnants of his sandwich.

Chapter Eight

Girl Posse

I slid up and on the downward glide I knew it was coming.

And like last night, both before and after sandwiches, it took me by surprise.

But this time, I was riding Jacob so I didn’t know what to do while riding a man and having an orgasm.

In the end, I couldn’t do anything but what my body told me to do.

And that was slam down hard on his c**k and feel it pulse through me, radiating everywhere, shaking me through and through so intensely I arched back and had to brace myself by curling a hand around his thick, hard thigh.

So totally better than self-induced it wasn’t funny.

“Baby, do not f**kin’ stop,” Jacob growled, his hands on my h*ps coaxing but I was too far gone.

So far, I barely felt Jacob sit up but I did feel his thigh come up as he cocked his knees. Then I had an arm around my waist pulling me up and slamming me down.

My head tipped down and I lifted my eyelids as far as they would go, which was about a quarter of the way up.

“Honey,” I breathed as he pulled me up and slammed me back down.

That felt good and a low sound escaped my throat, I lifted my hands to his shoulders, used them as leverage and took over.

“Thank f**k,” he muttered but didn’t release my waist.

“This is fun,” I whispered, sounding slightly surprised, moving on him fast and hard.

“It’ll be more fun you take me there, like, soon,” he replied.

Wasn’t I doing it right?

I bit my lip and grew uncertain.

Jacob’s eyes narrowed on my lip.

A second later I was on my back in his bed, he was pounding deep and he had a hand between us, thumb pressed to my cl*t and one could just say he knew how to use his thumb.

“Jacob!” I gasped.

“Now this,” he grunted as he thrust, “this, baby, is fun.”

He could say that again.

He didn’t.

He kissed me.

I came again a few seconds later.

Then he did the same a minute after that.

* * *

“We gotta go, honey. You have insulation to install and I have chips to pour into bowls,” I said after Jacob got back from the bathroom, rejoined me in bed, settled on his back and cuddled me close to his side.

“We can eat them out of bags,” he replied.

“Okay, then I have a fridge to check and make sure it’s working, and if it’s not, I have beer to shove in snow to make it cold.”

His body shook with silent laughter before his arm got tight when I tried to pull away. “In a minute.”

“Jacob—”

“I like this.”

I did too.

And I liked it that he liked it. Jacob Decker, my friend reunited, now my lover (and a great one), wanting to cuddle in bed after sex with me.

But this being Jacob, all he was and all he was to me, that made it even better.

So I settled in.

The one good part about Dane was that he liked to spend the night with me. Sex with him had its moments, none culminating, but there were moments. But sleeping with him was always nice. He was also a cuddler and I liked that too.

My only lover before him, Jerry, cuddled a bit after but always went home to his own bed or expected me to go home to mine. I’d had him while Jacob was with Elsbeth but he never met anyone because he didn’t last long and it never got serious.

Between Jerry and Dane, a long dry spell that was okay by me.

Jacob, too, was a cuddler, but with his long frame, it being so big, and his innate bossiness, it was different than Dane. Dane spooned but if I moved, he let me go my own way. Jacob slept and I slept with him however that came about. I moved, he moved me back or moved into me (mostly moved me back). If he moved, he took me with him.

It was weird and it didn’t sound like it would be good.

But since he was Jacob, all he was and all he was to me, it was fantastic.

Thinking these thoughts led me to thinking that switching creepy, the-only-thing-good-about-him-was-cuddling-and-he-could-be-sweet, felonious Dane right away with everything-was-good-about-him-except-he-was-sometimes-bossy Jacob didn’t suck.

This thought was so funny that me, me, Emmanuelle Holmes, thirty-four years old and only having two short-term boyfriends moved right from one guy, felonious or not, to another, and traded up to one who was hotter, nicer, funnier, smarter, richer and had the capacity to give orgasms every time (sometimes two!) made me start giggling.