Adding Up to You Read online

  Now, when he could have bought nearly any other house he wanted, he wouldn’t have traded it for the world. In the years since, he’d purchased places for his parents and his brother, but he’d stuck with this one for himself. It meant something to him that he’d come from nothing. That he’d rebuilt this house from nothing.

  That he’d made himself a home.

  He opened the front door, watching Kenna take in the airy, open space that was his living room.

  “This is great,” she said. “Are we going to—”

  “Make love.” He pulled her to him, slipped his arms around her. “We’ve had sex, fast and hot and reckless. But we haven’t made love, Kenna, long and slow and sweet.”

  She laughed a little, and backed up. “But I didn’t have anything against the fast and reckless sex.”

  “Are you nervous because I used the love word now?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. Nothing makes me nervous.”

  “I think I’m making you nervous.”

  “Wes…”

  “We’re still different, you know. Nothing’s changed there.”

  “Not that different, I’ve come to realize.”

  “Different enough.”

  “Let me show you we’re not, let me prove it.”

  She looked so excited and nervous and terrified all at the same time, poor baby.

  He knew just how she felt. He pulled her close again, trailed his mouth along her jaw, loving the feel of her body against his as they swayed together in the middle of his living room. “I should tell you…I work hard and play hard. I thought women were just a part of the play. They’re not. You’re not.”

  “I know.”

  “You work hard and play hard, too,” he said, and let that sink in.

  They weren’t that different.

  “Come see the rest of the house with me.” He showed her the kitchen, the deck…his bedroom.

  She laughed at his unmade bed, then squealed when he scooped her up and tossed her onto it. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes slumberous. Her long hair tumbled over her shoulders.

  She looked so good in his bed, he planned on keeping her there a while.

  A long while.

  She came up to her knees in the middle of the mattress, looking right at home there. Kneeling on the bed with her, he cupped her face, kissed her jaw, her throat, nibbling at the corners of her mouth before he finally settled his lips over hers, scooping her closer, loving the feel of her warm curves against his body.

  As he undressed her, he felt her pulse hammer beneath his fingertips. He intended to go slow, give as much pleasure as possible, but as he peeled off her clothes, exposing her body to his gaze, his own pulse hammered in his head.

  So hot, so…his. Her body curled into him, her breasts and hips flush to his, moving, arching as the need built to unbearable heights.

  Tugging his shirt free, she tossed it aside, then ran her hands over his chest and arms with a look of wonder on her face. “You’re so beautiful.” Then she shoved him to his back on the bed and pulled off his pants.

  He’d barely taken a breath before she straddled him, wrapping her fingers around his erection, bringing him to her hot, wet—

  “No,” he managed to say through his clenched jaw, and rolling, tucked her beneath him. “Not yet.”

  Her hands, caught in his, flexed as she stared up at him. Not yet? What did he mean not yet? “Why not?”

  “I told you. Long and slow and sweet. Or at least at a speed somewhere below wild and crazy. We’re going to make love, Kenna. Haven’t you ever made love before?”

  Panic wove around her heart. “Wes—”

  His tongue circled her nipple.

  She nearly jerked out of her skin. “I don’t think—”

  “Perfect,” he murmured. “Go with that.” Lifting up a fraction, he blew on her wet skin. She watched him watch her intently as the tip beaded tightly under his administrations. Then he drew her into his mouth, and she writhed against him, helpless, mindless against the onslaught of emotions.

  “Easy,” he whispered, trailing his mouth over her quivering belly. “We have a long way to go.” His tongue dipped into her navel, then lower, until she felt his warm breath on the inside of her thigh.

  “Wes—”

  He kissed her, there. “Yum,” he said, and used his tongue.

  She nearly shot off the bed, but he held her still beneath him, slowly, surely, purposely driving her out of her mind. Because he knew her, because she’d let him know her, he was able to torment her, for one long, humming moment holding her quivering and shuddering on the very edge.

  “When…I can…breathe,” she panted. “I’m going to…so torture you back.”

  He treated her to one perfect stroke of his tongue and sent her skittering into an earth-shattering climax. Surely such intensity, such unbelievable reverence and desperation had never existed before now. Her entire body shuddered and clutched, and finally, she felt his weight shift, felt him reach for a condom.

  “Oh, no,” she managed, and flinging her hair from her damp face, sat up. “My turn.” She shoved him to his back, looking over his body, from his broad shoulders to his tough chest and flat belly…

  To the part of him standing at attention. Needing attention. “Hmm. Look at that.”

  “Kenna—”

  “Shut up, Wes.” She took her time looking, then touching, then tasting…and only when the breath was sowing in and out of his lungs as if he’d run a marathon, when his body was gleaming, when he’d whispered her name over and over in a plea that made her wet all over again, did she sit back on her heels. “Yep, that should do it. We’re even.”

  “Condom,” he begged, and reached for the night stand.

  She helped him, then put her lips to his damp shoulder, surprised when he cupped her face for a sweet, tender kiss. “Now,” he said, and rolled her beneath him. “The slow, the tender. The gentle.” As he eased into her she was blown away by the sense of homecoming, a rightness, a joy that couldn’t be explained.

  It was the most intimate thing she’d ever experienced. She stared at him, her anchor, her lifeline. He’d been right about one thing, this was more than that mindless sex she’d come for.

  If that’s what she’d really come for.

  He smiled as if he knew, as if that was okay with him even, and began to move, and she nearly died.

  Definitely more than sex, but she had no idea what to do with that knowledge other than close her eyes and let it take her.

  CHAPTER 19

  KENNA WOKE UP to the early sun shining in her face. Squinting, she sat up and blinked.

  She was naked, still in bed. But not hers.

  The room was warm from the rays blaring in the window. The scent of the ocean wafted in, too, ruffling the gauzy curtains.

  There were other sights. Three discarded condom packets on the nightstand. And Wes’s pillow, which she’d stolen, lay in her arms. Like a silly lovestruck teen, she smashed her face into it, inhaling deeply. She couldn’t wait to hold him again, couldn’t wait to look into his eyes and—

  Hold it.

  The scent of bacon and something cinnamony came to her then, and she lifted her face in time to see a shirtless Wes slipping back into the room, holding a tray. He wasn’t wearing his glasses, so he was giving her that adorable, sexy, squinty-eyed look that told her he was straining to see.

  She was glad for the lack of glasses on his part, because it hit her right then, like a one-two punch.

  She’d fallen all the way in love with him. Heart-pounding, pulse-drumming, howling-at-the-moon, crazy-about-him love.

  Clearly mistaking her half awed, half horrified expression for lust, he grinned wickedly and set down the tray. “Hungry?”

  “Um…yeah.” She put a hand to her belly, knowing it wasn’t hunger pangs making it quiver.

  “You’re going to sidetrack me from my mission,” he said hoarsely, staring at her body as he put a knee on the bed.

&nbsp