Late Nights & Love Lines (Single Dad Hotline #2)

10. Traitorous vagina

10

TRAITOROUS VAGINA

ROWAN

“ G ood girl,” he murmurs in my ear. What the hell? Did I suddenly come down with a praise kink? Or maybe I’m losing my damn mind because my core spasms as though it’s a hairsbreadth away from orgasming.

From freaking words.

“Good girl,” I shoot back when I’m mostly convinced that I have control of my traitorous vagina. “I told you, Sebastian Walker, that you are not the boss of me. I’m not a child in need of saving. I don’t need rescuing or any other bullshit princess constructs that are constantly shoved down our throats.”

“And I told you, Rowan Ellis, that sometimes you have to let down your guard and count on someone else.”

“You never said that.”

“Maybe not, but I’m telling you now. Sometimes you have to trust me.” He opens the door and fires off his glare to the left, then the right, and I hear Pappy laugh. “I’m taking her to the infirmary. We’ll be back.”

Slowly, he turns his head. Our cheeks are too close for this conversation and I’m far too naked. My lips are pressed into a thin line, and my jaw is clenched so tightly it clicks in my ears.

He shakes his head, but I don’t miss the sadness in his features.

“I don’t need your pity either,” I say haughtily.

“Trust me, pity is the last thing I’m feeling.” The way the words rumble in his chest knocks loose something in mine, and I chew on my lips to keep every catastrophic idea from escaping my mouth.

He stomps through the night, holding me up by the backs of my thighs as carefully as he can. He can’t help himself, he’s a natural-born caretaker. His kids are very lucky to have him.

“Who do you trust?” he asks quietly, so quietly he’s almost drowned out by the crickets and frogs.

That’s too broad a question for me to ever answer. “Trust with what?”

“I don’t know, Rowan. Who’s your emergency contact?”

“I’m not ten. I don’t have school forms my mom is supposed to fill out anymore. What the hell would I need an emergency contact for?”

He stops walking, cranes his neck, and forces me to look at him in the moonlight.

“If you were in an accident, who would the hospital call?”

“Who knows. If I’m dead, it doesn’t matter, right? And if I’m not, I’ll take care of myself again as soon as I get out.”

The man growls. Actually growls as though he’s calling his wolfpack to meet us out here in the dark.

“And you don’t think it would absolutely crush Pappy if he suddenly never heard from you again?”

Shit. He had to play the Pappy card.

“Well, there are only two numbers in my phone. They’d either call him or Lottie.”

“And if your phone was submerged in a lake or thrown from the car?”

I don’t answer, and eventually, he starts walking again.

“You need a damn emergency contact. Who do you call if your car breaks down?”

“AAA.”

“What if you’re sick?” he shoots back.

“Then I would have some freaking chicken noodle soup delivered. Listen, I get that you’ve spent the last twelve years in dad-mode, but I had one of those and I’m not looking for another. When I say I can handle my shit, I mean it.”

“You’re impossible.”

“And you’re infuriating.”

He grins back at me with a wolfish gleam that has me loosening my arms around his neck to create space.

“You like me,” he says, and I swear to God he adds a sexy swagger to his gait as he jogs up the steps to the camp infirmary while wearing a smirk that shows off dimples I’ve just now noticed. Dimples I want to lick.

Lick? What the what?

“Did I hit my head in the fall? How do you get that from me telling you that you’re infuriating?” I ask, but I’ve lost the bite that made it easy to keep him at bay.

“Because you keep going. If you didn’t like me, you’d simply walk away, you wouldn’t engage.” He tilts forward, resting me on his back so he can use one hand to enter a code to unlock the door. The adjustment places the bag of ice dangling from his hands on my upper thigh, and I hiss in a breath right before Lucky meows on the steps below us.

Of course that little fucker is here. Now I’m certain he’s the reason I slid into a pricker bush in the first place.

“In case you’ve missed it, Sebastian, you’re carrying me. Carrying me! I don’t have the option of walking away.”

He gently sets me down on a doctor’s table, then picks up Lucky and places him outside.

“I like our banter,” he chuckles, striding back to me with purpose. “Lie down on your belly so I can put this ice under your ankle.”

I do what he says and then grumble into my hands when I’m face down. After he positions the ice, I hear him searching through cabinets and drawers.

“How did you even get in here? Do you have any idea what you’re doing?” I ask.

“I’m a silent owner of the camp, and what I’m doing is keeping you from getting an infection,” he says as if this is just another day.

He exhales, and it shifts the air at my back. He moved so stealthily I hadn’t heard him approach. “Okay, we’re going to have to lower the towel some.”

I choose to ignore the throaty tone of his voice.

Holding the towel to my chest, I lift up and undo the Velcro holding it together so it can slide down my back, then drop my face back to my folded hands.

“Could this be any more humiliating?” I groan.

His laughter catches fire in my veins. “Well, yeah. You could have them in your ass too.”

Mother forking jackoffs. I groan in answer, and his hands hover above my skin. The heat of them ghosts over my shoulder blade.

“You have them in your ass too, don’t you?” He sounds tortured, and I shudder to admit it, but he also sounds turned on, and that ignites every naughty thought I’ve ever had about this man.

“God, why me? I couldn’t get through this with a shred of dignity?” My voice doesn’t sound any less needy than his.

“I can always call Leo’s fiancée, Tabby, if you want.”

God. Did his voice drop and become even more silvery?

“No, forget it,” I mutter. “Let’s get this over with and then never, ever talk about it again.” As mortifying as this is, he’s right. My ass is on fire from sitting on it for so long in the car.

He rips open a package, and then his hands are on me, gently caressing my back with the softest touch. Then he stops, and my skin pinches as he plucks a burr out, and I hiss in a mouthful of air.

“Sorry,” he whispers, leaning so close to my ear that I shiver. “I’ll be as gentle as I can.”

And lord help me, but I believe him.

We’re silent as he meticulously makes his way down my spine. When he leans down to get one close to the side of my breast, I hear him swallow. It shouldn’t turn me on, but like everything else in my life right now, nothing behaves as it should.

His fingers skim the sensitive skin of my side, so close to my breast that it grows heavy with want.

Holy shit. I want this man to touch me.

I’m over thirty. I’ve had sex, but it’s usually better when I take care of things myself. A single touch has certainly never stolen my breath before.

“Sorry, I’m not trying to feel you up, I promise.”

A whoosh of air releases in a semi-choked laugh.

“Not your type, huh?” I have no idea how those words left my mouth. Maybe I should have seen a doctor. I must be concussed.

His fingertips rest on my back. All ten connections press at different times into my skin, and after a few moments, I lift my head to peer up at him.

His gaze is searing into my soul, and I wish I’d never looked up.

“Why would you say that?” His voice is rough and low. He has me pinned to this bed, not by where his hands touch me, but by the way his gaze devours me.

My mouth opens and closes a few times—I’m finally speechless. He walks to the head of the table, and I arch my back to maintain eye contact. Slowly, he lowers into a squat, so we’re face-to-face.

“I think you’re the very definition of my type, Peach. Maybe you always have been, but I have children to consider, a career that is one wrong turn away from collapsing. My wants and needs can’t factor into my life until my children feel stable, but make no mistake, whatever you thought my type was, you’re wrong.” He never breaks eye contact while he speaks—he doesn’t even blink.

If ever there were honesty in words, I’d bet Junebug that he’s offering pure truth.

He stands suddenly, and my eyes expand when I come face-to-crotch with a very defined cock that’s pressing the limits of what his khakis will allow.

Sebastian sees my reaction and chuckles before returning to my backside.

Ugh, what am I doing?

Thankfully, he’s quiet after that little spiel, but the silence makes scenarios run amok in my mind. It doesn’t help that his hands have been on me for an eternity now.

I’ve never let a man touch me for this long. Sex is just that, sex. I don’t even mind the phrase wham, bam, thank you ma’am because that’s exactly what I’ve wanted. But this? With him? It’s too much.

Goosebumps explode over my skin, and there are times when he touches me that I can’t contain a shiver. Like now, when he’s at the base of my spine. He can probably see the dimples above my ass, and he has his face so close to me that his hot breath flutters against my skin. It’s erotic in a way I don’t know how to handle.

His breathing has also changed. It’s more erratic and panting?

Is he panting on me? I don’t dare to look, but suddenly his heat is gone.

“Fuck, Rowan. Maybe we should call someone else to do the rest.” He sounds as tortured as I feel.

Rolling my face to the side so I can stare at him, I blink away moisture that shouldn’t be there and hope he doesn’t notice. “Why?” I finally ask.

“I can’t tell you that.”

“Why?” I repeat.

His heated stare bores into my skin. His jaw ticks, and the muscles in his neck jump three times as though he’s chewing on his words. “Because if I tell you why we need someone else to finish, I’ll have to tell you why I can’t do it, and that will sure as fuck scare you away. I won’t do that to you or my kids. They like you, and they need you.”

“I’m temporary,” I remind him, but unfortunately for me, it feels like the start of a lie. “But I also don’t scare easily, Seb. When you’ve fought the demons and won, nothing else can hurt you. And I’ve won. Over and over again.”

“You don’t know what you’re asking.”

I raise a brow in his direction. “Don’t I?”

His palm rests at the curve of my back, and he lowers his face so we’re cheek to cheek. Every nerve ending in my body comes to life. This is what it means to be alive.

I almost moan at the intensity of it all.

“I think we should find someone else to work on your ass, as much as it pains me to say that, because simply touching your back for the past hour has my cock fighting against my zipper and weeping for a taste of you. Because if I touch your ass, I’m going to want more. Because if I hear you moan one more time at the touch of my hands, I’m going to flip you over and worship every goddam inch of your body, and then I’m going to make you come until your body seizes up and begs for a break before I do it all over again.”

His fingertips dance at the curve of my ass.

“That’s why I can’t do this, Peach. I can’t take the risk of losing you while my children are just beginning to make progress, so unless you’re willing to give me more than three weeks, we need someone else to work on your ass.”

He places the most chaste of kisses to my cheek.

“Do you?—”

“Well now, this is interesting.” Lottie’s voice bursts our overly erotic bubble like an explosion in a silent night.

I gasp and scramble to right myself while Sebastian takes his time unfurling himself to his full, upright position.

“What are you doing here?” I ask.

“I got in this afternoon and was in the office with Leo. He got a notification that Sebastian had unlocked the infirmary, but it never said he left, so when we finished there I decided to come see how things were working out with you,” she says, but her eyes miss nothing as she scans the situation she’s found us in. “It appears I had nothing to worry about.”

“She’s injured,” Sebastian says. How the hell is his voice so calm? “I’ve been working on her back for an hour plucking these little fuckers out.” He holds up a pair of tweezers as if that explains it all. “But, as I was explaining, for the sake of professionalism, we should call in someone to help her with a more delicate area.”

He walks toward Lottie and hands her the tweezers.

“Rowan,” he says my name when he’s at the door but waits until I lift my gaze to his. “I’m really.” His throat works to swallow. “Really glad I could be the one to help you. I understand why you don’t trust easily, but you can always come to me.” His jaw ticks, and his gaze darkens as it sweeps over me one final time. “For anything. I’ll wait outside to carry you home.”

Then he exits, and the door snapping shut makes me jump. My mind is a battlefield, and I don’t know which side of the war I’m on anymore. It takes several minutes for me to realize Lottie’s talking.

“Are you okay?” Her question finally registers in my brain.

“Mm-hmm. I slid in some burrs. I have some poky things in my ass. Can you get them out?”

“It’s a good thing I love you, Rowan Ellis. But don’t for one minute think you’re going to get out of discussing whatever the hell that was with Sebastian—your client, I might add.”

Guilt turns my stomach. She’s worked so hard to build this company, but at the same time, far too many of her nanny matches have ended up with the title of wife. I know it’s just not for me, and something about that makes my insides tremble violently.

“It’s nothing,” I mumble.

“Don’t give me that when it smells of sex and happy endings in here.”

I scoff.

“Not that kind of happy ending. The kind that ends in a white dress and a picket fence.”

“No,” I nearly scream. “That’s not what this is. At all. I just—he’s Pappy’s grandson.”

She freezes with the tweezers held in the air. “Your Pappy? The one who showed up to graduation? The only other person on this planet that you talk to regularly. That Pappy?”

“Mm-hmm.” Words are getting twisted between my mind and heart, so I simply hum. One drunken night with Lottie, I spilled a lot of my secrets. I’ve never regretted it before now though.

“Whoa. So, how long have you known Sebastian?”

“I don’t. Not really. I knew him, past tense, from the age of eight to thirteen. But we weren’t really friends. It’s more that he felt the need to babysit me. I haven’t seen him since that last summer at Pappy’s.”

I hear a thud and lift my head to find that she’s dropped heavily into the chair beside the table. I recognize that starry-eyed gaze, but I want nothing to do with it.

“This is not a fairy tale or those spicy love stories you read, Lottie. It’s not some second-chance—or even a first-chance romance. I’m leaving in a few weeks. It’s what I know. It’s how I protect myself, and I’d rather be safe than live my life waiting every day for someone else to leave me. I can’t go through that again. I can’t.” My voice breaks, and so does her happy expression.

“Oh, hon. You’re beyond fucked up, huh?” She sniffles and giggles at the same time. It causes a very similar, but snotty reaction from me.

“I am,” I admit.

She nods, but I can almost hear the gears of her imagination spinning this tale into something fit for a princess. What she doesn’t understand is that sometimes it’s the princess who has to hurt the prince to survive—and that’s something I’d never want to do to Sebastian.

“Let’s get this over with then. You do have an amazing ass, but this is the very last thing I was expecting to do tonight.”

I lie down, and she swings the towel to expose one cheek. She gasps. “Holy crap, Rowan. What the hell did you do to yourself?”

“It’s a long story. Just do what you can, and I’m sure I’ll be fine.”

With a throaty chuckle, she gets to work on my butt. That’s an image that will need to be bleached from my mind in the morning.

Well, if I still have a job in the morning. Where will Sebastian and I go from here? Where will I go from here?