Hard Edge Read online

  My mom looked over from her order list. “Who was that?”

  I could have just lied, but it seemed time we got the topic of Caden out in the open. “It was Cade. If you don’t need me, I’m going to go down the street and hang out with him for a few hours,” I said it as if we were kids again and I was just heading out to ride bikes or play video games. Only my mind was spinning with the alcohol and the suggestion of extremely dirty sex. I just hoped my highly intuitive mom couldn’t use her sixth sense to read it on my face.

  Mom twisted her lips in a judgmental knot. Up until now, she’d kept her opinions, of which I knew she had plenty, to herself. It seemed she’d been trying hard to ignore the beach trip I’d just taken with the local bad boy. I knew she approved of us being friends, but as a prospective boyfriend, not so much. Fortunately for me, those days of being told how to live my life by my parents were long behind me.

  “Kenny,” my mom started with a slightly condescending tone, “you know, as your mom, I just want you to be happy.”

  “Perfect,” I spoke up quickly. “Then we’re both on the same page.”

  “But, Kenny—”

  “Mom, it’s been a fun morning. Let’s not ruin it with a heated discussion about my social life. Caden and I might be heading toward a serious relationship. I’m not completely sure what’s happening yet or if it would even work, but we’re finally both acting on feelings we’ve had for a long time.”

  She still hadn’t untwisted her lips as she nodded in agreement and returned to her notepad. “Have you talked to Jeremy at all?”

  “About what?”

  The lacy straps of her apron vibrated as she shrugged. “I don’t know. Whatever you two might have to discuss. You don’t let me in on much, so I can’t really answer that.”

  I got up and the three drinks seemed to float right up to my head. It was a good, light feeling that made this unwanted turn in conversation much more tolerable. “Mom, we are through. He’s just waiting for me to get my stuff and give him back his ring.”

  Her face snapped my direction with rounded eyes, eyes that were the same color and shape as mine.

  “Yes, I’m giving it back. Before the sting of the breakup even had time to set in, he asked for the ring. Which gives you some insight into the man I almost wasted the rest of my life with.” I walked over and kissed her cheek. “I’ll be back in two hours, when the rest of those truffles have set.” I left the kitchen and the house, before she had a chance to respond.

  It was a warm, slightly humid day, and heat was coming off the white sidewalks in sticky waves. Halfway up the block, I heard a whistle split the air. I was transported back in time, and without thinking, I looked back in the direction of the sound and expected to see Grady racing toward me on his bike. It had been a neighbor whistling for his dog. The whistle had sparked one of a million memories. Grady had spent the entire summer before sixth grade perfecting his whistle, insisting he could use it to woo the seventh and eighth grade girls as they walked past his locker. I let him know that his plan was stupid and that it would probably end up getting him more scowls than smiles, but he persisted with his whistle practice to the point that it nearly made him sick. On one particularly hot summer day, we’d been sitting on the cement steps in front of our elementary school and he blew and blew, hoping he’d find the perfect pitch for his ‘lady-wooing whistle’. Then the summer custodian came out to chase us off. Grady stood so fast and his head was so light from blowing he fell down the steps and landed on his knees. It had scared me plenty. I raced to him, thinking my best friend had just had a heart attack or stroke or some other fatal, hospital worthy episode. By the time I reached him, he was laughing. ‘Guess I need to swallow some oxygen in between’ he said, still laughing. I slugged him on the shoulder. He complained about it hurting all the way home.

  I faced forward again. It was amazing what being back in Mayfair did to me. I wasn’t a kid anymore, and Grady wasn’t riding up behind me on his bike, but those vivid memories of us growing up together were like priceless gold to me now.

  Caden was standing on the porch as I walked up to the house. His smile flashed white from beneath the shade of the overhang.

  “I was afraid you might get lost with your tequila buzz.”

  I climbed the steps. “It’s a pretty straight shot from my house to this one. Besides, I had an incentive to make it here.” I walked into his arms, realizing that I badly need him to hold me. “An extremely hot man invited me for some extremely dirty sex. But I’m hoping that there is no actual dirt involved. I prefer the other kind of dirty.”

  His arm slid down and he took hold of my hand. “Then, my sugary smelling darlin’, we have a lot in common.” He led me into the house.

  It had been years since I’d stepped into his mom’s house. The front room was filled with overstuffed couches and distressed pine furniture painted to look shabby. “Your mom really embraced that whole country chic look, huh?”

  “Yep, just wait until you see my bedroom, or, as she named it, the lilac guest bedroom.”

  “Lilac?” I asked as he led me down the narrow hallway to the back bedroom.

  He pushed open the door. There was purple in every corner and the bed linens were dotted in lavender flowers. “Ah yes, I see.”

  “Fucking missed you, Trinket.” Caden pulled me into his arms and kissed me. He ran his tongue across my lip. “Hmm, tastes like booze. I like it.” He squinted down at me.

  “What?”

  “Just trying to assess how drunk you are. It might play a part in how much fun we can have.”

  My mood had been slightly dampened by the flashback on the way over. I pressed myself into Caden’s arms again. “You know what I really want?”

  He gazed down at me, more serious now than seconds before. “What’s that, Trinket?”

  “I want to hear those last three words you said to me on the phone just now. I want to know that this is still real and not just one of the many images and memories I have floating through my head.”

  He pressed his hand against my face and kissed me lightly on the lips. “Kenna, I need you. I need you in my life.”

  I threw my arms around his neck and kissed him back. He swept me into his arms and carried me across the room. Seconds later, I was surrounded by purple flowers and soft pillows. Caden took off my shirt and bra. He kissed my bare breasts and my stomach as his hands worked at the buttons on my shorts.

  He straightened and stared down at me with such intensity, it made my already light head spin more. Not just from the anticipation of sex but from the reality that Caden Stratton, the boy I had been completely nuts about, was standing over me, wanting me, needing me in his life.

  His shirt came off. The chiseled muscles of his arms and chest pulsed with strength and power. My heart raced with the thought of being in those steel arms. His eyes glittered with an almost feral gaze as he stripped naked. A smile flashed across his face, and instead of climbing on the bed, he walked over to the dresser and opened the drawer.

  “What are you up to?”

  “You’ll see.” He spoke without looking up from the drawer. “I figure, you don’t drink much, so I’m going to take a little advantage of the tequila. Ah ha, this will work.”

  His hand emerged with a narrow strip of fabric the same lavender color as the curtains. It was something that could be used to tie the curtains back. But it seemed Caden had come up with a new, less decorative use for it.

  Caden walked back to the bed with a devilish, cocky smile, swinging the strip of fabric around his hand. He stopped in front of the bed and looked pointedly at the wrought iron frame of the daybed. Then he looked at me. “So, baby, is the tequila still working its magic?”

  “I don’t know about the alcohol, but you standing naked in front of me with all that—muscle, ink and raw sex thing happe
ning has its own brand of magic. What exactly do you have in mind?”

  He reached down, took hold of my hands and tied them lightly together. I watched, at first, with amusement but then with a sense of erotic anticipation that made my heart race and white hot heat flow through my entire body. That same strength and power I’d been admiring in Caden just moments before was now swirling around the room, like its own entity. Suddenly, I was his captive, his to do with as he pleased. And I was loving it. Not because I was slightly drunk and lacking inhibitions, but because it was Caden. Everything about him thrilled me.

  “Get on your knees, baby.”

  With hands tied, it took a bit of skill to follow his order. I knelt in front of him. My entire body trembled with excitement, and my nipples hardened at the idea of being his plaything. It was something completely out of my usual comfort zone, and yet, with Caden, it felt completely exhilarating. I wanted whatever he had in store. My pussy throbbed with the prospect.

  Caden took hold of the end of the lavender fabric and led me to turn around and face the ornate bed frame. He climbed on the bed behind me and kissed my shoulder as he lifted my hands and tied me to the wrought iron railing.

  With my hands secured to the bed, he began a long, hot trail of kisses down my back and along my ass. The small bed shifted under his weight as he scooted back. His hand came around in front of me. As he slid his fingers through the folds of my pussy, he moved my hips so that my ass jutted out and I was completely exposed. He pressed his mouth against my pussy from behind while stroking me from the front with his deft fingers. He used those same fingers to part the folds of my pussy.

  Cool air and his warm breath mingled, causing tingling sensations to course through the heat between my legs. I was completely exposed and vulnerable and the mere thought of being his to do with as he pleased, nearly sent me over the edge of an orgasm.

  His tongue lathed over my clit, and I sucked in a breath. “Yes, please. Yes, Cade.” The words ushered from my lips without me even forming them in my head.

  He answered my plea with his thumb, massaging my clit as his tongue impaled me over and over again. More than once, I went to move my hands, only to remember that I was tied to the bed and completely at his mercy. That delicious thought made my pussy clench, and the early waves of an orgasm thundered through me.

  Cade sensed it and pulled his tongue and fingers away. I collapsed forward. My breaths came in fast, short spurts. Every inch of me was begging for the climax.

  “What?” I asked breathlessly, nearly delirious from the need to finish.

  “I don’t want you to come yet. I’m going to bring you to the edge again and again until you are mine. Until you are begging me to fuck you.”

  As my breathing slowed and my body relaxed with the disappointment of unfinished sex, he began again, with the skill of a man who knew exactly how to touch me. His fingers returned to my aching clit, and I shuddered as he, once again, made it ache with need. Again his tongue licked my pussy to a frenzy. He added a teasing wet finger, pushing inside of me at just the right time to make me tighten and contract my pussy and thighs against the pressure. Again, he brought me to the starting line of a mind-blowing orgasm, and again, he pulled his exquisite touch away, leaving me nearly delirious. It was an erotic, torturous game that left me dizzy, trembling and close to tears. And I loved every second of it.

  A third round of the most incredible teasing followed. Caden added in something new. Something untried for me and something I wasn’t sure of until I wanted it badly. He wet his finger and pressed it into my ass just far enough to make me clench against it. It was that resistance that sent pulses down to my pussy. He’d introduced me to another pleasure, another erogenous zone. For months, I’d languished in bed, thinking I had a terrible sex drive and that there just wasn’t much to look forward to. But I’d been so damn wrong.

  My body grew weak, and my hands felt tingly from the ties. The center of all my thoughts was the orgasm I wanted so badly. I was not beyond begging. Caden stroked me with his fingers and tongue and teased every intimate part of me.

  “Don’t stop this time. Please, Cade. Please. Please. Fuck me. Fuck me, Cade. Now.”

  He moved his mouth and hands away, and a cry of desperation fell from my lips. Then his hands took hold of my hips and he held me firmly.

  I cried out again. “Yes! Please.”

  He thrust his cock inside of me. Instantly, my body shuddered and my pussy clenched him tightly as I came in waves of pleasure that made the entire room spin around me.

  Caden moved hard and fast inside of me, pumping the sweet ache of afterglow through my body with his thick, rock hard erection. The bedroom was a swirl of purple. If my hands had not been tied to the bed, I wouldn’t have stayed upright.

  Caden held me firmly in his grasp as he came.

  It took a few moments longer than usual for my breathing and heart rate to return to normal. Caden reached forward and untied my hands. I shook the numbness from my fingers before taking hold of his arms and drawing them around me like cloak. He held me close to him as he relaxed down on the bed. We stayed like that, spooning and tucked together like one person, as we drifted off to sleep in a soft sea of purple flowers.

  Chapter 26

  Kenna

  Waking up in Caden’s arms was as luxurious and awesome as falling asleep in them. Even though I woke with a slight pulse in my temple. Not exactly a hangover, but the residue of the buzz I’d had earlier in the day.

  Caden lifted his head off the pillow and glanced at the clock on the dresser. “Shit, guess we have to leave this little slice of purple heaven and get back to the day. I told my dad I’d trim his hedges.”

  I stretched and purred away the afternoon nap.

  Caden tightened his arms around me again. “Or I could just stay here with my highly sexy kitten.”

  “As nice as that sounds, I have to get back to truffle town. But I think I’ll stop in and say hello to your dad.”

  “He’d like that. Sally’s been spending every afternoon helping out at the church. Guess it helps keep her mind off of things and makes her feel better. Dad has one more week off work. In the meantime, he’s splitting his time between the television, the newspaper and staring absently out the front window of the house, almost as if he’s waiting for someone to come home.” Caden’s words fell off on the last sentence. “Being back here makes it fresh again.”

  “I noticed that the second you drove the truck around the corner to our street. We took ourselves out of the context of it all with our trip to the beach, but nothing has changed. Reality is still fucked.”

  Caden lifted his head and peered at me. “I hardly ever hear you say fuck. I mean, you know, when we’re not in the heat of passion.”

  “That’s because my mom would faint if she heard it from her little girl’s lips. But, occasionally, it feels therapeutic to throw it out there.”

  Slowly, and with the full reluctance of two people who could easily just have hibernated naked in bed for the rest of summer, we got dressed and combed enough to erase the obvious clues of two people who had just fooled around.

  I pressed my arm against my stomach. “I think the truffles and margaritas are protesting. It’s funny to think that the mom who spent every day of my young life reminding me to eat from all the food groups was shoveling liquor laced chocolates and drinks toward me all morning.”

  I did my best trying to restore the frilly bed to its former lilac glory. My face warmed as I glanced up to the wrought iron and the purple strip of fabric that had bound my hands just an hour earlier.

  I untied it and turned around. Caden had just pulled his shirt over his head. I held it up. “Your shackles slash curtain ties, master.”

  He took hold of it and gazed down at me. The crooked smile that tilted his mouth made me want to climb right back i
nto bed with him. “Who knew I’d find something so fun in the guest bedroom?” He shoved it back in the drawer and then patted the dresser. “For safe keeping.” He winked at me and motioned me to follow him out of the room.

  It was still hot outside, but the sun had drifted lower in the blue sky. The neighborhood was quiet and, as always, perfectly familiar, as if I’d never left it. A feather-light feeling of homesickness always drifted over me when I walked down our street. Mayfair was the only place on earth that I could count on to send me back on a nostalgic journey to my childhood.

  Caden took hold of my hand as he led me along the sidewalk to his house. “We could get something to eat later if you have time. Maybe something from the four food groups.”

  “Sounds good.”

  We walked up his driveway and went in through the back gate to the kitchen door. I glanced up at the tree house and my pathetic excuse for a jolly roger fluttering in the wind above it. I thought about that first kiss, the one I’d been waiting for forever. Everything from that moment on had moved so quickly, it was stunning to think it had just been a few days ago.

  Caden’s dad, Kevin, was sitting at the kitchen table behind a large packing box. There were stacks of photos and papers sitting in neat piles on the chairs. Other pictures were spread out over the table.

  Kevin looked up. It was obvious he’d been crying.

  “Dad, you don’t have to go through this stuff now. Why don’t you wait?”

  Kevin forced a weak smile. “Wait for what? The pain will be the same no matter what day I unpack Grady’s things. It actually makes me feel better to look at the pictures. I wanted to make a scrapbook or something.” The words wobbled like gelatin as he spoke them.

  I hadn’t gotten near enough to the table yet to look at the pictures. Caden hadn’t either. He finally worked up the courage to move closer. He pulled out a chair and sat down at the table. I took a deep breath and did the same.