AllFreeNovel
Share Us
“Sometimes you call her Mom,” she pointed out. “Sometimes you call her Sheila.”
I hummed. “She always left it up to us. Ian calls her Sheila more often than not. Parker always calls her Mom.”
She stared into my face for a while, then reached her own hand forward, gently tracing the bottom curve of my lip while my heart hammered unsteadily in my chest.
“I used to wish my dad had remarried,” she said. Her eyes stayed locked on my mouth.
The admission had my heart stalling for a moment, then restarting quick and fierce. Because it was freely given, something that hadn’t happened since her reappearance in my life.
I kept my face even when I answered. “Maybe you would’ve had a Sheila too.”
Ivy exhaled a disbelieving laugh. “Not likely.”
“Why do you say that?”
“My dad’s not nice enough to bag a Sheila.”
My chest shook with laughter, and her cheeks lifted, even as she hid a smile into the pillow.
Then her eyes took on a thoughtful quality.
“What?” I asked.
“It’s weird to think about,” she admitted. “How my life might be different if he’d remarried someone kind and loving and sweet.” With a wry lift to her eyebrows, she said, “Maybe I’d be nicer.”
Now I couldn’t help myself. I slid my hand around her waist and tugged her closer, so I could wrap my arm around her back while I kissed her soundly. My tongue teased at the seam of her lips, and she opened immediately, on a soft, sweet sound that had my body reacting instantly.
Reluctantly, I pulled back.
“You don’t need to be anything other than you are,” I said against her mouth. Then I nipped at her bottom lip. “I like your sharp edges.”
Her eyes were serious when I pulled back. “Even if you cut yourself on them?”
“Do I look hurt to you?” I asked.
Ivy leaned up on her elbow, her golden hair sliding gently over her shoulder as she leaned in and made a show of studying my face, running her hands over my chest and arms. “No,” she said simply. “You don’t.”
“So then why are you worried about it?” I eased her closer until she laid one arm over my chest, her breasts pressed tight to my skin.
“I’m not, I just … I don’t know how to be some soft, sweet woman any more than you know how to be an asshole.” Ivy’s fingertips danced lightly over my chest, and she pressed a kiss over one of my pecs, pulling away before I could ease her onto her back and do more kissing and more touching and find new positions to try. “Knowing my luck, my dad would’ve remarried some cliché gold digger with a pea brain and a bad dye job.”
Subject officially changed. We managed to get a bit too close, so she danced us away from that topic.
I decided to let her, so I smiled. “You would’ve run her out of there in no time.”
Ivy laughed quietly. “I think you give me more credit than I deserve. I don’t have that kind of power over my father’s decisions.”
When I thought about lying in bed and asking Ivy questions, I’d meant to keep them light and easy, so as not to scare her away.
But maybe light and easy wasn’t possible for us.
Maybe the attraction between us burned too hot and fierce for it ever to settle into something normal and mundane. Maybe the wild nature of it, something lush and untamed, meant that it would burn out quickly.
No.
I refused to believe that.
Something more was here, and I think she knew it too. I turned the direction again, thinking it would bring us back to the light and easy.
