Katherine Garbera - The Mistresses - Make-Believe Mistress

“I don’t know. One like most kids. I think you’re the exception, Adam.” In her small town, he would have been the exception. They’d had rich kids like everywhere else, but no one who’d grown up the way Adam had. Traveling every season, going to trendy ski resorts and all-inclusive Caribbean getaways instead of riding in the backseat of a cramped car to some dreary relative’s house several hours away.

“How?” he asked, his interest genuine.

“Just that a lot of parents weren’t that supportive of kids in my neighborhood.”

“You’re from a small town, right?”

“Yes. A poor one. Most families really scrambled to make a living.”

“Yours?”

“Yes.”

“What did your folks do?”

She should never have started this conversation. How could she talk about being deprived when her father had been a preacher and had provided a nice house for her? How could she explain, without sounding like a whiner, exactly the way she’d been deprived? How could she explain what she herself never wanted to understand?

“My dad’s a preacher.”

“So you’re the rebellious preacher’s daughter?”

“No. Not a rebel. I prefer to just blend into the walls.”

“I’ve noticed.”

“Well I must be doing something wrong, because you weren’t supposed to notice.”

“I didn’t until today.”

She smiled at the way he said it. Like it was an important thing. That having noticed her had made a difference to him.

Was it because of the story?

“I’ve noticed you before.”

“Really? Tell me what you observed.”

She took her time trying to figure out how to tell him what she’d seen in him without revealing how deeply she’d studied him. Now that she was here with him, she felt a little silly that she’d given him a starring role in her fantasies without really knowing the man behind the good looks.

Adam knew he was pushing. But the more he learned about Grace, the more he realized that his knowing about her fantasies was going to wound her. She gave off the image of being so superefficient and competent that only tonight had he glimpsed the vulnerabilities she had underneath.

He didn’t want her to think he’d exploited those weaknesses. And guilt ate at him. Omissions were lies, he thought. Hell, he knew that omissions were the biggest kind of lies.

But he wanted to hear from her lips that she found him attractive. That he hadn’t imagined the story that he’d reread during the day about five times. He knew exactly what she liked. How she wanted a man who was forceful in the bedroom but sensitive and understanding outside.

To be honest, that wasn’t how he normally operated with a woman, but everything about Grace was different. She made him want to be more. He didn’t know why. He couldn’t explain it to himself. But tonight, with a cool breeze in the air and the fragrance of the blooming vegetation around his pool filling the air, he didn’t care.

He didn’t want to think of anything other than this woman and how he could convince her she’d be safe in his arms. And he wanted her in his arms. He wanted her mouth under his with no dinner buzzer about to go off. No crowded restaurant of people too close to them. Just the two of them and the night and nothing between them.

“Come on, Grace, what did you think about me the first time we met?” he asked, having the feeling that she was going to just keep quiet and let the conversation die an awkward death.

“It’s complicated,” she said, leaving the deck and walking toward the pool. She stopped by a potted hibiscus and bent to smell the bloom.

She ran whenever he pushed too far into her barriers. The ones she used to keep everyone at arm’s length. She was subtle and only someone who spent a significant amount of time with her as he had today would notice it.

“I understand complicated. Is it such a bad impression that you’re worried about hurting my feelings?”

“Give me a break. You must know that no one has a bad first impression of you.”

“I don’t know that, Gracie. You won’t tell me what you thought.”

She took a deep breath and faced him, her eyes alive with an emotion he couldn’t name. “I thought, this man is someone who knows how to really live his life.”

He was taken aback by her comment. To be honest, he’d been fishing for a compliment. Having read her story, he knew she liked his shoulders and his backside. He was chagrined to realize that he’d expected her impressions to just be physical. If they had been, he would have felt comfortable using the physical attraction between the two of them to seduce her.

“Not what you were expecting?” she asked.

“No,” he said. What she’d observed in him revealed what she herself was afraid she was missing. It took him a moment to identify fragility and fear as the emotions in her eyes. Grace didn’t lie, either. The knowledge made him feel protective of her.

“Well, there it is. You also have very nice eyes.”

She took a step closer to him. There were still a few inches of space between them, but she’d made a move toward him—the first she’d made since they met. He was a little thrown by her compliment. Nice eyes? “No one has ever mentioned that before.”

She wiggled her eyebrows at him. “Probably because they were busy ogling your physique.”

“Ah, that’s more what I was expecting.”

She laughed at him. But there was something in her eyes that told him she’d said it to distract him. And he let her because he already knew more of her secrets than he intended. More than she’d probably intended him to know.

“Anything specific about my physique?” he asked, letting her turn this moment a little lighter. He had to touch her again. She’d left her hair down. The silky length of it fell around her shoulders, curling gently.

He caught one of the curls and let it wrap around his hand and wrist, drawing her closer to him. She was short, shorter than he’d realized until he held her in his arms. She came only to his shoulders.

He lowered his head, brushing his lips against hers. He felt her fingers move restlessly on him and wished he didn’t have his shirt on so he could feel her touch on his skin.

Her fingers were small and her touch light. So light and tentative, as if she wasn’t sure what to do next. He groaned deep in his chest, thinking of this fragile, beautiful woman and wondering if he had a right to touch her like this. Because he was a rambler. A rolling stone that had learned that life was less painful when he kept moving. He didn’t notice the emptiness when he moved from place to place.

And if ever a woman was rooted to one place, it was Grace.

She opened her lips under his and he stopped thinking. He just felt. The soft brush of her tongue over the seam of his lips made his blood flow heavy. He felt a tingle of arousal spread down his spine. He pulled her closer with his hand in her hair at the back of her neck.

His other hand skimmed down her curves to rest on her hip, drawing her into his body before he took control of the kiss, thrusting his tongue deep into her mouth and tasting her deeply. The flavor of the wine they’d had with dinner was on her tongue, but also something he was beginning to identify with only Grace. That was what he hungered for. More Grace.

He lifted her to his body, canted his hips and wrapped his arm strongly around her hips to enable him to kiss her deeper. To thrust his tongue into her mouth again and again, trying to assuage a hunger that he’d never had before. A hunger that made all the emptiness in his life pale in comparison. A hunger that came from this small, complicated woman.

He traced her lips, his finger following the path his mouth had taken a few moments earlier. He caressed the pulse point where he’d suckled her neck and then moved lower.