Stepping back into the house, Amelia jumped up and took my hand in hers, the litany of questions she wanted to ask easily read on her face. I squeezed her hand and pasted on a smile. The sheriff hadn’t come right out and said it, but that brick settling in my stomach told me everything I needed to know.
He’d tolerate me dating his daughter, but I wasn’t good enough for her.
Exactly what I feared when I was honest with myself.
Just meant I’d have to work doubly hard to prove myself.
17
Amelia
Amelia: Can you come over after work tonight? I miss you.
Titus: Depends. Are you going to make me fix something again?
Amelia: It was just that one time, no need to keep bringing it up. And no. I wanted to seduce you.
Sure, I wanted to tell him how I felt, but I wasn’t afraid to use my body to lure him over here. Had to work that angle while I could. Decades from now when all my skin was heading south, I didn’t want to have any regrets about not using the banging body I’d had in my youth. I was a long-term planner, dammit.
Titus had said he loved me two weeks ago and I hadn’t reciprocated. I wasn’t sure if I was ready to say that yet, but I did want to be honest with him. He deserved to know that I was in the process of falling for him. Now that I’d pulled my head out of my ass as far as he was concerned, I was finding it all too easy to dive into the deep end with him.
Titus: I’d come over tonight even if you just wanted me to fix something. You know that, right?
Amelia: I do.
Titus: Let’s get back to you missing me. Tell me more.
Amelia: *eye roll emoji*
Titus: I’m serious. That’s probably the sweetest thing you’ve ever texted me.
Amelia: shut up
Titus: There’s only one way you can get me to shut up.
Amelia: What’s that?
Titus: I’ll come over and show you.
Amelia: Okay….?
I shut my phone off and called downstairs to let the front desk know I was off for the night. There really wasn’t anything for me to do tonight anyway, so I was confident they could handle the handful of guests we had on property for one evening.
Stripping down, I climbed in the shower before Titus got there. I knew he’d take me any way he could have me—and didn’t that leave a nice glow in my belly—but a girl had to have cleanliness standards. The pipes groaned in the wall and sputtered out cold water before turning scalding hot and then finishing off with a round of ice-cold water.
“Stupid Wayne.” I rolled my eyes and stepped out to grab a towel. I’d been telling him for months that there was something wrong with the plumbing in the hotel. Being the cheap bastard he was, he turned a deaf ear.
I wrapped the towel around me and stepped out of the bathroom, coming to a screeching halt when I saw Titus lounging on my bed, boots kicked off and hands stacked behind his head. His long body almost didn’t fit on my bed, making it look kid-sized in Titus’s world.
“Well, do come on in,” I said sarcastically.
He smiled smugly. “You gave me a key when I was here working on the guest room after the tree fell. Figured why give me a key unless you wanted me to use it?”
I raised an eyebrow, taking in the way his work shirt stretched across his broad chest. “Um, for emergencies?”
He picked up quickly and stripped the T-shirt over his head, a wide grin on his face. “Figured this was an emergency.”
I took a few steps closer, wanting to see that muscled chest up close. “How so?”
He ran a hand down his chest, abs, and then grabbed ahold of the bulge in the crotch of his jeans. “My girl texted about seducing me. Seems she needs the Big D something bad.”
I dropped the towel to the floor and watched the way his eyes heated as he swept me from head to toe like he couldn’t take me in fast enough. “A dick emergency?” That was a concept I could understand.
He swallowed hard and reached out his hand. I let him tug me over to the side of the bed. “Climb on, sweetheart.”
My nipples tightened just looking at him and that rush of expected pleasure started up in my stomach. How could I have looked at Titus for sixteen years and felt none of this sexual tension? And now, just two weeks into dating him I couldn’t seem to keep a clean pair of underwear on from simply glancing at him? I reached for the button on his jeans, but his hands stilled me.
“Nah-ah. Climb on, sweetheart.” He pointed to his face, his words scraping over jagged rocks of desire.
He leaned back on the bed and settled on my pillow, tugging me some more. I sucked in a breath and almost pinched myself to make sure this man was for real. Not being an idiot, I didn’t wait for another invitation. If the boy wanted me to ride his face, who was I to turn him down? I lifted a leg and straddled his chest, pausing to kiss him and inhale the scent of Titus after a day of honest work. Wood, sweat, and soap. Delicious.
His hand came around my backside and urged me forward. I crept upward until the juncture of my legs was directly over his mouth and my hands were on my headboard. My knees dug into my soft pillows, a counterpoint to his rough stubble. His hot breath hit me and my legs began to shake.
“This is how you get me to shut up.” His blue eyes darkened to the shade of a starving man.
Before I could comment on his choice of muffling methods, he
