Chapter 4

Aurora woke and climbed out of bed. Yesterday had been a full day, filled with romance, drama and even hope for the future. When she’d finally fallen asleep, her dreams had been full of R.G. His lips as they devoured hers like they’d done on her deck the night before. Only in her dreams they hadn’t stopped at her lips. Even now, she could feel the memory of his lips and hands from her dream roaming over all her most sensitive parts. She showered and dressed, trying to appear sexy without seeming obvious about it.

Her phone signaled she had a text message. “Hey Princess, Finished your manuscript. Grabbing a shower and I’ll be over to talk with you about it in an hour. What’s for breakfast?”

“Biscuits and gravy.” She grabbed some sausage patties and began frying them to chop up in the gravy she’d make from the grease. She had a box of Bisquick in her cabinets to make the biscuits from.

“Sounds great. I’ll swing by and grab us some Java.”

She texted back a thumbs-up emoji and flipped her sausage patties. Within half an hour, breakfast was on the table, and R.G. was knocking at the door. She opened the door for him with a smile, and her heart almost stopped.

He had looked good yesterday, but today he looked even better in a tight stone blue V-neck T-shirt that let her see every line of his hard chest, shoulders and arms. She almost laughed at the graphic on the shirt. It was the flaming horse logo for the Phantom Horse Bridge series. The text under the logo stated, “I saw Grandpa Harold’s Ghost in Phantom Horse, Colorado.” Still, those muscles, so well defined, made her want to rip that shirt off him and run her hands all over his exposed skin.

He smiled as he entered her apartment. Aurora got an equally libido increasing eyeful of his posterior in the tight faded Levis he’d paired the shirt with. “Hey Princess. I plan to kiss you silly as soon as I put these hot cups on the table there.”

His words caused her heart to race and other places to tighten in ways that were deliciously pleasurably. Then he was doing exactly what he’d said as he took her in his arms and pulled her against all those wonderful places she’d been admiring. Just before his lips claimed hers, he whispered against her skin. “I’ve been dreaming of this all night.”

Her arms came around his neck, and she lifted on her toes without thinking as she breathed back, “Me too.”

Then his lips lightly grazed hers, and she leaned into the kiss. When she licked his lips, he moaned and pulled her even closer as his mouth opened to hers. Then he was in her mouth, teasing, tasting and stroking. His hands wandered up and down her back before settling on her bottom, pulling her even tighter against him. Her knees almost gave out, and she’d have fallen if not for his hold on her.

The growling of her stomach reminded them it was time to eat. When her stomach protested again, it dampened the mood for romance. Her face flushed with embarrassment, chasing away the passion that had just heated it moments ago. “We should eat before the gravy gets cold.”

He released her, and she instantly felt like she was less than she had been. She felt empty somehow, as if his very soul had invaded her, along with his scent and tongue, and now she had a Rob sized hole in her own soul. He walked over to the table without letting go of her body. “It sure smells good.”

He held out her chair as she sat, then took the chair across from her. “So, you said you had to work tonight. Where do you work?”

“I’m the night watch over at the Cassidy Heritage Museum. It’s not a demanding job. I mostly get paid to be there in case of a fire or break-in. I get a lot of writing done while I’m there.”

R.G.’s fork stopped halfway to his mouth. “Well, that wasn’t what I expected to hear. I figured you were a nurse’s assistant or telephone operator, at the most far-fetched end of my imaginations a custodian. Never would have dreamed my sexy princess was a bad-ass security guard.”

She smiled and shook her head, trying not to gush about him calling her his sexy princess. “I’m not a security guard. I’m a security monitor. I’m there only to report if there is a problem. There never is, so I honestly am getting paid to sit around and write. Mrs. Cassidy knows that’s what I do, and as long as I take a walk every other hour around the house and property, she’s okay with it.”

“Well, in my mind, you will always be a sexy security guard trained by the CIA to be a lethal assassin, and the security guard’s job is just your cover.”

She giggled. “If what you say is true, Mister Donovan, then you should be terrified. You’ve discovered my secret and now I have no choice but to take care of you.”

The look on Rob’s face was not one of teasing anymore, but one that scared her with its intensity. It was lust, desire and hunger all rolled into one.

“Just how do you propose to ‘take care of me’, Princess?” His eyes traveled down to her lips and as low as he could see with a table in-between them before climbing back to her eyes. She felt her body respond to that look, and her eyes flew open as she realized she was turning on this incredibly sexy man.

Aurora opened her mouth to respond when he stood so fast his chair crashed over backward. Rob moved around the table and grabbed her by the arms. He was lifting and turning her before his lips were attached to hers again. There was nothing slow or gentle about his kiss this time. He demanded entrance to her mouth, and she willingly allowed it. Pulling her even tighter against him, their bodies pressed against each other, she couldn’t help but know how she affected him. One hand gripped her bottom, the other yanked her T-shirt out of her waistband. His hand climbed up her back, rubbing and stroking her heated flesh until he reached the band of her bra. He searched for the clasp, and she heard and felt his growl when he realized it was a front clasp.

His mouth moved off hers and landed at that place where jaw and neck met. His kisses were passionate and demanding. They started at that juncture and trailed down the side of her neck. He alternated between kissing and gently biting. The sensation was causing her to lose every coherent thought in her head. Her hands, almost of their own volition, moved to his shirt, pulling it loose and running up his belly toward his chest, finally tracing and caressing the defined muscles she’d dreamed about all night. Was this another dream? Had she really ever awakened at all?

Then, just to make sure she knew she wasn’t dreaming, the inside door to her parent’s garage opened, and she heard her mom call out. “Hey you two, thought I’d check in to see ... OH! Sorry!” Then her mom’s footsteps started hastily back down the hall she’d come from. Rob cursed and released her. As Aurora turned and rapidly followed her mom. “Mom, wait.”

*****

Rob released Aurora the moment he heard her mom gasp and apologize. He stepped back with a curse. What was wrong with him? Why couldn’t he keep his hands off this woman? Maybe it had to do with the fact that he’d dreamed about unwrapping and exploring her cinnamon and honey-scented body all night. Even so, he should have more control than this.

Maybe it was the fact that he still couldn’t write a word unless it was on the story she inspired yesterday at the coffee shop. He’d tried to work on his novel, but he couldn’t get past where he had been stuck at now for three entire weeks. The ‘Love at a Coffee Shop’ book was already at fifteen thousand words, and he’d only stopped to get a two-hour nap before coming over here.

Then he’d seen her in that peach-colored top and those tight jeans with her bare feet and hair in a braid down her back. Part of his body stood and took notice, while his brain had sent extra blood rushing to that interested body part. Suddenly, he didn’t need to write or talk to her about her novel. He just needs her in his arms, preferably in a horizontal position on a soft surface.

When she’d responded almost as passionately as he’d started, his thoughts just quit working at all. If her stomach hadn’t growled, he didn’t know what would have happened. However, he had a superb idea what would have happened if her mom hadn’t interrupted when she had. He’d have to send that woman a box of chocolates for her timely entrance.

Rob was attracted to Aurora. He couldn’t deny that, but he didn’t want to rush this and mess it up. Three years ago, he had vowed not to get romantically involved with a reader again. He still remembered the horror he’d felt when still half asleep, he had answered the ringing cell phone on his hotel nightstand. Only to have an angry husband demand to know who he was and why he was answering his wife’s phone at six in the morning.

He apologized to the man and explained that they had been sitting across from each other at the author-reader meet and greet the night before. Somehow, Rob continued explaining his completely fictional excuse. In the evening’s excitement, their phones must have accidentally gotten swapped. He would call his phone and have her call her husband back on Rob’s cell. The reader blushed at being found out and called her husband and told him how sorry she was for mixing her phone up with that author’s. After he’d gotten her out of his bed and room, Rob made a rule not to sleep with anyone at a convention again. He took it one step further and vowed to never sleep with a reader at all.

It had done him well until Aurora asked him to watch her stuff so she could go to the bathroom. But she wasn’t really a reader, was she? He argued with himself. She was a writer and a good one. He came here to encourage her to tighten a few things and expand a few others and finish this novel. He was sure she’d sell a ton of them. However, first he needed to get his hormones under control.

His next thought was: Thank God it was her mom who walked in on them. If it had been her dad, he’d have been on his way to the hospital or the morgue. While the man backed off a little when he saw how much money Rob made. Rob was certain-sure, as his western hero would say, if the man had caught him with one hand up his daughter’s shirt and the other kneading her luscious tush, he’d have been beaten, stabbed or shot. Hell, Mr. Wright was a father of three daughters. If the man had caught them, Rob was sure he’d have experienced all three things. He looked up when Aurora and her mother came back into the great room. “I’m sorry Mrs. Wright, I seem to have lost control of myself regarding your daughter’s person.”