The Slow Burn Read online

  This man.

  He wasn’t done.

  “And I care you can end a great fuck bein’ sassy and laughing.”

  That meant . . .

  Everything.

  “Toby.”

  “Tonight was fantastic, Lollipop, and I don’t just mean you demonstrating you seriously get off on having your face fucked. Everyone got to feel a part of it by bringing food. I love it that you gave me that about your mom so I could have a mind to the state of you. You let Margot mother you, and she needs that almost as much as you do. And havin’ us all together like that just felt like Christmas.”

  “Baby,” I whispered, dissolving into him and putting my lips to his.

  He cupped the back of my head and gave me a deep kiss before the pressure he put there told me it was time to break it.

  I lifted my head.

  “Get rid of this condom and then sleep, yeah?” he murmured.

  I nodded.

  “Want your nightie?” he asked.

  I nodded again.

  “Panties?”

  God.

  This man.

  This man was a good man.

  I nodded.

  “Right.”

  He pulled me down for a lip touch and then I was rolled yet again.

  Toby got my nightie and my panties and handed them to me before he hit the bathroom.

  I had them on when he returned.

  When he joined me, he took what I considered my side of the bed.

  I did not quibble.

  It’d take half a minute to find out it didn’t matter.

  We turned out our lights and then he pulled me in his arms in the middle.

  I snuggled in and Toby held me tight.

  “Wish I could have met her,” he said into the golden-red glow of Christmas lights that lit the room.

  “Sorry?” I muttered into his throat.

  “Your mom.”

  Oh boy.

  He put his lips to the top of my hair. “I’ll agree, Gamble Men are the best. But Forrester Women are better.”

  And there he was again.

  Putting it out there.

  I shoved my face into his throat, whispering, “Shut up.”

  He settled in.

  But after he did, he said, “Thanks for comin’ over to my house and verbally handing me my ass today, baby.”

  “Thanks for tapping my ass after I did that, baby.”

  There was a smile in his smooth, deep voice when he replied, “Shut up and go to sleep.”

  “You shut up and go to sleep.”

  “Okay,” he muttered, kissed the top of my head and again settled in.

  I settled into him.

  Yeah.

  Hell yeah.

  Life was awesome.

  “Say what?”

  It was the next morning.

  Toby’s ass was to a stool, leaning into Brooks in his high chair, spooning cereal into my kid.

  His hair was also hanging down to his cheeks on both sides.

  I’d discovered Toby’s version of a bedhead.

  It was phenomenal.

  I was standing at the counter opposite the island from them, making him and me toast.

  And at his request, I’d just finished sharing my schedule for the week.

  “I’m working a couple extra hours Thursday and Friday evenings, I took an extra shift on Wednesday, which was my day off, and Michael wants me for half a shift on Saturday morning, my other day off,” I repeated.

  “The Christmas Fair is this weekend,” he told me something I knew.

  “Dodo! Moomoo. Lala!” Brooks shouted, then threw a set of plastic keys across the kitchen.

  Dapper Dan went to investigate.

  Tobe turned his attention back to Brooklyn and shoveled more cereal in his mouth.

  Okay, a hot guy, who didn’t fuck like a god, but fucked like a caveman god and didn’t mind me getting maudlin over my mother, but instead loved me sharing I did so he could have a mind to me, who also fed my kid breakfast with a natural ease was the most attractive thing evah.

  “And, babe,” he continued, “I might wanna take my girl out on our first date.”

  Oh shit.

  I stopped reveling in how attractive Toby was as everything I’d been able to forget over the last day came crashing down on me.

  I’d made some cards, not enough, but at least I had some to give Macy that day.

  And I’d made a promise to Michael to take on extra hours.

  I’d also gotten myself in a relationship that wasn’t new, since we’d essentially done the getting-to-know-you and mingling-families part for the last seven months.

  But it was new.

  And it was me who had to have a mind to that.

  “I promised Michael, my manager,” I told him.

  The toast popped up.

  “Right,” Toby muttered and shoved more cereal in my kid.

  I knew by his tone this didn’t make him very happy.

  I took the toast out and started buttering it, saying, “I know you don’t wanna talk about this kind of thing, and you’re helping out, Johnny’s helping out, Margot’s helping out, but I still need money. But more, I made a promise that I’d take overtime through the holiday season, and Michael is depending on me.”

  Toby didn’t say anything until I finished buttering the toast and putting more bread in.

  Once I pushed the lever down, he spoke, “Okay, this is where I’m at, Addie.”

  I looked to him to see his attention was on me.

  He launched in.

  “In order of priority, I wanna take you and Brooks to the Christmas Fair. He won’t remember it, but you and I will, and I want you on my arm. I want it known in town I’ve claimed you and Brooks. And I want us to have some fun, the three of us together.”

  I was going to go get the jelly while he was talking.

  I didn’t go get the jelly because I could no longer move.

  He wanted to claim us.

  Publicly.

  And he wanted to have some fun.

  Us three.

  And again, he put that right out there.

  Oh yeah.

  Head over heels for this man.

  “Second,” he carried on, “I wanna take you to The Star. A nice night out, just you and me. I don’t wanna take you some night where you just got off shift. I wanna take you when you’ve had a day to get shit done to clear your head, maybe relax a little, and now that I’ve seen the results, have time to do yourself up for me. Mostly, I want us to celebrate goin’ there with this and making our own memory about that. I also want time just with you to get to know you as you. Except for you at my place yesterday, the time we had last night, and right now, we’ve never had that. There’s always been someone around. And I love this little guy . . .”

  He jerked his head toward Brooklyn, making his hair slant along his cheekbones, something I instantly memorized even if we were into something heavy, then he resumed talking.

  “But even if he’s a kid, he’s someone and a distraction and I want time without anything distracting me from you, or you from me.”

  One could say I wanted that too.

  A lot.

  And one could say I loved he wanted that.

  A lot, a lot.

  “And Christmas is coming,” he continued. “That’s makin’ cookies and watchin’ Christmas movies and wrappin’ Brooks’s presents and goin’ to parties, and you give that kind of overtime to the store, you’ll be beat and some of that can’t happen, but most of it’ll be done just to get it done instead of it bein’ done because it’s fun.”

  He thought all that was fun.

  Where did this guy come from?

  He was totally surreal.

  The good kind.

  “Honey—”

  “No pressure. You do what you gotta do,” he said. “I’m serious about that. I get it. Life is about doin’ what you gotta do. You just need to know that if I don’t get that shit, I’ll be disappoi
nted. And I know that seems like I’m full of it and puttin’ on pressure. But for this to work, we have to communicate and you gotta know where my head is at and what I want. I want the same back from you. I get life is about disappointment too. But I’m not gonna get in this with you and sit on shit that disappoints me and let it infect what we got. We’re here.” He raised Brooklyn’s spoon to indicate just how here we were (and one could say I loved that too). “I’m good. That isn’t gonna make me stop wanting more.”

  “I won’t take the Saturday shift,” I told him.

  And God.

  God.

  The look on his face.

  It was like I put a chest filled with treasure on the island and told him it was all his.

  “I don’t want life to be about disappointment for you, Toby,” I told him quietly.

  “Babe, your dad was a dick who beat your mom, so she had to put you in a car and escape him. Your husband was a deadbeat waste of space who cheated on you. My mom took off on my dad, who worshiped her, leavin’ a five-year-old and a three-year-old she’d carried in her own fuckin’ body, and no one knew why she pulled that shit. My brother fell in love with a woman and went all in, not hiding that. And she decided to go on the lam with her motherfucker of a brother who ended up kidnapping your kid and I’m still some serious pissed I didn’t get to rip his balls out through his throat, he did that. Life is about disappointment, Adeline. We got good now. We sail those winds. Because a different wind is gonna blow and it’s probably gonna blow soon. So we gotta take what we can get.”

  I stood there, staring at him, hurting for him, and wondering if all this was why he’d spent the last decade and a half chasing experiences and adventure.

  Maybe he wasn’t doing that.

  Maybe he was running away from disappointment.

  He had to get to the garage and I had to get Brooklyn to daycare and then get to the store, so I didn’t have time to get into that.

  I knew one thing.

  I needed money.

  One could say I had a helluva cushion now. But ten thousand dollars wasn’t ten million dollars, and I needed to keep my eye on that ball for me and my boy.

  But I also knew I was going to have a conversation with Michael that day about how bad it would be if I couldn’t do holiday overtime.

  “You need me to get Brooklyn from daycare Thursday and Friday nights, get him home and do his gig for you?” he asked.

  “That’d be great, honey,” I said softly.

  “I’ll be on it,” he muttered, and turned back to Brooklyn, who, as I watched, decided in the time between Toby stopping feeding him and Toby starting again, he hated cereal if him giving Toby an ornery face and jerking his head side to side when Tobe tried to shovel some in was any indication.

  “You done, bud?” Toby asked my kid.

  “Gah!” Brooks replied.

  Since I wasn’t even sure what “Gah!” meant, Toby tested it out and lifted the spoon hovering close to his face.

  Brooklyn jerked his face away.

  Tobe tossed the spoon into the bowl and muttered, “You’re done.”

  Then he took Brooks’s bib and rubbed the cereal off his face, doing this also with natural ease, even if Brooklyn wasn’t helping and instead was jerking his head around and shouting, “Dodo! Nono! Fafa!”

  Through this, I stood there and watched wondering how life had led me from what I’d had, which, outside my mother being a seriously boss bitch and my sister being the best big sister alive, wasn’t much, to starting things with a good, decent man one day and having him slip into feeding my son breakfast the very next morning like he’d done it since Brooks started eating semi-solid food.

  And in that moment I knew Toby was wrong.

  Life wasn’t about disappointment.

  Life was a journey.

  The journey of finding what I’d seen on my sister’s face the night before.

  Finding your place.

  Finding your people.

  And settling in so when those cold winds blew, you had warmth to see you through.

  Toby was going to understand that.

  I knew it.

  No.

  I vowed it.

  Because I was going to teach him.

  “Hey,” Toby greeted when he picked up my call.

  “Hey,” I said, on the trot back to the store at lunch after dropping the cards at Macy’s.

  “You sound like you’re running,” Toby noted.

  “I’m heading back to the store from Macy’s to eat the huge-ass roast beef sandwich you made me before hitting my register.”

  “Ah.”

  “I talked to Michael.”

  Pause then, “Yeah?”

  “He says he’s had about ten people come in and ask about a holiday job. He gave me the hours because it’s store policy to give overtime to current employees who request it in times like this. But if I don’t want it, he’s good and the store is covered.”

  “Lollipop,” he said, low and sweet. “You didn’t have to do that.”

  “I know I didn’t. But I want to go to The Star with you and make Christmas cookies and find a job that pays about three times as much as I make now, but I’d take double. I can’t get my résumé together, look for jobs, put in applications and explore the option of making some extra dough doing something I dig by starting an Etsy store if I’m working for bupkis at Matlock Mart.”

  “A what store?”

  “An Etsy store.”

  “What the fuck is that?”

  “It’s about selling online craft projects, and I’m not sure with you having a penis that I could explain it in terms you understand.”

  He burst out laughing.

  I grinned and crossed the street.

  When he stopped laughing, I shared, “Michael also put up next week’s schedule and I have Monday and Thursday off.”

  “Workin’ the weekend,” he muttered.

  “I know. Suck. But we could go to The Star Monday or Thursday night. I’ll ask Izzy or Deanna to babysit.”

  “I’ll get a reservation.”

  “Righteous.”

  “You want company tonight?” he asked.

  “Do I need to find time to cut up some faux fur blankets to make our cavemen outfits?”

  He said through a chuckle, “No. But I’ll find time to hit that sex shop in Grayburg to get us some handcuffs.”

  I experienced a shiver that had nothing to do with the cold.

  “Grayburg is fifty miles away,” I reminded him. “The city’s closer.”

  “I got a lead foot and the shop in Grayburg is better than anything they got in the city.”

  Hmm . . .

  Intriguing.

  “You’ve done this research?”

  “Babe. Life’s about the adventure.”

  It was me who was laughing at that, but I was doing it to hide he was turning me on.

  I pushed through the doors to the Mart and head down, phone to my ear, listened to Toby ask, “You got a vibrator?”

  Okay, I was a girl who could do anything.

  Including, apparently, talk about vibrators in the produce section of a small-town grocery store.

  “No, I have a selection of three.”

  “Now, that’s righteous, baby,” he growled.

  “Don’t turn me on by the package salads.”

  Another chuckle before, “You’re off at four?”

  “Yup.”

  “See you at yours at five thirty.”

  “Okay, honey.”

  “Later, Lollipop.”

  “Later, Talon.”

  We disconnected.

  I ate my huge-ass roast beef sandwich that Toby made me along with the Ziploc bag of chips and a pudding cup.

  I felt over-full for the next hour, standing at my register.

  I didn’t care even a little bit.

  “Don’t come.”

  “Tobe.”

  “Do not come, Addie.”

  I was fingers curl
ed around the iron headboard, unable to move one hand since I had Toby’s fingers curled over mine.

  I was also on my knees.

  Toby’s other hand was engaged in pressing one of my vibrators going full vibe to my clit.

  And Toby was on his knees behind me, fucking me hard.

  His beard was brushing my shoulder, his breaths were heavy in my ear, this mingled with his grunts were an aphrodisiac that was a new definition of the good kind of surreal.

  “Baby,” I moaned.

  His fingers over mine left so he could plant his palm in the wall and get further leverage on the action.

  God.

  He started rolling the vibrator.

  Gawd.

  My head fell to his shoulder, arcing my back into a bow so I could keep my ass tipped to take his cock, this pressing my clit into the vibrator.

  Oh . . .

  Wow.

  I took my free hand from the headboard, reached around, grabbed hold of his ass and started panting.

  “Take more,” he grunted.

  “I can’t.”

  “More, honey.”

  I couldn’t reply.

  I cried out sharply then fell silent, the orgasm rolling over me, stealing my ability to do anything but feel Toby moving inside.

  He dropped the vibrator, shifted his hands to my hips and held me steady, slamming into overdrive.

  “Yes, Toby,” I whispered my encouragement.

  He slid both hands up, cupping my breasts, the pads of his fingers digging in, shoving his face in my neck, the sounds of our flesh connecting through the power of his thrusts splintering through the room.

  “Yeah,” I breathed, floating down, no longer about what I was feeling, what we were doing, now just about him.

  I tightened my pussy around him.

  “Fuck, Adeline,” he groaned, baring his teeth and scoring the length of my neck.

  I put both my hands to the wall and reared into his drives.

  “Fuck,” he barked, then came, his teeth sinking into the flesh where my shoulder met my neck.

  Nice.

  Very nice.

  His thrusts tapered to pulses then to glides and finally he slid in.

  Once in, his lips and beard moved on my neck, and after he found the vibrator, turned it off and dropped it back to the bed, his hands moved everywhere—breasts, chest, belly, ribs, sides, hips, the curls between my legs.

  And that was beyond nice.

  “How’m I supposed to make it about you when you make it about me?” he grumbled, low and gruff, in my ear.