Andy stood in the long hallway, holding the doorknob to the door that led to Cadell’s bedroom.
Perfect little Andal Kumar wouldn’t be standing there. She would be in her single bed in her parents’ house, surrounded by childish things.
She certainly wouldn’t go into a man’s bedroom.
Andy twisted the doorknob.
Under her hand, the knob turned, unlocked, and she pushed the door open.
The nice Indian girl Andal Kumar wouldn’t walk into a man’s bedroom, let alone a man who dropped out of college to be a musician and had piercings and tattoos and a child from a one night stand and was a recovering heroin addict.
Andy almost faltered at that last thought, but she walked inside his room.
Dim light suffused the room from the window, moonlight and the peach glare of a streetlamp.
Cadell was asleep on his back, one arm thrown above his head.
The proper girl Andal Kumar wouldn’t stand beside the man’s bed, watching him sleep for a moment, before she removed her clothes and slid, naked, into the bed beside him. Such a move could cause her to lose her virginity and be spoiled. Such a decision might destroy her impending marriage and future.
The cool sheets were soft under her naked butt as she slid inside.
Andy snaked her hand between the covers and stroked Cadell’s shoulder. The hard, rounded flesh under her hand mesmerized her, like she had shed her former self along with her clothes. “Cadell?”
He shifted under her hand and muttered, “Em, what did we say about sneaking into bed with Daddy? I might roll over and smush you.” He reached his hand through the covers. “Smush the baby.”
His hand found Andy’s stomach and pressed lightly on her flesh.
In the slivers of light sneaking in through the blinds from the streetlamp outside, she saw his eyes open.
He whispered, “Andy?”
“You were expecting someone else?” she asked. Hey, she was funny and naked. Chalk one up for not being too stupid.
“I wasn’t expecting anyone at all.” Cadell rolled over to face her, bringing his body right up against hers. The soft fabric of his pajama pants brushed against her legs, and she touched the soft flannel over his shins with her toes. He said, “And I certainly wasn’t expecting this.”
Even though Andy had walked into Cadell’s bedroom, undressed, and gotten into bed with him, her throat was tight. “Me, either.”
His fingers wandered over her skin and down the outside of her thigh. “I was planning to corner you tomorrow morning, to talk, first thing. You’re making that very difficult.”
“Good.” Wow, chalk another one up for the mysterious femme fatale from the East. Andy gave herself a mental pat on the head.
“When we went to get the ice cream—”
“Kiss me.” Yep, that’s right. That’s how we do it.
Cadell sucked in such a deep breath that his chest crowded hers. “Have you been drinking?”
“Around my parents? Not at all.”
“This isn’t like you, to crawl into bed with me.”
“I dragged you into the on-call room and kissed you.”
“I stand corrected.”
“Do you?” She reached out to his waist, muscles tight and rippled under his tee shirt, and lower over his hip.
He caught her wrist and held it to his side. “Look, I can hold whatever line you need, but it’s not fair to tease me.”
“I just want to touch you.” She flexed her fingers, gripping his hip.
“We need to talk about today.” His tight voice sounded like his teeth were clenched.
Andy sighed. “My parents are very old-fashioned. It doesn’t bother me anymore.”
“What they said about a son bothered the hell out of me, to the point where I was worried about Emily being within earshot and that I wanted to reach over and drag them across the table by their throats. That’s not what we need to talk about, though.”
Andy wracked her memory for any other anachronism that they had spouted at supper, but nothing popped up. “What?”
“When we went to get ice cream—”
“I thought everything went all right there. I thought we had a nice time, didn’t we? Didn’t you need the ice cream after the sambar?”
“After that nuclear lemon pickle, absolutely I needed ice cream. God Almighty. But what I meant was, when I saw you with all your friends and cousins, I saw you differently. I got it. It makes sense why you would put up with that from your parents, even let them arrange for you to marry some guy you don’t even know. You were friends and buddies and cousins with everyone on that street.”
“Of course. I grew up there.”
“That’s not how I grew up. I’m not even sure that I could name half the families on the street that I lived on when I was a kid. I knew a few kids, but that was it.”
“That’s so sad.”
“If I were a part of a community like that, I wouldn’t give it up. The first time that I felt like I belonged anywhere was when Xan recruited me for the band, and then he and I put the rest of the original members in place. Even there, sometimes, I feel like an outsider, the lone wolf in the pack.”
This seduction was not going as planned. Andy needed to up her game. She could feel the nice, quiet, traditional girl Andal Kumar crawling through her body and into her head.
So Andy kissed him.
As her lips touched Cadell’s soft lips, he grabbed her, his hand leaving her wrist and wrapping around her. His mouth opened on hers, his tongue stroking inside her mouth.
She twined her arms around his neck and pushed her body against his.
He rolled her underneath him, one hand ensnared in her hair and the other behind her shoulders. One of his knees wedged between her legs. Soft fabric touched the insides of her thighs.
Cadell broke off the kiss. His voice strained like he was shouting a whisper, “I don’t want to mess things up for you.”
“You won’t,” she told him.
“You don’t want to live like I do, with no family and no one you can count on.”
“You can count on me,” she told him, “and I think you can count on the people in your band more than you think.”
“That’s not the point. Don’t fuck up what you have there. It’s precious. I hate what your parents said about a son. You’re perfect. No one should tell you otherwise. Everything about you is absolutely perfect. But your friends, and your family, and there were so many people.”
Words condensed into a knot in her chest and broke her open. “I want to be here with you.”
“No one will know,” he said. “You need to think about this in the light of day, not here in the dark, in my bed.”
“My parents and aunts jabbered at me all night long about the wedding and clothes and food, for hours. I just got away. I just want to be a doctor and save lives and be with you. I am so tired of being told what I should care about.”
“You’re right,” he said. “I shouldn’t explain your choices to you or make your decisions for you. You’ve had enough of that in your life, right?”
“Yes!”
He was still wearing his pajamas, the fabric soft against her skin. He moved, pressing his other leg between her thighs. He rocked his body forward, pressing his long erection inside his pants against her. “Understand this, then. Next time, if you’re in my bed again, I’m going to be inside you, our bodies like this. My arms will be around you, and I’ll take you. Understand?”
She nodded. Oh, yes. She understood.
Maybe tomorrow night, if she could summon the courage to sneak into his bedroom again.
Maybe she would drink wine.
“Tell me,” he said. “Understand?”
“Yes,” Andy said.
“But not tonight. Nothing irrevocable tonight.” He dipped and kissed her, his mouth covering hers. His lips sucked her lower lip into his mouth, let her go, and then opened over hers.
Within seconds, from his mouth on hers and his body between her legs, wildness invaded Andy. She pushed up against him, grabbing him around the neck and kissing him back harder. His breathing turned harsher, too, his chest pushing against hers, and his hands roamed her skin. Everywhere he touched—her shoulders, her ribs, her waist—were her new favorite parts of her body, each as sensitive as her tongue where he touched her.
He moved away from kissing her mouth, though she tried to follow him. His short beard was soft fur against her cheek and jaw as he kissed lower, over her jaw and down her neck, softly sucking on her throat and over her pulse.
Dizziness assailed Andy, spinning her around in the bed, almost flipping her. She clung to his shoulders, stretching the neck of his tee shirt aside to press her lips to his neck and skin. A puff of warmth, sweetness, and clean male scent fluffed out of his tee shirt, and she buried her face against his shoulder, inhaling the flavor like brown sugar, cloves, and sun-warmed wood.
Cadell’s mouth traced lower over her skin, his hair trailing over her shoulder, a caress of silk, until he flipped it behind his back.
Lower. He was going lower.
Andy arched her back, offering her breasts. She wanted his mouth and his hands everywhere. Her skin begged to feel more of him.
His mouth found her breast, and he ran his warm tongue over the peak.
Her body shivered, aching, wanting.
Andy reached down his back, gathering his tee shirt, and pulled it up. Cadell arched, letting her strip it off over his head, before he returned to taking her nipple into his mouth and sucking gently, and then letting her go and breathing on her wet breast.
It was torture. She knew now what lay at the end of this torment, and she wanted him to touch her, to put his mouth on her or to somehow end this agony. The march toward release was too much. His heavy, taut body pressed her legs open, but he stayed back and away from what she craved. She whispered, “Cadell!”
He laved his tongue around her breast and hummed, just lifting off enough to ask, “Yes?”
“I’m—”
“You want?”
“Yes!”
Another moment of maddening pleasure as he sucked her again, and then a chill that tightened her nipple into an aching point. He asked, “What do you want?”
She could barely breathe enough to answer, “You!”
A shiver ran down his body, almost as if he saved himself from falling. “No. I won’t. No. But this.”
He held himself off of her with one arm and slid his other hand over the curve of her stomach and down.
He brushed his fingertips over her soft folds on the outside first, a feather on her skin, until she lifted her hips, trying to feel more, and his fingers stroked her within.
Andy’s eyes were clenched shut as he touched her, slipping over her wet skin. One finger grazed her clit, a shock of sensation, and her eyes flew open.
Cadell was hovering over her, watching her, his eyes dark and wide. His lips parted as he breathed. He slid his fingers through her folds, slipping with her cream.
Ecstasy zipped through her as he found her clit again. Her hands clenched, digging her fingernails into his shoulders.
His hot mouth latched onto hers again, his tongue swirling with hers, sucking on her lips. When he lowered himself to kiss her, his fingers slipped lower between them, pushing the heel of his hand against her clit and pressing one of his fingers barely inside her core.
Andy grabbed him around the neck, opening her mouth under his, and raising her hips.
Cadell thrust his tongue into her mouth, and his finger slid more deeply into her, touching her inside. It didn’t hurt. It didn’t rip. The erotic pressure doubled as he stroked inside her core and ground the heel of his hand between them with his body.
She whimpered against his mouth, still opening for him and pushing up. He slipped in farther, rubbing a lightning bolt of a nerve inside her body and kneading his palm against her clit and every part of her folds.
His finger slipped out and then invaded her again, thicker this time, more and deeper, rubbing her harder but not hurting.
She flailed around him, riding his hand and panting, grabbing his shoulders and keening. His hot breath burned her shoulder, and the friction from his beard scraped her cheek and neck as he lunged against her. It was building hard, lifting her, crushing her inward from his hand and fingers rubbing her inside.
Everything inside her twisted. She was a clenched fist of torment, straining. Cadell rose up on his knees and pushed his fingers deeper inside her, squeezing and kneading her fold with his palm.
He opened his mouth—heat on her throat—and his teeth scraped the side of her neck.
The bolt slammed through her, and she flung her arms wide to the mattress, a pulse of power and bliss that electrified her, but she was falling and grabbed onto Cadell’s shoulders as she rode the blinding waves that coursed through her like a string of suns.
Andy was gasping, sighing, and clinging to Cadell as the crests faded away.
He was shaking in her arms, too, his other arm wrapped around her and cradling her against him. His fingers were still buried in her as her body fluttered around them, a sore invasion that thrilled her. At the thought of the pain, her body pulsed and lifted her against him again.
“Shhh,” he whispered. “Don’t tighten. Stay relaxed.”
“I don’t think I can.”
“You can. Lie back. Relax. Open.”
She wrapped her arms more tightly around him, one around his neck and one around his middle. The waistband of his pajama pants was a lump under her arm.
The weight of his body pressed her into the bed, his muscular arm a thick rod between them.
He withdrew his fingers, slipping out of her, and she sighed with the loss.
And then he slid them back inside.
More.
Her body clenched around his fingers again.
Thicker.
Harder.
She rose off the bed, her tender core suddenly tight around his hand. “Oh, God!”
He asked, “Again?”
Andy rocked on his hand, filled so full with him, softly crying out, “Please!”
Cadell shoved himself against her again, grinding his palm into her clit and burying his fingers deep inside her, grabbing her, almost lifting her.
It shot through her, every nerve alight with sharp pleasure and her breath rasping in her throat. She clawed at his shoulders as her jaw clenched and the waves pounded through her.