Callie swore she fell just a little bit in love with Ford Holder at that moment.
Derrick. She fought not to scowl at the thought of his name. Still, she needed some kind of confirmation from him that they were over. Didn't she? Wasn't there some rule that said that before she could let Ford bring her flowers and kiss her on the porch and impress her grandparents and all the things he'd said he wanted to do she had to...? To what? Have Derrick's approval? Fuck that. But there was still a part of her that was sure she could make him listen somehow.
New York. She knew she had no business getting involved with anyone right then. But Nina Morales wasn't due to announce her next protégé for weeks yet so maybe there was nothing wrong with her and Ford getting to know each other, especially if they were going to take it slowly.
"Is that okay with you?" Fear scraped through his question.
"Yes," she assured him. "As long as you promise to really call me and do all those other things."
Concern tensed in his brow. "What made you say that?"
"Say what?"
"Why don't you think I'd do what I said?"
Her cheeks flushed like he'd just turned a hot spotlight on her face. She tried to shrug off a little of the attention. "I don't know. Most guys don't...do what they say."
With that, he leaned, scooped his arms under her legs, and set her in his lap. Her breath tangled in her throat. For a quick moment, she'd felt like she was free falling. But then his strength surrounded her again, and the only time she'd ever felt so thoroughly safe was when she stepped inside her grandparents’ home.
"Listen to me," he soothed. "I just got out of a relationship that was way more lies than it ever was the truth. I see no point in lying about anything. If I tell you I'm going to do something, I'm sure as hell going to do it. I am not most men."
No, he definitely wasn't. "Good," she whispered.
"Let me take you back to your car. But first, put your number in my phone," he handed her his cell. "I'm taking you out tomorrow night."
At one time in her life, Derrick's laid-back, dispassionate approach to life had been somehow appealing. But Ford's commanding presence and his determination stirred something awake inside of her. She wanted absolutely nothing to do with calm, cool, or collected ever again. Beaming up at him, she nodded. "Yes, sir."
Another one of those eager grunts lodged in his throat. She swore the noise had already taken up residence in the marrow of her bones. She wanted to spend the next few weeks doing and saying things that made him make noises like that.
He shook his head at her with an adoring grin. "You're not going to make this taking things slowly thing easy on me, are you?"
Not quite certain what had elicited that remark, she giggled. "Challenge accepted."
An hour later, Callie paced in her bedroom with her phone to her ear. On the eighth ring of her fourth call she finally accepted that Derrick wasn't going to answer. He's probably out trying to find ketchup at the grocery store. She rolled her eyes. She needed to get this over with so she could fill her mind with thoughts of Ford and feel no guilt. Not that Derrick had ever felt any guilt when he was jacking off to all of those women in those chatrooms he frequented. She gagged. God, how had she stayed with him for so long? Disgust crawled over her skin. Deciding she needed a shower, she checked the time. It was two hours earlier in California. She'd try Derrick later.
When she emerged from a long, hot shower there was a message on her phone but not from a number she recognized. Grinning at that, she flopped on her bed. The damp towel she'd wrapped around herself fell open leaving her completely naked. She didn't care. She wanted to listen to the message.
"Callie, it's Ford. I know it's only been a couple of hours since we were together, but I couldn't stop thinking about you. Guess I wanted to prove that I really am going to call you. I had fun tonight. More fun than I've had in," his pause spoke volumes, "well I don't even know how long. Sleep well, sweet baby. I'm picking you up at five tomorrow night. But I'm probably going to call you again before that. Night."
Torn between bouncing out her glee by jumping on her bed and immediately calling him back, she chose the latter. Besides, jumping on her bed naked would definitely horrify Nana. Ford had just gotten divorced from an awful woman who'd been cheating on him. Callie didn't want him worrying about why she hadn't answered her phone.
He answered on the first ring. "Hey there." A note of sleepiness hung in his tone.
She cringed. "Were you asleep? I didn't mean to wake you."
His chuckles were just as addictive as his grunts. "Nah, I wasn't asleep. I'm in bed though."
"Me too. Well, kind of. I was in the shower when you called."
Another one of those grunts. So far, she liked talking on the phone to him almost as much as she liked being in his arms.
"Did you get dressed before you called me back?" rumbled from him.
Her breaths came much too quickly all of a sudden. "No."
"Damn, baby." His mattress gave an audible squeak. The rustle of his sheets reached her ears. "My bed still smells like you."
For as long as Callie could remember, she'd worn watermelon-scented lotion. She loved the smell. It reminded her of Holder County summers. Bringing her arm to her nose, she inhaled and grinned. She'd just put some on after her shower. "Do you like that?"
"Way more than I should." More rustling and another breath-laced grunt.
"Ford, what are you doing?" She finally gathered the courage to ask.
"Trying to figure out how to sleep when I'm harder than concrete and twice as heavy."
Another dose of sticky wet heat gathered between her thighs. Her nipples tightened. She ran her free hand over them, thinking of Ford, taking her own breath away. "If I were there," fell from her lips.
"If you were here, we sure as hell wouldn't be taking things slow, and I told you I'm a man of my word. I'm gonna do right by you. I'll take care of this."
Oh my god. They were miles apart, and she swore the only other time she'd ever been this aroused was when he gripped her thigh, rough and ready up on that water tower and kissed her like he was signing a deed to her body. "You're making me wet again." It was somewhat easier to say things like that to him when she wasn't in his physical presence.
"Damn, baby, when you say things like that,” he rasped. “What are you doing to me?" Now his tone threaded towards desperate, almost starved. It hurt her that he was in need, and she couldn't be there to ease it. The sounds of the sheets and squeak of the mattress turned rhythmic.
"Are you...?" Her question dissolved as she fully understood what he was indeed doing, and he was doing it to thoughts of her, to her scent. A heady sense of feminine power filled her. "I want to get on my knees for you." She let her eyes close and the fantasy form fully in her mind. "I want to know what you taste like."
"Christ," ground from his mouth, but she wasn't certain if he meant it as a curse or a prayer. She was good with either. "Keep going," he demanded.
"I want to lick your slit until I know the flavor of you. Oh god, I want you to make me take you deep." Her breaths staggered from the thought. "I want to suck you, to feel you get even bigger in my mouth. I want it to be all because of me."
"It's all you, baby. All fucking you," came from him in an agonized groan. Finally the sound of flesh on flesh reached her. "Wanna make you suck me. Wanna hear you moan over me." That was followed by another desperate grunt.
Her own hand drifted down to the need gathering between her thighs. "It makes me even wetter when I suck you." She had no idea how she knew precisely what he needed to hear, but she was too far gone to consider her words. She teased at the apex of her slit drawing a soft gasp from her own lungs.
"You keep your hands on me. I make sure of that. If you touch yourself, I'll bind them behind your back. I take care of that wet pussy. Only me," he ordered as he lost the ability to maintain his self-control.
"Yes," she whimpered both from his command and his loss of restraint. "I want you to make me drink you," she begged in a tone she barely recognized as her own.
"I will," he assured her before his harsh male shudders became apparent via the noises she could make out. "Make you take it all down your throat, sweet baby. I'll make you tell me how good it tastes." Another groan. "Fuck. I'm coming."
She'd done that. She'd turned him on so much he'd done this over the phone with her. This rough, rugged cowboy who thought he could be an old-fashioned gentleman for her. She'd worn him down just a little. It had been all her.
For a few seconds, only the sounds of his heavy breathing filled the phone. Then she heard several rough scrapes in succession and finally determined he was pulling tissues from a box. "That was incredible." She wanted to make certain he felt no shame over what they'd just shared.
"Yeah, but it was only incredible for one of us. I don't like that. I know I came off a little rough, but I'll never be a selfish lover, honey. I can be gentle if you want. I don't have to be like that. It's just...it’s been a long time. I didn't know what I was saying."
She grinned at that. "Trust me, you have no idea what you just did for me, and I like your rough side. I can't wait to experience in person."
"Yeah well, I'm not sure what just happened qualifies as taking things slow." Disappointment rang his sleepy tone now.
"Maybe not, but it was perfect. Are you still picking me up tomorrow at five?"
"Isn't that what I said?"
"Yeah." She hoped he could hear her grin over the phone.
"Then that's exactly what I'm going to do."
It wasn't until Callie was drifting slowly off to sleep with thoughts of Ford taking up almost all available space in her brain that she realized two things—she still hadn't gotten her grandfather's folder back and she still hadn't talked to Derrick. Damn.