Page 13 of Working for the Single Mom

"You're not reading it wrong," I say instead, quiet, barely audible over the rain.

That's all it takes. He closes the last bit of distance between us, and his hand comes up to my jaw, careful, like he's still checking whether this is something I actually want, and I answer that question by closing the last inch myself, pressing my mouth to his.

The kiss is slow at first, careful in a way that doesn't match the two weeks of tension that's been building between us, but it doesn't stay that way for long. His hand slides from my jaw into my wet hair, and I fist my fingers in the front of his shirt, pulling him closer, and the kiss turns hungrier, and single thing neither one of us has said out loud since that first morning in the gravel lot hangs between us.

"Sadie." He breaks away just far enough to say my name against my mouth, breathless, like he's checking one more time. "You sure?"

"I'm sure." I am. I've never been more sure of anything, standing soaked to the bone in the back of a trailer while thunder rolls overhead, but it feels more right than anything's felt in longer than I want to admit.

He kisses me again, harder this time, and my back finds the stack of lumber behind me, strong enough to hold my weight when my knees go a little unsteady. His hands are everywhere at once, sliding under the hem of my wet shirt, along my ribs, up my spine, and I'm doing the same to him, finally allowed to touch what I've spent two weeks pretending I wasn't looking at.

He pulls back just far enough to tug my shirt over my head, and the look on his face when he does it, like he can't quite believe this is happening, sends a shiver through me that has nothing to do with the wet clothes or the storm outside. "You're beautiful," he says, low, rough around the edges.

"So are you." I pull his shirt off too, finally getting to run my hands over what I've been sneaking glances at since day one, and he groans low in his throat when I do it, dropping his forehead against mine for a second like it's almost too much.

He pulls my bra from my body, his mouth going to my nipple as my hand goes between us and gets rid of the material covering his cock. I wrap my hand around the warm, velvet skin, and jack the length.

Beau throws his head back, groaning when I sweep my hand over his tip.

I haven’t done this in so long that I’m not sure what it is that I want. But when he takes all the clothes off my body, spreads my thighs, and looks between us, I know I want him. “Do you have a condom?” I gasp. “I’ve already had one unplanned pregnancy, don’t want another one.”

He makes a noise in the back of his throat, and fishes his wallet out of his back pocket. I watch, eyes wide, as he presses the latex over his length. Then he’s pressing into me, and I know now that my life is never going to be the same again.

Wrapping my legs around his waist, I let my heels dig into his ass as we push and pull against one another. My fingers go up into his hair, tugging on the strands as he works my body the same way he does the wood he makes into beautiful pieces.

The rain keeps hammering the roof, and we lose ourselves in each other, careful and hungry in equal measure, tucked between stacks of lumber that smell like cedar and rain. His hands know exactly where to go, unhurried despite the storm outside, and I find myself gasping his name against his shoulder more than once, the two of us fitting together in a way that feels less like this is new and more like we've been doing this our entire lives.

Afterward, we stay tangled together, my back against his chest, his arms wrapped around me, both of us breathing hard, listening to the rain start to ease off outside. "That was…" I start, not entirely sure how to finish the sentence.

"Yeah." He presses a kiss to the top of my head. "That was amazing."

I don't know how long we stay like that, wrapped up in each other in the dim light of that trailer, but it's long enough that the storm's mostly passed by the time a fist knocks against the metal door hard enough to make us both jump.

"Beau? You in there? The storm's cleared, man, we're back to work!"

It's Dane, his voice muffled through the metal but unmistakable, and I feel my whole face go hot, scrambling for my shirt, which is somehow ended up all the way across the trailer.

"Yeah, give me a minute!" Beau calls back, and I catch him grinning at me in the dim light while we both hurry to get dressed, a grin that's equal parts satisfied and a little bit panicked. "We're gonna have to figure out what we're telling people."

"Later," I say, pulling my damp shirt back over my head. "Right now, I just need Dane to not walk in here and find us half dressed in the back of a lumber trailer."

Beau laughs, low and warm, and presses one more kiss to my temple before he moves toward the door. "Later, then."

I follow him out into the wet, cleared-off afternoon, my heart still racing, and I don't have the first idea what happens next between us.

But standing there watching him walk toward Dane like nothing just happened, hair still damp, mouth still a little swollen from mine, I know one thing for certain.

I don't regret a single second of it.

nine

. . .

Beau

It’s been three days since we had sex in the trailer, and Sadie and I still can't manage to be in the same room without it going weird.

It's not that anything's actually wrong. We're both still doing our jobs, still talking about invoices and deliveries and the Miller cabinets that are supposed to deliver next week. But there's a careful kind of distance sitting between us now, the kind where I catch her watching me and she looks away too fast, or I catch myself standing too close to her desk with no actual reason to be there and have to make something up on the spot.