Page 77 of The Beekeeper

He’d come in his pants, and all from the pleasure he’d given to me.

I blinked rapidly as he tipped forward, planting his knuckles on either side of me to support him leaning over me. “This is your expectation,” he declared once he had my full attention. “Watching you—tasting you getting off should do unfathomable things to the man responsible, understood?”

My head bobbed, unsure if I’d ever be able to speak again. Mercifully, I didn’t have to try. Blaze’s phone started buzzing on the counter, and instantly, like the flip of a switch, he was back in protector mode. Back to being a dad.

“Shit,” he husked. “It’s Pais. I have to go get her.”

“Okay,” I said with an embarrassing squeak.

He took two steps toward the hall and then stopped. “Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” I managed, my voice still embarrassingly high.

His eyes raked over me and mine did the same—like we were both reluctant to let this moment go. At least for me, I knew the image of Blaze Stevens in gray sweats stained with his own cum was not the kind of fantasy I was ever going to forget.

“I can stay out if you need…” He trailed off when I shook my head.

“No, I’m—I’ll be fine,” I assured him, only a little breathless now. Not a chance I was going to tell him I needed time alone to recover. “I have to check the hives. I think one is sick…”

Out there I could figure out how to put myself back together into a semi-functional human.

Blaze nodded. “And Harper…Paisley can’t know anything.”

My cheeks burned. “Of course not. I would never…”

His hot stare did one more sweep over me, lingering on my bare bottom and my feet dangling off the table, like it killed him to walk away. Which it didn’t, I reminded myself, because this was just sex.

“Thanks,” he said, and then he was gone, upstairs to change and then out the door without another word.

How did people survive this whole just sex thing? It was like saying oh, just a bomb. Oh, just a plane crash. Oh, just this unsurvivable act of destruction, no big deal.

I’d figured it would be okay because we had a deal—because I had expectations. But how could this stay casual when he so casually recalibrated those expectations? How was I going to survive?

Instead, I focused on this momentary destruction. He could ruin me with pleasure, that I’d agree to. The trick was making sure he didn’t obliterate everything else in the exquisite, earth-shattering process.

Chapter 18

Harper

“How long did you think you were going to avoid this conversation?” Frankie sauntered behind me, her arms crossed.

“I’m not avoiding the conversation,” I lied breathlessly, keeping my determined pace back to the hives. I hadn’t planned on my cousin cornering me at my tool shed this morning, but maybe I should have since I’d ignored each and every one of her texts asking about what happened with Blaze after the cookout.

“I’m sorry, I didn’t realize they’d come up with a new word for not texting back, not calling back, and not answering me in general.”

At least, because I walked ahead of her, she couldn’t see me wince.

“I’ve just been busy. The mite population is too big in some of the hives, so I have to contain it before it spreads,” I said, and that was the truth.

The morning after, I’d come up here to check on the bees, especially the hive that was struggling, and found varroa mites in the population. The little parasites were one of the biggest culprits of honeybee hive destruction, and if I didn’t act fast, they could decimate my entire apiary before the summer was over.

“Well, you know what I have to contain before it spreads? Bullshit,” she quipped, jogging to catch up to me. “So, spill. Did you guys hook up? Are you an item?”

I breathed slowly, knowing I wasn’t going to get out of this, and honestly, after a week, I didn’t want to. I needed to talk to someone because now that it had finally sunk in that Blaze and I were having a fling, it was probably in my best interest to tell at least one person who could keep me grounded in reality.

“We’re…contracted,” I said, choosing my word carefully.

Frankie let out a whoop and then clapped gleefully. “My. Plan. Worked. I’m so excited!”