Page 32 of Tragic (Lark Cove 3)

He tossed me onto the blue quilt and came at me with the same ferocity as he had yesterday on the couch. But this time, we savored. We worshipped. We discovered.

Kaine Reynolds was a master with his hands, among other appendages. He had sensitive nipples and liked it when I tugged them between my teeth. His hair was soft and threaded perfectly between my fingers.

And despite our first go on the couch, the man had stamina.

Long after the sun had gone down, Kaine and I shared a big cookie. Then he got dressed and went home.

I watched from the doorway as he navigated the path home in the moonlight and laughed to myself, muffling it with a hand.

Of all the neighbors I’d had before, and there had been many, Kaine was far and away my favorite.

A car door slammed outside, and its engine hummed to life. I ditched my bowl of cereal on the coffee table and stretched over the couch to peer out the window. I was just in time to watch Piper peel out of her driveway in her tiny black clown car. A Mini something.

It would be shit to drive in the Montana winter, especially up the road to her house. The county wouldn’t plow these side roads until the highway and streets in town were clear. She needed something with higher clearance and four-wheel drive.

But it wasn’t my business what kind of car she drove. We were fuck buddies, not best friends. I wasn’t her Montana lifestyle coach. If she got stuck just once, she’d figure it out herself.

Though if she did get stuck, she’d probably be pounding on my door, begging for help. I’d have to haul out my towrope from the shop, then drive to wherever she got stuck and drag her car back home. She’d probably ask me to take her up to Kalispell and go car shopping. What a pain in the ass.

“She needs a new car,” I told the glass, then went back to my cereal. I’d talk to Piper about it before the end of the summer.

I scowled at the other vehicles in her driveway. Besides the camper, three trucks were crammed in by the house. Her construction crew had been banging and crashing around since six thirty this morning.

I wasn’t sure how she could fucking stand it. I wasn’t going to ask.

It had been three days since she’d had me over to her camper for dinner, and I’d been avoiding her property line like the plague.

Piper had this way of stealing my ability for rational thought. When she was near, my brain got muddled. Simple conversation was difficult because I was too busy thinking about kissing her or touching her or finding some way to get inside her luscious body.

So I’d kept my distance, not trusting myself to get close. We’d agreed on casual sex. That, I could do. But she was the type of woman I’d want daily. Hourly. Seeing each other that much would be too risky. She might develop feelings. She might confuse sex with love.

She might? That was bullshit. I was really worried about myself. So for casual sex to stay uncomplicated, I couldn’t see her as often as my body would have liked.

But even though I’d stayed away physically, my mind crossed that property line at least ten times a day. Piper had rooted herself in my thoughts.

Every morning, I’d sit in this exact spot, eating my cereal on the couch. I’d tell myself not to look when she left for work. But just like today, every morning, I looked. I’d never looked out my living room window as much as I had in the last three days.

Besides the spying, I wondered about her constantly. Was she having a good day at work? Had she eaten lunch? What was she doing for dinner?

It was pathetic. I was pathetic.

I’d had girlfriends

come and go all through high school. I’d had plenty of women afterward, all casual relationships, and never had a woman stuck like Piper did. Not even work could keep her from sneaking into my mind.

I normally got lost in my projects, completely enveloped in the wood and the design and working with my hands to shape something beautiful out of a raw element. No matter how good the sex was, a woman had never come between me and my craft.

Until now.

A loud crash sounded outside, and I turned again to the window. The crew seemed to be ripping out doors today. A young guy hauled one out the front door and threw it in the Dumpster that had been emptied yesterday.

The huge bin was full again because the crew had cleared away all of the trash they’d piled outside the house. Had Piper asked them to do that for my sake?

Another guy came out carrying another door. It was tossed in the Dumpster with a cracking boom.

“Son of a bitch,” I grumbled.

This morning was going to be a disaster of noise and distraction. And as much as I wanted to work on Piper’s table, I still hadn’t remembered how to work amid all the racket. Though, the noise from her crew wasn’t the only reason progress had been slow.