Sugar on the Edge Read online

Page 10

  I hear Gavin coming up the stairs so I quickly get to work dusting his desk, making a quick pass over the framed photo but steering clear of his laptop. I also wipe down the doors and windowsills, deciding against cleaning the windows because they look to be in good shape and I know Gavin wants to get to work.

  By the time Gavin sits at his desk and boots up his computer, I’m backing out of his office. Just before he closes the door, he reminds me, “A sandwich and some chips if you don’t mind around noon. ”

  “Sure thing, boss man,” I tell him and shut the door behind me.

  “Sweet… wake up,” I hear a voice say, sounding like it’s way off in the distance. I push mentally against it and sink back down into slumber.

  Something touches my shoulder lightly and shakes me. “Come on, Sweet… get up. ”

  “Stop,” I say grouchily, swatting at the offending thing that’s shaking me.

  I hear a chuckling sound, and it gets louder. “Savannah… wake up. You’re going to get a kink in your neck in that position. ”

  What?

  I lift my head up and blearily open my eyes. Looking around in confusion, I’m in a place I don’t immediately recognize, and then Gavin’s face comes into focus. Then I see that I’m in his kitchen.

  Why in the hell am I in Gavin’s kitchen?

  “Gavin?” I ask as I sit up straighter and rub my eyes.

  “You fell asleep on the counter,” I hear him say, and awareness starts to filter in.

  I finished cleaning but had miscalculated the timing of his laundry, still waiting on the last load to dry. I went ahead and fixed him a sandwich, put it in the fridge, and then sat on one of the stools at the kitchen island. I vaguely remember laying my arms on the counter, resting my head there for just a second. I intended to close my eyes for just a moment, hoping to get some relief from the blistering headache that had started about an hour before.

  A huge yawn courses through me and I arch my back, stretching my arms skyward, and yup… my neck is sore from the position I was in. No clue how long I was out.

  “Tsk, tsk, tsk,” Gavin says. “Sleeping on the job. What’s a stern employer to do?”

  “Sorry,” I mutter, rubbing my eyes again. “I didn’t mean to fall asleep. ”

  “No worries,” he says as he leans a hip against the corner beside where I’m sitting. Crossing his arms over his chest, he looks down at me. “No offense, though. You kind of look like crap. Rough night of sleep?”

  “Try no sleep at all,” I tell him with another yawn. “I had a job for the newspaper over in Charlotte yesterday and when I got back in to town, I came straight here to clean your house. ”

  “What the f**k, Sweet?” I hear him growl, and I focus my weary gaze on him. He looks angry but for the first time, it doesn’t cause a frisson of unease to course through me. I think I’m too tired to be intimidated by him. “You didn’t have to come today. You could have just gone home and slept. ”

  Pushing myself up from the stool, I stand a little wobbly. “Well, yeah… sorry, but the poor have to work when they can so it wasn’t an option for me to ditch my job. ”

  “Go lie down on my couch and get some more sleep,” he commands me, and I don’t even bother looking at him. Instead, I head into the laundry room, where I can still hear the machine whirring. The timer says it has twenty more minutes.

  Just great.

  Walking back into the kitchen, Gavin appraises me while standing in the same position.

  “I made you a sandwich. It’s in the fridge,” I tell him and sit back down on the stool again, resting my chin on my hand. “I still have twenty minutes before your last load of laundry is done, and then I’ll get out of your hair. ”

  “Go lie down on the couch and sleep for twenty minutes then,” he demands of me again.

  “No, thanks,” I say, refusing to look at him, even as my eyes start to droop.

  “For f**k’s sake,” I hear him grumble. The next thing I know, one of his arms is sliding under my legs, the other behind my back, and he’s lifting me from the stool.

  “Gavin,” I yelp in surprise as he carries me into the living room, I’m sure to deposit me on the couch. “I don’t need to sleep. I can do that when I get home. ”

  “Just shut up, Savannah. For once, your mouth isn’t so sweet,” he growls at me, and then bends over to lay me on the couch with surprising tenderness.

  I start to sit up the minute his arms release me, but he does nothing more than put his large hand in the center of my chest and push me back down. Whereas ten seconds ago, I felt bone weary with exhaustion, the warmth of his hand through my T-shirt causes my pulse to speed up. I struggle for just a moment, attempting to continue my rise, but his brute force wins out and he pushes me all the way back down.

  “If you don’t lie down, I’m going to lie down on top of you and pin you there. Now which do you want?”

  “Fine,” I huff out just to get him to leave, because there’s nothing appealing about him laying his body over mine, right? “Just until the laundry is done. Now go eat your sandwich and get back to work. I’ll see you next week, okay?”

  He stares at me a moment, his lips curved up in amusement. “Sure thing, Sweet. See you next week. ”

  Gavin turns away and heads back into the kitchen. I close my eyes, and I’m immediately out.

  9

  What the f**k are you doing, Cooke? I ask myself for about the hundredth time as I watch Savannah sleeping on my couch. The sun has gone down, and she’s been out for a solid nine hours. I’ve never seen anyone sleep that hard before. She hasn’t moved a muscle… at least not as far as I can tell.

  After I deposited her on the couch, I ate my sandwich and went back to work, banging out another three thousand words before dinnertime. I came back downstairs, expecting to see the couch vacated, but she was still flat on her back, one arm resting over her stomach where her T-shirt had ridden up just enough to give me a tiny peek at the smooth flesh. Her long legs were bare as she was wearing a pair of denim shorts today because the weather is quite mild. My f**king fingers itched to touch her, but I shook my head to clear it of such ludicrous thoughts and went into the kitchen to heat the Mexican casserole she left me.

  I vowed to myself if the smell of the food woke her up, I’d offer her some and send her on her way. When that didn’t work, I figured the banging around in the kitchen while I ate and then rinsed my dishes would wake her up, and then I’d send her on her way. She stayed soundly asleep.

  Only after I grabbed a bottle of scotch and a glass, this one a plastic tumbler with a brown and green palm tree on it, and poured my first drink, did I sit on the loveseat opposite of her and vow to myself I’d wake her up after I finished my first one.

  Now, two glasses of scotch later, she still hasn’t stirred. I don’t know why I’m not waking her up and making her leave. Staring at her in the dim light cast from the one lamp I have turned on, my thoughts take a dark turn. Why is this slip of a girl causing me so much fascination? She’s not like my usual brand of tramp that I like to f**k and then tell them to get the f**k out of dodge. I’m attracted to her… sure. But it scares me to think that the attraction is because I can’t quite figure her out. I normally steer clear of any type of situation that takes me out of my comfort zone, and she definitely makes me uncomfortable.

  I’m pleasurably warmed by the scotch, yet I hesitate to pour another glass. Just weeks ago, I only survived my life by drinking myself into a stupor most nights. Sometimes I’d really launch myself into oblivion by taking some coke, desperate to escape my past.

  But now, I don’t have that compulsion. I’m drinking my scotch tonight and enjoying the smoky, sweet flavor… relishing the slow burn when it hits my stomach. I’m not burning my taste buds out by gulping it down, but rather taking small sips to appreciate the fine art of single malt chemistry.

  It’s definitely an appreciation tonight, n
ot a compulsion.

  Sitting in the semi-dark, sipping my liquor and watching a woman sleep. Some would find that romantically sweet. I find it to be macabre, because no matter the fascination sweet Savannah holds for me, when it boils right down to it, deep down I want to break her. I want to prove to myself that she’s nothing special… that she’s exactly as I imagine her to be. An uninteresting sort of woman who thinks more of herself than she actually is, and in the grand scheme of things, she’ll never amount to more.

  It’s why I haven’t changed the plot line of her character. Yeah… she called me an ass**le, and yeah, she’s asserting herself with me more, but she’d never have done those things if I hadn’t practically dared her to do them. She doesn’t have it in her… not for the long haul anyway, to really push at me.

  Demand of me.

  Demand of anyone, for that matter.

  No, she doesn’t have the strength of character that would be deserving of heroine status in my book, so I’m not changing a damn thing I’ve written just because she’s shown a little gumption of late.

  Savannah lets out a soft sigh from the couch, and I watch her intently. The hand across her stomach moves up, and she stretches both of them over her head, arching her back off the couch in a sleepy stretch. It pulls her T-shirt up higher, exposing more of her stomach and thrusting her br**sts out.

  The two glasses of scotch I’ve had haven’t mellowed me enough that my dick doesn’t take notice of the unintentional, but sexy move. It thumps against the zipper of my jeans with interest.

  I wonder if I could seduce her… right now? I wonder if I gave into this attraction… this lust that’s brewing for her, could the pounding of my c**k between her legs drive her right out of my thoughts for good? Maybe that’s what I need… just to f**k her, with raw, primal energy… enough to scare her away for good. Maybe then, I could quit thinking about her. She’d run away crying, her dignity shredded, and I could hire a new cleaning service and be done with her.

  Savannah takes a deep breath, lets it out, and then goes still. I can’t see if her eyes are open in the shadows where she lies, but by the measured movement of her chest, I think she’s gone back down under.

  Setting my empty tumbler on the table beside me, I stand up and walk over to the couch. I stare down at her, her face so serene and peaceful. I wonder if she’s dreaming.

  Without a second thought, I sit down on the edge of the couch, in a small area available to me by her left hip. Taking my finger, I stroke it over the skin of her stomach and say, “Sweet… it’s time to wake up?”

  She gives a soft moan in her sleep and arches her back off the cushions again.

  And f**k, that’s sexy.

  And yeah, I definitely want to f**k her.

  “Savannah,” I call out to her softly and bring my hand up to her face, grazing my fingers over her temple. “You need to wake up. ”

  Her eyes flutter open, immediately making contact with mine, and I let my hand drop away.

  “She’s alive,” I murmur as she stares at me with dark eyes.

  “What time is it?” she rasps out, turning her head to the left to look out the back glass door.

  “Just after nine PM,” I tell her. “You slept like a rock. I could have had my way with you, and you would have never known. ”

  “Oh, yeah?” she asks skeptically, and with sleep still heavy in her voice. “Like what?”

  Oh, little girl, the things I could have done to you.

  I go for the shock factor to see what she does. Reaching my left arm behind me, I place my fingers on her calf. Her skin is warm and silky, and her breath hitches at the slight touch. “I could have skimmed my fingers up your leg, right past your knee… up your thigh,” I tell her, moving my fingers up that same path I’m describing. When I get to the edge of her shorts, I halt my progress. “I could have inched my way right under these short little shorts… found the edge of your damp panties just to prove that you were having a sexy little dream while you were sleeping. ”