Unfortunately Yours: A Novel (Vine Mess Book 2)

August trudged up onto the shore, sweatpants waterlogged, skin scraped from the debris that had passed him in the water. He accepted a blanket from one of the emergency workers and waved off the applause, relieved and gratified enough just to see the Frasier fivesome reunited. But he had one destination in mind. The truck. The woman.

Getting her the hell out of there and back into his house, where it was safe.

And he didn’t need to wait long to reassure himself she was all right, because Natalie was running toward him in her nightshirt.

It was the most beautiful thing he’d seen in his entire life—and easily the most terrifying. They were still in a volatile situation with the rain continuing to come down at an alarming rate. If the road behind him could be flooded in seconds, the one they were standing on could, too. Don’t get him started on landslides and falling trees and power lines coming down.

“Get back in the truck,” he called, his voice hoarse from shouting.

Of course she kept coming. Didn’t slow down at all.

The nightshirt clung to her, black hair stuck in damp curlicues to her neck and cheeks. No shoes. Was she hoping to round off this fine fucking morning with a tetanus shot? Or was she more of a hypothermia girl?

If only she wasn’t the most beautiful sight he’d ever beheld in his life, maybe he could hold on to his anger. But he was aching everywhere, all over his body, for her touch, because he’d had the same recurring thought during the rescue.

What if the last time I saw her, I was shouting at her? What if that’s how she remembers me? After all, there was always risk involved with every mission, no matter how big or small.

Around ten yards away from August, she stubbed her toe on the road and the dinner they’d eventually gotten around to eating around midnight nearly came back up.

“Natalie,” he growled, ready to admonish her for leaving the safety of the truck when he was damn well on his way to be with her, anyway. But the lecture died in his throat when she leapt into his arms with a sob, her body shaking like a washing machine during the spin cycle. “Hey.” He kept his voice as soft as possible, but it was thicker than pancake batter. “Everyone is okay, princess. Everything is fine.”

“What the hell,” she strangle-whispered into his neck. “Like, what the hell?”

August carried her over to the open passenger-side door of the truck, but he walked slowly, because there was nothing in the goddamn universe better than holding this woman, except for maybe holding her in a safe, dry location. “What’s the matter? You’ve never seen a flash flood before?”

She clung harder. “No!”

“Civilians.” He sighed, tickling her ribs a little. “Stay off this road during storms. The elevation puts it lower than the creek bed.” She said nothing, so he poked her. “Promise me, Natalie.”

“Okay. I promise.” She leaned back a little and her puffy eyes and red-tipped nose nearly made him stumble. “Of course, if I ever got stuck out there, you’d just strap on a harness and come rescue me. Totally calm and casual, as if you’re heating up a microwave dinner.”

He took stock of his body, cataloging the chaotic buzz at the base of his throat, the vibrations in his fingertips. The rippling of his heart, which whipped into breakneck speed at her words. “For the record, I’m not calm. I’ve got enough pent-up adrenaline to flip this truck and maybe run a half marathon. If you were the one I had to rescue, Natalie . . .” He shook his head, and kept right on shaking it until he probably looked insane. “I wouldn’t have been coolheaded enough to put on the harness. I’d have jumped in and swum.”

The picture she’d painted in his head—of herself stranded on the island of her blue car in the middle of a swift current—made his arms and knees weak, so he set her down sideways on the passenger seat before he did something humiliating, like collapse in the middle of the road. He was attempting to rein in his stampeding adrenaline and it took him a moment to notice how she was looking at him. Softly, with teeth-marked lips and eyes heavy with moisture, her breasts shuddering up and down. Vulnerable in a way he’d never seen her before. Walls down.

“I don’t think one month is going to be enough anymore,” she said haltingly, swiping at her eyes and hiccupping through a gulp of air. “We might need to renegotiate our terms.”

Oh shit. There went his heart. Booming like a cannon. Did she mean what she was saying? Or was she shaken up over the water rescue? He didn’t care. He just wanted his bride. “Forget negotiations.” He leaned down and pressed their foreheads together. “I don’t need any fancy language to know you belong with me.”

She gave him a tearfully dubious look. “It’s not that easy.”

“I don’t want easy,” he said through his teeth. “Neither one of us wants easy.”

“So . . . what? I can’t just . . .” The rain was so loud on the roof of his truck, he had to press his ear almost to her mouth to make out the next part. “I can’t just . . . give up New York.”

August’s lungs flooded with oxygen so fast, he got lightheaded. The way she said those words didn’t sound all that confident. No, she sounded open to negotiation. As in, she was considering the alternative to returning east? Holy hell. “Yes, you can. You can stay with your husband, who would throw himself into a flood for you.”

“That’s . . .” Was she having trouble breathing? Should he perform CPR? “That’s extremely romantic, but we’re probably jumping the g-gun because we just went through something scary.”

He shook his head. “I can’t believe that all it took was a standard water rescue to make you consider staying.”

A watery laugh burst out of her. “There was nothing standard about that. You were heroic. You were . . .” The muscles of her throat worked. “You could have died.”

“Me? Nah. I’m too stubborn.” Why did his response seem to upset her more? Was her lip trembling now? God, he didn’t like that. Not at all. Make her laugh. “Out of curiosity, how scary does living with me permanently sound to you? On a scale of TV dinner to flash flood.”

Not even a beat of hesitation. “Like back-to-back flash floods.”

“Thanks for your honesty,” he responded dryly. “We’ll try and work it down to a summer storm with no possible fatalities.”

Her attention dipped to his mouth and the damn thing went dry, like she’d snapped her fingers and wished it. “I love that,” she murmured. “I love some parts of the storm between us.” For long moments, they looked into each other’s eyes. Hers were uncertain, but hopeful, and so beautiful, so fathomless, a chicken bone seemed to be stuck behind his jugular. And it only doubled in size when her legs parted, ever so slightly on the seat, allowing his hips to move in closer to her heat. “Am I really considering staying longer than a month? I don’t have a real job, my family could take me or leave me, and you . . . we barely get along—”

“We are the fucking dream team and you know it. We got this.”

“Not yet. Not completely.” She closed her eyes. “Right now, this very moment, we do, though. I’ve got you. You’ve got me. Can you please bring me home and take me to bed?”

Frantically, August performed another check of his vitals and found the adrenaline hadn’t ebbed whatsoever. If anything, it had skyrocketed at the very real possibility that Natalie might consider staying in St. Helena. That he might actually have a shot at turning their marriage from one of convenience to one that would last.

Forever. Forever, if you asked his heart.

Or his dick. Because the damn thing was forever a backseat driver that wouldn’t be silenced. At the mere suggestion of sinking into Natalie’s warm, wet pussy, dude was growing like Jack’s magic beanstalk. Fuck. He was going to love on that thing so hard, he’d snap the headboard in half. Unfortunately, he might snap the girl of his dreams in half in the process. “You need to give me twenty minutes to flip my tire when we get home.”

Puzzlement knit her forehead together. “Huh?”

“The leftover adrenaline, Natalie. I need to work some of it off first or . . .” He pointed at the apex of her very smooth, very spreadable thighs. “I’m going to offend the queen.”

She did a double take. Squinted one eye. “Wait, so I’m the princess and my vagina is the queen?”

“And I’m her loyal subject. Yes.”

Silence fell.

But it was interrupted a moment later by her laugh.

A clear, musical sound that twisted his chest up in a knot and forced a hoarse chuckle from his own mouth. Foreheads flush, their bodies shook with mirth in the middle of the still-raging storm. “You’re such a weirdo,” she gasped.

“You can learn to live with it.”

She nodded, turned serious. “Maybe.” Her fingertips traveled down the front of his torso and he saw actual stars when they tucked inside the waistband of his sweatpants. “I don’t want to wait for you to flip the tire.”

“Need to flip the tire. I don’t want to hurt you.”

“Do you think this is turning me off?”

“I don’t know. I just stay one hundred percent honest with you and hope for the best.”

“Oh dear,” she whispered, brushing her lips along his jawline. “That turns me on, too. We’re not even going to make it home.”

Jack’s magic beanstalk was almost at full height. “Tire.”

“Forget the tire,” she purred, touching her tongue to his earlobe.

Colors and shapes blurred in front of his eyes. “What t-tire?”

Footsteps approached from August’s right and he moved on instinct, stepping back from the V of Natalie’s thighs and pushing her knees together. There was only one person that had the privilege of seeing her panties and that person had been reduced to monosyllables.

Someone slapped him on the back.

“Thank you again for your assistance, Cates.”

August looked back over his shoulder to find one of the police officers holding his hand out for a shake. But thanks to his beanstalk being at full maturity, he could only turn partially and slap his hand into the officer’s waiting palm. “Don’t mention it.” The guy just stood there nodding and grinning, shifting in his boots. Oh man, August knew that look. He was seconds from getting invited out for a beer with the bros. “I need to get my wife home before she catches a cold.”

Natalie ran a knuckle down his happy trail and he almost swallowed his tongue. “The only thing I’m going to catch,” she whispered for his ears alone, “is this di—”

“All right, you take care, man. Let’s have a beer sometime,” August blurted, pushing Natalie’s legs into the truck, his blood thickening like hot gravy. At this point, he didn’t even care who saw his boner, as long as he got the woman home in the next ten minutes. Rest in peace to his headboard. In a few long strides, he was around the front bumper, diving into the driver’s side and reversing through the maze of emergency vehicles. “Oh, you are going to get it, Natalie queen princess Cates.”

She slid gracefully across the front row of his truck, pressing her mouth to his shoulder. Kissing, licking . . . and biting down in way that sent his balls up into his throat.

“Fuck.”

“Yes, please.” She gripped his cock through the wet material of his sweatpants and in one big, shuddering breath, he fogged up every single window of the truck. “And I don’t need you to take it easy on me. Our make-up sex was interrupted this morning. Maybe it should be a little . . .”

“Rough.” He fumbled for the defroster with a growl. “You have no idea how bad you’re making it hurt, princess.”

That magic hand of hers started to stroke him up and down. “Pull over and show me.”

“Natalie,” he groaned, trying to blink away the tiny dots of light spinning in front of his eyes. “I think you might be short-circuiting my brain.”

“I’m sorry,” she said, not looking the least bit contrite. Jesus, what was coming next?

When she stripped the soaked nightshirt over her head, he had his answer.

In a mere scrap of panties, she resumed jacking him off, but this time her hand had entered the end zone. It was inside his sweatpants doing the Lord’s work, playing with his balls and tugging on his cock gently, with a grip that increased in pressure, then got rough.

“Son of a bitch,” he hissed through his teeth, forcing himself to breathe and focus on the road. If he crashed his truck with Natalie in the passenger seat, he’d probably die from the horror alone. “I can’t pull over into the woods, Natalie. I’m not risking you getting struck by lightning or . . . God, another flooded road—”

“I’m safe as long as you’re with me.”

Now she was stroking his ego, too? He was man enough to know when he’d lost a battle. “You’re damn right you are, princess.”

Her hand was going for broke now. Was someone singing opera in the rear cab of his truck or was that all in his head? “Taking a quick break from our argument to let you know this is the best hand job I’ve ever had in my life. And about ninety-nine percent of those were performed by me, an expert on my own dick. You’re absolutely nailing it.”

Those lips curved into a smile against his jaw, her low-pitched hum coursing through him. “You know what would feel even better . . .”

“Your pussy? Yeah, it’s pretty much the only thing I’m capable of thinking about.”

“Pull over,” she cajoled, cupping and massaging his balls.

August gritted his teeth and searched for a break in the trees. There was one around here somewhere. He’d used it to make a K-turn a hundred times after forgetting to buy cat food at the store. Come on, come on. Point of no return. He was going to come in his pants.

There.

Every ounce of blood in his body was located in his lap, making his dick so stiff that he was dizzy by the time he parked the truck, threw open the driver’s side door and dragged Natalie across the seat. Out into the rain. He couldn’t get a breath, couldn’t think about anything but getting inside her, where it was warm and he belonged and she’d get pleasure. Christ, he wanted that more than anything. To bring her off so hard she’d be delirious for a week. “All right, let’s go.” Door closed, he lifted her up against it and pinned her there. Rough enough to rock the vehicle. You’re twice her size. “Natalie, I . . . the adrenaline . . .”

“I know what I’m doing,” she breathed, arching her back. Giving him a long, hot look at her tits. Those stiff, rosy nipples. “I know what I’m in for.”

“Just to clarify, though . . .” My cock is going to explode. “Very rough sex. With me. Now.”

“Yes.”

“No foreplay.”

“No,” she said, her tone reedy. “Please. Please. I want you to use me to get rid of the adrenaline. Now, August.”

Her panties were ripped to one side, his sweatpants shoved down and he entered her in one fast, upward punch of his hips. And a series of images from his life flashed in front of his eyes. Learning to ride a bike, Hell Week, shopping for socks that would actually fit his big-ass feet. Not a single moment in his existence compared to this. Filling up his woman and finding her soaked as fuck, on the verge of coming from one thrust. “Damn, princess,” he grunted, rattling the window of the truck with a series of quick drives. “Speaking of flash floods—”

“No.”

“Sorry.”

Their mouths locked into a kiss and she heaved a broken sound from her throat that made him feel sick with need. And she was ill with want, too. He could tell by the way she closed her eyes so tight during their breathless kiss, her legs wrapped so securely around his hips, he swore they were becoming a part of him. The way she had an orgasm almost immediately, her eyes flooding with anticipation, then going utterly blank, head falling back against the window, thighs quivering uncontrollably. “Oh Jesus, August, yes. Yes. Harder.”

This woman was a treasure. His hips were moving in a battering rhythm, cock harder than a fucking mallet, her ass squeaking up and down the wet door of his truck, and she was asking for more. “Anything you want.”

“No, anything you want.” She was shaking so hard mid-climax, he almost couldn’t make out her words. “That’s what I want.”

“Oh yeah?” The tether inside him loosened and he snapped his teeth against her ear. “I want you to bend over like a good girl so I can hit it filthy from the back. How about that?”

August learned something about their relationship in that moment.

This woman didn’t let him get away with jack shit.

Not unless he was giving her orgasms.

So apparently he’d be doing a lot of that.

August pried Natalie off the side of the truck and wrenched the driver’s door back open. She dropped her legs from his waist and spun around, gripping the edge of the seat, hips tilted up, her panties half in tatters. He tore them the remaining distance down her legs, licking the crack of her ass on the way up, which was something he wouldn’t mind doing every hour for the rest of his life, especially when she moaned and inched open a little wider. She panted his name, her smooth back puffing up and down. And hell, he was powerless to do anything but lick that pretty pucker some more, pressing between those tight cheeks and worrying his tongue against it. “August.”

“Mmmm.”

She squirmed back against his face. It was truly a thing of beauty. “August.”

If he kept this up, he was going to try something he had no goddamn business trying today, when he couldn’t be slow or gentle to save his life. “Coming, princess.”

He lunged to his feet, pressing forward over Natalie’s back and jerking her up onto her toes, her ass tucked like a dream into his lap. Then he reached down and pushed his cock home, shuddering over the enthusiastic way she welcomed him. She cried out and lifted her butt, giving him that deep access he needed so bad his nuts almost swore out loud.

“God, I love fucking you,” he growled against her spine, gripping her hip in his right hand, holding on to the steering wheel with his left. “I love fucking my wife. I feel it in my chest, you know? It’s never been like this. It’s never going to be like this again for either of us. All right? We found it.” He pressed his mouth to the nape of her neck. “You love fucking your husband.” His palm slipped downward from her hip, delving between her pussy and the edge of the seat, massaging her clit with two fingers. “Say it back to me.”

She heaved two big breaths, tweaking her hips back to meet his fast and furious pumps. “I love fucking my husband.”

“Why?”

“It’s so good. It’s just so good.”

“That’s not all that’s good, Natalie.” He took his left hand off the steering wheel and plowed it into her hair, tugging her head back. Locking eyes with her from above. “It’s good outside of bed, too. You know it is. We’re just figuring it out. I . . .” This was what he’d secretly been worried about, all hopped up on adrenaline. Saying those three words too early. Scaring her. Don’t push for too much too soon. “I need my wife. I’ll always fucking need my wife.”

Her breath caught and she blinked rapidly several times. Her response probably could have been delayed until later. There was a lot going on, between the pouring rain, thunder, the fact that he was thrusting into her body like humankind depended on him hitting that release button. But she surprised him, moved him, by pushing her back up against his chest, nuzzling her hair into his hand until his fingers loosened automatically to stroke her face. “I need my husband so badly, too.”

Oh boy.

That did it.

His dizziness increased due to the palpitations of his heart and the pressure between his legs. It was system overload. Desperate to bring her with him, never wanting to go anywhere without her ever again, he rubbed her clit the way he knew would roll her eyes back in her head—and with a pair of strangled moans, they lost it. August dropped his face into the valley of her neck and came like a motherfucker, roaring through some rough punches of his hips, making her scream, kicking that second orgasm into overdrive until they were in a heap, draped over the front of the driver’s seat.

He kissed her hair with what little strength he had left. “As long as you need me, Natalie, I’m with you. Whatever you decide, whatever happens, I’m your goddamn man.”

“I know.”

Several seconds ticked by, his chest swelling with every single one. “I love that you know.” I love you. He kept those words from running loose by dragging his lips along the slope of her shoulder. She’d admitted she needed him, that she wanted longer than a month. He needed to be grateful and patient. For now. “Going to take you home—our home—and do everything I can to make sure you don’t forget.”