Irresistible: A Small Town Single Dad Romance (Cloverleigh Farms Series Book 1)

I stared at the ceiling in the dark, alternately angry and humiliated.

He’d wanted me, hadn’t he? Of course he had—I’d felt it between his legs. And he’d kissed me first! He’d put his hands all over my skin! My breasts ached as I recalled his touch, and the unrequited longing in my body refused to ease up. I was restless and irritated, with him and with myself.

Although it was kind of nice that he was trying to be noble and heroic about the whole sex thing. I understood his point—he worked for my dad, so technically, yes, I was the boss’s daughter. And his part-time nanny. And ten years younger.

But dammit, I’d been harboring this crush on him forever. I didn’t care about those other things. I wanted to be with him.

And now he knew it. Ugh.

I squeezed my eyes shut, feeling like a kid who’d made a total ass out of herself in front of her teacher crush. Had I really suggested he take me back to his bedroom? Shaking my head back and forth, I tried to erase the memory of his rejection.

So much for seduction.

But the longer I lay there, awake and shivering a little beneath the blanket, the more I realized I wasn’t sorry for trying. At least I’d taken a risk. Acted on an impulse. Granted, it hadn’t gone as well as I’d hoped, but still—Mack had kissed me.

I turned onto my side, pulling the blanket up over my shoulder and closing my eyes.

I wasn’t sure how long I’d been lying there when I felt a hand on my hip. I opened my eyes and saw Mack crouched next to me, balanced on the balls of his feet. Shirtless.

My breath caught.

He put a finger to his lips.

My heart started to pound. Was this real or a dream?

Without wanting to know for sure, I put my hand in his and rose from the couch. He led me through the dining room and into his bedroom, closing the door soundlessly behind me.

“Mack. What are you doing?” I whispered.

Instead of answering, he pushed me back against the door and kissed me hard and deep, his arms caging me on either side. “I changed my mind.”

“Why?”

“Because I’ve been lying here for fucking hours and I can’t stop thinking about how much I want you.” His voice was quiet but gravelly, more growl than whisper.

“But you said—”

“I know what I said. But I’ve decided I’d rather be reckless than responsible tonight. If you’re in, I’m in.”

I put my hands on his chest and pushed him back. “I’m in.”

Then I grabbed the bottom of the shirt I wore and whipped it over my head. Immediately our bodies came together, our bare chests pressed tight, our mouths sealed. Somehow, we managed to make it over to the bed, where he worked his pants off and stretched out above me. My heart was pumping so furiously, I was nearly afraid the doctors were wrong and there was something it couldn’t handle—getting naked with Declan MacAllister.

I shivered.

“Are you cold?” he asked.

“Are you serious?”

He smiled down at me in the dark. The warmth and weight of his masculine, muscular body was like heaven, and I wrapped my arms and legs around him. His erection pressed hard against me.

“We have to be quiet,” he whispered, his breath on my lips.

“I can be quiet,” I promised.

“Good.” He kissed me then, sending stars shooting throughout my body, to the ends of every finger and toe. I kissed him back like I’d never kissed anyone before, like he was the air I needed to breathe. I loved the warmth of his skin on mine, the way he smelled, the thickness of his chest.

Mack, Mack, Mack.

He put his hands on my breasts, making me arch into his touch and bite my lip to keep from sighing too loudly. He moved his mouth down my throat and chest, stroked my tingling nipples with his tongue, teased them into unbearably hard peaks that he sucked and flicked and caught between his teeth. I wove my hands into his hair, writhing rapturously beneath him. When he kissed a path down my belly, I began to panic that I wouldn’t be able to keep my promise about being quiet.

He barely lifted his mouth from me as he dragged my underwear from my legs. Then his head totally disappeared beneath the blanket, and he pushed my thighs apart.

At the first sweep of his tongue, I yelped. I couldn’t help it. Immediately, I slapped a hand over my mouth. I heard him laugh before he gave me another long and luscious stroke across my clit. I yelped again and clapped the other hand over the first.

Mack pushed the blanket off his head. “Should I stop?”

I shook my head. Vehemently.

“Then you have to be quiet, angel. Shhhhh.” He returned to what he’d been doing, and I whimpered helplessly behind my palms. He slid a finger inside me, and I covered my face with a pillow. He sucked my clit into his mouth while he fucked me with one finger, then two, causing my body to hum and tighten and fill with uncontrollable longing, until finally it was too much for me to contain and everything burst wide open in an explosion of stars that rained down around me.

I might have been quiet. I wasn’t really sure.

With one last kiss on my inner thigh, Mack moved up my body again. “Jesus Christ,” he said, his voice raw.

“Was I too loud?” I whispered.

“I have no idea. I was too busy trying not to come from the way you taste.” He kissed my neck. “And the way you move.” He kissed my jaw. “And the way it’s going to feel when I get inside you.” He covered my mouth with his, and I twined my limbs around him, desperate for the very same thing. I could feel how big and hard he was as he rocked his hips above me.

“Yes,” I said against his lips. “I want you inside me. Now.”

Mack leaned over me to open the nightstand drawer. Ten seconds later, he’d shoved his underwear off his legs and was kneeling between my legs, rolling a condom on. I’d seen other guys do this twice before, but it was always awkward and fumbling, like they hadn’t wanted me to even look at them. Granted, those had been skinny adolescent boys compared to the man in front of me now. He was mature and confident, rugged and strong. Everything about him exuded masculinity, from the stubble on his chin to the hair on his chest, to his muscular arms and thick, hard cock.

But I barely had time to admire his silhouette in the shadowy dark before he was above me again, positioning himself between my legs, then easing inside me. Slowly. Inch by hot, rock-solid inch.

I took a few deep breaths and closed my eyes as my body got used to being stretched so tight and filled so completely.

“Are you okay?” he asked. “You can tell me to slow down.” But he was already starting to move, his hips undulating over mine in deep, unhurried strokes.

Echoing his rhythm, I moved my hips beneath his, sliding my hands down his back and whispering in his ear. “I’m more than okay. I want this so much.”

He kept the rhythm slow and steady, his voice low in my ear. “Do you know how many times I’ve thought about fucking you right here in this bed?”

“Tell me.” I struggled to speak

“So many nights.” He changed the angle, making me gasp and sink my teeth into his shoulder. “But you’re even better than my fantasy. Sweeter. Hotter. And I fucking love how wet you are for me. It feels so damn good.”

God, I loved his foul mouth. I’d donate every cent I had to the swear jaw if he’d just keep talking to me that way.

And the way he moved, oh my God …

Already aroused from my first orgasm, my body was more than responsive to a second one. Within a few minutes, I felt myself at the edge of the cliff once more, and every deep, hard thrust of his cock pushed me closer to jumping off. And if Mack’s strangled moans and ragged breaths were any indication, he was just as close.

I clawed at his skin. I choked back cries. I grabbed his ass and pulled him into me, wanting more, more, more, even though I knew my body couldn’t take it. “Mack,” I begged. “Mack …” Just saying his name, feeling it on my lips as he moved inside me, was a kind of ecstasy.

Sex with Mack was unlike anything I’d ever experienced before. Rougher. Deeper. More intense. It felt like the real thing, like the times before were silly imitations. And every sensation was heightened by the fact that we couldn’t be loud. It was damn near impossible! All my effort was needed to keep from crying out—in pleasure, in pain, in total disbelief that this was actually happening.

Then he was cursing into the pillow beneath my head and his muscles clenched and I felt his orgasm rippling through his body into mine. It sent me spiraling over the heights, head over heels, spinning and falling and pulsing and holding him close as we shared this insanely powerful, extraordinary thing.

A few moments later, he lifted his chest off mine and pulled out. “I’ll be right back.”

“Okay,” I said, disappointed he wanted to get up so fast.

While he was in the bathroom, I lay there clutching the blankets beneath my chin. I couldn’t believe this! Just to be sure it wasn’t a dream, I pinched myself. Hard.

Nope. It’s real.

But now what? I couldn’t actually sleep in here, could I? No, I should go back out to the couch. We did not need his kids discovering me in his bedroom in the morning. I found my underwear at the bottom of the bed, yanked them on, and was hunting around on the floor for my T-shirt when Mack opened the bathroom door. Light spilled into the bedroom.

“Hey,” he said.

“Hey.” Spying the shirt on the floor, I straightened up and slipped it over my head.

“Um, do you want to use the bathroom?”

“Oh … sure.” He stepped aside as I passed him, giving me way more space than I needed to get by, which seemed kind of weird since his sweaty, naked body had been tangled up with mine for the last thirty minutes. That was a move you made passing someone in the hallway at work, not in the bedroom after sex. Were we going backward now?

In the bathroom, I shut the door behind me and cleaned up a little, trying not to read too much into it. But something felt off. I dried my hands and paused for a moment before reaching for the doorknob. After a couple deep breaths, I turned off the light and opened the door, hoping I’d been wrong.

My eyes weren’t used to the dark, and I wasn’t sure where he was at first. It took me a moment to realize he wasn’t even in the room. I stood there for a minute, confused and blinking at the empty bed, when the bedroom door opened. Mack entered, holding the pillow I’d been using on the couch. He wore sweatpants and a T-shirt.

“Hey,” he whispered. “I was just switching pillows.”

“Switching pillows?”

“Yeah. Moving mine out there and bringing yours in here. I’ll sleep on the couch and you can have the bed.”

“That’s not necessary. I can sleep on the couch.”

“I’ll just tell the girls I offered you the bed when I realized how cold it was out there.”

It actually hadn’t been that cold out there, but suddenly it felt damn near Arctic in here. “Mack, I—”

“Do you want clean sheets on the bed?”

“What? No.”

“Okay. Keep this closed, and hopefully the kids aren’t too loud when they come down. You can sleep in a little.” He grabbed the door handle and began pulling it shut behind him. “Night.”

“Wait a minute. Mack.” I walked toward the doorway. “Come back in here a sec.”

He hesitated, but then did as I asked and entered his bedroom again, closing the door. “What?”

“Well …” I folded my arms over my chest. “What now?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, are we just going to pretend this didn’t happen?”

“I think that’s best. Don’t you?”

Of course not. I wanted to ride off into the sunset with him. Cue the music. Roll the credits. “I … I don’t know. I guess so.”

“It is. Trust me on this, Frannie.” He’d adopted a sort of I’m Older And Wiser tone that made me feel five years old. “Tonight was a nice break from the norm but it can’t happen again.”

Nice break from the norm?

Nice?

I’d just experienced the most unbelievable, mind-blowing, earth-shattering sex imaginable. My life would never be the same. And he’d thought it was nice?

I wanted to die.

“Right,” I said, glad the lights were off so he couldn’t see how mortified I was. “Okay. It didn’t happen.”

“Good. We agree.” He sounded relieved. “And now that it’s out of our system, we can just go back to the way it was before. ’Night.”

He was out the door before I could even say it back.

Confused, hurt, and embarrassed, I crawled back into the bed, which smelled like him. Curling up on my side with a pillow in my arms, I fought off the lump swelling in my throat.

Then I was angry.

Grow up, Frannie. You wanted to be treated like an adult? Free to make your own mistakes? Here you are—a great big plate of THIS IS WHAT IT FEELS LIKE, served cold with a side of humiliation. And it won’t do you any good to cry over it.

What, did you think he was going to confess his undying love just because he gave you a couple orgasms in the middle of the night? Did you think you two would be a couple now? What a joke.

Sometimes sex is just sex, and you’re acting like a teenager, sniveling into a pillow in the dark. No wonder he thinks you’re too young for him. You knew your feelings for him were pointless from the start, so don’t pretend otherwise.

Only a child believes in fairy tales.