The Belle and the Beard by Kate Canterbary (good book club books .txt) 📕

so unavoidably present that everything felt quiet and fuzzy and overwhelmingly real, like that moment right before waking up from a dream.

"Is this all right?" he asked, his mouth on my neck. Which meant his beard was also on my neck and the double duty made me feel hot and dizzy and wonderful.

"Mmhmm," I managed.

He bucked against me, growled into my shoulder. "Give me the words, Jas."

I was surprised to find I enjoyed those growls of his. If someone had told me Linden was a growler, I would've looked at him and said, "Yeah, that tracks" and I would've considered it highly concerning behavior. Why would any adult human growl? Seriously, why? There were no conditions in which growling was appropriate, let alone sexy. But this…this was something I wanted in my life. It was a predatory hum, a groan that got twisted up in desire and turned into a snarl, a primal warning of what was to come.

Those growls made me smile. They filled me with feminine triumph and I wasn't sure I'd ever experienced triumph that I could call specifically feminine. He was reacting to me, not threatening me. And I liked that.

I dragged my nails up the corded muscles of his back and shoulders. I shouldn't have been able to feel that much definition with several layers between my hands and his skin but I did. I felt it all. I dropped my head back, only slightly surprised when I connected with the bark.

"Jasper," he grunted. "Talk to me. Say it. Give me the words, baby."

"What words?"

He growled again before pulling that tree trunk of a cock away from where I needed it. "You're not ready."

"I'm—I'm what?"

"You're not ready," he said, my leg still looped around his waist and his erection still outlined in his jeans. "I shouldn't have pushed."

"I believe I'm the one who gets to decide whether I want to be pushed or not."

He tipped his head to the side. "How would you like to be pushed?"

"I, well, I mean, I'd, um"—I gestured between us—"that was fine."

He gave one decisive nod and said, "You're not ready."

"I'll get ready," I snapped. "I can—"

"Don't," he interrupted. "Don't force it, okay? When you can say it, when you stop distracting yourself with bullshit like beard oil—"

"I am actually curious about that."

He stared at me the way parents stared at children who were covered in chocolate sauce but swore they had no idea where it came from. For reasons that were completely unkind and unfair, he looked magnificent doing this. I was as turned on by the stern, disappointed stare as I was by the growling and kissing that bordered on sex.

"Like I said, when you can say it, then you'll be ready. I'm not going to be the guy who pushes you into anything." He glanced up when a bird squawked somewhere nearby. "Not today."

"Some other day?"

He ran a thumb over my cheek, my birthmark, my lips before leaning in and kissing me again. This wasn't like the time before but it was possible this was better. It didn't make me think about all the things I'd never felt before, rather it made me think about fucking the plan. Abandoning expectations. Rejecting anyone else's definition of success. Maybe I could do this. Maybe I could start over.

I could climb a man in the middle of a forest and not give a damn about it. Maybe I could do this too. Maybe.

"Some other day," Linden whispered against my cheek. "If I don't invite myself next door and steal you out of your bed in the meantime."

"I can't tell if you're serious about that."

"I spend most nights thinking about it."

"About…kidnapping me?"

"I wouldn't call it kidnapping so much as preventative retrieval," he replied. "I've told you since the start, you shouldn't stay there."

"I thought that was because you didn't like me."

"I didn't like you being in that house alone."

Still feeling some of that feminine triumph, I said, "But if I wasn't alone? If my husband was there?"

"I've already told you," he warned. "We're not talking about that guy. Understand?"

"I think so."

He eased me back onto my feet, his hands firm on my waist as he held me steady. "All right there?"

I nodded, touched my fingertips to my lips. "Yeah. I'm fine."

Ugh, why am I such a mess? Such a terribly needy mess who has to cry all over this man's shoulder then dry hump his leg?

I stared at his shirt because I couldn't meet his eyes. Somewhere between setting the kitchen on fire and wrapping my legs around his waist, I'd uncorked my personal shit and poured it all out. I couldn't believe myself. I never did this. I never talked about Preston or why our marriage had been doomed from the start. I never shared my plan for leaving Timbrooks. I never exposed myself like this and I couldn't undo it now.

I couldn't clean this up.

Every time Linden looked at me, I was certain he saw the pointless marriage and the bombed-out career. He saw the person who wanted to leave but hung on to both of those things longer than was smart or even sane. What did that look like through his eyes? And why did he have to be so nice? Why couldn't he go back to yelling about crowbars and insulting my pies? Why did he have to see so much of me—and then kiss my lights out?

His arm hooked around my waist, he steered me toward another tree. "Now, this is why we came here."

I lifted my face to take in the full height of the tree. Linden was talking about nature and things like that, making marks in his notebook and circling the tree to inspect it from different angles, but I didn't hear him. I continued staring at the sky. It was a gorgeous, cloudless day and it kept my attention away from Linden's thick thighs when he crouched down to inspect the base of the trunk.

What was I going to do about that?