Fast & Loose by Elizabeth Bevarly (the giving tree read aloud .txt) 📕

man could be expected to turn back after reading something like that. Lingerie drawers were way more impersonal than a journal. It was just a lot of fabric without words or thoughts or feelings. He would just take a peek with this. It would only be for a few seconds.

And it would have been, too. If it hadn’t been for the fact that what he saw there on top was not black silk. What he saw there on top was instead lavender lace.

Lavender lace. He never would have guessed. Delilah just didn’t seem the type. Lavender lace was so…demure. So…unsullied. So…sweet. Lavender lace really was snowy mornings in bed and kittens. And, strangely, he thought, the novels of Thomas Pynchon and the music of Itzhak Perlman. But unlike Miss February, the wearer of lavender lace would actually know who Thomas Pynchon and Itzhak Perlman were.

Before Cole realized what he was doing, he’d dropped his hand into the drawer and carefully lifted the lavender lace from where it lay. Not to fondle it, he immediately told himself, but to see what lay underneath. And what lay underneath the lavender lace was peach lace. And then butter yellow lace. And then pale blue silk. And then pink silk. And then, on the very bottom of the assortment, he hit pay dirt.

Black silk.

Oh, yeah. “Delilah, you little vixen,” he said aloud.

Then he chuckled at himself for being so…He hastily but carefully arranged all the lingerie back exactly the way he’d found it. Weird, he finally finished his own sentence. That was what he was being. Weird. No way did he normally behave the way he’d been behaving since taking up residence in this house.

He closed the drawer and picked up his brandy, lifting it to his lips for a generous taste. The spirit felt good going down, smooth, warm, and mellow. Unfortunately, the same couldn’t be said of himself. As usual, he was too wound up to sleep, and his little foray into Delilah’s underthings hadn’t helped. He turned and saw her computer sitting on the desk on the other side of the room. He smiled. Maybe a little bedtime reading was in order.

He’d read Delilah’s journal often enough by now that the angel didn’t even bother to show up anymore. The devil one did from time to time, whenever a passage was particularly steamy. But mostly, Cole was on his own now when it came to the violation of his hostess’s privacy.

He rationalized his behavior by reminding himself that she really didn’t write about anything all that personal. And she was a very good writer. Her descriptive passages on food alone could easily see print in some of the country’s leading publications. Like Playboy or Penthouse. Easily.

He’d gradually been working his way backward through her entries, until he’d read through all of April and March. Now he was into February. The twenty-first, to be exact.

Woke up to snow this morning, the passage began. Six inches that no one predicted, a total surprise. I’m sitting on the sofa as I write, looking out the window at a winter wonderland. It’s gorgeous. Needless to say, I’m blowing off work and giving myself a gift. The gift of a day. To read, or watch a movie, or sketch, or do whatever takes my fancy.

Cole lifted his brandy for another sip. This was different. All the passages he’d read before this had been about specific experiences or observations. She’d never written about herself in a Dear Diary kind of way. This was nice. A little glimpse into the person herself.

Though it’s days like this, she continued, when I wish I wasn’t alone. When I wish there was someone here to turn the cold outside into warmth inside. Someone who would spike his hot chocolate with rum, too. Someone who would sit at the other end of the sofa and play footsie with me under the afghan. Someone who would read aloud to me books filled with grand adventure and epic romance.

Cole grinned, liking the fact that his hostess had been a single woman as recently as two months ago way more than he probably should.

Someone who would join me in the tub later, for a steaming bath redolent of patchouli, he read on. Then he began to think that maybe he should stop right there. He thought that even more when the next line said, I can feel him now, in the water behind me, the air around us foggy from the mingling heat of the bath and our glistening bodies. And then he knew for sure he absolutely had to stop reading when the line after that said, His hands slide up under the water, over my thighs and hips, along my slick torso, to cover my wet breasts.

So, of course, he kept on reading.

At first, he only holds my breasts in his hands, gently kneading them, dragging his thumbs over their tops, then tracing the bottom curves. When he rolls my nipples with his fingers, I feel heat explode in my belly. He dips his head to my neck and brushes his lips along my shoulder, then one hand leaves a breast to move between my legs. I open them wider so that he can touch me there, and he strokes my damp flesh with his long middle finger. I spread my legs more, and he covers me with his hand, caressing me, stroking me, fingering me until I shatter inside.

Cole reached blindly for his brandy—for some reason, he really needed a drink—and nearly knocked it off the desk before snagging it with shaky fingers. Damn. His hostess sure knew how to warm up a snowy winter day. He told himself he really should stop reading and go to bed. But he knew that wasn’t going to happen. Not yet, anyway. He wanted to see how this turned out.

How it turned out was that she spent another page and a half describing how her lover washed every inch of her body, then another page