My Ex's Baby (Crescent Cove 8)

Best part? It fell off her shoulder and she wasn’t wearing a bra.

I was a damn lucky man.

She was makeup free and smiling up at me. One of my favorite Kinleigh expressions. Then she glanced down and saw the food and the flowers. Her cheeks pinked and she snatched the bouquet of pink and purple tulips out of the bag.

“How did you find tulips?”

“Just lucky, I guess.”

“They’re beautiful, thank you.” She buried her face in the blooms before going onto her tiptoes to give me a soft, almost shy kiss. An all too brief one.

“Nuh uh. I’ll take some more of that.” I grasped her arm when she would’ve slipped away too soon and lowered my mouth to hers once again.

After a moment, she slid back and cleared her throat and turned on her heel to go to her small kitchen. “I was beginning to think you weren’t coming.”

I followed her in. “I hadn’t had dinner yet.” I set the pie down on her tiny kitchen island and nudged a three-tiered rack full of crystals, rocks, and plants over a little. At the top was a colorful diffuser pumping out the crisp scent of lemon I was so used to. “Figured I’d share.”

She busied herself with putting the flowers in a trio of mason jars. She set one by her sink in the window, then dragged her thumb along the edge of a bloom before turning away to take the other two into the living room.

I dragged my hand through my hair. Was she upset? Flowers were the go-to for my mom. And while I wasn’t exactly a serial dater, I’d had girlfriends before.

Flowers were just…thoughtful.

And I was overthinking everything because she drove me crazy.

I tucked the ice cream in the freezer and followed her into her living room. She kept fussing around the room. She placed one of the jars in the front window and still another on the little sideboard table that held crystals and another diffuser. Decks of colorful cards, tall glass candles, plants, and dried flowers were scattered around every crack and crevice in her place.

In front of the bank of windows was her sewing area. It took over almost half of her living room. Her dress form was decked out in a sparkly formal dress with lots of flowing see-through material. She was picking up bits of fabric and tucking them into one of the half dozen baskets that always seemed to litter her space.

“Kin.”

She wouldn’t look at me.

“Kinleigh.”

She stopped, tucking her fingers into the sleeves of her sweatshirt. “I’m almost done.”

I went over to her and slid my knuckle along the smooth skin of her back. I eased her back against my chest. “What’s up?”

“Nothing.”

I teased the soft skin of her her midriff, my thumb coasting up over her ribs to the underside of her breast. She shivered in my arms. I dipped my head to taste her shoulder. “It’s something. You won’t even look at me.”

Spicy lemons and freckles filled my senses. I followed the star pattern they made on her shoulder with the tip of my tongue. I kissed over to her neck, my tongue dragging along the fragile chain of sunny yellow gems dotting along every few inches of her necklace. I lifted her hair up and traced a figure eight along the nape of her neck.

She swayed against me with a sigh.

I’d never had to work so hard to woo a girl in my life. Sex was easy between us, but the minute I offered her more, she turned into a damn turtle. Even if the more I offered was just a fistful of flowers.

I wouldn’t let her slip away from me. If I could be patient and find the perfect design in a slab of wood, I could certainly wait out Kinleigh.

I hoped.

But for now, I knew how to make her open up for me. Even if it was just her body.

I slipped under her sweatshirt, cupped her breast and gently tugged at one tip. I let her hair fall and used the other hand to slip between her thighs. I groaned into her neck when I found just skin under the loose hem of her shorts.

Her curls teased my cheek as I searched out that little spot that made her purr against me. Her pulse fluttered under my mouth and I bit down softly, adding more pressure as I circled her tight little clit.