CupidsChoice Read online

  “Right back atcha,” she said, and stepped back so he could come inside.

  He was rockin’ the jacket and button-down shirt over jeans look in a big way.

  And he had flowers.

  “It’s not my birthday,” she told him, taking the gorgeous bouquet of red, orange, yellow and dark pink ranunculus as he came inside.

  She blushed when he bent and kissed her cheek.

  “I came over empty-handed once,” he said, as though that were an explanation.

  She looked up at him, not sure what to say next. In her past, guys had shown up for dates empty-handed all the time. Did this mean chivalry was not dead?

  Who knew?

  “They’re really beautiful, Cooper.” She stepped a little way into the living room and set them on her coffee table. “Thank you.”

  “Did you do all this for me?” he asked, his eyes scanning her house.

  She’d lit candles throughout—in the living and dining rooms and even in the kitchen. The lights that were controlled by dimmer switches were turned fairly low, and she’d put the mellow blues channel on Pandora.

  “I have to tell you, this looks more like a seduction scene than a birthday party,” he said, his eyes dark in the low light but clearly glittering with amusement.

  He shrugged out of his jacket when she reached for it.

  “How would you know?” she asked, managing to hang it on the coat tree without burying her face in the collar to see if it smelled like him the way she wanted. “You said you’ve never had a birthday party before.”

  “But I have been seduced a time or two,” he told her.

  “I’ll bet you have,” she muttered.

  She realized he must have thought she had a no-shoes policy in her house as he toed off his shoes. The fact that she’d completely forgotten to put shoes on and was barefoot might have had something to do with giving him that impression.

  “So the concept isn’t completely unbelievable, despite your former aversion to me?”

  Damn him. He looked so smug she wanted to throw herself on him and kiss the look off his freakin’ face. “Not completely.”

  “What changed your mind?” he asked with a cocky smile.

  That kiss. The rainwater. The fact that he hadn’t once made her feel as if she was crazy because of the way she’d reacted to the tornado warning.

  That kiss.

  Hell.

  “Would you like something to drink?” she asked, turning away before she did something she wanted to save until much later.

  Like show him to her room and start ripping his clothes off.

  “I have wine,” she picked up the bottle of red she’d opened earlier and turned to show it to him. He was right behind her. “I also have some disgusting old scotch my brother RJ gave me when he was trying to teach me to like it last Christmas, and beer if you’d like something more pedestrian.”

  His eyebrows went up and he laughed once. “What does that mean?”

  She shrugged, toying with him. “Aren’t all doctors the fine wine, old scotch and custom-made Armani jacket type?” she asked with a nod toward the door, where his custom-made Armani jacket hung on her got-it-on-clearance-from-Target coat tree.

  He took the bottle and eyed the label with a haughty look. “Yes we are, the same way all nurses are Nascar-watching, cheap–beer-drinking floozies.”

  Well, well, well. Not only was he chivalrous, kind and really damn sexy outside of the hospital, but it turned out he had a sense of humor as well.

  She smiled as something warm came alive inside her. “Good one.”

  His dimple appeared without a smile and he slid her a sideways look. “Thank you.”

  He picked up one of the two wineglasses she’d set out just in case and poured. Bree waited until he poured himself a glass as well, then raised hers.

  “Happy Birthday, Dr. Bennett,” she told him.

  He touched his glass to hers. “Thank you, Nurse Trenton.”

  He still wasn’t smiling, but that flirty dimple was showing. And he didn’t drink. He bent and kissed her instead.

  Who needed wine when there was Cooper to make her dizzy with a kiss?

  She swayed when he straightened and sipped from his glass.

  “I have something for you,” she told him, taking a fortifying drink from her glass as she moved around him. In her small house, it wasn’t a long trip from the kitchen to the dining room that was so small it only fit a four-person dining table.

  “You do?” he asked, sounding genuinely surprised.

  “Yes, I do,” she pulled out one of her dining chairs and motioned for him to sit.

  As he did she picked up the gift she’d gotten him. The idea had come to her as she’d been waking up from sleep that afternoon. She’d run out to get it between baking and frosting the cake she’d made for him, and when she handed it to him, she knew he thought the idea was as funny as she had.

  He simply stared a moment, then the dimple appeared, followed quickly by a smile that made her grin in response.

  “I thought it might come in handy,” she said, watching him run his long fingers through the curly ribbon she’d tied around the curved handle of the black umbrella. “You know, for the next time you’re caught in a monsoon. Or Midwestern weather.”

  He laughed. “Yes, I could use one of these,” he told her, and the look in his eyes when he raised them to hers had her belly fluttering again.

  She slid the cake sitting in the center of the table closer.

  “I hope you weren’t kidding about liking chocolate,” she warned, “because there’s a whole lot of it here.”

  She’d baked a chocolate cake, slathered it in the heaven that was her Grandma’s special chocolate icing recipe and covered the sides with curled chocolate shavings. Out of the corner of her eye she could see he was looking at it with interest.

  “You baked this yourself?”

  “With my own two hands.”

  He looked up at her. “For me?”

  “No, Cooper. I bake random chocolate cakes all the time.” She clicked the trigger on her candle lighter and lit the wick in the lone candle stuck in the center. “Make a wish.”

  He was still looking at her. There was another long, silent moment before he leaned over and blew out the candle, then set the umbrella on the table and took her hand. He pulled her into the space between his legs and gently tugged on her arm so she sat.

  “This is by far the best birthday party I’ve ever had,” he told her, his voice deep, quiet, his expression strange.

  “Better than a ticker-tape parade?” she asked, liking the solid strength of his thigh under her bottom and his arm around her waist.

  “So much better than that,” he whispered, holding her jaw lightly, fingers on one side, thumb on the other, pulling her closer.

  There was no lingering touch first. Not this time. He opened his mouth and she did the same. His tongue dipped inside and hers chased it when it retreated. She angled her head and wrapped her arms around his shoulders when he came back with more pressure and a deeper plunge. Oh she was in so much trouble with this man.

  She squirmed against his leg, ready for him in an instant.

  To hell with the cake, she thought, indescribably happy to let him continue to have his way with her mouth. To hell with the stupid things that had happened at work in the past. None of them mattered when he was kissing her that way.

  She didn’t want it to ever stop.

  Bree reached over and pushed the cake plate back to the center of the table, out of the way. She broke the kiss and stood long enough to shift, hike the loose skirt of her dress a little higher and straddle his legs.

  “But the cake.” His protest wasn’t very convincing. He was breathing just as hard as she was and the pupils of his eyes were dilated wide.

  “The cake will be fine,” she assured him, shifting higher up his thighs.

  His eyes dropped to her mouth, her chest, then lower. “What if it’s a long while?”


  She pulled the fabric of her skirt up higher, exposing a whole lot of skin.

  Good thing she’d shaved all the way up her legs earlier, just in case.

  “Here’s a little known fact about my cakes,” she said, draping the gathered fabric of the skirt over the crease where her legs met her hips, knowing full well he was probably getting a peek at her panties. “They just get better with age. Kind of like wine.”

  His eyes lifted to hers. “We don’t have to do this.”

  “Of course we don’t have to.” She unbuttoned a couple of buttons on his shirt and helped herself to the feel of the hair, the skin on the exposed V of his chest. “But don’t you wonder what might have happened if we’d ended up at the party Saturday night?” She traced his solid collarbones with her fingers, smoothed them over the strong muscles in his shoulders. “If I’d simply played along with the rules of the game?”

  “You have no idea how much time I’ve spent wondering that exact thing.” He gripped her hips and pulled her higher up his lap.

  She couldn’t say she’d thought about him that way before Saturday night, but she couldn’t deny she hadn’t been able to stop thinking about him that way since.

  If he’d agreed to go to Petra’s party simply to get her attention, he had it.

  Oh boy, did he have it.

  “Tell me what would have happened,” he said, eyes on hers as his fingertips brushed over her skin just under the fabric gathered on her upper thighs.

  Bree braced her feet on the rungs under his seat and finished unbuttoning his shirt.

  “Well, since it’s such a long drive here from Petra’s place, we would have probably had to use one of the spare bedrooms there.” She pushed the front of his shirt aside and looked him over. “Wow, what a chest,” she breathed.

  “Or we could have gone to my apartment, which is right downtown.” He leaned forward and kissed her neck where it curved into her shoulder, his hands now under her skirt, stroking the skin of her ass.

  “I don’t know.” She sighed and angled her head to give him better access to that spot. “It’s kind of hot to stay at Petra and Jude’s for the night.” Her hands slid up his shoulders and neck. “I mean, the walls aren’t paper thin or anything, but you can hear the sounds of everyone else in the house having a good time.”

  His head came up. “While you’re sitting in a room alone reading, right?”

  She couldn’t explain why, but that tiny show of playful jealousy made her smile.

  “Of course,” she assured him.

  “That’s what I thought.” He pulled her up high enough on his lap that she could feel his cock—thick, hard and straining against the front of his jeans. He pulled the strap of her dress off one shoulder. “Go on.”

  She sighed as his mouth went back to exploring.

  “So there we are, in your bedroom in your apartment…”

  “Mmm, much better.”

  “Both of us naked.”

  He nipped at her shoulder. “I like where this is going.”

  “You sitting on the edge of the bed with me kneeling in front of you.”

  He groaned and used his hands to rock her against him.

  “Your cock in my mouth,” she whispered in his ear.

  His head came up again. “The first time?”

  She blinked, caught off guard. “Why not?”

  He merely looked at her. “You mean it doesn’t have to be a special occasion?”

  She bit the inside of her cheek to keep from laughing.

  “Cooper, what kind of women have you been dating?”

  He loosened his grip on her ass and shifted so they were no longer plastered together at the crotch.

  “Well, I was married for ten years, and then I haven’t dated since that ended.”

  She hadn’t been expecting that. Not at all.

  “That explains so much,” she whispered with an incredulous shake of the head.

  In her eyes it explained it all—the perpetual bad mood that she’d thought was his personality and the tension he created when he walked into all rooms that were not patient rooms. Dude just needed to relax and no one had been helping him with that.

  He frowned. “What does that mean?”

  She laughed, wrapped her arms around his shoulders and moved so they were touching in all the right places again, effectively distracting him. “You know, today is your birthday, which qualifies as a special occasion in my world. We can use that as an excuse if it’ll make you feel better about the first-time thing.”

  “Oh, don’t get me wrong, I don’t have an issue with the first-time thing,” he said, brushing her hair back over her shoulders. “But let’s save it for a little later. When I come with you for the first time, I want to be buried so deep inside you.”

  He gathered her hair as though he was going to put it in a ponytail for her and she could feel him wrapping it around his hand.

  “I want your entire body wrapped around me.” He pulled gently and her head fell back, making her back arch, and her pussy pressed hard against his erection. “Your fingernails digging into my skin and your teeth sunk into my shoulder.” His teeth grazed her jaw and she shuddered. “I want your legs squeezing the breath out of me, your cunt throbbing and tight around me as you come so hard you forget your name.”

  His free hand came up to cradle her breast through her dress and she moaned.

  “Whatever you want, Cooper,” she said with a sigh, grinding harder against his cock. “It is your birthday after all.”

  Chapter Five

  She pushed his open shirt down his shoulders. “Tell me you have a condom.”

  He’d been trying for weeks, no months, to figure out how to get her to at least talk to him. Suddenly she was in his lap, skirt hiked up to her hips, wiggling deliciously as he helped himself to the delicate skin of her neck.

  Maybe there was something to that whole birthday thing after all.

  “I have a condom.” Actually he had three, but he didn’t want her to know how optimistic he’d been feeling about getting invited back to her house.

  “Get it,” she whispered in his ear.

  He let go of her hair and stuck his hand in his pocket while she went for his fly.

  He put the condom on the table, took her face in his hands. “Let’s go to your room.”

  She shook her head and closed the distance between their mouths. His body became an even more urgent bundle of need as her hands bumped and brushed against his cock through denim while she worked the button fly.

  She broke free with a gasp. “I can’t wait that long. I want it here. Now.”

  Her hand dove inside his underwear and gripped him.

  Yeah, he was going to give it to her wherever she wanted it.

  “Holy shit, Cooper,” she said and sat back on his lap, looking down as she freed him. “What kind of heat are you packin’ down here?”

  He ground his teeth, desperately grasping for self-control and getting perilously close to the edge of losing it as she tugged and stroked.

  “You’re so thick.”

  He was going to come out of his skin. Or all over her hand.

  She licked her lips and his hips jerked in her direction.

  “I think that’s the most beautiful thing I’ve ever seen.”

  He looked down. He did seem bigger with her small hand around him at any rate.

  “I think your idea of beautiful might be a little off kilter,” he told her, then sucked in a sharp breath as she stroked the slit at the tip with her thumb.

  He pulled her close and dove into that luscious mouth of hers. She moaned and he echoed the sound when she squeezed him so tight he thought he might pass out.

  And then she was climbing off his lap. “Put the condom on,” she told him, reaching under her skirt to pull her underpants off.

  He pushed his jeans down over his hips and gladly did as he’d been told. She straddled him again, her feet braced on the rungs under the seat of his chair. He held her st
eady, his hands on her waist as she took him in hand again and showed him the way to heaven. His pulse rushed through his ears and his teeth ground together. She was incredibly tight and so hot the rest of his overheated body felt cool by comparison.

  “Oh, Cooper,” she whispered, slowly taking him all the way inside.

  He kissed her harder, deeper, and she tightened around him. Her hips rocked in response and the tiny little movement made every single nerve ending in his body crackle with electricity.

  He broke the kiss with a gasp and pushed her skirt up over her hips. “We need to get rid of this.” There was a zipper in the back. He managed to get it down after only fumbling with it once and pulled it off over her head.

  He didn’t know whether there had been a bra built into her dress or if she simply hadn’t been wearing one, but the moment it came off she was completely naked. She was small and curvy, but not soft the way he’d imagined. Oh her skin was as heavenly as fine silk, but beneath that silky skin her curves were firm, muscular.

  “Now that is beautiful,” he whispered, running his hands up her thighs, over her hips, caressing her sides and smoothing over her back. He drew her body to his so their stomachs touched and her incredible breasts were pressed against his chest.

  She wrapped her arms around him, dug her hands into his hair and rose up.

  “Oh God,” he gasped when she slowly lowered herself over him again.

  She rested her forehead on his. “Feel good?”

  “Amazing.” He slid his hands over her ass. “Faster,” he prompted, lifting her up then pulling her down and meeting her with a quick, upward thrust.

  She braced her hands on his shoulders. “Like this?”

  “More,” he prompted, using the hold he had on her to show her.

  Her eyes rolled closed and her mouth fell open.

  His head fell back when she sped up. “Yes, baby, just like that.”

  She whispered his name in a shaky breath and the grip she had on his shoulders tightened. Cooper lifted his head, pressed the palm of one hand to her belly and used his thumb to find the swollen nub of her clit.