Sadie's Little Christmas - Maren Smith Page 0,32
tub until she found the controls. Turning the jets on rekindled the bubbles. In fact, it rekindled the bubbles pretty darn quickly and brought Daddy rushing in to shut it off again. He was only barely in time to keep the frothy bubbles from engulfing her completely. A waterfall of bubbles had already spilled over the side of the tub onto the tile floor.
“No, no, no,” he laughed. “Not with a bubble bath. I put too much in for the jets. Do you want to wash your hair?”
“No,” she said, hugging her knees, although not because she was embarrassed. There wasn’t a lot he could see, not with all the bubbles shrouding her. She was more embarrassed by the urge she had to stand up and let him see her, in the guise of letting him help dry her off.
“All right, then.” Picking up the towel she’d used before, he held it out to her. “Out you come.”
In her fantasies, she wanted to stand up bold, confident, and sexy, knowing how good she looked and that she was more than woman enough to please him visually. The reality, however, was she was polka-dotted with bruises. She stood up a lot more shyly.
He wrapped her up, covering her completely, and when she stepped out onto the bathmat, rubbed her dry. He didn’t spend any more time on her breasts than he did on her back, but they still grew heavy under his touch. Her nipples beaded, and her puss grew throbby all over again.
Her nightgown was probably at the bottom of the lake along with her car, but that was all right. Daddy had bought her a new one from the store. Decorated in frolicking bunnies, the t-shirt style nightie covered her almost to her knees. It was soft against her skin, although that might have been simply because her nerves were so sensitized to the calloused caress of his hands as he dressed her again.
Taking out her braids, he brushed her hair, then down the hall they went to her bedroom—the pink-and-white painted Little room with its queen-sized four-poster bed and the gauzy netting that swooped down around it like curtains. Right now, they were drawn back and tied to each of the four posters. If she wanted, she could untie the ribbons, and she’d have her own private fort in bed.
Peeling back the blankets, he held one corner up for her. “In you go.”
She hopped up onto the high mattress, the anticipation killing her. It wasn’t half as biting, however, as the disappointment when he drew the blankets up around her, covering her. He sat on the side of her bed, propping himself over her, one hand braced on the mattress by her hip.
“Are you going to get in with me?” she asked, picking at the folds of the blanket with her fingers.
“Not tonight.”
The disappointment turned sharp and cutting.
“Not even if I want you to?”
“Believe me, I’m glad you want me to,” he replied, tapping her lightly on the tip of her nose. “But I’m not sure yet of your reasons for wanting me, and I don’t want what we do between us to feel like a one-night stand.”
Her heart skipped a beat at the same time frustration mounted.
Taking the blankets, he tucked them right up around her chin.
“Where’s Spankles?”
She pointed toward the foot of the bed where her duffel bag was still resting, fully packed on the floor. It was an old habit left over from her foster care days. She never settled in anywhere until she knew she was going to stay, something that had likely made it easy for her roommate while he was in full freak-out mode, trying to get rid of all evidence of her.
She plucked at the blankets as Derek went to her bag. He unpacked it, starting with Spankles, which he handed to her, and ending with her mismatched set of clothes, which he tucked into the dresser. He didn’t say a word about what few things she had. When he came back to the bed, he simply bent and pressed a warm, lingering kiss on top of her head.
“If you need me, I’m right down the hall. Pleasant dreams, darlin’.”
On his way out, he turned on the light in her adjacent bathroom before cracking the door.
And they hadn’t even had sex.
God, she wanted sex.
He said he didn’t want her to feel like a one-night stand. She’d never had a one-night stand, but right now, she’d happily have thrown herself into one