Single Dad's Christmas Present: A Dad's Best Friend Romance Read online

  I wished Amber a quick good night before going up the stairs to my room. I’m just a man. What did I expect? I unzipped my pants to stroke myself with a low and muffled groan. I was helpless against what my body needed. I just wanted to bury myself between those toned legs and to feel her wet flesh in the palm of my hands. I could hear her moans in my ears as her hands rested on my hips, guiding my frantic thrusts into her body.

  My release came down hard. I sagged over into the bed in relief, sucking in deep breaths to calm my racing heart. That was when shame flooded through the haze of pleasure. I had done it. I had gone to the one place I had vowed not to do, but I couldn’t resist it any longer.

  I had no how idea how much longer I could last with Amber in the house.

  Chapter 12

  Amber

  Gage Devlin had been naked in the shower with me. Even better than that? I had gotten a glimpse of how well-equipped he was in the downstairs department. There was no doubt in my head now that having sex with Gage would be the best I’ve ever known. He’d blow Scott out of the water. He already did in so many ways.

  It had been hard, though, to hear him call out for Marcie in the depths of his fever. I had caught sight of those tears in his eyes when he realized it was me, not his late wife. I refused to let it sting too much. Both of us were grieving our relationships in different ways. I had only been with Scott for three years before our marriage came crashing down. Gage had been with Marcie for nearly eleven years, if I counted right. It was natural for the both of us to be carrying this sort of emotional baggage around. Our kids carried it around, too.

  My heart clenched, thinking of Lily throughout the week. She had lost interest in girl’s clothes since her mother’s death, but she had made camp in the center of my guest room while looking through my bag of makeup. It instantly reminded me of the times I would watch my mother doll up for the day, and my heart swelled with a new grief, thinking of how Lily no longer had that connection. Until now.

  The sound of the sliding glass doors opening drew me out of my thoughts. I twisted around from where I was seated on the couch, wrapped up in a thick blanket with a book in my lap. Gage carried in the fourth box of chopped wood from outside. He set the box down on the bricks around the fireplace with a sigh.

  “A foot of snow is being forecasted tonight,” Gage said, slipping his gloves off. The tip of his nose was red from the cold. “If we need any more wood to keep warm, I’ll grab some throughout the night.”

  I closed my book to set it on the coffee table. “Do you think we will lose power up here?”

  “Yes,” he replied simply. “It happens more than you think.” He caught sight of the panic spreading through me. “Don’t worry. I have a generator to run the house if we really need to. The fireplaces in here tend to keep us pretty cozy. We’ll just have to sleep down here with candle lights.”

  “Even the furnace won’t be on?” I asked anxiously. The thought of being snowed in with Gage wasn’t entirely a bad prospect. It was the freezing my ass off in the middle of the night that didn’t sound pleasant. Temperatures in Montana had a tendency to drop into the negative digits, even more than Colorado.

  Gage frowned at me. “Most likely, no. I can run the generator enough to keep the furnace going. Will that be better?”

  “If it isn’t a problem,” I started, but Gage shook his head at me.

  He tossed a large log into the already smoldering fire before heading down in the direction of the basement. I picked at the corner of my book while gazing out the windows. The sky was already covered in thick grey clouds. Upstairs, I could hear Lily and Ethan playing in her room. They were excited for another few days of snow. It meant that Lily didn’t have to go to school if the roads were too treacherous and slick to drive on.

  I listened to Ethan’s bubbly voice as he played along with Lily. All traces from the nightmare last night was gone. He had woken up as usual with a bright smile, but I saw it lingering in his eyes the same way my dreams haunted me. His screams had stirred me out of my own nightmare about Scott. It had felt so real. I could smell his breath and the wet spit in my face. I could feel the heat of his hands on my arms, and the pain of his fingers digging into my skin. No matter what I did anymore, or how far I ran, Scott still managed to find a way back into my life to haunt me.

  In three weeks, we had a custody hearing in front of a judge. Neither one of us was willing to mediate when it came to Ethan, so we bypassed mediation to go to court in front of a judge. A part of me wondered if Scott had shown up to my parents’ home, searching for me since he knew that they were gone.

  Just yesterday, I had turned the TV on to let Ethan see my father on the screen as he left a congressional meeting with his fellow peers. Scott kept track of things like that, but my phone remained silent. No one called to warn me that he was on his way up to Montana.

  I rubbed at my aching head. For days, I had popped Vitamin C to keep from getting Gage’s cold. I didn’t want to go delirious with a fever. There was no telling what sort of secrets would come spilling out of my mouth. My fantasy about finishing that shower with Gage in there with me, for example.

  I still couldn’t erase those images of his taut and well-muscled ass cheeks when he stepped in the shower, bumping into me with a hip. He was all hard lines and coiled muscles beneath his thick skin from years of being out in the wilderness. Water had trailed down through the patch of chest hair and past a flat and toned stomach, before disappearing into the thick curl of hair between his legs.

  My core ached thinking of it. He was just pure masculinity, a real man who could take care of himself without any help from modern day accommodations. If the world ended tomorrow, I knew without a doubt that Ethan and I would be safe under Gage’s watch.

  “Here,” he said.

  I looked up in surprise to find Gage setting a cup of hot cocoa on the coffee table next to my book.

  “For you,” he said. “You look like you need a pick me up.”

  The thoughtfulness touched a part of me. I smiled up at him in appreciation as he disappeared once again to get ready for the incoming snowstorm. Picking up the mug, I studied the generous amount of whipped cream on the top with a sprinkle of what seemed to be cinnamon and nutmeg. I took a sip with a sigh of pleasure.

  Everything about Gage was drastically different from Scott. There were little things that Gage did throughout the day that spoke of genuine compassion and care. Bringing me a cup of hot cocoa was one of those gestures that brought tears to my eyes because I couldn’t remember the last time anyone ever made me feel cared for like this. Scott had never bothered to keep up his charade of being a chivalrous gentleman after our marriage vows. We were already married. He had me, and he didn’t believe that I would ever leave.

  A cold chill went up my spine when I had gone through our house in a hurry to grab only my clothes and Ethan’s things. Those white walls had become my prison. There was no warmth in that house, only dark shadows and cold temperatures because Scott refused to pay for a high furnace bill.

  Now, I was seated in front of a blazing fire with Ethan and Lily’s laughter echoing from upstairs. It still felt surreal to be here with Gage, going about our lives like we were meant to be together. The perfect sense of domestic bliss. That was the best way I could describe it.

  The shrill sound of the phone ringing from the kitchen cut through the warm and comfortable haze. I got up, knowing that Gage couldn’t hear it from the basement, and picked up the landline.

  “Gage Devlin’s house,” I said formally.

  “Hi, honey. It’s Mom. Is that how Gage really wants you to answer the phone now?”

  I smiled at the warm-hearted jest. “No. I just do it out of courtesy since his work does call the landline if they can’t get through to him on his cell phone.”

  “Cell service must be down then. I tried calling your phone.”

  “There’s a snowstorm heading in,” I replied, looking out the window. “It’s going to dump a
couple feet of snow here. What are you doing?”

  “Enjoying breakfast with a few friends here. It’s sunny and warm out right now. I’m enjoying a dress at the moment.”

  “Way to rub it in,” I said, sitting back down on the couch. “I’m assuming you are calling here for a reason?”

  “I wanted to let you know that I’ll be back in two weeks. I’m going to arrange for security to come get you from Gage’s house. We can have a proper mother-daughter chat then.”

  “You mean that you’re going to lecture me, right?”

  “I wouldn’t say lecture. I’ll be in touch, dear. I have to go. I love you, sweetheart. I hope that you and Ethan are doing okay there. It’s so kind of Gage to take you and Ethan in for us.”

  “Yeah,” I said thickly. “He’s been very good to us by taking us in. Everything’s fine here. Don’t worry about us.”

  “I’m your mother. I’m always going to worry about you.”

  I hung the phone back up. My stomach twisted into uneasy knots. I doubted that my mom would feel so appreciative of Gage’s help if she knew how much I desired him. Just the suggestion of it would give her a heart attack.

  “Mommy,” Ethan called out, running into the kitchen to wrap his arms around my legs. “Can we go outside to watch the snow when it comes down?”

  I smoothed back his hair to look up as Lily came into the kitchen, too, with Gage right behind them. He shrugged his shoulders when I looked up at him.

  “Sure,” I said. “Only for a little bit, though. I don’t want any of us getting sick when are snowed in.”

  The air was heavy with the promise of snow when we stepped outside. I watched as Lily and Ethan scooped up snow, still frozen and cold from the last snowfall, to throw at one another.

  “Wait for it,” Gage whispered into my ear, his shoulder brushing against mine as he looked up at the sky. “It’ll start off as a trickle before it really comes down.”

  Fat snowflakes fluttered down from the sky slowly. A cold wind ripped through the evergreen pines. I shivered against the onslaught of it as the steady trickle turned into a torrential downpour of wet and heavy snow. Gage called the kids in after a few minutes when he noted that our coats were getting saturated from the snow.

  We ate dinner together while watching the snow continue to pile up on the front porch, no matter how many times Gage went out there to shovel it off. He gave up hope when the electricity shut off as expected and pulled out a few candles to burn.

  “You’re going to love this, Ethan,” Lily said, taking her sleeping bag from Gage when he returned from the spare room. “It’s like camping in a warm house. We get to sleep on the couches!”

  I smiled when Ethan clapped his hands happily. All we had was the light from the fireplace, along with the candle lights, as the night stretched into complete darkness. Not even moonlight could escape through the thick clouds above in the sky. It was well close to ten o’clock when Lily and Ethan finally settled down before drifting off into a peaceful sleep on opposite couches.

  I tucked an extra blanket around Ethan to make sure he kept warm while Gage fed the fire with another log. It wasn’t until I turned to look back at him that I realized we were alone in front of a blazing fireplace with candles scattered throughout the house to guide us around the dark.

  A shiver went up my spine at the temptation. Something had shifted between us since yesterday. Seeing Gage naked in the shower had done something to me, and I felt powerless against it now.

  Gage’s eyes darkened in the shadows of the firelight as he slowly closed the metal doors to keep the fire contained. He picked up a spare blanket from the floor. My heart pounded heavily in my chest when he draped it over my shoulders.

  “Let’s go into the kitchen,” Gage whispered softly. “I don’t want to wake the kids now that they are asleep.”

  “Right.”

  I followed him into the kitchen where a few candles were lit on the kitchen counter. The winter air seemed to seep through the windows and cracks in the door. Thankful for the blanket, I wrapped it around myself as Gage took hold of a candle before turning to look at me again.

  Desire. I could see it swimming in the depths of his eyes that were a now a stormy blue. The color reminded me of standing on the beach when a thunderstorm rolled in from over the ocean. The waters had been choppy, and the wind had been strong. Yet, it was peaceful. There was something peaceful about getting lost in a storm that I knew that I couldn’t fight against.

  Heat seared through me in reply to the feverish look in Gage’s eyes. This time, however, it wasn’t a delirious fever. It was the look of a man ready to ravage someone after holding back for a long period of time. This was wrong. A part of me cautioned that getting involved like this could spell disaster for everybody involved, but I didn’t care.

  I threw caution to the wind for one night. That was all I needed. That was all I wanted. So, I let the blanket drop away from my shoulders. I looked into Gage’s eyes, pouring every inch of desire inside me into that look. He set the candle down before holding out a hand for me to take. This was it. I no longer wanted to spend the rest of my life wondering what it would be like to have Gage for myself, even it was for one night. I just wanted him, and only him.

  Chapter 13

  Gage

  I watched the emotions in Amber’s eyes shift in the candlelight as she reached for my hand. I couldn’t tear my eyes away from her, even if my life depended on it. The candle light accented the softness of her face and her curves perfectly. Those red lips were plump and ready for a kiss. It took all my strength to not lean in there to kiss her madly.

  Something had shifted over the past twenty-four hours. I couldn’t place my thumb on it, but I didn’t care to. I could feel the spark of it between the both of us in the dim light of the candle.

  Her soft and delicate fingers brushed against my own. Clasping them gently, I pulled Amber a bit closer to me. Her breathing rate increased as she looked up at me.

  We were on the cusp of crossing a very thin line into dangerous territory. I could feel it from the way Amber held her breath. Her fingers and palm were damp with nervous sweat. Or was it my own nervous sweat? I could feel a trickle of moisture go down the back of my neck that had nothing to do with the fire in the living room.

  Amber glanced back over her shoulder to make sure that the kids were still sound asleep on the couches. Neither one of their tiny bodies moved from the couch.

  “We should go upstairs,” Amber whispered, her fingers squeezing mine. “I don’t want the kids to wake up.”

  My throat went dry with lust as Amber tugged me in the direction of the stairs. Wake up from what? I wanted to ask that question, but there was no doubt in my head what was about to happen between the two of us. My legs followed behind Amber up the stairs, even though my brain was screaming not to follow her. I was about to immerse myself in something that could not only cost me Amber, but also my friendship with Beau Roselynn. Even future job contracts.

  I didn’t want to lose Amber, either. It had been over fifteen years since I’d been in a relationship. Nine of those years were marriage and routine, while the first part had been dating and singlehood. Sex back then had felt natural. Now, I felt like a damn teenager all over again about to lose my virginity for the first time. I wasn’t sure if I would even be able to last long with Amber’s taut and beautiful body squirming beneath my own.

  My cock was already hard in anticipation. The upstairs portion of the house was mildly warm thanks to the fireplace downstairs, but I had set the furnace to a mild 70 degrees to ease Amber’s worries about freezing in the middle of the night. I distantly heard the click of the thermostat turn on followed by dull roar of the generator in the basement kicking on as well, to power the furnace.

  Amber walked straight past the guest room to my room. She pulled me in before I could say a word, and shut the door behind me. The click of the door lock only added to my arousal.

  “Amber,” I started, t
rying to regain control of my senses. “We need to talk about this before anything happens.”

  “Okay,” she said. “What do you want to talk about?’

  She appeared in front of me. A ghost of a smile tugged at her lips as she took the candle from my hand.

  “For one, I don’t think this is a good idea,” I said while she set the candle on top of my dresser.

  “Why is that?”

  “There are a lot of reasons. I’m sure you could name a few.”

  “I could,” Amber agreed quietly. “I want to hear your reasons, Gage, because mine are weak at the moment.”

  I sucked in a deep breath through my clenched teeth. This was the moment I had fantasized about since the day Amber had stepped into my house. We were alone in the privacy of my bedroom. And both of us were free to cave in to one another, but I forced myself to hold back. I had to diffuse the situation before I was too far gone in my own desire to see straight.

  “I don’t want to hurt you, for starters.”

  “I don’t think that’s possible. I’ve been around for a few weeks now, Gage. I don’t think you’re capable of hurting a person intentionally. Trust me. I know from personal experience.”