“Give it to me. It’s mine,” he growls before he sucks my clit into his mouth. His tongue strokes me back and forth. I cry out again, my hips thrusting forward. Crane grabs my hips, keeping me in place so I don’t fall off the desk.
My eyes flutter open as I start to come back down to earth. Crane slips my panties back into place before he rises to his feet and then rights my skirt.
“That was…” I trail off, not having words to describe how good it was.
“Perfection,” he responds before kissing me again. He groans into my mouth when I deepen the kiss. I want more. I want to give him the same pleasure he just gave me.
“Is it too late to—” I jerk back from the kiss and turn my head to see Martha standing in the doorway of the library. We closed twenty minutes ago, but I hadn’t locked the door. I never do until I leave.
“It’s fine,” I tell her. Crane grabs my hips, lifting me off the counter to put me on my feet. My eyes catch the screen of his phone as he snags it off the counter where he’d dropped it. Six missed calls show on the screen.
Six? Someone must really need to get a hold of him. My first thought goes to another woman. Someone from back in the city. Maybe not a girlfriend but a fling or booty call.
“I just wanted to grab one of these.” Martha shakes me from my thoughts. She goes straight for the romance holiday book table and snags up two. I proceed to check her out as quickly as I can. The entire time, she eyes up Crane, who is clicking away on his phone now. Who the heck is he talking to?
Martha slips back out of the library, and I’m sure she’s going to let a handful of people know that she walked in on Crane and me kissing. Luckily, that’s all she saw. A few seconds sooner and she really would have had something to talk about. I peek over at Crane. I’d let him go down on me right here on the front desk in the library.
What’s gotten into me? Crane, that’s what. A man I know very little about. One I think only grows more mysterious as I grow closer to him. How is that possible? I don’t know, but it is.
13
CRANE
My phone buzzes again, but I ignore it as I open the car door for Liza.
She slides in, and I lean down and fasten her seat belt.
Once I’m in the driver’s seat, I head toward the diner.
“We’re going to dinner?” she asks.
“I heard your stomach growl.” I reach out and take her hand.
She looks straight ahead and worries at her bottom lip.
“What is it, babe?” I squeeze her fingers.
“Nothing. I just …”
“You can tell me.” I hope she doesn’t feel like I took things too far in the library. Hell, I want to take them a lot further. She’s irresistible, and I still have a trace of her on my tongue.
“I, um, saw you had a lot of missed calls.” She glances at me from the corner of her eye. “And you were talking to someone.”
“That’s just work.”
“It was?” She turns all the way toward me now.
“Yeah. I did sort of take the day off unannounced.” I shrug.
“Oh, that makes sense.” Her face brightens. “Actually, that makes total sense.”
“Who did you think it was?”
She looks away again. “I didn’t know if maybe you were seeing someone before you came to Snow Hills.”
“No.”
“You weren’t seeing anyone?”
“The only person I’m seeing is you, Liza. I’m not interested in anyone else.”
She beams at that, and my tension begins to ease. I can’t exactly give her details on why Mayor McGovern was blowing up my phone, but I’m not lying to her. He was calling me incessantly as part of my work. The asshole is impatient for news about how Snow Hills pulls off the win every year. But I don’t have anything for him. Not yet. Liza doesn’t even know who the judges are.
“Does your mom talk to the Spirit of the Season judges?” I ask.
She cocks her head to the side. “Not that I know of. Why do you ask?”
“I was just curious. It seems like a big deal to win it, especially three years in a row. I bet she’s really proud of your work and would love to brag about you to the judges.”
“It’s silly, really. I want to decorate because I want everyone in town to feel loved and warmed by the holidays. Like I said, I’m not into competition.” She sighs. “I wouldn’t care if we didn’t enter the competition at all.”
“But your mother insists?” I ask as we pull into the diner parking lot.
“Not ‘insists.’ I mean, we pay the entry fee every year, but if I told her I didn’t want to do it, I’m certain she’d sit it out for me. But it makes her happy, and plenty of the residents love being winners, too. I wouldn’t want to take that away from them.”