Neighborly Complications (Stories of Serendipity) Read online

With a low growl, his lips devoured hers, while he swept her into his arms and carried her up the stairs to a bedroom. He laid her down on the bed and climbed on top of her, still kissing her. The kisses moved down her throat to her neck. One of his hands came up under her shirt and cupped a breast. She sat up and took off her tank top, to give him what he wanted.

  “My God, Claire, you are stunning,” he breathed. She reached up and grabbed his face with both hands, and pulled him back to her mouth, kissing him hungrily. He pulled her up so they were facing each other, and his hands toyed with her breasts, tweaking the nipples until she was gasping for air. She undid his towel so that he sprang free. Intimidated, she looked into Max’s face, mouth agape.

  He smiled sheepishly, “Don’t worry, I’ve never gotten it stuck in anything it hasn’t come loose from eventually.” And then he lowered his mouth to her breasts. She fell back on the pillow and just let him go to town. He really knew how to use his mouth. His tongue flicked her nipple, then sucked it, then flicked it, then bit it, then tweaked it, then sucked it, and on and on and on. It was pure torture. She moaned with the sheer pleasure of it. His hands found the clasp on her jeans, and slowly, he unzipped the zipper and pulled them off. His mouth left a trail of kisses from one breast to the other, then down to her navel, then lower. She grabbed his hair, pulled his head back up to her face and kissed him.

  “What are you doing?” She didn’t even recognize her own voice, it was so full of passion.

  “I’m making love to you, Claire. I’m pleasing you. I want to see you.” He lowered his head again, trailing his tongue down to her navel, swirling in circles around her belly button, then going lower still. Max’s fingers slipped inside her panties and pulled them down. His fingers rubbed small circles around the nub, eliciting a startled gasp from her. The circles got wider, creating friction against the folds of her womanhood. His hands spread her legs wide and he dipped his head down to breathe his hot breath against the apex of her thighs. She moaned, there was absolutely no describing this experience. His tongue licked her button, while he breathed his hot breath on it. He licked and sucked, and then while he was doing that, he slipped a finger inside the folds and found the perfect spot inside her to tickle. She moaned and gasped, and bucked, holding his head right where it was, not ever wanting him to stop doing this magic that he was doing to her. As wave of pleasure washed over wave of pleasure, she climaxed around his fingers, screaming his name, while he watched from his perch between her legs.

  “Would you reach into that drawer and get out a condom?” So polite, as if she could move.

  “Nu-uh.” Claire was jelly. There was no way she could move.

  He chuckled and reached over to get one himself, sheathing his – Wow, he really was big. Claire seriously wasn’t sure where all of that was going to fit.

  He lay down next to her and put his hand on her hip. “Are you still okay with this?” He looked at her searchingly.

  “You have got to be kidding me.” Claire grabbed his hair and pulled his lips to hers, kissing him, tasting herself. Drinking deeply of the kiss, he rolled on top of her, putting his weight on his elbows, moving his thighs between hers and entered her in one swift thrust. Claire gasped around his lips, and on his next thrust, she met him sinking him to the hilt in her flesh. She hooked her feet behind his back and thrusted, meeting him every time. She could feel the warmth building again inside. The waves of pleasure crashed down almost immediately, causing her to shudder as she climaxed around him. As he felt her climax, he gave one final thrust and froze on top of her. She looked up at him, to see the painful pleasure of orgasm ripple across his face. He looked down at her, breathing hard and smiled.

  That had never happened to Claire. Never. In. My. Whole. Life.

  “I’ve heard about sex like that. It always sounded so nice.”

  Max chuckled a low, throaty, growly, totally, damned sexy chuckle and spooned behind her, pulling her close, with his hands around her waist. “Nice, huh? I’ll try harder next time.”

  “Max?”

  “Hmm?” His nose was in her hair. His breath was tickling the back of her neck. She liked it.

  “I think I like making things less complicated.”

  His hand crawled up her torso, and stroked a breast, lazily. “Me too.” He mumbled into her neck. “Does this mean I can help you with stuff without you snapping at me?”

  “That depends.”

  “On what?”

  “You can help me, but you’re still not the boss of me.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” She could feel his smile on the back of her neck, and it made her warm. She snuggled closer to him, wiggling her hips to fit into the hard planes of his body.

  “Careful, Claire…” He growled into her neck.

  “Of what?” She asked innocently.

  He shifted his hips against her backside, revealing the evidence of his arousal, and she giggled. He bit the back of her neck gently, sending shivers down her spine.

  “I’m not scared of you, Max.”

  “You would be if you knew all the things I’ve been imagining doing to you since we’ve met…” He hadn’t shaved today, and his mouth on the sensitive skin at the back of her neck sent ripples of delight straight to her core.

  “Show me.” She gasped, as she turned to face him.

  So he did.

  Chapter 11:

  Since Max had furniture in his house, they were sitting at his kitchen table that evening, eating a dinner of grocery store rotisserie chicken, and potato salad.

  “So what’s the plan for your house?” His intense caramel eyes studied her.

  “What do you mean?” Claire answered through a mouthful of potato salad.

  “What do you want to do first?”

  “Find the gold. Duh…I can’t afford anything until I do that. I’m broke.” She picked up a piece of chicken.

  Max thought for a while. “Well, what was the hint your uncle gave you?”

  “All he said was that the gold was hidden well. Those were his exact words, every time anybody asked him.” She took a bite of her drumstick.

  Abruptly, Max stood and grabbed Claire’s hand. “Come on.”

  Dropping the chicken leg, surprised, she said, “What?”

  “He wasn’t hinting. He was telling you.” Max led Claire to his garage, where he had a huge assortment of tools. Grabbing a bucket, he got a sledgehammer and a chisel and raced over to Claire’s house.

  Effortlessly, he pulled the plywood off the well, and lowered himself into it. Realization dawned on Claire, and she eagerly handed him the tools. The well’s circumference was just big enough to accommodate Max’s frame, but there was not enough room to swing the sledgehammer.

  Holding the chisel between his feet, he dropped the sledgehammer straight down as hard as he could, muscles bunching in his back. A small piece of concrete chipped away.

  “This is going to take a while.” He grunted to Claire.

  “What do you want me to do?”

  “I’ll hand you pieces of concrete. You can put them in the bucket, and dump them somewhere when it gets full. That’s about it, for now.”

  “Do you really think it’s here?” She asked.

  “I can’t think of anyplace else it could be. The house itself has been searched thoroughly.”

  Quelling her excitement, Claire watched as piece-by-piece, Max managed to break a layer of concrete out of the old well.

  “How deep do you think it is?” She asked, after watching for a few minutes.

  “There’s really no telling. These wells can be eighty feet deep, and I have no idea how long I can keep this up. But I’ll do it for as long as I can, and then you can take a turn.”

  “Okay.” She continued watching him, plunging the sledgehammer down on top of the chisel, chipping the concrete away, bit by bit.

  As she watched, excitement swelled in her chest. “How much do you think there is?” She was trying not to be greedy and start counting on the windfall, but
she couldn’t stop herself from imagining a priceless treasure, buried under all the concrete.

  “I’ve no idea.” Max grunted, out of breath. He worked for a while longer in silence, excepts for occasional grunts. Eventually, he asked, “Are you ready for a turn down here? I need a drink.”

  “Sure!” Impatiently, Claire waited for Max to pull himself up onto the edge of the well, before she eagerly descended. Trying to mimic Max’s actions he had made look so easy, Claire found she could barely lift the sledgehammer, much less slam it down with the force that he had used.

  “Wow…” She muttered to herself, as she heard Max’s amused chuckle above her. She looked up.

  “Just do what you can. I’ll be back in a minute. I just need a drink, and I can keep going.”

  “Okay.” She nodded.

  Claire worked up a sweat in the ten minutes that Max was gone. In those ten minutes, she made very little progress, and her shoulders ached ferociously. Max had already been down here an hour, and he’d managed to remove about a foot of concrete. She felt like she hadn’t made any progress when he came back.

  “Ready for a break?”

  “Shit. This is hard.” She wiped her brow, and allowed him to pull her up.

  “It’s just using muscles you’re not used to using, that’s all.”

  “Okay. Whatever. Can you really keep doing this?”

  He looked up at her and winked. “For you? I can do this all night.”

  “Well, I have other plans for tonight, if you don’t mind.” She was teasing. The excitement of actually finding the gold was engulfing her. There was nothing she would rather do, right now, than watch Max painstakingly dig it out of the concrete.

  “Then I just need to work faster, don’t I?” He went back to work with renewed vigor, either rejuvenated from his drink, or anticipating the night’s activities, Claire wasn’t sure which.

  After another nerve-wracking hour of watching Max’s sweat drenched back, as he worked at making the hole deeper, he finally exclaimed. “I think I’ve got something!”

  Claire dropped to her stomach to hang her head over the hole and look down. Max had uncovered what looked like a metal box wrapped in layers of plastic.

  “I think that with this plastic, if I can get the top uncovered, we should be able to just pull it out. Can you get something to cut the plastic with?”

  Claire ran into the house, retrieved a pocketknife and brought it back to Max, who had uncovered the entire top of the box. It looked like a metal file box of some sort. Taking the knife from Claire, he slit open the plastic, and using the chisel around the edges of the box, he pried enough out of the concrete that he could lift it with his fingers.

  “It’s heavy. That’s promising.”

  “Here. Hand it to me.” Claire held out her outstretched hands.

  “Take it inside. We don’t need to open it in front of the whole neighborhood.”

  “Okay.” She watched as he hauled himself out of the well, and she led him into her house, where she sat on the floor and pried open the lock with the pocket knife.

  Harsh intakes of breath filled the room when they saw the contents of the box.

  Chapter 12:

  Max watched Claire as she lifted, one at a time, a total of nine bars of gold from the box. She fingered them individually, turning them over in her hands, silently contemplating them. He knew he should leave her alone with her find, but he couldn’t leave her with all that gold in the house alone. Certainly not without knowing if the guys who had been here earlier had been picked up by the police. Or if they were planning on coming back.

  So he just watched her.

  He wanted to say something to her, to tell her he was here for her, but he’d said enough about his feelings, and she’d just begun to trust him. He didn’t want her to get mad at him, again. All he knew for sure was his feelings for her had grown impossibly strong in the short time they’d known each other. He wasn’t about to put a name to them, yet. But they were there, and he wanted her to understand he wasn’t going to let her shut him out.

  She had forgotten he was here, he could tell. The way she was just fondling the bars, muttering under her breath, told him she was in her own world, oblivious to his presence. Finally, he broke the silence.

  “What are you going to do, now?”

  She looked up at him, obviously surprised he was still there. “Um…I’m not sure. How much do you think this is worth?”

  He reached over to pick up a bar, pausing mid-reach. “May I?”

  She nodded, so he picked one up and hefted it. “It’s about two pounds, I would say, which would make it around $50,000 on the current market.” He placed the bar back in front of her, carefully and looked her square in the eyes. “You have $450,000 sitting in front of you.”

  He watched as she blinked once, twice. Her mouth formed a perfect little ‘o’ and he felt the sudden urge to kiss the surprise off her face, but he suppressed it.

  She whispered, “I don’t know.”

  “You can’t spend the night here by yourself with it. You know I’m not going to let you do that, right?” He said quietly. There was no way in hell he would give those assholes a chance to come back and take it from Claire. “How about this. How about I stay here tonight. Tomorrow, we’ll go get you a safety deposit box to put it in. Okay?”

  She nodded.

  “Claire…” He grasped her hand. “Tell me what you’re thinking right now.” She hadn’t spoken more than fifteen words since she’d opened the box forty-five minutes ago. He was afraid she was going into shock.

  “I can pay you now.” She looked away from the gold, and up at him. “To fix up this house.”

  He laughed. “Claire, I would have fixed up the house without the gold. Swear.” He held up three fingers in the Boy Scout salute of honor. “You could have paid me other ways.”

  “I’m not a prostitute!” Her cheeks flushed red, and that sexy flash glinted in her eyes.

  “I’m not talking about sex, sugar.” He leaned back, glad that she was returning from the daze she had been in. “You could do my laundry for a couple of years…” He ducked a swat from her, laughing.

  “I would turn one load of tee shirts pink before you reneged on that offer.”

  “Maybe…”

  She grew pensive again, and withdrew into herself. Max watched her, wondering what was going on inside her mind. He didn’t ask, though. He just let her be.

  Eventually, she started packing the bars back inside the box, and stood.

  “You ready to go upstairs?” She asked him with a mischievous gleam in her pretty, hazel eyes.

  “Hell, yeah.” Max stood, eagerly. He had to admit to himself, he would follow this woman anywhere.

  When they had gotten to the bedroom, Max pulled her down to sit next to him on the bed. He turned her to face him.

  “Before we do anything, we need to talk.”

  “Okay…”

  “Nothing has changed between us, Claire. I want you to know that. I need you to know I understand if for whatever reason you don’t trust me. And I can see why you would be even less inclined to do so with that box under the bed.” He grasped her hand and pulled it up to his mouth, kissing her knuckles, then rubbing them over his cheek. “But you have to understand I still feel the same feelings for you that I did earlier today. I still want to have a relationship with you. I want to share your life. I want to help you do things. I want you to help me. I want you, Claire. Just you. Not your gold. Do you understand?”

  He kept his voice quiet, trying to convey meaning with its intensity. He held her hand, rubbing it with his thumb, attempting to stroke away all of her doubts about him.

  “I do, Max.”

  “Can we do it?”

  Max watched her think about it. He could see the hesitancy in her eyes, followed by resignation. Mystification showed on her face, and then a realization dawned. Beneath all of this, he saw another, deeper emotion that he was unwilling to put a name to. Y
et.

  She nodded. “I think so, yes.”

  “Good. Because right now, I want to make you forget about everything that’s happened in the last two days.” He kissed her then. A soul-scorching kiss that curled her toes. “Except my name…I want to hear you scream my name.”

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  Turn to the next page for the first chapter of Dream On, from the Stories of Serendipity Series by Anne Conley:

  Chapter 1

  Dalton tilted his head back and felt the shot burn as it slid down his throat. He looked over at the woman in the vinyl bustier to his right, and lifted the empty glass to her in a gesture of thanks.

  He had been second-guessing himself. Just because he always came here, didn’t mean he had to always come here, did it? He wondered if he was getting tired of it all. He had been feeling restless the last couple of weeks, and couldn’t quite put his finger on what was causing it.

  He briefly wondered if he was finally ready to go back home, and fulfill his family’s desires for him. Then the shot had showed up and the vinyl bustier had winked at him, and all thoughts of home and family vanished. He figured he could find someone entertaining to do tonight.

  She stood up from the plush wingback chair, and sauntered over to him, to perch on the arm of his chair. Eerily, her face reflected the multi-colored strobe lights: sickly green, mellow blue, demonical red. This last color seemed to mesh well with the abundance of makeup she wore, either to hide her age or hard living, Dalton couldn’t tell, nor did he care.