The Kitchen Renovation Crew Stayed Three Weeks Longer Than the Quote novel · Chapter 2 of 24

Chapter 2: The Butcher Block

Tanner takes her on the new island and leaves at dawn; minutes later Kou arrives and announces the tile is wrong and the job will run another week.

He shut the front door behind us, and then he stood in my hall with his hands at his sides.

"Britta," Tanner said. "I should say something first."

"Then say it fast."

"I've wanted to put my hands on you since the second week."

That was all, and he said it flat.

I took his wrist, which was thick and warm and ridged with old scars.

I walked backward into the kitchen.

He followed me.

The work light over the island was still on.

It lit the plywood floor, the open hole.

The long slab of butcher block he had planed and oiled himself.

I stopped with my back against the edge of it.

"Kiss me," I said.

He didn't hurry.

He put one hand along my jaw.

The other in the small of my back where it had been that morning.

He looked at my mouth for a long moment before he took it.

His beard was softer than I expected.

His mouth was slow and sure and tasted of coffee.

When I opened to him he made a low sound in his chest and pulled me flat against him.

I could feel all of him, the hard planes of his chest, the belt buckle, and lower, against my belly, the thick ridge of him through his jeans.

I got both hands under his shirt.

His back was hot and ridged with muscle, and he shivered when my nails dragged down it.

"You're shaking," I said.

"I've been standing in this room with you for six weeks," he said against my mouth.

He untied my robe.

It fell open.

I stood in front of him in the thin cotton nightgown I had put on to go to bed alone.

He looked down at me.

His breath went out of him.

"Every morning you come down those stairs with your coffee," he said. "Every morning I forget how to read a tape."

"Tanner."

"I need to see you."

He drew the nightgown up and over my head and let it drop on the plywood.

I stood naked in the work light.

I was forty, and soft at the stomach and wide through the hips.

My breasts were heavy and a little lower than they had been at thirty.

I braced for his face to change.

It didn't.

He looked at my breasts, my hips, the thatch of strawberry-blonde between my thighs.

His hands closed into fists at his sides.

"God," he said. "Look at you."

"I'm not twenty-four."

"No," he said. "You're better."

He lifted me.

His big hands went under my thighs and he set me on the edge of the island with the oiled wood cool and smooth under my ass.

He pushed my knees apart and stepped back to look, and I felt myself get wet under his eyes.

"Lean back," he said. "Put your hands behind you."

I leaned on my palms.

He pulled a folded moving blanket off the stack by the wall and dropped it on the plywood.

He went down on his knees on it between my legs.

He put his hands on the insides of my thighs.

His thumbs were rough and warm and he spread me open with them, slowly.

He breathed out against me.

"Pretty," he said. "You're so pretty here."

Then he put his mouth on me.

He started with the flat of his tongue, one long drag from my entrance to my clit.

My head fell back and I heard myself say his name to the ceiling.

He did it again, as slow as the first time.

His beard scraped the tender skin inside my thighs.

The contrast, rough and then wet and soft, made my hips lift off the wood.

He pushed them down with one big hand.

"Hold still for me."

"I can't."

"You can," he said. "I'm not done."

He found my clit with the tip of his tongue and circled it, slow and exact.

He took his time.

I had never been touched by a man who treated my pleasure as a job he meant to finish properly.

He slid a thick finger inside me, then a second, and curled them up toward my belly.

My whole body jerked on the island.

"There," he said. "That's it. That's the spot."

"Oh God. Tanner. Right there."

"I know. I've got you."

He fucked me with his fingers in a steady rhythm while his mouth worked my clit.

The wet sounds of it filled the kitchen.

I stopped being embarrassed about any of it.

I put my hand in his hair and gripped it.

He groaned into me, and I felt the vibration all the way up my spine.

"Come on my mouth," he said. "I want it."

I came with a cry I had never made in my marriage.

My thighs clamped around his head and my back bowed and the pleasure rolled through my belly in long hard waves.

He kept going, gentle now, easing me down, and when I finally pushed at his shoulder he lifted his face.

His beard was wet and shining.

He wiped his mouth with the back of his wrist and looked up at me with those hazel eyes gone dark.

He was breathing hard.

"Again," he said.

"I need you inside me."

"Soon."

"Now," I said. "I mean it. Take off your jeans."

He stood and did it, boots first, then the belt, then the jeans and his briefs in one push.

He was long and thick and flushed dark, the head wet already.

He took himself in his scarred hand and stroked once, hard, watching my face.

"Well?" he said.

"It's perfect."

I slid off the island and took his cock in my hand, and he hissed through his teeth.

He was hot and heavy and so hard that it twitched against my palm.

I stroked him from root to tip, slow, and thumbed the slick off the head.

"Britta." His voice cracked. "You're going to make me finish."

"Not yet."

"Then turn around."

He took me by the hips and turned me.

He put his big palm between my shoulder blades and pressed me down over the butcher block.

The wood was cool against my breasts and my stomach.

He kicked my feet apart.

I felt him behind me, felt the heat of his body, felt the blunt head of him slide through my wet and nudge my entrance.

He stopped there.

"Last chance," he said, and his voice shook. "I'll be careful with you."

"Don't be careful," I said.

"Britta."

"I'm forty, Tanner, I'm not made of glass. Fuck me."

He pushed in.

It was slow, and thick.

It stretched me until I gasped, until I felt every inch of him take up a place inside me that had been empty for a year.

He stopped when he was all the way in and held there, his hands tight on my hips.

"God, you're tight," he said. "You feel so good."

"Move."

He drew back and thrust.

It rocked the whole island and I grabbed the far edge with both hands.

He did it again, harder, deep, the head of him dragging over the place his fingers had found.

"Like that?" he said.

"Yes. Harder," I said.

"Say it again."

"Harder, Tanner. Fuck me harder."

He gave it to me.

He drove into me hard enough that my breasts slid on the oiled wood.

The work light swung on its cord, and every thrust ended with the slap of his hips against my ass.

He bent over my back and put his mouth on my shoulder and bit down gently, and growled against my skin.

"You're so good," he said. "You take me so well. Look at you."

I was crying out with every stroke, and I did not care who heard.

He reached around and found my clit with his fingers and rubbed it in tight circles, in time with his thrusts.

The pleasure climbed again, higher this time, tight and bright.

"I've got you," he said. "Come for me."

"I can't, it's too much."

"You can. Come on my cock, Britta."

I came screaming.

It went through me hot and clenching, and I felt myself grip him again and again.

He swore, a low ragged sound, and drove in twice more.

Then he groaned my name and I felt him come, deep and hot and pulsing, his forehead pressed between my shoulder blades.

We stayed like that, bent over the island, breathing together.

He kissed the back of my neck and the top of my spine and the freckles on my shoulder.

He eased out of me and wrapped me in my robe.

He carried me to the sectional in the living room and sat with me across his lap.

Neither of us said anything for a long time.

"I should tell you," he said at last. "I've never been this slow with anyone."

"You weren't slow."

"I was trying to be."

I laughed into his chest.

He laughed too, a low rusty sound I had not heard from him before.

Around midnight he got up and found his shirt and kissed me in the hall, and he said, "Goodnight, Britta."

I locked the door behind him and went upstairs.

I slept for eight hours, which I had not done since September.

At six-forty the next morning I came down in my robe for coffee and found his pencil on the island.

A white van was turning into my driveway.

It was Saturday, and only Kou worked Saturdays.

I opened the door, and he stood on the step in his gray jacket, holding his clipboard.

"Ms. Sundquist," Kou said. "The replacement tile won't ship until next Friday. I'll prep the floor today."

I looked past him at the open garage door.

Along the back wall were stacked boxes of tile, sealed, with the label facing out.

It was the exact size I had picked in January.

I told myself I wasn't going to think about it.

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