Only When It's Us (Bergman Brothers #1)(98)

“The hell, it is.” She turns and climbs me like I’m a tree until she’s wrapped around my waist. “Kill it.”

I roll my eyes. “I’m not killing it. Spiders play an important role in the ecosystem—”

“Ryder. Stellan. Bergman.” Willa grabs my jaw and looks me dead in the eye. “If you want to get laid tonight, you will kill that fucking spider.”

“That’s not fair. We agreed sexual threats weren’t fair play.”

She sighs and drops her forehead to the crook of my neck. “Fine. Please, just pretty please, kill it. If it’s alive, I won’t be able to sleep. Or eat. Or think about anything else.”

“Willa.” I press a kiss to her temple as I walk toward the spider and feel her cling tighter to me. “I’m not killing a harmless—”

I stop, staring closely at it. Willa lifts her head enough to glance at the floor, too, and shudders. “Okay, never mind.” I hike her higher up. “That’s a black widow.”

Willa shrieks right as my boot lands on it.

Once my ear stops ringing, I deposit Willa on the floor and clean up the damage. When I straighten from that task, Willa’s staring at me. Her eyes are chocolate brown turning butterscotch. I know those eyes now. Horny eyes.

I hold her gaze and fight the very real impulse to throw her over my shoulder and take her to bed again, but I still have to do my part on the A-frame upkeep while I’m here and I didn’t finish repairing the gutters. “I’m going to wrap up on the roof now.”

Willa nods slowly. “Dinner’s underway. Should be ready in about an hour.”

“Perfect.” I kiss her once, hard, on the lips. “I’ll be done and cleaned up by then.” She pulls me back for one more kiss, and when I break away, I instinctively give her an affectionate smack on the ass.

Willa hiccups and stares up at me, wide-eyed.

I stare back, then clear my throat. “Sorry. Don’t exactly know where that came from.”

“Like hell you don’t,” she whispers. Willa bites her lip and leans into me. “And don’t be sorry. I didn’t dislike it, for the record. I didn’t dislike it at all.”

My unease dissipates, and I tug her close, kissing her slowly.

When we pull apart, her smile is warm, so impossibly trusting and affectionate. I can’t get over watching those full lips part, that wide dazzling smile I’ve only ever seen her give me.

“Now get outta here, Slayer of Spiders.” Willa swats my ass. “And come back hungry.”





“Shit.”

I suck my finger into my mouth. Second time I’ve stabbed myself with a paring knife in the last five minutes. That’s what I get for trying to hull strawberries while watching Willa dance around in only one of my flannel shirts.

Fucking hell.

She bends over the dining room table, finishing setting it. Proper silverware, big wine glasses. She even went on a walk for some wildflowers and stuck them in a vase.

“Everything looks and smells great, Willa.”

Straightening, she turns and smiles at me. “Thank you. I wanted to make it nice, give you a big feast. All you’ve done is cook and take care of me.” She walks my way and wraps her arms around my waist. “Now it’s my turn.”

I’ve liked taking care of Willa. Now I’m starting to not mind when she wants to take care of me, too. Though I’ll always enjoy cooking for her, drawing her a hot bath, telling her to put her feet up and relax, it felt weirdly comfortable to finish my to-do list on the house earlier, then come inside to the view of her holding a bodice ripper in one hand while stirring au jus for the beef finishing in the oven.

Willa kisses me, and her wild hair tickles my arms. I pull her close and breathe her in. Sunscreen and flowers, a hint of herbs and red wine from cooking.

After one more kiss, I let her go. Willa sweeps up the bodice ripper off the counter which she took from the A-frame’s hodgepodge library. I watch her walk the other side of the counter, turn a page and absently sip her wine. Her hair’s the biggest it’s ever been because I literally cannot keep my hands off her. I keep dragging her back to bed, shoving my fingers into those gorgeous curly waves, tugging, knotting, breathing them in.

Aaand I’m hard now.

I glance down at my dick insistently tenting my sweatpants. “Chill out, dude.”

“You talking to your log jammer, Lumberjack?”

I startle and drop the paring knife before I stab myself again. A blush creeps up my cheeks. “Maybe.”

Willa sashays around the rest of the island and drops onto a stool. The beef just has to rest in the oven. Dinner’s ready. I’m making dessert. Willa seems content to sit in the quiet of the kitchen and read. It makes my heart tumble as I watch her reading and a blush tinging her cheeks.

“That is some vintage smut you found, Sunshine.”

Willa snorts and drops the book just enough to meet my eyes. “It’s so good. This duke is my kind of asshole.”

“Isn’t that stuff pretty misogynistic? Aren’t they all damsels in distress, in need of a good plundering?” I toss the strawberries into a bowl and add the sambuca, Grand Marnier, and sugar. Willa loves peppered strawberries, so I’m making them happen.

“Some of it is, yeah. But others aren’t. Like this one.” Willa turns the page and takes a sip of her wine. “It’s feminist, even though there’s ‘plundering,’ because she wants to be plundered. It’s feminist as hell, claiming your sexual preferences whether or not they include manhandling.”