“He stopped off to pick me up and ended up bullying me to drive him home.” Quinn winked at Tabby.
“I did not bully you,” Zac grumbled. “You’re the one who took my keys from me and insisted on driving.”
Their banter eased some of the fear that had sprouted roots in her belly. Not that it did anything for the guilt that she’d ignored Quinn, who was sporting a white bandage on the back of his neck. “Hey, Quinn. Are you all right?”
“Just a few bumps and bruises. Hey, Buchanan. Do you want me to leave your truck at the station or behind Tabby’s place?”
“Behind the diner is good. I’ve got a spare set of keys so just hang onto that set for the next time I see you.” He waited until Quinn drove his truck out of sight before trudging into the garage where he hung up his turnout gear to air. “As much as I want to kiss you, kitten, I need a shower first.”
“Need some help?” Man, she was out of control when it came to wanting to get him naked again. Ever since she’d left him that first morning he’d stayed over, she’d done nothing else but think about ways to get him out of his clothes. Talk about obsessive.
“Darlin’, as much as I am looking forward to getting you nekkid and wet, I’m gonna have to take a rain check. But I’m definitely taking you up on your offer once I’m awake, okay?”
He disappeared into the house and down the hallway to the master suite at the far end, leaving Tabatha to pace the living room-dining room-kitchen track once more. Despite Zac’s assurance he didn’t need help in the shower, she slipped into the bathroom where Zac was already naked and standing in a shower, complete with four showerheads, that was as big as her apartment’s kitchen.
Zac had his back to her, his soap-covered hands lathering his face, so she stayed back, admiring the view. And oh man, what a view. The muscles defining his back leading to the best ass she’d ever seen. An ass she’d had her hands all over just two nights before.
And if she was lucky, for as many nights in the future as she wanted. A naughty smile tickling her lips, she stripped down, stepped into the shower. Another half step and she closed her hands over his taut globes. “Need some help, stud?”
“What the—” Zac twisted with a yelp. His feet slid out from underneath him and he hit the marble wall with his shoulder seconds before landing on that magnificent ass with a thud that shook the whole house.
Shit. Shit shit shit! “I’m sorry!” She knelt in front of him. One of the shower jets hitting her full in the face forcing her to bat it in a different direction before sputtering, “I thought you heard me come in.”
“Nope. You been takin’ ninja lessons?”
Oh man, the back view had been lovely, but the front view? Water sliding down over his pecs, his body tight and perfect. From the light fuzz of blonde hair on his chest, down to the smooth skin on his belly, and oh my, that delicious rapidly engorging cock. “Um, surprise?”
“How about next time I skip the whole screaming like a little girl and falling on my ass bit.” Though laughter tinged his voice, there was a whole lot of “I’m getting you horizontal and beneath me right the hell now” going on in his eyes.
Chapter Six
When Tabatha had watched Zac climb out of the truck and walk into the garage, she had been worried he wouldn’t have the strength to make it as far as the couch, let along the bedroom. Yet here he was, his cock standing tall and proud against a golden nest of hair, laughter and heat in his eyes. Issuing a challenge that, after the other night, she couldn’t resist.
“Do whatever you want, baby. I’m all yours.”
His voice had a delicious huskiness to it, that while her logical side attributed it to the smoke he’d sucked in during the night, her pussy claimed was the start of him losing control. She preferred her pussy’s explanation.
So what did she want to do to him? She tilted her head and considered. A blow job like the other morning? Or maybe to ride him cowgirl style?
“Let’s start with this.” She leaned over and captured his face between her palms. Brushed her lips against his. For a guy he had incredible lips, not too rough, not too fat or too skinny. And Christ they were talented. She love the wonderful slide of lips and tongue, loved how his stubble rasped her chin, his crisp chest hair doing the same to her nipples.
Her breath stuttered as he slid his soap-slicked hand down her belly to cup her mound. And again when one long soapy finger slipped through her folds, unerringly finding her clit. A simple touch was all it took for her body to shudder. Except that shudder had him pulling back his hand.
“Damn, you’re wet, baby.”
She could have pointed out that they were both wet because of the shower, but he was right. The slippery wetness between her thighs was all because of him.
His gaze locked on her, he held up his hand, and licked her juices from his fingers. Two days ago—or was it three now—she’d taunted him the same way, only she’d used frosting. At the time she’d thought it might be over-the-top, laughable even, but had loved teasing him. But there wasn’t a single cell in her body laughing as his tongue delicately lapped any trace of her from his hand. Instead her pussy clenched, wanting him inside, fingers, tongue, cock, she didn’t care.
I want this man. She wanted him to blindfold her. To tie her to his bedposts and lick her whole body until she was shaking and pleading for him to take her and take her hard.
And then, when she’d come, she wanted him to flip her over and take her from behind again, maybe even take her ass the way he’d threatened the other night. And she’d beg him to do it all over again.
Not just today. But tomorrow too. And next week. Next year. For the next fifty years.
Wait a minute. Next fifty years? What was she thinking? She pulled back and sat on her heels.
She’d just gotten out of a, well, not a bad marriage, but a passionless one, yet she was already planning on committing to another relationship? Shannon and some of her other friends had warned her she would have a rebound fling. Is that what this was? Was she seeing something in their relationship that wasn’t there? Was it even a relationship after two nights of sex and a fun time at a concert?
He stroked her cheek, concern filling those beautiful eyes, the dark ring at the edge of his irises making the blue bluer. “Talk to me, kitten. What’s going on in that head of yours?”
A question Bill had never asked her. She held up one finger in the universal sign to hold on a minute.
She’d spent her teenaged years lusting over this man. Fantasizing about him. Writing Tabatha Buchanan and Mrs. Zac Buchanan in the edges of her notebooks at school. Then she’d lost him, or thought she had. Because she’d been too shy, too uncertain of herself—with Val no doubt undermining her confidence because of her own crush—to approach him.
Over the years, she’d pushed Zac firmly into the distant friend category. He’d lived in Houston; she’d lived in Carter Valley. Never the twain and all that. Oh sure, they wrote breezy emails to each other at first, emails that had been reduced to the obligatory Christmas and birthday cards with a hurried “Love ya, miss ya” scrawled inside, as she convinced herself that her loyalty, her love, even her heart, belonged to a man who couldn’t have cared less about it.
But the attraction to Zac, the longing, had returned full force when she’d seen him from the window of the storefront she’d been considering renting to set up Twisted Tabby’s. He’d not seen her at the time, not known she was back in town. He’d walked down the street with a confidence and determination some men never achieved. Then, right outside the window, he’d stopped to talk to Mrs. Meehan, who was walking her German Shepherd puppy. He’d bent down and stroked that lucky pup’s ears, and her body had shivered, imagining his fingers stroking the soft skin behind her ears. One of the many erogenous zones Bill had never discovered.
But Zac had. The first night they’d slept together. He’d stroked her there, kissed her there too. And each time her body had responded to his simple touch, with shivers and hea
t that swept right down to the juncture of her thighs.
Actually he’d touched her there before, she remembered with not a little guilt. They’d been watching some show last week, and she’d gotten tired. He’d pulled her to rest against him and somehow she’d ended up with her head in his lap. Thinking her asleep, he’d stroked her hair, and tucked a portion behind her ear. She’d shivered. He’d thought she was cold, so he’d covered her with an afghan her grandmother had knitted years before. And resumed stroking her hair. All the more erotic, and romantic, because he’d thought she was asleep. When he’d finally left, she’d crawled into bed and buried her head in her pillow and sobbed. Because that one single night of company had shown her more passion, and more tenderness than she’d had in eight years of marriage.
Yet now she was questioning whether she could live with fifty years of that type of tenderness? Of the type of passion? Count her in.
And if she couldn’t have fifty years, she’d take whatever he’d give her. And never regret a single second.
Where two minutes ago Zac had been so fucking aroused his cock was about to blow its load if Tabatha so much as touched it, now fear goose-stepped up his spine with spiked boots.
Two minutes ago, her breath had been hot against his cheek, her face had been flushed, her nipples had been heavy and drawn, begging for his attention. But now the woman who had kissed him with a passion he’d never felt before was gnawing the lipstick off her kiss-swollen bottom lip, her eyelids with their long dark lashes sweeping her cheek bones as she focused on the white tiles between them.
What had sparked such uncertainty?
Was it something he’d said? Something he’d done?
He raced through his memory of the events leading up to the moment she’d pulled away. She’d walked into the shower of her own volition. She’d taken off her clothes and climbed into the shower of her own choice. She’d leaned over for that kiss, demanded it of him rather than him forcing her.
Then he’d played with her pussy and licked her essence from his fingers, teasing her the same way she’d teased him at the diner.
Shit. Had that been what she didn’t like? Had it tripped some sort of ‘ick’ factor?
If it had, then they didn’t belong together. Because he couldn’t deny that side of his nature. Zac liked sex. Hell, he loved sex. He liked it raw, raunchy, and rough. But with Tabatha he’d discovered he loved it soft, slow and tender too.
That discovery had been a fuckin’ eye opener.
He loved her. Plain and simple. As he had no other woman.
Zac shifted, pulling his legs around to kneel in front of her. Fuck, these tiles were hard on his knees. And his ankles. His ass hurt too, thanks to that stupid-ass fall he’d taken earlier. And with the shower shut off, it was getting fuckin’ cold too.
But none of it mattered as long as she sat in front of him looking like a lost…kitten. For her, he’d sit like this until his knees bled. And even then he wouldn’t move from this spot until she did.
He reached out and stroked her hair, stroking that spot on her neck beneath her ear that he knew she loved. As she had the night she’d fallen asleep with her head on his lap, her head canted against his hand, her hair brushing over his fingers like silk.
“Talk to me, kitten. Don’t shut me out.”
Tabatha lifted her gaze from the tiles, those beautiful, long, dark lashes sweeping up to once again frame gorgeous, warm brown eyes. If he fell back on his ass for the second time that night, it wasn’t because the shower had just spat a last gasp of cold water that had hit him in his spine and trickled down to his ass. Okay, it wasn’t just because of the fucking blast of ice water.
He fell because of the fierce strength in her eyes. There wasn’t a lick of fear or disgust in them.
She scrambled to help him sit up. A job she was getting far too much experience at. He must look like a fuckin’ idiot to her about now.
“I’m all right.”
She responded—he knew she did because her mouth moved. But damned if he heard a word. He’d been too entranced, concentrating on the plump bottom lip with its soft pink lipstick no longer being chewed. God, he wanted to kiss that mouth again. Feel it kissing back.
“Zac?”
He shook his head. “What?” Wow, can you act any stupider, dumbass?
The edges of her mouth curled up, giving him hope he hadn’t totally fucked things up. “I didn’t think you were tracking. I said, make love to me. Do all those things you said you were going to do the other night.”
How the fuck had he missed that request?
He was on his feet, she was in his arms and they were in the bedroom before she closed her mouth. As he commended himself for not slipping on the fucking tiles again, especially with her in his arms, he set her down beside his bed.
Dear God in heaven, he’d brought in an angel. The sunlight streamed in through the window, sparkling off the water drops that stubbornly clung to the curve of her breast, belly and hips like diamonds.
While his conscience chided him for not covering her in a towel, mentioned that she might be cold, he just stood there, ogling her like he was a damned horny teenager and she was the first naked female body he’d ever seen.
He followed the path of one water droplet as it slid from her hair, over her breast, down her belly to disappear into the crevice between her thighs. Smart water droplet. Who was he to question its lead? He traced its path with his tongue, loving her whispered sighs, and the way her body trembled with each inch he progressed. His cock hardened to the point of pain when she tunneled her fingers in his hair, not stopping his exploration.
The shower had removed the scent she normally wore, removed any lotions, leaving an unadorned essence of Tabatha, a taste that wine connoisseurs would record with flowery terms, full bodied, creamy, elegant, earthy…she was all of those, and more.
She was Tabatha. His Tabatha.
Wow. That should scare him but it didn’t. He urged her back onto the bed, nudged her legs apart and licked a path up her center. Each hitch of her breath, each twitch of her muscles, the jump of her belly, a jiggle of her breasts, guided him to what she liked and didn’t like. The heady aroma of her arousal, mingled with soft sighs, had his cock aching, wanting to be buried in the same tight passage his tongue teased. When he didn’t oblige his cock, his balls drew up tight to his body. He ignored them all.
She’d asked to be blindfolded, bound and ball gagged. One day he’d do all three, but today he refused to deny himself the sight of her eyes as they unfocussed in pleasure. The ball gag would have prevented him hearing her say his name when she came the first time, and the second. It would have muffled and changed the moans and squeaks and funny little sounds she made as he drove her to the edge of an orgasm and eased her back down, then drove her up again. It would have stopped him from hearing when she’d cursed him out, threatening to not cut Yoshi’s claws and then pour catnip in his lap if he didn’t let her come right the hell now.
As curses went, he had to admit that was one of the better ones. Yeah, no ball gags for her in the near future. Not while that pretty mouth of hers was so inventive.
When he finally buried his cock deep in her, he realized if he’d bound her, she wouldn’t have been able to wrap her legs around his waist to pull him deeper. Dear God, there was nothing as amazing as being totally surrounded by her heat.
He slid his hands beneath her hips, changing the angle slightly, and sank even deeper. The change had them both groaning.
“Zac, please…”
He fell into her warm gaze, let it bathe him in the emotion sweeping through them, hoping it was love, not lust. Praying this was no fling for her, no rebound. Her muscles tightened, her inner walls fluttering against his shaft, drawing him deeper still in what he’d learned was the precursor to her orgasm.
No. Too fast.
Sweat slicked their bodies, the sounds of skin slapped at skin, the moans and pants and heavy scent of sex filled the room. Though his
balls screamed for release right the hell now, making promises they would be ready for action again in less than five minutes, Zac told them to shut the fuck up. He drew on his hard won control and slowed his thrusts in a desperate attempt to draw out the ecstasy, for him and for Tabatha.
But Tabatha had other plans. Her heels clenched his ass harder, and she took over the rhythm he’d set earlier, pumping him deep and fast, drawing his oversensitive and ready to oblige cock deep in her body then pulling it out until he was sure his dick would slip out, only to have it welcomed back with a lusty kiss.
A simple squeeze of her inner muscles sent all thoughts from his big head and set his little head in charge. His hips thrust with renewed vigor, plunging his cock balls-deep into Tabby’s pussy, his hand reaching between them to flick her clit just the way she liked it.
With the first touch, she shuddered beneath him, her body clamping his cock as the fire between them burned wild and white-hot. Another touch of his finger to her sensitive nerve bundle sent her over the top, taking him with her.
As his lungs struggled for air after his release, he stared at Tabatha and realized this wasn’t just sex with Tabatha. It wasn’t just about their bodies’ need for release. An adrenaline rush similar to running into a burning building, and making it out safely.
For years his parents had lectured him about how there was a difference between sex as a release and sex with someone you loved. That when you make love with a person you love, and who loves you, sex stops being about the biological urges. His mother would sigh dreamily and talk about making love and soul mates, and—Zac used to shudder at this word—destiny. His father, on far fewer occasions, and probably on his wife’s urging, would mutter that sex with the right woman wasn’t about tab A fittin’ into slot B. That it wasn’t about you getting yourself off, but caring more that you pleased your partner. And that Zac had better damned well make sure he pleased his partner, whoever she was.
Up until today, to this minute, Zac had thought they were talking out their asses, trying to get him to cool down some of his horndog exploits that had filtered back to their ears despite his careful attempts to keep his love life private. Oh sure, he’d made sure his partners got off before he did. That was a no brainer to getting asked back into their beds.
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