by Ally Blake
He glanced across at Saskia. Her motivations for being with him were simpler still, and yet far more complicated than he’d envisaged. Because compared with his usual dates, Saskia was...real.
Reality was scrappy. It was dirty, hard, complicated. It asked everything of a man and then some. His father dying young, leaving him with four women in varying stages of grief to look after, had given him a closer dose of “real” than he ever wanted to encounter again.
And yet here this woman was, real from the top of her wavy hair to the tips of her now bare feet and her short fingernails—a couple bitten to the quick. He looked at her slight figure. The way her right foot rubbed up and down the back of her left calf as if it might bring forth inspiration as she stared at the scrap of paper in her hand. She was first off the mark in Faith’s game of high-speed half-time charades.
Saskia looked up at him then. Two little lines showed above her brow, her bottom lip was disappearing and reappearing from between her teeth. There was entreaty in her gaze.
He tilted his head in question. She flicked the paper in her hand. Two weeks they’d known one another, yet there was a shorthand there. An understanding that he couldn’t remember having with another woman.
Maybe it was because there was no pressure. No demands.
Maybe it was because they both knew it was a few weeks, a wedding. And out.
But even while he felt his twin sisters’ eyes swing to him at the same time, even while he knew they were smart enough to know there was something different about this one, Nate put down his drink and went to her.
And he had to admit, as Saskia threw herself into the game with gusto and a complete lack of success, that those twenty odd minutes were some of the most fun he could remember having in that house in a really long time.
* * *
After lunch Nate found Saskia looking out of the French windows in the library, watching Jasmine’s husband and kids playing chase in the backyard. She was leaning over the back of a couch, her backside pointing nicely his way.
He shoved his hands into his jeans pockets.
“Come here often?” he asked.
She came to with a start, as if from a million miles away, before a smile stretched across her face—which had his eyes zeroing in on her mouth, making him wonder when they could get the hell out of there.
“That the best line you’ve got?”
“I don’t usually need any.”
“I don’t doubt it.”
He might have let it go if not for the fact that her cheeks had turned a completely gorgeous shade of pink. “Really?” he drawled.
She rolled her eyes. “Like you don’t know you’re gorgeous.”
She said it so matter-of-factly, and yet her admission slid through him like a wave of heat. And when her eyes connected with his awareness surrounded them like a net—heavy, tight, confining.
“So...” Saskia said, moving around the couch, clapping her hands together and using them as a shield.
Interesting. She was aware of him. She liked the look of him. Clearly. And now she was trying to pretend it didn’t mean anything.
Maybe it didn’t, he thought.
Then again, maybe it could.
It was four weeks till the wedding, and he didn’t see why they couldn’t enjoy themselves in the meantime.
He took a step her way and her eyes flickered.
He took another step until she’d backed herself against a bookshelf.
He put a hand on the shelf above her shoulder and very much enjoyed her shiver at his near touch. The rise of her chest, the way her lips fell apart. At a noise in the hall Saskia’s gaze cut sideways, leaving him room to whisper against her ear, “We want them to walk in on this.”
“We do?” she asked. Then, as an afterthought, “Walk in on what?”
“This.”
He pushed her hair aside and kissed the soft skin of her neck. Her scent poured into him like pure pheromones. He pressed himself against her. Thank God she pressed back. Her hands lifted to his shoulders, where they gripped for dear life.
“Nobody’s watching,” she said, her voice a rasp as he trailed kisses along her jaw.
He dropped a kiss on the corner of her sweet mouth. “Then consider it practice.”
Her hand slid to curl around the back of his neck, her hips rocking against his and making him see stars.
Even while his body screamed at him never, ever to stop, he knew things were fast getting out of hand. Having his sisters and mother believe he was attracted to Saskia was one thing. Being caught with the evidence in his pants was quite another.
“Come with me,” he said, grabbing her by the hand and dragging her after him without waiting for a response.
Up the stairs he went, two by two, with her keeping up behind. They hit the hall and he just kept on walking till they reached his old bedroom.
With his hand on the doorknob, he balked, realising how long it had been since he’d been inside. Years. Decades. Maybe his mother had turned it into a guest room. Or an after-hours seniors disco. Hell, he hoped so. And he hoped not. It had been his refuge during the hardest years of his life.
He pushed the door open and as the ghosts of his past rose up and surrounded him with such complexity, such vividness, he felt himself sway.
Saskia shot past him. “Oh, my God,” she said, laughter in her voice. “Is this your room?”
His eyes on hers, Nate felt his tension ease back a notch. He crossed his arms across his chest and looked right on back. “Not anymore.”
“No? You don’t live at home still, then? I know you own like a million houses, but we never did touch on which one you live in...”
“Funny girl.”
Saskia gave him a curtsey before taking a slow turn about his room, forcing Nate to follow. The room was big; the bedspread, dark wood furnishings and the nautical wallpaper were the same as they’d been the day he’d left.
When Saskia ran a finger and thumb softly down the sail of an elegant three-foot yacht on the chest at the end of the bed, Nate said, “Dad and I made that one when I was about eleven.”
She shot him a glance. Then she kept walking, as if it wasn’t as important an admission as it clearly was. “Good with your hands. Nice to know. Anything else? For the dossier, of course.”
A good listener was Saskia, he warned himself, and an eager one, with an ulterior motive. And yet still he said, “He made the small ones downstairs too—the ones in the bottles. It was his favourite hobby. Mine too. Until it wasn’t.”
Her eyes swept back to him—open, warm, filled with understanding. “Nate...” she said, her voice husky.
His thumb pressed against his temple.
“You need to stop doing that,” she said, pulling his hand away.
“It helps.”
“Find another way. How do you relax?”
“I don’t. I work.” He glanced up at her, then admitted, “Occasionally...yoga.”
“Hardcore relaxing. Does it work?”
“If I let it. Which isn’t as often as I ought.”
“Why not?”
“I have...responsibilities.”
“As do we all.”
“I have over a hundred employees who depend on me. Every decision I make affects them. And their families.” Nate lifted a hand to the back of his neck, but stopped it there. How had that happened? He’d walked away from being responsible for four souls only to become responsible for hundreds. No wonder he never took a day off.
“Nate, you might be their boss, but they are, each and every one, responsible for themselves. On the other hand, I wonder if you spend near as much time worrying about yourself.”
Saskia’s eyes roved over him then. Over his eyes, which he knew looked as tired as he felt. Over
his shoulders, making him feel the tightness of the muscles bunched therein.
She reached out, slid her small hand back into his and led him to the bed. There she pressed him down with gentle hands at his shoulders.
He sat, bouncing on the mattress, looking up at her.
She smiled a little before lifting her hands to run them through his hair. Front to back. Her fingers sliding across his scalp with perfect pressure. The touch was such a surprise he blinked at her. Speechless.
“I’ve been wanting to do this since I first saw your picture,” she murmured.
Then, when her hands moved back through his hair, against the grain, tugging slightly against the short strands, he closed his eyes with the complete and unexpected pleasure of it.
When her thumbs moved to his temples, making small insistent circles right where he needed it most, he groaned at the sweetness. He put his hands behind him on the bed and gave himself over to the sensation. The pure relief.
There they stayed for seconds, minutes, until the constant pressure that lived inside his head ebbed away.
As her hands moved to his neck, kneading at the tight muscles bunched there, her knees bumped his. He opened them to let her closer.
When her outer thighs brushed his inner thighs all relaxation fled in a heartbeat, leaving him unquestionably aware of himself. And her.
His eyes swept open to find her watching herself work, concentrating, with those little lines above her nose. Clueless to the fact that she was trapped between his legs. That her breasts were at his eye level. That she was so close that when he breathed deep through his nose he could smell her—not just her shampoo and her soap but her skin. Her heat. Her essence.
When he lifted his hands to her waist she flinched with surprise.
She braced her hands against his shoulders. Her eyes flickered to his. Her next breath in was deep, her breath out lush. As if she’d known that touching him would lead to this.
Her thumb grazed the outside of his neck, sending shivers through him. Leaving him baffled that this lean, soft, down-to-earth woman could create such anticipation, such rich layers of desire coursing through him with no more than a brush of her thumb.
And surrender in her eyes.
One hand at the back of his neck, she leant down and pressed her lips to his.
He knew to expect sweetness, to expect warmth, to expect her clean, honest taste. What he got was a jolt of heat so thick that the blood rush to his head near wiped out all thought.
He wrapped his arms around her to drink it in. All of it. All of her.
She opened her mouth to him, sank her body against his, and all that softness and warmth pulsed through him till he wrapped his arms so tight about her there wasn’t a millimetre of daylight between them.
Yet for all that he wasn’t close enough. He wanted to be inside her. Inside that heat and ease and peace and sweetness. He wanted her with a level of need he hadn’t felt in a long time.
As if she felt it too she pressed nearer again, till he tipped back, taking her with him. Her hair tickled his cheeks. Her mouth was like a siren song, drowning him till his brain was a haze of red, and sex, and Saskia.
Nate rolled until he was on top. Looking down at her. The dark waves of her hair splayed out on the plaid bedspread, her cheeks flushed, her lips dark pink and plump, her eyes drunk with desire.
“Having flashbacks?” she asked, her voice husky, her fingers playing with the back of his hair. “I’m betting I’m not the first girl you’ve made out with in this room.”
She was right. And she had him so hot he felt seventeen all over again. Clumsy, desperate, on the verge of losing himself in her.
He shifted till his hardness was nestled against her and her eyes fluttered closed.
He ran his thumb down her cheekbone, traced her bottom lip, the dip in her chin. “Would you have played hooky with me back then?”
“Not on your life. I was a good girl. Classic only child. Pleaser. Head in a textbook. Didn’t have my first real kiss till uni. Marty Grantham. Chemistry major.”
Again Nate found himself gripped with a desire to track this Marty down and clock him one, even though by the lift of her mouth her memories of him were all good. Sweet kid she must have been then. All alone. The desire to protect her, from that and more, swelled from some place deep down inside him and landed like a punch to the solar plexus.
Saskia didn’t leave him any time to dissect it as she slid a hand to his neck and dragged his mouth to hers.
Desire, and thunder, and instinct pounded him from all directions. Nate tried to keep his head, but pleasure ripped through him as her tongue slid neat and clean along the edge of his bottom lip, before she found his tongue and traced it with hers. Lust pressed against the outer edges of his skin, raw and rabid, nothing neat about it.
Her hands were clawing his back, his backside. Her leg around his waist, then her hand moved between them, cradling his length. A groan spilled from his mouth as he pressed into her hand, relishing the feel of her around him, beneath him.
A fog of rich red lust swarmed over him, wiping out everything in its path. Control, order—gone. Screw it. Screw it all. All he wanted was this. Her. Now.
“Nate? Are you in there?”
He heard his mother’s voice all too late.
“Oh,” she said, before the bedroom door slammed shut.
Nate could only hope she was on the other side of it.
The fog cleared faster than it had come over him, leaving the world around him crystal-clear. The glow of the old red lamp on his bedside table, the dust on the edges of the shelf with books and old toys leaning against them, the grain of the bedspread digging into his wrists.
He glanced down at Saskia to find she’d slapped a hand over her eyes, her body tensed like a rubber band stretched to its outer limit.
His mother’s muffled voice came through the door, “Just letting you know Jasmine and the boys are heading off if you want to say goodbye.”
“We’ll be down in a minute!”
“Rightio,” said his mother, with more than a little laughter tingeing her voice before her footsteps padded away.
“Saskia,” Nate said, once he was sure they were alone.
“Mmm-hmm?” she said, trying to roll up in a ball beneath him.
“She’s gone.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
A smile creased his face. “Just because you couldn’t see her didn’t mean she couldn’t see you.” He peeled her hand from her eyes to find them wide and wild. Heat still lingered. More than lingered. It pounded behind her eyes. Drenched with desire.
He felt the same pounding rekindle deep in his belly. The drumbeat of lust was pulsing through him as she shifted beneath him, the length of him cradled between her legs.
He heard Jasmine and the boys downstairs, calling out their goodbyes, and he bit out a curse as he pushed himself away from Saskia. He heard the bed creak and turned to find her straightening up, running a hand over her bed-tousled hair. She might as well give up. She looked well-tumbled.
If only, Nate thought, then caught himself, thanking heaven they’d only gone as far as a kiss. If what they’d been doing before his mother had stumbled upon them could be called something so simple as a kiss.
“Hell,” he said, running a hand over his face.
“Think they’ll believe we’re an item?” said Saskia, her bright eyes cutting to his.
And he realised she didn’t think it as funny as he did. In fact she looked more than a little shell-shocked.
Swearing again, Nate moved to sit beside her, taking care not to touch. Touching this woman was not a smart idea unless he intended following through.
“That’s not what that was,” he said, running a hand up the back of his head. “That wasn’t for their benefit
.”
She sucked in a quick breath. “I know.”
“Do you?” he asked, reaching out to tuck a kink of dark hair behind her ear. So he couldn’t help himself. That much was fast becoming clear.
Saskia looked from one eye to the other and Nate felt himself being weighed and measured. And for a man who’d long since been in a position where nobody who judged him could find him lacking it was a strange sensation indeed.
“I really wanted to kiss you,” she said simply.
“I wanted you to kiss me.”
“I got that feeling.”
“Did you, now?” he asked, a smile easing across his face. The relaxing of his shoulders showed him how tense he’d been. How concerned that he’d been that he’d stuffed things up royally. How much he wanted things to continue...until the wedding. “Though as I recall, heavy petting on my childhood bed wasn’t part of the original deal.”
“Let’s call that a renegotiation.”
At that Nate laughed so loud his sides hurt. “You’re a savvy operator, Saskia Bloom. In fact, why don’t you work for me?”
“I like being the boss.”
“Mmm, woman after my own heart.”
When he’d first come upon that picture of a girl in a hat with big, sultry eyes, he’d struggled to believe them the same species. Yet the more he got to know her the more alike it seemed they were. Stubborn, determined, captains of their own destiny. Equals in very many ways.
Then with a saucy little lift of her shoulder Saskia was up, heading for the door. “The sooner we face them, the sooner the mortification will be over and done with.”
“You’re one hell of a woman, Saskia Bloom,” said Nate as he took her hand.
“Don’t you forget it.”
FIVE
“You what?” Lissy yelled to be heard over the sound of The Cave’s house band who’d just started up a grunge version of “Perhaps, Perhaps, Perhaps.”
“I kissed him,” Saskia said, the words no easier to spit out second time around. Stupid, stupid, stupid, she sang inside her head along with the chorus.