Shame not to take advantage of that.
Brady reciprocated and slid his arms under the back of Rachel’s thin t-shirt until he reached her bra clasp, where he hesitated.
“Take the damn thing off,” she ordered him, answering his unspoken question.
He unhooked her bra and moved his hands to the front of her body and began to slowly and tenderly knead her breasts. Rachel threw back her head and let out a long, low moan, happily surrendering herself to his touch.
“I’ve missed that noise,” he said.
“Not as much as I’ve missed making it,” she said.
Brady took her hands and gently drew her to the bench, where they sat down together at the same time and immediately took up where they’d left off. The bench wasn’t that comfortable, but it was large enough that Rachel could easily recline on it, allowing Brady better access to her body. After gradually pushing her t-shirt and bra up her chest until her breasts were exposed, he bent his head and lightly kissed and licked the delicate area in the middle of her chest before latching onto a taut nipple. As his tongue raked her sensitive flesh, Rachel pulled his head closer to her and delighted in the sensation of his mouth on her body. How she had missed this—the physical, sexual, and emotional connection with this man she adored.
Tired of the twin inconveniences of her shirt and bra, Rachel shimmied out of her garments with Brady’s help. She was prone before him, topless and illuminated by the moonlight passing through a handful of gaps in the canopy. She turned her head to the side, looking toward the way they had entered the secluded area.
“Are you sure this spot is secluded enough for what we’re doing?” she asked.
He nodded. “Didn’t you notice how far off the trail we were before we got to this little clearing? And we’re behind a thick cluster of honeysuckle. No one’s going to see us.”
“What about hear us?”
“Just what did you have in mind for tonight out here?”
“You can’t guess?” she teased.
“I’m serious, Rachel. You really want to make love out here? I thought you said that wasn’t a good idea, as I recall.”
She pulled herself up and wrapped her arms around him. “I didn’t know about this spot,” she said, kissing him. “And I didn’t realize how desperate I’d be after a few days.”
He held her at arm’s length and shook his head. “No, we can’t. Not tonight.”
She almost broke into tears. “Why? Because we’re outside?”
He shook his head. “No, not that. I think we’ve got this part of the forest all to ourselves, except for the wildlife.”
“So why not?” she asked, sounding a lot more petulant than she’d intended.
“We’re not prepared.”
“What?”
“No condom.”
“Do you think we need one?”
He took her face in his hands. “Are—are you sure?”
“Yes,” she said.
“I’ve never not used—I mean—”
“Me too—”
They talked over each other, leaving them both giggling. He was still cradling her face, and she didn’t want him to let go.
Ever.
Rachel knew that the moment had come.
“Brady, I lo—”
“No, wait,” he said, interrupting her confession.
“What?” Rachel was incredulous that he had the nerve to stop her when he knew what she was about to say. What she had to say.
“Please let me say it first,” he begged.
She pulled away from him, shaking. “Are you really so competitive that you have to go first?” she asked. “Why is that so damned important?”
He grabbed Rachel and held her tightly to him, their lips nearly touching. “It’s not because I’m competitive, Rachel. It’s because you’re that damned important to me. Because you deserve to hear it first, that’s why.”
She felt tears well in her eyes and start sliding down her cheeks. “I’m sorry,” she whispered.
Brady said nothing but once more took her face in his hands, wiping her tears with his thumbs. He searched her face and satisfied himself that she had stopped crying.
“I love you, Rachel,” he said.
Chapter 22
Even though she was expecting his words, hearing them was like a physical blow. Rachel inhaled a shuddering breath and trembled.
“I love you, Brady,” she whispered.
He pressed his lips to hers and tried to weave his hands into her hair, but was foiled by her ponytail and grunted in annoyance. Understanding his frustration, Rachel reached behind her head and pulled the elastic away to release her tresses, then shook her head until her dark coppery hair cascaded around her shoulders. Brady eagerly entangled his fingers in her sleek locks and she sighed happily as he played with the strands. She relished feeling his fingers moving through her hair and briefly thought of that day not so long ago when the ceiling had fallen and Brady had touched her hair for the first time.
Rachel slipped her hands underneath the front of his shirt and slid them up and over his abs until she reached his nipples. She stopped and used her thumbs to gently massage the tips, and then it was Brady’s turn to moan.
“Too many clothes, Judge Craft,” she said. Rachel moved her hands higher and helped him pull off his shirt.
Before she could enjoy the feeling of their bare chests pressed against each other, Brady gently pushed her back until she was reclining and propped up on her elbows. He ran a finger along her waist and chuckled.
“Elastic waistband,” he said, and tugged on her shorts. “Convenient.”
She kicked off her shoes and Brady soon divested Rachel of her shorts as well as panties, leaving her wearing nothing but a pair of socks.
“Not exactly sexy, are they?” she said, wiggling her toes underneath the socks.
“Your feet don’t have a lot of power to distract me right now,” Brady replied, and they both laughed.
Brady put his hands on her hips and slowly swept them up her body until he cupped her breasts. Rachel laid back on the bench, with one leg around Brady and the other dangling over the edge. Brady positioned himself above her, continued to massage her breasts, and gazed down at her in what she could only recognize as wonder. She soon began to sigh contentedly and writhe under his touch.
“I’ve missed you so much,” he whispered, bringing his lips to her breasts again.
Holding his head against her chest, Rachel savored the feel of his tongue on her nipple, then moved her hips against his and felt his erection, warm and hard and inviting beneath his clothes. She moved her hands to his waist, and was disappointed to discover that his shorts, unlike hers, possessed a zipper and button. She couldn’t get a good grip, and instead allowed Brady to take off the rest of his clothes until he too only wore a pair of socks.
Rachel was still on her back, and Brady was in an awkward half sitting-half leaning position over her.
“I think there’s only one way this is going to work,” he said, sitting up.
“Lucky me,” she said. Straddling him, Rachel briefly thought of the loveseat in her office. Her mischievous dream was coming to life in the forest rather than at work.
His erection was not in but underneath her, and she savored the feeling of his hardness pressed against her most sensitive flesh. His hands roamed freely over her back and chest as they kissed, and since she was above him, her hair fell down around their faces like a soft, semitransparent curtain. Brady slid his hands up her body to her breasts, where his hands came to rest with hers on top of his. They looked at each other, saying nothing and breathing heavily. Rachel moved her left hand to Brady’s right shoulder and claimed his erection with her right. She lifted her hips and rear, positioned him beneath her wet opening, and slowly and easily slid down on his rock-hard length.
Unable to speak, Rachel clenched around him. Brady positioned his hands on her ass and Rachel began to ride him hard. It had never been so good for her. K
nowing they were in love and completely joined somehow transcended and intensified the physical act of sex. Rachel had never felt so alive, so needed, so loved. The maelstrom of physical and emotional sensations consumed her and she quickly climaxed.
She bit her lip not to cry out, and instead softly whimpered as Brady started to feverishly pump himself into her while she was coming down from her peak. Brady moved harder and faster inside her as he sought his release—and then she started to climb again. She thrust her hips against him desperately and her second orgasm hit her moments before he came. Brady gripped her hips and let his head fall back against the bench as he let out a guttural cry into the night.
She collapsed onto him.
“Oh, God,” she said in a rattling whisper. “I’ve never…twice…”
Her head fell onto his shoulder as she continued to straddle him. She didn’t want to move and wasn’t sure she could do so if she tried. Brady kissed her cheek, held her to him, and rubbed her back until they both briefly drifted off to sleep under the light of a summer moon.
It was nearly midnight by the time they reluctantly left the forest, and it wasn’t until they reached their rooms that they realized they’d been holding hands all the way back.
“There’s not a soul around, Rachel,” Brady said as Rachel’s eyes nervously darted around the vicinity.
“Thought I heard someone getting ice back at the vending area,” she said.
Brady looked over his shoulder. No one was in sight.
They stood there together, a few feet apart, but not daring to touch or embrace.
At the same time, they both said, “I love you.” After smiling and lightly giggling at their simultaneous professions and giving each other looks filled with not-really-unrequited yearning, they said good night and went into their separate rooms to grab fitful and lonely sleep.
The next morning, a Saturday, they chose to get on the road early rather than take the time to have a leisurely breakfast in the dining room. Rachel announced she was tired of the company of so many judges, but amended her complaint to state that Brady was specifically excluded from that group. Fifteen minutes after leaving the lodge, they stopped at a fast food place and ate a quick breakfast inside the restaurant. Although the food wasn’t anything to write home about, they did get the chance to sit next to each other in a booth, rather than having to sit apart to maintain the pretense that they were nothing more than professional colleagues.
After arriving back in Bourbon Springs in the early afternoon, Brady took Rachel to the courthouse to pick up her car. They made arrangements to meet that evening again at her house, but after dark.
“As much as I enjoyed last night’s unique venue,” Brady said as he removed Rachel’s luggage from his SUV and put it in the trunk of her vehicle, “I’m looking forward to being back behind closed doors with you.”
“Same here,” she agreed, “but it sounds like you didn’t care for doing it in the great outdoors.”
“It wasn’t so much the outdoors as what was out there with us. I’m covered with mosquito bites. But you’re almost completely unscathed. That bug spray did nothing for me.” Rachel stepped back and studied Brady’s arms and legs; sure enough, several little red spots were sprinkled over his body.
Fortunately, bug bites did not interfere with their plans for the evening. They made love twice that night and told each other I love you more times than they could count.
Rachel then spent her Sunday alone, catching up on laundry, running errands, grabbing a quick nap, and calling her mother to report on her experience at Judicial College. Late Sunday evening, as she was preparing to go to bed, she got a text from Hannah asking whether she could come to the distillery bright and early on Monday. Rachel had a motion hour, but it was scheduled for late in the morning, so there wasn’t a scheduling conflict which would cause her to decline the invitation. She texted Hannah back and agreed to meet but asked why.
Campaign stuff was the response.
You know I can’t talk Rachel texted back.
But Hannah was not dissuaded.
Not what you think. Need to talk. Please come.
Rachel agreed, but a part of her knew that the discussion would probably end with her once more telling her friend that talking about the judicial campaign was strictly off-limits.
Monday arrived bright and warm. Rachel emailed Sherry that she’d be late to work and explained (lest she think her lateness was due to another late night with Brady) that she had a breakfast meeting with Hannah at the distillery. She texted Brady and told him the same, figuring that she wouldn’t really be that late into the office due to the likely topic. Since Rachel had court that day, she wore a dark purple suit, the skirt hitting at the knee, and black pumps.
During the drive west from her house to the distillery, Rachel felt like she was moving through a vividly-painted dream. Curls of fog clung to the swales and along the creek beds that crisscrossed the glorious expanse of Bluegrass known as Craig County, Kentucky, and the sun’s light filtered through some puffy morning clouds, making Rachel think there would be rain later in the day. As her car neared her destination and skirted around the northern edge of GarnetBrooke, a major thoroughbred horse farm across the road from the distillery, Rachel caught the inimitable whiff of the mash.
Even though Rachel lived several miles from the distillery, she had detected the welcoming, woody, yeasty, sweet-and-sour aroma the moment she had opened her garage door and had gone outside to get her newspaper down at her mailbox. The fragrance could travel many miles—it graced many a distillery town in Kentucky—and it regularly traveled south and east from Old Garnet and settled over Bourbon Springs. The mash had a distinctive pungency; it smelled much like rising or baking bread. What scent could more powerfully, viscerally, and instantaneously invoke a sense of hearth and home? It was a part of every Bourbon Springs native’s mental landscape.
Even when Rachel had worked in Frankfort, the aroma was almost always present; the state capital was home to two major distilleries, Buffalo Trace and Jim Beam. There had been only one time in her life when she’d not been around the smell on a regular basis, and that was when she’d gone to undergrad and law school in Lexington at the University of Kentucky. Although Lexington now boasted a downtown distillery, Town Branch was not opened until years after Rachel had graduated. Lexington was no slouch in the great-smell department, however: it boasted a peanut butter factory. The aroma of the roasting peanuts (which always smelled like popcorn to Rachel) regularly wafted over downtown and toward the UK campus.
Upon arriving at the distillery, Rachel parked in the nearly-empty lot in front of the new visitors’ center. Old Garnet had undergone some expansion over the past several years, with the addition of the large visitors’ center being the most visible change. The impressive oval-shaped edifice was made of Kentucky limestone, a visual echo of the stone used in the construction of several of the very old buildings on the distillery grounds, including the distillery building itself and the oldest rickhouse, or aging warehouse, just a few yards away. Rachel recalled that Hannah had mentioned to her that Bo had insisted the visitors’ center be made of limestone not merely to match some of the other structures on the property, but in honor of the calcium-and magnesium-rich stone which produced the unique water so instrumental in crafting Kentucky’s sweet ambrosia—bourbon whiskey.
Blooming orange daylilies, hostas, and red-and-yellow marigolds flanked the short path leading to the front doors of the center. Flower baskets hanging from the front porch overflowed with cascading purple petunias, and the blossoms were so flamboyantly lush Rachel thought they resembled small lavender waterfalls. Over the front door hung the Old Garnet logo, a replica of the image on the bottle itself: a faceted red oval gem inside the large O, with Old Garnet written in an old-fashioned script. Underneath the brand name was a ribbon bearing the Gaelic words uisce beata, meaning water of life, and from which the word whiskey was derived.
Hannah had texted just
before Rachel left home, telling her to meet in the visitors’ center café. The venue sold sandwiches during lunch, but also offered coffee and pastries for early business visitors.
Rachel reached the front door and, finding it open, entered. She crossed the wide lobby; the sound of her heels clicked against the amber-hued hardwood floor and echoed in the cavernous, light-filled space. Above her, the center was crowned with a small dome with a skylight on top and its lofty, curved interior was painted with murals depicting scenes from the bourbon-making process, including a field of corn, coopers making barrels, and bottles of Old Garnet coming off the line.
Rachel thought she heard voices coming from a hallway to her right and glanced in that direction, but then Hannah appeared in the café entrance and waved to her to come inside. Hannah, looking stunning in a yellow sheath dress that morning, had coffee and bagels at the ready, and gave Rachel a hug as she arrived at the table. Her friend’s long blonde hair was loose, and she gave the appearance of glowing, even though the interior of the café was dim. Most of the overhead lights were not on, and since the café windows fronted on the west side of the building, there was little natural light filtering in at that time of day.
After some chatter about work, the weather, and family, Hannah sat up a little straighter. Rachel readied herself for the questions she knew she likely could not answer.
“I wanted to talk to you about the campaign,” Hannah said, and held up her hands in front of her chest. “And before you start to argue with me, let me say that it has nothing to do with asking you for advice or support, or anything like that. In fact, there’s something I think you need to know in case the gossip makes it back here.”
“OK,” Rachel said slowly, but still didn’t believe that Hannah was going to raise a subject they could properly discuss when it came to the campaign.
“Remember my friend, Cassie Claiborne?” Hannah asked.
“Yes, I saw her several times during the conference last week.” Rachel didn’t mention that most of those encounters had not been enjoyable, at least on her end.
Secret Blend (Bourbon Springs Book 1) Page 19