Ordinarily she didn’t drink much.
But after her lunch with Connor, and a long, dreary day of rebuilding a carburetor and then the depressing conversation with Mrs. Harrison, she’d felt she’d earned a drink or two.
Mrs. Florence Harrison, a widow who lived just outside of town had been disappointing Emma for two years now. All because of a ’58 Corvette currently rusting in Mrs. Harrison’s barn. The car had once belonged to the woman’s son, now dead forty years. Emma had lusted after the ’Vette ever since the moment she’d first seen it. She longed to bring it into the garage and restore it to its full glory.
But Mrs. Harrison flatly refused to part with her late son’s “baby.”
“Ah, well,” Emma said, and took a long, deep drink of the frothy concoction in her glass. She let the icy stream wash down her throat and send chills to every corner of her body. “What’s one more no in the grand scheme of things, anyway?”
Connor didn’t want her enough to lose the bet, and Mrs. Harrison was clutching that Corvette to her bosom like a long-lost child.
Pushing off the top step, Emma stood up and walked down the stairs and across the lawn. The damp grass felt cool and lush beneath her bare feet as she wandered aimlessly through the shadows. From down the street, she heard snatches of sound, letting her know her neighbors were also enjoying the cool relief of the summer night. Children laughed, dogs barked and the faint sound of a radio playing caught the air and hung on it.
When the wind kicked up suddenly, it swept through her hair, lifting it off her neck into a wild, brief dance. At the side of the house, the wind chimes tinkled merrily, and she smiled at the sound, in spite of everything.
“What’re you thinking?”
The deep, familiar voice came from somewhere close beside her, and Emma’s stomach jumped as she turned to face Connor. “You scared me,” she said, though that wasn’t strictly true.
Startled, yes. But scared? Nope. Much closer to a rush of hunger than a rush of fear. Funny how she’d never noticed before now just what kind of effect his voice had on her. Just when exactly had that started happening?
“Sorry. Didn’t mean to sneak up on you,” he said, and took a step closer. “But you looked like you were thinking serious thoughts—then you smiled. Intrigued me.”
Still in the USMC T-shirt and jeans he’d been wearing earlier, Connor looked good enough to fuel dozens of dreams. At the thought she clutched her margarita glass a little tighter and took a sip, even as she acknowledged that it was false courage. “I, um, just liked the sound of the wind chimes.”
As if awaiting a cue, the wind breathed past them again, and the chimes sounded out like fairy bells.
“Pretty,” he said.
“Yeah, they are.”
“Not them,” he said. “You.”
Whoa.
Head rush.
It wasn’t the margarita. She hadn’t had enough of that to matter. It was Connor. Plain and simple. In the moonlit darkness, he looked impossibly handsome. His strong jaw worked as though his teeth were clenched. His eyes were as dark as sapphires, and the reflection of stars danced in them. His mouth was tightened into a grim slash that made him look as though he regretted saying those words.
Well, too bad if he did.
He had said them and there was no going back now.
“Thank you.”
“Emma…”
“Connor,” she interrupted him neatly and took another sip of her drink to stall for a precious second or two. “If you’re here to tell me again what a great pal I am and how you don’t want to lose me—” she stopped and took a breath. “You don’t have to bother. I get it. Understood. Go. Be happy. Fly free.”
He glanced around the empty yard, and she knew he wasn’t noticing the lushly crowded flower beds or the sweet smelling jasmine vines clinging to the fence wrapping around her property. He was waiting, thinking, maybe having as difficult a time as she was with whatever it was that lay between them.
And for one brief moment Emma wondered if she’d done the right thing in setting this ball in motion. But there was no turning back. No avoiding whatever was coming.
Finally he looked at her and she read a decision in his eyes. She lifted her chin and braced herself for whatever was coming next.
“This isn’t about our friendship, Em,” he said softly. “This is about what’s making me crazy.”
“And what’s that?” Oh, man. She held her breath and felt the sense of waiting all through her body.
“If I don’t kiss you in the next ten seconds, I think I’m gonna lose what’s left of my mind.”
All of the air left her body and fire replaced it. She felt tongues of flame working their way through her insides. Her body went hot and ready and eager. Her mind clicked off and her emotions charged to the surface. But her voice was steady as she smiled up at him. “Time’s awastin’ then.”
He grabbed her.
She dropped the acrylic margarita glass to the ground, spilling the icy drink across the grass.
He pulled her hard against him, stared deeply into her eyes for one heart-stoppingly long moment.
And then he kissed her.
Seven
C onnor hung on to Emma as if it meant his life.
And in that moment maybe it did.
For the past several days, she’d filled his mind. Every thought, every dream was stamped with her image.
She fit against him as if she was the missing piece to his puzzle. And though one corner of his brain clanged out a warning bell, he refused to listen.
His arms wrapped around her, pulling her close, closer. His hands swept up and down her back, aligning her body with his, until he felt every inch of her pressed to him tightly enough that he felt her heartbeat fluttering wildly. His mouth took hers, his tongue tangling with hers in an erotic dance that fired his system with a need unlike anything he’d ever known before.
She sighed into his mouth, and he swallowed her breath, taking it inside and holding it. Her arms linked at the back of his neck, and she pressed herself even more fully against him.
He felt the pressure of her pebbled nipples pressing into his chest, branding his skin with heat that seared him right down to his soul. Connor groaned, and his arms tightened around her, lifting her feet clean off the ground.
Again and again their tongues tangled in a dance as old as time and as new as sunrise. She tasted of her icy drink and tantalizing secrets. He couldn’t get enough of her.
Somewhere in the back of his mind, a voice shouted, This is Emma. His pal.
His buddy.
And right now the only thing in his life he desperately wanted.
Tearing his mouth from hers, he gasped for air like a wild man. Blindly, Connor stared down at her and saw her familiar features through a bristling red haze of passion. Her mouth was swollen from his kiss. Her summer-blue eyes were glazed with the same desire blasting through him. Her breath labored in and out of her lungs, and he wondered if her heart was thundering in her chest—as his was.
“Wow.” She blinked up at him and smiled with all the wonder of a kid at Christmas, unwrapping a gift she hadn’t even been aware of wanting.
Connor knew just how she felt. “Yeah,” he said, “I think that just about covers it.”
“Who would have guessed?”
He set her back onto her feet and released his viselike hold on her. Still, though, he was reluctant to break all contact. He lifted one hand and stroked her cheek with his fingertips. Her skin was as warm as sunlight and as soft as velvet.
Emma turned her face into his touch and closed her eyes as he caressed her face. She sighed a little, opened her eyes again and said, “Why did you come here tonight, Connor?”
Good question. He wasn’t entirely sure he had an answer for her. Shaking his head, he said simply, “I don’t really know. I just drove here. Didn’t actually stop and think about it. Didn’t plan it. Just followed my instincts and they led me here.”
&nb
sp; “Instincts, huh?”
He nodded and shoved one hand along the side of his head. Hard to admit, even to himself, that it was pure gut reflex that had brought him to Emma’s door. But there it was. As a Marine, he’d learned long ago to trust the impulses that drove him. He didn’t question, didn’t doubt. He just did. That confidence in his own subconscious had saved his butt more than once.
And tonight those instincts had brought him here.
To Emma.
“What are they telling you to do now?”
If he told her that, she’d probably run for the hills. Because it was taking all of his self-control to keep from tearing her clothes off and tossing her onto the cool, damp grass. He wanted her naked. He wanted her beneath him. Over him. Astride him. He wanted her in every possible way, and as they stood there in the starlit shadows, that want continued to pulse and grow. “You don’t wanna know.”
She stepped up close, close enough that he could feel the heat of her body radiating out around her. “Yes, I do.”
Her scent lifted into the air and filled his mind. The taste of her still lingered on his tongue. His blood raced, his body tightened until the pain of waiting was almost as fierce as the desire gnawing at him.
He hadn’t meant to start this. To light a match to the stick of dynamite lying between them. But now that the first, most difficult, step had been taken, now that the lit fuse was lying there sparking and sizzling, there was no going back. Though his brain shouted at him to think about what he was doing, what he was thinking, his body wasn’t listening.
His mouth hungered for another taste. His hands burned to touch her, to sweep along her skin, define every inch of the compact, curvy body that had been plaguing him.
“If you don’t want this to happen,” he managed to grind out, “say so now.”
She was breathing as heavily as he was. Even in the pearly moonlight, he saw the flush on her cheeks and the glitter in her eyes. And he prayed—desperately—that when she made her decision it would be one he could live with. One that wouldn’t haunt them both. Even as he thought it, though, he realized that the hell of it was, no matter what she said, they would be haunted.
Because after this night, nothing between them would ever be the same—whatever happened.
“If I didn’t want this,” she pointed out, “you would have known about it when you kissed me.”
“Be sure,” he said, and wasn’t entirely sure himself why he was giving her this out. Why he was practically daring her to call a halt to this. Because if she did say no—it was going to kill him.
“I’m sure, Connor. Are you?”
“Decision made, babe.” He grabbed her again, filling his hands with the thin fabric of her tank top. He pulled her close again and dipped his head to take her mouth with his. To drown in the taste of her. She sighed into him, and Connor’s blood raced through his veins, thick and hot. He groaned, broke the kiss and stared down at her for a long second, before picking her up and tossing her over his shoulder.
“Hey!” She braced her palms against his lower back, pushed herself up and shouted, “What the hell are you doing?”
“I’m through wasting time, Em.” He slapped his palm against her butt, and when she yelped, he grinned.
“What are you, a caveman?”
“Caveman, Marine…you tell me.”
“I will if you’ll put me down.”
“Not a chance.” He marched across the moonlit backyard, took the five steps to the back porch at a dead run, then yanked open the screen door and stepped into her kitchen.
He paid no attention to the homey room with its glass-fronted cabinets. He glanced at the blender full of margaritas, then kept walking, out of the kitchen to the bottom of the stairs. He’d been to her house before. He knew his way around the ground floor—but he’d never been upstairs. Never been into her bedroom. Never even considered it until tonight. But that was then—this was now.
“Damn it, Connor,” she said, slamming her fist against his back, “I mean it. Put me down.”
“As soon as I see a bed. Trust me. I’ll put you down. Where’m I headed?”
She sighed, then laughed, and the magic of it floated in the air like soap bubbles on a summer wind. “Upstairs, you Neanderthal. First door on the left.”
“Got it.” He took the stairs two at a time, his long legs making short work of the trip. Emma’s slight yet curvy body hooked over his shoulder didn’t slow him down one bit. It did, though, fill him with a fierce and frantic need to reach her bed—hell, any bed.
The first door on the left stood open in invitation and he rushed through it. Connor hardly noticed the room itself. All he saw was the double bed with the wrought iron head and foot rails. A colorful, flower-splashed quilt was spread over the mattress and a half dozen throw pillows in different colors and shapes were piled against the bigger bed pillows.
Every cell in his body urged him to hurry. To grab her, take her, fill himself with the taste and touch of her. Giving in to that urge, Connor flipped Emma over his shoulder and onto the mattress. She bounced a couple times and laughed even harder than she had downstairs.
“You’re crazy,” she said, grinning up at him in the moonlight pouring through the bedroom window overlooking the backyard.
“Been said before,” he agreed, planting one knee on the edge of the bed and leaning over her.
She reached up and caught his face between her palms. Her gaze locked with his, and he felt as if she were trying to see all the way through him, down to his soul. And a part of him wondered what she’d find there.
Then philosophical questions faded from his mind as he slid one hand beneath the soft fabric of her tank top. At the first touch of her skin against his, he swallowed hard, and she hissed in a breath and let her eyes slide closed.
“Have to have you, Emma,” he murmured, and bent his head to take one kiss, then two.
“Have to have each other,” she answered, and snatched a kiss for herself as his hand slid higher, up her rib cage to cup her breast.
“No bra.” The words slipped from him on a grateful sigh. His thumb and forefinger tweaked her pebbled nipple, and she arched into his touch, her breath sliding in and out of her lungs in hungry gasps.
Her skin was magic.
Warm silk.
He moved to straddle her body, his knees at her hips. He stared down at her as he pushed her tank top up and over her head, tearing it off and tossing it over his shoulder to land on the floor. A spill of moonlight lay across the bed and bathed Emma in a wash of pale light that almost made her skin glow.
He looked his fill and knew it would never be enough. He cupped her breasts in his hands and felt a hum of appreciation rush through him. Her nipples hardened at his touch. She reached up and ran her palms up and down his forearms, and he felt every stroke of her fingers like a live match against his skin.
Bending low, Connor indulged himself with a taste of her. He took first one nipple, then the other into his mouth, his tongue and teeth nibbling, pulling, teasing at her flesh until Emma was twisting and writhing beneath him.
Every move she made inflamed him. Every sigh that escaped her fed the flames engulfing him. Every touch made him want more. His eyes blurred, his brain shut down and his body took over. All he could think about was burying himself deep inside her. Feeling her damp heat surround him. Feeling her body quiver in climax.
He growled against her flesh and suckled her deeply. Emma’s back bowed and she groaned his name as she clutched at his shoulders. “Connor, Connor don’t stop. Don’t stop doing that.”
“Not a problem,” he mumbled, surrendering to the hunger clawing at his insides. His mouth drew at her nipples again and again, feeling her need build, feeling his own desire ratchet up past the boil-over point, and still he wanted more.
Sliding down her body, he unzipped her shorts and as he moved, he skimmed them and the white lace panties beneath them, down and off her legs. In the moonlight, he saw the tan lines mark
ing her body and felt his heart jump at the narrow strips of pale flesh over her breasts and at the juncture of her thighs. Why the thought of her in a tiny bikini could inflame him even while he was staring at her nudity, he couldn’t figure out and didn’t much care.
Everything he wanted in the world was there, at his fingertips. And he meant to enjoy it.
Emma felt him watching her and thought she might just burn to ashes under that heated gaze. But instead her body lit up like a fireworks display. His hands on her legs, as he caressed her from her ankles to her thighs and…oh, boy—even higher, felt hot, heavy, rough and so damn sensual, she couldn’t imagine how she’d lived so long without having him touch her.
Her blood was bubbling inside. That had to be the reason why her whole body felt so twitchy. She wasn’t a virgin. She’d had sex before.
But she’d never had sex like this before.
Not when she felt as though the top of her head was going to fly off into space—as though her insides were so jumbled with an intensifying need, that she might never feel normal again.
Connor’s lips replaced his hands on her legs, and she felt the warmth of his breath dusting her skin as he moved to the insides of her thighs, kissing, nibbling, licking.
Her breath rushed in and out of her lungs. She heard herself panting. She felt herself writhing and couldn’t stop. Didn’t want to stop. All she wanted was more. More of him.
Then his mouth covered her center. “Connor!”
Thank heaven he didn’t stop at her shout. She parted her thighs wider, inviting him closer. She planted her feet on the mattress and lifted her hips, rocking with the soul-shattering rhythm that he’d set with his lips and tongue. He tasted her intimately, sending showers of sparks throughout her body. Emma felt the world around her tremble as anticipation built within.
She opened her eyes and looked at him, watched him taste her, watched as he learned the secrets of her body, and she felt a rush of something hot and primal burst into life inside her.
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