Snowy Mountain Nights

by Lindsay Evans

  He was disturbingly beautiful. A better-looking Shemar Moore, with a shaved head, a goatee around his smiling mouth and bright white teeth. His dark eyes danced with friendly and flirtatious humor. Definitely not Garrison.

  “Oh, my God!” Her face burned with embarrassment as she quickly gathered the edges of the coat together. “I’m so sorry! I—”

  The man in the doorway grinned. “I’m not.” His eyes were kind and sweet, although he did help himself to a second look at her figure, now safely covered up by the coat.

  “I must be at the wrong apartment. I thought—”

  “You’re exactly where you need to be.” He laughed again and called out over his shoulder, “I told you to get the door yourself, Garrison.”

  Reyna heard Garrison’s deep voice call out from inside the apartment. Her face burned with mortification. She backed away from the door. “I’ll just come back another time.”

  “Oh, no. You stay right there.” The man shouted something else into the apartment that Reyna didn’t understand. Something about Garrison dipping his oars in the water. He turned back to her. “I’m Wolfe, by the way. I’m sure I’ll be seeing you again.” He stepped back from the doorway and into the apartment.

  Reyna heard voices rippling with amusement. Then a woman appeared in the threshold to flick her eyes once over Reyna before she glanced back at Wolfe. Reyna had a brief impression of gorgeous—short hair, model-sharp cheekbones, red lips—before the woman stepped back into the apartment. Moments later, she and Wolfe reappeared in the hallway.

  At second glance, the woman was even more beautiful. She had a long and graceful neck, full lips and large eyes that reminded Reyna of a cat. She wore a designer black blouse, black pencil skirt and royal-blue high heels that rivaled the ones Reyna was wearing in height. And she was sure they were expensive.

  “I’m just going to leave.” Reyna clutched the edges of the trench coat tighter and turned to walk away. Heavy footsteps sounded near the door.

  “Reyna?” Garrison stood in the doorway. “What are you doing here?”

  But his eyes dropped to the trench coat, her stockinged legs, the high heels. His whole body went rigid, eyes devouring Reyna. She couldn’t have moved if she wanted to. She licked her lips, goaded into the nervous habit, and Garrison’s eyes latched on to the movement.

  Reyna shivered.

  “You’re right, as usual,” the woman said to Wolfe somewhere behind her.

  Reyna was aware of the two strangers, but most of her was focused on Garrison.

  “Garrison, Nichelle and I are heading out,” Wolfe said. “We’ll call you about brunch tomorrow.”

  She heard their footsteps leading away toward the elevators, but didn’t watch them go. She couldn’t take her eyes off Garrison.

  “Come in.” Garrison’s voice was low and rough, a welcome abrasion.

  She walked ahead of him into the apartment, vaguely aware of him closing and locking the door behind them. He said her name again and stepped closer.

  “I’ve missed you,” he said.

  He gripped the edges of her coat in his fists, slowly parted the cloth. The balmy breeze from his apartment brushed over her skin, and she trembled.

  “I need you.”

  The side of his mouth twitched at her words, but other than that, he was completely absorbed in looking at her.

  The lingerie she wore was a pale green lace, like frosting on her body. The cups of the demi bra held up her breasts like fruit to whomever she wanted to have them, and the high-cut bikini panties elongated her legs even more. The stockings were black silk, held up by the pale green garter belt. His eyes stroked her; they did not tease, did not hint at things they had done, but raged with what he wanted to do to her. Her belly tightened.

  When she’d left the house dressed in lingerie under her trench coat, she thought of it as a naughty surprise to tease him with, to convince him to go out with her again, then they would talk and she would apologize and then… She couldn’t think beyond that conversation. Only that she wanted the conversation to happen, and she needed him in her life again.

  But now, with the incendiary heat of his eyes devouring her near-naked flesh, she didn’t feel like talking. He said her name again and tugged the coat from her shoulders. Instantly, she felt naked. Soaked in her sudden and irrevocable arousal. This was not what she had planned, but now, with him watching her like a hawk that had sighted its prey, it was exactly what she needed.

  He pulled her to him roughly, and she gasped, sucking in air and his breath then his lips. She moaned into the silken glide of his tongue and fit herself closer to him, sank her fingers into the back of his neck. His hardness pressed into her hip, and she moved against it, hungrily seeking. He groaned her name.

  They caught fire together. She felt it. And it was perfect.

  Garrison pulled away. “Before we do this—” His voice broke off. “Before we do this, you need to know I want more than tonight with you.”

  He sounded so sure of what he wanted, his gaze tearing her apart and putting her back together. Reyna made a low noise at the back of her throat, a whine of surrender and of yes, and of oh, God, why had she waited so long?

  “Yes!” Reyna reached for him, her lips parted, hands sliding around his shoulders. “Yes. Please. That’s what I want, too.”

  A quick confession tumbled from her, how much she wanted him but had fought against it out of fear. He stopped the rush of words with a finger against her lips. Reyna took the hint, but bit his finger, sucked it into her mouth and swirled her tongue around the thick hardness. Garrison’s pupils widened, and his breath caught.

  With a rough noise, he tugged the trench coat from her shoulders, threw it somewhere behind him. He swept her into his arms, and she shrieked softly with the surprise of it, her world spinning.

  His bedroom was filled with sunlight and reminded her, strangely, of Halcyon. The big bed, dark furniture, the way he put her among the sheets like something precious. He shook his head like a man trying to clear a mental fog.

  “I like your outfit.” Garrison’s voice was rough. He stood before her, leisurely tugging off his clothes as if he had all the time in the world. “But I’m afraid I’m going to take it off you now.”

  She mewled in anticipation.

  Then he was naked, and a knee was pressing into the bed while she fought to take in all of him at once. The sculpted shoulders, hairless chest, solid abs and slight fuzz of a happy trail leading down to… She licked her lips.

  And he touched her, very deliberately undoing the feminine magic of her lingerie, slipping off her stilettos, undoing the snap of her garter belts, rolling off her stockings. His fingers skated over her flesh, electric and warm. He was as deliberate about that as he was with everything else, and she whimpered with arousal, the sweet heat building between her thighs with every brush of his hands.

  She didn’t know when she was naked, only that Garrison had unrestricted access to her body. He touched her everywhere, deep and back-arching strokes that made her moan his name.

  She reached for him, adored his beautiful body with her hands. The coiled muscles under silken skin, the firmness of him, his mouth. He nipped her fingers with strong white teeth, and she gasped when the sensation went straight to her core.

  He smiled, a hard tilt of his mouth. “Payback.”

  A touch at the back of her knees made her legs fall open for him. His breath brushed her ear in a filthy whisper, then he slid deeply inside. She gasped at the fullness of him.

  Finally…

  Her fingers dug into his hips to spur him on. But Garrison did not rush. He stroked her languidly, building a deliberate and pulse-pounding rhythm that left her gasping. She held on tight as he loved her, locked her ankles behind his back. The pleasure rose in her as if it would never end.

  “I love you!” She dug her nails into his back and moved against the sheets. “I love you…”

  He stuttered, and his hips froze their magical dance
between her thighs. He lifted his head to meet her eyes.

  “Reyna…?”

  She whined and clutched at his hips, begging him to move. “Please.” She squirmed beneath him, pinned to the bed where they were intimately joined. She licked her lips at the expression on his face, hopeful and awed, a nakedness that had never been there before. Reyna said the words again and again and again. He closed his eyes and shuddered then drew back his hips, nearly abandoning the wet heat of her. She cried out again. He sank back into her, filling her with sweetness and more heat.

  “Yes,” she whispered. “Yes.”

  He bit her throat at the end of it and whispered something into her skin, something that her mind was too frayed to grasp while she lost her breath and all awareness of everything else to the sensations coursing through her body at the speed of light.

  She must have slept, because the next thing she knew she was waking at Garrison’s side, and all the lights outside the windows were muted. New York winked at her, a nighttime seductress. Garrison, sensing she was awake, shifted next to her, not seeming sleepy at all. His gaze swept over her face then her mouth. A shudder ran through him. But he only kissed her lips once before tugging her with intent from the bed and into the living room. More stars. More New York lights. Pinpricks of beauty piercing the darkness. Reyna sighed, feeling that all those lights, every single one outside the window, represented a piece of her happiness.

  With a flick of his hand, Garrison turned on the lamps in the living room. He had draped a robe around her shoulders, silken and blue, and pulled on the pair of jeans he’d discarded earlier. On the sofa, he drew her to him, touching his forehead to hers. His warm breath teased her mouth.

  “I want you again,” he said. “I couldn’t focus with you in my bed like that.”

  She bit her lip, pleased. “So the lingerie and trench coat…” She leaned into his steady strength and sighed when his arms wound around her from behind. “They were a success?”

  His soft laugh floated above her head. Reyna twisted around to look into his face and see with her own eyes the laughter that transformed it. His eyes were warm and heavy-lidded, his mouth curved in a satisfied smile. Her heart knocked at the sight.

  “Very much so,” he said. “But I love you in anything. Naked. In a cabin. In New York. As long as you’re with me.”

  At first, the words floated through her head as a pleasant and very positive response to her question. Then the one word knocked her in the belly like a hammer. Love.

  She pulled away and sat up straight on the couch. “You love me?”

  Reyna half expected him to make a denial about slips of the tongue or try to distract her with his hands. But he surprised her by allowing her to pull away. He sat beneath her shocked gaze, his face beautifully naked to her. “Yes, I do.”

  Reyna trembled at the certainty of his words. She propped her chin on her raised knees to watch him. He was so beautiful to look at, and she had been starved for him for so many months. He leaned back into the couch, circling her ankle with his fingers as if he needed that connection.

  “I was actually on my way to see you.” A wry smile touched his lips. “But, as usual, you surprised me.” The pad of his thumb traced a line from her ankle down to her foot then back again.

  The delicate movement stirred a flutter in Reyna’s belly. He was so tender with her. With a start, she realized that he always had been. Their eyes met, and an expression moved over Garrison’s face, a waiting. A thought. Then he apparently made a decision. He slid a hand into his jeans pocket. It emerged with a small silver box.

  Reyna stilled.

  “Before I saw you again at Halcyon, I never thought very much about partnership,” Garrison said. “But once you and I started talking and you dug into the hidden parts of me, I saw things differently.” He flipped open the box with his thumb.

  The breath shivered in Reyna’s throat. Her fingers, locked fiercely on her own arms, twitched. Inside the box lay a platinum necklace weighed down with a small Adinkra symbol. A grounded heart. Odo Nnyew Fie Kwan. The symbol that meant “love never loses its way home.”

  She swallowed the sudden lump in her throat. He remembered.

  “I bought this for you at Halcyon.” Garrison paused and lifted his gaze to Reyna. The lamps in the room highlighted his face, offering up every line, every angle to her. Nothing hidden. He licked his lips, an uncharacteristic gesture. “At the time, I wasn’t sure what I meant when I bought this. I just had to let you know that the love your parents share can be yours, too.” He touched her cheek with a hand that, incredibly, trembled. “But now…I know I want you to share it with me.”

  The feelings she had for him rolled over her like a tidal wave, undeniable. And she thought she’d have to convince him to give her another chance, but all the while… She picked up the necklace.

  “All this time?” Her voice shook.

  “Yes.” The truth of his love poured from his eyes.

  Reyna allowed herself to look past his habitual reserve and see the fires in him that burned hotter than any she’d ever known.

  He kissed the corners of her mouth, enveloping her with the scent of him, and of the two of them together. “All this time I’ve loved you, and you’ve only fought me, trying to get away to your lonely island.”

  “No. Never. I was just afraid of…of being hurt again.” She wouldn’t have been able to stand it if the thing she thought she had, unconditional and lasting love, turned out to be smoke and ashes. She did love him. Had loved him from the first. But she hadn’t wanted to.

  “There are few guarantees in life,” he said.

  “I know.”

  “But there are promises.” He took her hand and placed it tenderly against his chest. “And there is this.” His heart thundered beneath her hand. She closed her eyes and could swear she felt the rhythm of it in her own body. “I love you, Reyna Allen. I promise to be the best possible man I can be for you. Is that all right?”

  “Yes,” she said, breathless, tears falling. He kissed her wet cheeks and smiled when even more tears came. She laughed, throwing her arms around him. “It’s more than all right with me.”

  Epilogue

  Reyna slipped on her suit jacket and headed down the hall toward the elevator. She’d barely taken half a dozen steps, her high heels sinking into the thin carpet, before her cell phone rang. She smiled at the name and photo that popped up on the screen.

  “Hi, love.”

  “Reyna.”

  Her hand reflexively tightened around the leather handle of her briefcase. Even after a year together, the way Garrison said her name still made her melt.

  “I hope you left the office already,” he said. “We’re waiting for you at the restaurant.” He sounded wonderfully relaxed. In the background, she could hear the sound of traffic, a car honking, as if he’d stepped away from the table to call her. “I didn’t stop being a workaholic just for you to pick up my bad habits.”

  “No, never that.” She laughed, shaking her head in denial, although he obviously couldn’t see her. “A few last-minute things came up that I had to take care of.”

  Getting the job—complete with an office—at a downtown ad agency not far from where Garrison worked was a dream come true. The job had come on her own merit, and they worked her hard enough that she no longer thought of the position as a gift. Still, it was one of the most rewarding things she’d ever done.

  “That’s how it starts,” Garrison teased. “And I would know.”

  “Yes,” she murmured, picturing the curve of his smiling mouth. “You would.”

  Not long after they had made things official between them, Garrison started working less, wrapping up his workdays by six or seven in the evening, taking time to himself and actually relaxing for a change. He even made a spontaneous trip down to Florida to see Wolfe instead of being holed up in his admittedly beautiful study on a weekend when Reyna had to work.

  One afternoon, while they lay on blankets on he
r living room floor, listening to music and basking in the sun, Garrison turned to her with mild surprise. “I forgot how good it feels to just do nothing,” he said. Reyna laughed and pressed a kiss to his beautiful mouth. A week later, his secretary sent her a thank-you card.

  “I’m leaving the office now.” Reyna pressed the elevator button for the lobby. “I’ll be there in—” she looked at her watch “—about thirty minutes if the train isn’t acting up.”

  “Good. See you soon.”

  When she got to The Beautiful Feast about twenty-five minutes later, Vivian, the owner, greeted her with a warm smile at the door of the restaurant and waved her toward the private back room. The door was open, and she could hear the quiet conversations and laughter of her family and friends.

  She stood in the doorway, watching them—Garrison talking gravely with her father while her mother showed something to Garrison’s mother, Marian, on her smartphone. Louisa, Bridget and Marceline were all gathered around Wolfe, subtly vying for his attention. Her father saw her first.

  “I’m impressed.” He greeted her with a kiss and a teasing smile. “You’re actually early. You must really think he’s something special.” He jerked his bearded chin toward Garrison.

  Reyna turned her blushing face away to kiss Garrison. He palmed her hot cheek then gave her that small and intimate smile he reserved just for her. “The feeling is mutual, Mr. Allen.” His warm breath brushed her throat, and she shivered in response, sliding her arms around his waist and inhaling his sensual, clean scent.

  “Give the rest of us a chance,” Wolfe said with a laugh.

  When it was his turn, he enveloped Reyna in a warm hug. “Good to see you again, beautiful.” He gave her that teasing once-over that made her shake her head before slipping neatly from his arms.

  Marian Richards, whom Reyna had only spoken with a handful of times on the phone, stood up. “I finally get to meet the woman who captured my son’s heart.” Fine lines radiated from the corners of her expressive eyes when she smiled. She was as sensually attractive as her son, but her casual elegance—high heels, dark jeans and a white blazer—surprised Reyna. From what Garrison told her, she’d expected a bohemian in bright earrings and hemp harem pants.