by Sharon Sala
* * *
Dinner was Chinese delivery.
The whole time they were eating, Quinn kept expecting him to bring up their earlier conversation, but he didn’t. She was beginning to think that he’d forgotten it, and by the time they got to the fortune cookies she had completely relaxed.
“Here’s your cookie,” Nick said, as he dug them from the bottom of the sack. “You have to read it aloud. It’s a rule.”
She broke it open and put a piece of the cookie in her mouth, chewing as she unfolded her fortune. As she read, a flush was rising up her neck that she knew from experience would be clearly visible.
Then she took a deep breath, laid it facedown on the table and put the rest of her cookie in her mouth.
“You didn’t read it aloud,” Nick said.
“You go first,” she said.
He grinned.
“Chicken.”
He watched her eyebrows arch and her nostrils flare as she wadded it up and dropped it in front of him.
“Then you read it,” she snapped.
He was still grinning when he picked it up and smoothed it out, but then the smile died on his face. He looked up, then reached across the table and took her hand.
“Yes.”
Quinn felt the skin tightening across her face. She didn’t know whether she should laugh or cry as she looked down at the words on the tiny scrap of paper.
A second chance at love awaits. Say yes.
Her heart was pounding. He’d said yes.
“Read yours,” she said.
He let go of her hand and opened and read his, then looked up.
“I think we might be onto something here,” he said and pushed the paper toward her.
Again, she looked down and saw the words.
Trust your heart. Your luck is changing.
Her voice was shaking.
“I don’t believe in luck.”
“Neither do I,” Nick said. “But I believe in fate.” He paused. “Now, that’s enough of that. Do you want to go to the pool for a while? I know you can’t get your bandage wet, but you can stay in the shallow end, and it’s dark enough outside that I think it’s safe.”
The abrupt change of conversation was unexpected, but not unwelcome. It had gotten too serious, too fast.
“Sure.”
“Do you have a swimsuit?” he asked.
She nodded.
“Then you go ahead and change. I’m going to clean up here first, but wait for me. Don’t go outside alone.”
“Okay,” she said.
He started carrying the take-out containers to the trash as Quinn stood. When he wasn’t looking, she picked up the fortunes and took them with her as she left.
When Nick came back to wipe off the table he realized they were gone and smiled. Maybe, just maybe, that wall she’d been hiding behind was finally coming down.
* * *
Quinn laid the fortunes in the drawer and pulled out her one and only swimsuit. It had seen better days, but so had she. She tossed it on the bed and began to undress.
The first thing to come off was the sling, and letting the muscles bear all of her weight was a little painful as she laid it on the bed. Her mind was spinning...her thoughts in free fall as she kicked off her shoes.
This time last year she’d been in Denver working at a bar. The year before that it was Miami, working in a greenhouse. She couldn’t even remember the year before that, but looking back, it was painfully obvious she’d been wandering without an agenda. She’d never thought about it before all this. Before she’d nearly died—before she’d fainted in Nick Saldano’s arms.
That bullet in the back had been her wake-up call. Every little-girl dream she’d ever had came back in a rush. Even the princess she’d wanted to be... She’d lost that dream when she lost her knight in shining armor so many years ago. Finding him again in this way seemed too improbable to believe, and yet here they were.
Her clothes came off far easier than they went on, and she reached for the bottom half of her suit. With a little tugging, she got it on, wincing again from the pull of sore muscles in her shoulder. But when it came to the top, no matter how hard she tried, she couldn’t fasten it, so she put it on, then sat down on the side of the bed to wait for help.
* * *
It didn’t take Nick long to come out of his clothes, but since he’d cleaned the pool earlier in his white swim trunks, the only other one he had was his Speedo. He put it on without thought and headed across the hall to get Quinn.
He knocked once.
“Are you decent?” he yelled.
“More or less,” she answered.
He pushed the door inward and strode toward the bed.
Quinn stood and then stifled a gasp, too tongue-tied to speak. Nick was completely naked but for the tiny black Speedo stuck tight to his narrow hips.
He was admiring the alabaster beauty of all that bare skin when he noticed she was holding the bra part of her swimsuit against her with both hands.
She lifted her chin, refusing to be intimidated.
“I can’t fasten it.”
He leaned forward, reached around her back with both hands and grabbed both ends of the swimsuit top, then hooked them together in one smooth motion.
“That was fast,” she muttered.
“You should see how quick I can unhook one,” he drawled. “Are you ready?”
She nodded.
“Then let’s go,” he said and led the way as he strode out of the room toward the kitchen. He turned off the lights inside before they exited his house so that they wouldn’t be silhouetted against the light, then paused outside for a moment, letting his eyesight adjust. Once he was satisfied all was well, he took her by the hand and led her out.
The moment Quinn walked out into the dark, she took a slow, deep breath. It was the smell of freedom. Spending so much of her life outdoors and riding from state to state on her Harley, she didn’t realize how much she’d missed it until she was no longer surrounded by walls.
“Okay?” Nick asked.
She looked up at him then. The kindness in the tone of his voice and the concern on his face touched her.
“I’m fine,” she said.
“The shallow end is four feet. You can walk out to deeper water from there until it is up past your waist. I’ll try not to splash water on your bandage, and we should be good to go.”
Again, she let him lead her to the shallow end of the pool, then down the steps into the water.
Surprised, Quinn’s voice lightened.
“Ooh, it feels like silk against my skin.”
“Your skin is beautiful. You’re beautiful,” Nick said.
Quinn sighed as she moved a little deeper into the pool. When the water was just below her breasts, she stopped.
“I think this is far enough,” she said.
“Agreed. Do you want to stay out here in the middle of the pool or move closer to the edge?”
“The edge, so I’ll have something to lean against.”
So he walked her to the side of the pool, and as soon as she was safe, he dipped his hand in the pool and made the sign of the cross on her face, first touching her forehead, then her chin, then a touch to each cheek before ending with a touch on her nose.
“My queen! You are now officially baptized in the waters of Saldano. The magic is strongest here in the dark, m’lady. It is my honor to be hosting such a royal beauty.”
Quinn grinned.
“You always were fun to play with when we were kids.”
“I’m still fun to play with,” he said, then brushed a quick kiss across her lips before she could object and swam off into the pool before he got them both in trouble.
Quinn shu
ddered with longing as she watched him swim away. The warm ebb and flow of water against her mostly bare body was a sensual caress. She leaned back, resting her elbows against the side of the pool, and looked up.
Streetlights and the security lights of Nick’s neighbors took away the density of the night. The stars above were scattered across heaven like diamonds, and the pool lights below the water gave the pool a strange, otherworldly glow. The air was still warm, and the slight splash of water as Nick swam to the other end of the pool made her wish she could get in and race him.
Water splashed. She looked up. Nick had turned around and was already swimming back in the other direction. He continued to lap the pool for several minutes. Once, he got out at the deep end of the pool and went toward the pump. She watched him squat down to adjust some kind of setting and then dive back into the pool, cutting the water with very little sound or splash. He lapped the pool one more time, and when he started back again, she realized he was coming toward her.
When he stopped in front of her and stood, they were nearly at eye level. Then he leaned forward, grabbing on to the rim of the pool and encircling her with his arms.
Even though their lips were only inches apart, Quinn lifted her chin to meet his gaze.
“Sweet, fiery, unpredictable redhead that you are... I don’t fully understand what I did to piss you off, but I will clarify one thing for you right now. I have all kinds of emotions regarding you and your presence in my home and not a damn one of them involves pity. It feels like my whole life has been about waiting for this moment...waiting for you.”
Then he leaned in and brushed a kiss across her lips.
“And so, Your Majesty...there you have it. I laid my heart on the line. You know what I want from you. So what do you want from me?”
Quinn was blindsided, scared and ready to risk every kind of heartbreak. She didn’t hesitate.
“I want you. No matter what tomorrow brings, I want you now.”
“Your wish is my command,” he said, then took her by the hand and led her out of the pool.
Quinn’s heart was pounding, but she’d never been so sure of anything in her life as she was of making love with this man. Risk nothing, gain nothing.
Risk your heart, gain the world.
He stripped in the dark outside the sliding glass doors, leaving the scrap of a suit in a puddle beneath his feet, then stripped her, as well.
“You’re shaking,” he said softly. “Are you cold?”
“Not cold, just ready.”
The words were a punch in the gut. Now he couldn’t get her inside fast enough.
The air-conditioning was a shock against their skin as they stepped inside. He locked the sliding doors and set the alarm, then picked her up as if she weighed nothing and carried her through the house.
He set her on her feet beside his bed and then pulled back the covers.
“We’ll get the sheets wet,” she said.
“Yes, we will,” Nick said.
She eased down onto the bed, but when she reached for him she winced in pain.
“Don’t! Let me,” he said and crawled into bed beside her. He rested on one elbow to gaze at the beauty beside him.
“Truly a queen,” he whispered and rubbed the edge of his thumb along the sensuous curve of her lower lip.
She cupped the back of his head and pulled him closer. He watched her eyes closing and heard her breathing quicken as he rose up to straddle her body. Bracing himself above her, he stole the first kiss as she was taking a breath, and swallowed the moan that came up her throat. He moved down from there, to the hollow at the base of her throat, then her breasts, circling first one hard pink tip with his tongue and then the other. By the time he got down to her belly she was moaning. As he began to push his knee between her legs, she moved instinctively to let him in.
She was whispering something over and over as he settled within the valley between her thighs. When he realized she was saying “hurry,” he thrust his hard aching erection into her waiting warmth as deep as he could go.
She arched up beneath him with a groan and met the first few thrusts with timed precision. Before he knew it, she was coming so hard and fast that the tremors inside her body rolled around him in a quick, wet heat.
Her climax rocked him so hard he feared for a few moments that he would lose it, but finally gained control. Even as the aftershocks pulsed through her in waves, he was still moving inside her in slow, deep strokes.
Quinn didn’t want to open her eyes for fear she’d see herself floating above her body, convinced no one could have experienced that kind of rush and lived through it.
It took her a few moments to realize that not only was she still alive, but Nick was still inside her, still hard as a rock and still stroking, determined to take her back to her point of ignition all over again.
She’d never had this feeling with another man. Nothing had ever felt this good or this right. She wrapped her legs around his waist and pulled him deeper, holding him tighter until she felt that coil of muscles deep in her body beginning to tighten all over again. She fell into his rhythm, riding the ripples of that feeling. She was hanging on the edge of a second climax when he began to go faster—deeper. Then he broke rhythm between one stroke and the next and let out a deep groan of release as the climax rolled through him.
It was the warmth of his seed spilling deep inside her that sent her over the edge. She cried out as wave after wave of the climax shot through her.
Nick collapsed and rolled so that she was stretched full out on top of him.
No one moved.
Sleep caught them in the afterglow and exhaustion pulled them under.
Twelve
Hours later, Nick woke to find Quinn asleep on the pillow beside him. He glanced at the clock, then fingered the healing wound on his head. It would be dawn within the hour, so he slipped out of bed to get a pain pill. He’d been taking less and less of them each day, but hadn’t been able to shake the headache. It wasn’t always intense, but it was always there.
After taking the pain med, he turned off the house alarm and went out on the patio to pick up their wet swimsuits, locked and reset the alarm and then tossed the suits in the washer in the utility room. He stopped off in the kitchen and started the coffeemaker before going back to bed.
Last night with Quinn had been an awakening. He’d had sex with women, but after being with her it was apparent to him that he’d never made love. Now she was in his blood, and the timing of what was happening in their lives was crazy. At first, he thought the immediate attraction they’d had for each other was based on the bond they’d had as children. One might have argued it was a knee-jerk reaction to sexual attraction, but no more. He couldn’t explain it, but he didn’t want to lose it—or her.
He slipped back into bed, rolled over onto his side and pulled her close. The even rise and fall of her breasts against his arm lulled him right back to sleep, and the next time he woke up Quinn was watching his face.
He smiled slowly, taking in the pure green of her eyes and that tumble of red curly hair spread across his pillow. Then he reached for her, brushing his thumb across her lip as he cupped the back of her head and kissed her.
Her lips were as soft and yielding to him as they had been last night. He rose up on one elbow, taking in the glorious sight before him.
“Good morning, sweetheart. You are a most wonderful, magnificent and loving woman, and this is exactly the way I want to wake up for the rest of my life.”
Quinn arched an eyebrow.
“I was wondering what the morning after was going to be like with you, and now I know. It rocks almost as good as you do,” she said.
Nick rubbed a thumb along the lower curve of her lip, thinking about how much he wanted to start last night over again, but timing was off.<
br />
“This conversation could take us both to a whole other thing...but I’m thinking I need to move so you can get up?”
“Unfortunately, yes,” she said.
He got up and then helped pull her to her feet.
She patted his butt and blew him a kiss, then walked into the bathroom and closed the door.
All he could do was grin.
A few minutes later she came out with her hair wound up on top of her head and minus the bandage on her shoulder. Nick had left the room, so she put on a pair of shorts and her sports bra and headed barefoot into the hall, carrying her shirt with her.
Nick was pouring himself a cup of coffee when she entered the kitchen. She could hear the washing machine running and smelled bread toasting in the toaster.
“Hey, Nick?”
He was smiling as he turned, but it faltered when he saw her.
“You took off the bandage.”
“I need you to look at my back. I think there might be some infection. It feels weird.”
He hurried toward her as she turned around, and then his stomach rolled.
“You’re right. It does look infected. We need to get you back to the doctor.”
“Damn it.”
“I’m sorry, honey.”
She shrugged.
“Will you help me get this T-shirt over my head?”
“Absolutely,” Nick said and eased the shirt over her sore shoulder first before pulling it over her head. “I’m so sorry,” he said and hugged her.
Quinn sighed. The hug was worth the aggravation of an infection, for sure.
He kissed the top of her head and then turned her toward the table.
“You sit down and I’ll bring toast and coffee. Do you want a bowl of cereal to go with it?”
“No, toast and jelly sounds good to me, but I can help,” she said.