Kira laughed. “Who said I like you?”
He leaned over and whispered in her ear, “A little bird.”
Then he tugged at her lobe with his teeth.
“You’ve been talking to birds?”
He straightened up and looked into her eyes. “They know a lot of things.”
“Birds do?” she said skeptically, enjoying this game just because she was playing it with him.
“They fly around up there, watching us, listening to us. They see all and know all.”
“But they eat worms so how can their judgement really be trusted?”
“Does that mean you don’t like me?” he asked with enough of a bad-boy look in his eyes to let her know he was confident that wasn’t the case.
“You never know,” she said aloofly. “Could be I do. Could be I don’t.”
“Maybe I could win you over. If you don’t.”
“How?”
“How about like this?”
He leaned forward again, only this time he kissed her. A soft, simple kiss full of promise. A kiss that ended all too soon.
“Not bad,” Kira judged when he drew back again. “But who knows? One of those other guys might have done better.”
Cutty laughed. A low, sexy rumble of a laugh. “Guess I’ll just have to try harder.”
He propped his cane against the wall behind Kira, freeing both hands to hold her face on either side, his palms cupping her cheeks, his fingers in her hair as his mouth came to hers in a kiss much better, much more serious than the other one. A kiss that claimed her.
But it, too, ended after a few moments and he straightened away from her again.
“Well?” he said in a husky voice.
“Improving,” she declared imperiously.
His laugh was sexier still. “I guess I’m on the right track then,” he said before his mouth met hers once more.
No matter what she said, he was winning the game because her knees were getting weaker by the minute and she was having trouble not melting into that big body of his. Enough trouble so that she raised her palms to his chest to keep from giving in. Or at least to keep from giving in too easily. Plus it was nice to be touching that honed wall of muscle.
This time when he stopped kissing her he said, “Shall I call them tomorrow and give them the green light?”
With her eyes still closed she said, “Who?”
“The guys who want to ask you out,” he answered with one more raspy chuckle before he recaptured her mouth, wrapping his arms around her to pull her close against him with those agile hands against her bare back where it was exposed by the V of her dress.
Oh, what the feel of his hands did to her! His skin pressed to hers was all it took to whisk her back in time to the previous evening. To reawaken everything inside her that he’d brought to life then.
Only tonight it didn’t come with the fear of letting go. Tonight other things were racing through her mind.
Things like the fact that Betty would be taking over tomorrow and Kira didn’t know where that would leave her. Or if she really would stay or go.
Things like the fact that she’d enjoyed the idea she’d fostered all day of cutting loose. Enjoyed that vision of herself. Enjoyed the possibility that she could.
Things like the fact that after she’d done what she’d thought she should do last night and not allowed this to go all the way to making love, she’d regretted it intensely. She’d gone to sleep wishing that just once she’d been brave enough to do what she wanted to do.
What she wanted to do right now.
Without breaking off their kiss, Kira reached behind her and found the doorknob, turning it and pushing the door open.
Cutty abandoned her lips to see what she’d done.
“Oh-oh,” he said, clearly thinking she was going to leave him there.
But Kira picked up his cane and stepped over her threshold, taking it with her.
“You know that where the cane goes, I go,” Cutty said with a wicked crook to one corner of his mouth.
“Is that so?” she said. Then she tossed the cane onto the bed.
Cutty laughed and his eyebrows rose. But he stayed in the doorway. “What about last night and moving too fast and—”
Kira answered him only by kicking off her shoes.
But it was enough for him to get the message, because he finally followed her inside, shutting the door behind him.
He still didn’t actually come into the single room apartment, though. Instead he leaned back against the door, watching her through the moonlight that streamed in through the windows to provide the only illumination here, too.
“Tell me you know what you’re doing,” he said quietly.
“I’m doing just what I want,” she said without wavering because the longer she looked at him—at his sable-colored hair going every which way on top, at his ruggedly striking face, at that big body that seemed carved by an artist’s hand—the more her whole being cried out for him.
“No doubts?” he asked.
“No doubts.”
Still he stayed at the door, drinking in the sight of her just as she was him. Then he chuckled a little, took off his single shoe and sock, too, and came to where she waited beside the bed.
“This is really going to happen,” he said as if that fact was just sinking in.
Kira only nodded, basking in his gaze as it seemed to savor her.
Then Cutty raised one hand to her upper arm and let it glide down to her wrist so he could bring that wrist to his lips to kiss the soft inner side, all the while holding her eyes with his.
His breath was warm against her skin. Sensuous. And she stepped nearer to close the small distance between them so he could kiss more than her wrist again.
Which was exactly what he did as his arms came around her once more. Only this time those hands of his delved into the sides of the open V of her dress, slipping up to her shoulders and moving forward to slide it off as his mouth opened over hers and his tongue came to pitch a little woo.
With very little encouragement her dress fell around her feet, leaving her only in her panties, and Kira refused to be the only one of them without much on.
She wasted no time freeing his shirt from his slacks, interrupting the play of mouths and tongues to pull it off over his head.
With his chest bare, Cutty pulled her against him so her breasts could meet the hot silk of his pectorals as kisses turned urgent. Hungry. Demanding.
He didn’t wait for her to deal with his pants. He took something from his pocket and then dropped them to join her dress on the floor before he divested her of her lacy thong, too.
He stopped kissing her then and searched her face, her eyes, as if to reassure himself she was real. And only after he seemed convinced did he reach around to set what he’d taken from his pocket on the nightstand so he could clasp her hands in his as he sat down on the mattress.
He left her standing a moment while he looked at her and a smile of appreciation lit his oh-so-handsome face, wiping away any self-consciousness Kira might have felt.
Then he pulled her to the bed, too. To lie on her back next to him as he lay on his side, their hands still together until he let hers go to brace his weight with one, to slip the other behind her head as his mouth found hers once again in a kiss of parted lips and tongues dueling in delight.
She raised her own hands to his head, to his hair—bristly and soft at once—and he caressed her face lovingly before trailing his hand down her neck, to the hollow of her throat, to her collarbone and shoulder.
He stopped there. But she didn’t want him to. Not when her breasts were screaming for his touch.
She covered his hand with hers and urged it on, making him chuckle even as their mouths continued to cling.
Then to tease her he let only his fingertips trail a scant path, skimming just the surface of her skin, at a torturously snailish speed.
Kira groaned her complaint even as her tongue did a little pursuit
of its own. But still Cutty took his time, letting those feathery fingertips glide all the way down the upper swell of her breast to her nipple.
Taut. Tight. That crest became a knot that greeted those fingertips and held its own as he took it gently between thumb and forefinger and tenderly rolled it back and forth.
Kira’s groan became a moan when he finally took her breast into his palm, enclosing it in the warm strength of that hand she craved.
Kisses grew even hungrier. Even more urgent. Faster and freer, falling on lips and cheeks and chins.
Kira’s hands filled themselves with his back—broad and strong and well muscled.
He was beside her and above her, his mouth a rain of kisses, his hand a miracle of kneading, of teasing, of tormenting, every movement of it raising her temperature, making her want him with an even greater intensity.
His mouth abandoned hers for good then, kissing a leisurely route to her other breast, finding it first with his tongue to taunt that nipple, too.
Her back came off the mattress in response, leaving no doubt that she wanted more.
And more was what he gave.
He took her breast into the hot, wet darkness of his mouth, still using his talented tongue to toy with her nipple, circling it, flicking it, bringing it to life along with every other inch of her body.
Her own hands went traveling. Exploring. Seeking. Down the V of his back to the firm rise of that derriere she’d only glimpsed before that moment.
Lower, to the back of solid thighs.
Up again to his hips, giving him a bit of his own medicine when it came to tantalizing with anticipation.
It was Cutty’s turn to groan and hers to laugh. But she granted his wish and let one hand course around to his front.
His moan was deeper and more gravelly than hers had been as she took him in hand, closing her fingers around that long, thick shaft of steel, reveling in the heat of him, the power, the potency.
But that seemed to be all he could take because he rolled away from her briefly, reaching for what he’d left on the nightstand.
“You came prepared?” Kira whispered.
“Just because of a hope-filled fantasy,” he said, sheathing himself before he returned to rise above her, fitting himself between her thighs.
Thighs that Kira opened willingly, wanting nothing so much as to be completed by him.
He slid into her then as smoothly as if he had been carved from her. Filling her. Lowering his body to hers in a flawless joining of flesh.
He kissed her again then, easing himself more deeply into her, only to draw back and do it all again. And again until they were moving together too rapidly, too fiercely, for him to keep kissing her.
Kira just closed her eyes and let him carry her along, giving herself to him totally, relinquishing all control and allowing him to take her with him into sensations more incredible than anything she’d ever felt before.
Faster and faster, they moved as if their bodies had become one—in unison, in perfect rhythm. Striving. Straining. Working together until Kira felt as if she were no longer earthbound. As if she’d broken the ties of gravity to soar into the sky. Higher and higher until she burst through the clouds into a blindingly brilliant white bliss that stole her breath and left her cocooned in an eternal moment of unequaled ecstasy…
And then it retreated. Little by little they both came back to themselves. Muscles relaxed. Heavy breathing filled lungs with air again. And an exquisite calm settled them into each other’s arms.
“Wow,” Cutty said, sounding as awed as Kira felt.
“As good or not as good as your hope-filled fantasy?” she asked.
“The fantasy was surpassed a thousand times over. Are you okay?”
“Okay was surpassed a thousand times over, too.”
He smiled down at her and then buried his face in her tousled hair to kiss her head as he rolled them to their sides, keeping her close.
And that was how they stayed—his chin atop her head, his arm across her side, his leg over her hip—as total depletion of strength and energy overcame them.
Kira felt Cutty fall asleep but she didn’t mind. It was just too nice to be there like that, with him, for her to care about anything.
Then she closed her own eyes, reveling in that moment, that afterglow, and all the warm feelings that went with it.
And when thoughts of what the next day might bring threatened to intrude she just pushed them away.
Chapter Eight
Cutty woke up the next morning in a haze of contentment, the likes of which he couldn’t remember ever feeling before.
Without opening his eyes, he reached to the other side of the bed for Kira, expecting to find her there the way he had during the night when he’d drifted partially out of sleep and wanted to touch her or hold her.
But she wasn’t there.
Even with his eyes closed he could tell morning light was all around him, so he thought she was probably in the bathroom and he let himself lie there, basking in that contentment that felt so damn good.
He knew he should probably get up. That Ad’s sister would be bringing the twins home before long.
But still he stayed in that bed, enjoying the lingering memories of the remarkable night that had just passed. And the best birthday he’d ever had.
So this is what it’s like to feel genuinely happy.
That was a bizarre thought to flash through his brain. Where had it come from?
Obviously from the way he was feeling. But still it struck him as odd.
Genuinely happy? Had he never been genuinely happy before?
Cutty rolled onto his back, eyes remaining closed, and began to dissect that possibility.
He didn’t consider himself an unhappy person. He made the best of what he had to work with. There were things he liked to do. Foods he liked to eat. Friends he liked spending time with. There were the twins. His job. Baseball, basketball, football games with the Northbridge Bruisers—he liked all of that.
But none of it had made him feel the way he did right at that moment. This was the kind of happiness he honestly didn’t think he’d ever felt before.
He definitely hadn’t felt it as a kid. There had been happy times, but a general, overall deep-rooted happiness? No, he couldn’t say he’d felt that. Not while he was worrying about his dad and his dad’s drinking, and how to cope with whatever came as a result of it.
Then there had been Marla.
Happiness wasn’t something he thought of when he thought about Marla. Oh, sure, he’d been happy to hook up with her in high school. But like everything with Marla, even the start of the relationship had been complicated and so no, pure, unadulterated happiness was not the primary emotion he recalled.
Then she’d told him she was pregnant. That certainly hadn’t made him happy. Neither had meeting Tom Wentworth or fighting with him or being in a position of having to elope. And happy wasn’t how Cutty would describe having to come to Northbridge to live off the charity of his uncle.
Discovering that Anthony was autistic—there was no way that had been happy news. And the realities of living with Marla, of dealing with her relentless need for perfection. That hadn’t put him in a state he would consider genuinely happy, either.
Even the birth of the twins had been marred by Marla’s unhappiness at finding herself pregnant again. And what little marriage they’d had crumbling around his feet had been anything but happy.
And then there had been the accident. Losing Anthony and Marla. No matter how bad things had been at home before that, their deaths had struck a blow that he’d been struggling with ever since.
Still, it wasn’t as if he’d had a miserable life, because he hadn’t. It wasn’t that he suffered from depression or anything like that. But when he thought about the course of things all strung together, he guessed he could say that he’d never really felt genuine, deep-rooted happiness.
The way he did now.
And it didn’t take m
uch to figure out why he felt that way now.
It was because of Kira.
It was as if she’d brought a light, a joy, into his life that had never been there before. He could relax with her as he’d never been able to relax with Marla. He could be himself without worrying that he was disappointing her somehow or letting her down. He just felt good when he was with her.
He felt happy.
Where was she, anyway? he wondered, finally opening his eyes.
Oh, yeah.
He wasn’t in his own bed. He was in the bed in the garage apartment. He’d forgotten that.
It was the first time in ten years that he’d awakened there. And even though the place had been painted and the furniture was all new, even though it looked altogether different than it had when he and Marla and Anthony had lived there, finding himself there now was like being sucked backward in time. If Marla had charged out of the bathroom and screamed at him for laying around in bed, he wouldn’t have been surprised.
And just that quick his sense of genuine happiness was tinged with an old familiar anxiousness.
Cutty sat up in bed, wanting to hang on to the good feelings, wanting to escape the not so good ones.
“Kira?” he called.
Then it occurred to him that he hadn’t heard a single sound come from the bathroom and that was the only place she could be where he wouldn’t be able to see her.
So where was she?
Cutty glanced at the bedside clock for the first time and was shocked to find that it was already after ten. He hadn’t thought it was that late. And Ad’s sister had mentioned bringing the twins home around nine.
Had Kira heard the doorbell ring from out here?
He knew that wasn’t likely.
But what was likely, he slowly began to think, was that Kira had left him in bed hours ago and gone across to the house to clean before Betty came this afternoon.
If memories of Marla hadn’t totally deflated his joy moments earlier, that thought did the trick.
Cutty swung his legs over the side of the mattress.
His ankle shot pain up his leg in protest over the drop in altitude and he waited for it to ease up. Then he reached for the cane that was now propped against the nightstand rather than on the floor where it had rolled when he and Kira had joined it on the bed.
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