In response, she reached across the space between them and brushed her fingertips across his cheek. He caught her wrist in his hand and kissed the underside. “Hi,” he said softly.
“Hi.”
“Missed you.”
Stroking his face with the tips of her fingers, she said, “I wasn’t sure I was going to make it. I’m still not sure. That was the longest six weeks of my life.”
“You just say the word. I’ll pull over to the side of the road any time you want.”
“And get arrested for public indecency? I think not. As tempting as the offer is.”
“No sense of adventure,” he said, kissing the tender underside of her forearm. “None at all.”
“I can find plenty of adventure right at home. I don’t need to go looking for it on a lonely stretch of highway in the dark of night.”
“No cruising the bowling alley?”
“No cruising the bowling alley. I already have all the man I need.”
“You know, if this was the good old days of yore, you could just slide over here and I could wrap my arm around you, and you’d put your head on my shoulder, and we could just cruise, like a couple of teenagers. Damn bucket seats have ruined that.”
“Just think what a whole generation has missed out on.”
“Damn straight. Modern technology has made it really hard to grope each other while you’re driving.”
“It’s a tragedy of epic proportions.” She lay her hand against the front of his shirt and began inching it southward. “I could probably still manage a little groping, if you were so inclined.”
“If you move that hand one more centimeter, woman, I really will be pulling over to the side of the road.”
“I guess that means groping is out.”
“I guess it does. Looks like we’ll have to settle for talking.”
“I guess we will. For now.”
***
They came in through the shed. Casey hung up her coat and Rob kicked off his shoes and they entered the kitchen without turning on the lights. He dropped the carry-on and the duffel bag on the kitchen table and set the guitar cases on the floor. She moved past him to the sink, took a glass from the cupboard, and filled it. The water was cold and sweet, soothing her parched throat and quieting the hitch in her breathing. Behind her, he moved soundlessly, and she sensed him an instant before he touched a gentle fingertip to each bare shoulder and ran them, whisper-soft, down her arms to her wrists.
She shot from 0 to 60 in 0.2 seconds, her insides going soft and sticky and molten. Beneath her skin, there was a fine trembling, a vibration, almost a humming. Something was shifting inside her, some great tectonic plate cracking and splitting, revising history and altering beliefs she’d held for nearly two decades. This man had been her friend, then her lover, and eventually her husband. Although sometimes the edges had blurred, the progression of their relationship had been straightforward and clear. But after fifteen months of marriage, she understood that everything before tonight had been little more than dress rehearsal. Somewhere along the way, when she hadn’t been paying attention, he had become her life. Somewhere along the way, when she hadn’t been watching where she was going, she’d tumbled headfirst off a precipice she hadn’t noticed, and she’d gone into freefall with no safety net other than the absolute trust that he would be waiting at the bottom to break her fall.
I didn’t know, she thought stupidly. How could I not know? How was it possible for a woman to fall passionately in love with the husband she’d thought she already loved? How was it possible for a woman to reach the age of thirty-five without realizing that her one true love, the sole reason she’d been put on this planet, had been standing right by her side since she was eighteen years old?
Inside her, terror and elation battled for supremacy. She’d never experienced this kind of euphoria. Nothing in thirty-five years of living had ever felt so right as her feelings for this man. But just below the surface, it lay in wait, the crippling fear that history would repeat itself, that she would give up too much of herself for him, the way she had with Danny, and end up an empty shell. Determined to ignore that fear, she took a deep breath and resolved that tonight, elation would win. Tonight, she would allow herself to explore this maelstrom of emotions that swirled around her. Tomorrow was soon enough to face the fear.
She carefully set the glass in the sink and turned. He was leaning with both hands braced against the counter, trapping her within the circle of his arms. His body heat arced across the space between them and tangled her in its grip. In the silence, the kitchen clock ticked. Above her, his face was a pale gleam of white, blurred and indecipherable in the darkness. He smelled wonderful. Not a cosmetic scent; simply the musky scent of man. Her man. A scent so distinctive to him that, blindfolded, she could have picked him out of a crowded room. While her pulse hammered erratically and her stomach did back-flips, she lifted a hand and lay it flat against the hard muscles of his abdomen.
“Hey,” he whispered, and leaned in to kiss her.
His mouth was so very familiar, yet there was something different this time. He gave her tender, sweet little kisses that made her throat tighten with emotion. Teasing nibbles. Restrained, because after a year and a half as lovers, he knew what she liked, what she craved, knew her rhythms and her desires, knew what it took to make the fire smolder slowly between them. Her hands came to rest atop his, her thumbs looped around his slender wrists, drawing in his energy, his essence, as they took their time, letting the excitement build slowly. The electric connection between them flowed from mouths to hands and back again, while their bodies, two heated, yearning bodies, maintained a controlled, torturous distance.
He was the first to break, letting out a soft groan and driving her up hard against the counter. Cool restraint forgotten, she answered him with a muted, wordless sound. Then their hands were on each other, touching, stroking, seducing. The kiss deepened, tongues darting and plunging. They broke apart with a gasp, took in air, dove back in for another helping. Her hands knotted in his hair so tightly she knew she must be hurting him. Excitement churned inside her belly, so intense it nearly made her nauseous. She wanted him so, she could barely breathe. Thrilled by his hardness pressed against her, she arched her back and opened her thighs, craving that hardness, needing it, between her legs, inside her.
Still kissing her, he swept a hand down her thigh until he reached bare skin. He touched the back of her leg, sending a shudder through her, then began inching his way back up beneath the dress. When he reached silk and lace, he hesitated for an instant before hooking a finger beneath the waistband of her bikini panties and peeling them off. She freed her mouth and whispered frantically, “What are you doing?”
The panties reached her thighs and kept going. “Shh. ‘s okay.”
“Not here.” She kissed him. “Not in the kitchen.” Another breathy kiss. “Paige—”
The tiny scrap of silk and lace that she’d spent a fortune on completed its descent to the floor. “She’s asleep,” he whispered. “Just let me—”
“Ohhh,” she breathed as he dipped two fingers inside her, wet them, and began stroking her. The man was a sexual savant, and she refused to think about the long line of women who’d warmed his bed before her, or about which of them had taught him so well. That was the past, and it didn’t matter. He was hers now, and she was his, and none of those other women mattered. Their sexual histories were just that. History.
“Missed you so much,” he whispered against the corner of her mouth. “Missed touching you.”
“Stop,” she said weakly. “Please.”
“Oh, baby, your lips are saying no, but your body’s saying yes.”
She moaned, and he crushed his mouth to hers to muffle the sound. She fisted her hands in his hair, panted into his open mouth. Closed her eyes and let her head fall back. “Stop,” she whispered again.
“Why? You don’t like it?”
“Of course I like it.” She gasped, cl
utched at his arm, but her touch failed to have any effect on what he was doing to her. “You know I like it.”
“Shh! Then what’s the problem?”
The sensations he was causing were exquisite, and part of her wanted him to continue touching her until she imploded. It wouldn’t take much; she was already halfway to paradise. She could just give in and let him have his way, and enjoy the fireworks. But this wasn’t what she’d waited six weeks for, and if he kept it up, she wasn’t sure how much longer she could hold onto her sanity. “I want you,” she whispered fiercely. “Inside me.”
“We’ll get to that. But first—”
“No.” She caught his wrist in an iron grip. “Bedroom.”
“But you haven’t—”
“Now!”
“Okay, okay. Whatever you say, Sarge.”
He let the skirt fall back into place and hoisted her up into his arms. She wrapped herself around him like lichen on a tree trunk. He adjusted their fit, braced a palm against her bare butt. Kissing frantically, they made it as far as the living room doorway before she said, “Stop!”
“Shh! You’ll have the kid up. What?”
“Undies. On the floor.”
He backtracked, leaned to pick them up while she clung to him. He hooked them over her index finger and moved unerringly in the darkness toward the staircase that would take them upstairs. At the bottom, she said, “If you lose your balance and drop me, MacKenzie—”
“Don’t worry.” He hoisted her a little higher and she tightened her legs around his waist. “I have no intention of dropping you and missing this. Because, baby, by the time I’m done with you tonight, you won’t even remember your own name.”
“Abstinence,” she reminded him, “makes the heart grow fonder.”
“The abstinence,” he declared, “is over.”
Somehow, they made it to the top of the stairs and into the bedroom. He closed the door behind them, and in the velvety darkness, he loosened his hold on her. Still clasped in his arms, she slid lightly to the floor. He cradled her face in his hands, brushed a thumb across her cheek, and said, “You light the candle. I’ll take care of the music.”
Her legs had gone so weak they barely held her up. She dropped the panties on the dresser and pulled a kitchen match from the box she kept here for this very purpose. With trembling hands, she struck it and lit the fat, white candle perched on a ceramic saucer in front of the mirror.
She blew out the match, dropped it into the saucer, and turned to study him. He was so beautiful, all lines and angles, lean and lanky in tight jeans, his hair an unholy mess as he popped a cassette into the tape deck. He pushed the button and adjusted the volume. The music started—Marvin and Tammi singing Your Precious Love—and he turned to look at her, his expression solemn.
In the flickering candlelight, they studied each other, both of them swaying in time to that sweet, sensual rhythm, both of them aware that this night held some measure of significance, although she couldn’t explain that significance to him when she could barely understand it herself. He would think she was crazy if she told him that somewhere along the line, she’d fallen head over heels in love with him in a big, bad adult way that bore no resemblance whatsoever to the feelings she’d had for Danny. He would think she was crazy if she said that despite fifteen months of marriage, tonight felt like her wedding night in a way that their real wedding night had not.
Still swaying in time with the music, he slowly crossed the room to her and said, “Mrs. MacKenzie.”
Joy blossomed somewhere deep inside her. It bubbled up, spread through her extremities, and poured out of her in the form of delighted laughter. “Mr. MacKenzie,” she said.
“I really like those fuck-me shoes.”
She glanced down at the screaming red stilettos that raised her to a full five-foot-four. “Why, thank you, kind sir.”
“If you’d like to, y’know, keep ‘em on while we’re engaged in, um…marital relations…I wouldn’t exactly mind.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Marital relations?”
“I didn’t want to offend your delicate sensibilities.”
Still swaying, she said, “Isn’t this our song?”
“One of ‘em, anyway. Would you care to dance?”
She stepped into his arms, pressed her cheek to his shoulder, and let out a deep, shuddering breath. Near her ear, he was softly singing along with Marvin and Tammi in a perfectly normal voice that bore little resemblance to the one he’d used for his earlier duet with Mick. She loved it when he sang to her. There was something so intimate about it, so sweetly romantic. So classic MacKenzie. She locked her arms around his slender waist, closed her eyes, and just let it take her. The night, the music, the magic, the man.
He stopped singing. “There’s something different about you tonight. I noticed it as soon as I got off the plane.”
“It’s the shoes. They make me four inches taller.”
“So that’s it. No wonder I barely recognized you.”
She tilted her head back until she could see his face. “So who did you think you were getting intimately acquainted with down there in the kitchen?”
He raised both eyebrows. “Was that you? You know what they say about all cats being black in the dark. I thought it was my other wife.”
“There are no other wives, MacKenzie. There will be no other wives. There is only one wife.”
“How could I forget that? What’d you say your name was?”
In response, she ran both hands down his backside, groping him unapologetically, finally leaving her hands resting there on that sweet little butt. “Does this jog your memory?”
“Oh. That wife.”
“That’s right, Flash.” She released his butt, reached up and drew his mouth down to hers. “That wife.”
This time, there was nothing remotely restrained about the kiss. The music forgotten, the verbal foreplay abandoned, they came together like heat-seeking missiles, his body pressed hard against hers, hands stroking, caressing, exploring territory both familiar and enthralling. Excitement hummed inside her and she trembled with anticipation, her tongue tangled with his in an exquisite dance as they swallowed each other’s breath, each other’s moans, breathed in each other’s essence in a scorching need to merge and become one.
He ran his hands up and down her back, broke away, said against her shoulder, “How does this thing come off, babe? I can’t get to—”
“Over my head.”
He peeled the dress up and off, tossed it aside, leaving her naked except for the shoes. Never in her life had she stood in front of a man like this, naked except for a pair of red stiletto-heel fuck-me shoes. He was looking at her with a wolfish grin she’d never seen on his face before. She should have been embarrassed. Shouldn’t she? Instead, she felt empowered. Was it the shoes? Did they hold some heretofore unknown secret power? She took his hands, those magical hands that could play her body with the same skill and finesse they employed to tease heated sounds from an electric guitar, and placed them on her breasts.
He was a fast learner. He cupped and lifted, squeezed and brushed and teased. “You like?” he said.
“Yes. Oh, yes.”
Stroking tenderly, he said, “I am so not leaving you again.”
She let out a sound that was half laugh, half sob. “You leave me like that again, MacKenzie, I swear to God I’ll stab you until you’re dead.”
“Bloodthirsty wench.”
“Lecherous perv.”
“You are so damn hot. Have I ever mentioned how hot you are?” He pressed a kiss to the swell of her breast. “These are so perfect.”
“They’re too small.”
“Are you crazy, Fiore? They’re just right. You haven’t noticed how they get my engines humming?”
“Oh, I’ve noticed.” Her own engines were humming quite nicely, too. What he was doing to her should have been a crime. Surely anything that felt this good must be illegal. “Flash?”
He w
as a little distracted, so it took him some time to respond. “Yeah?”
Fumbling with his belt buckle, she said breathlessly, “I want you now. Right now.”
“Right now?” He circled one hard little peak with his tongue, sending her shooting off into space. “Are you sure about that?”
She pulled the belt free and dropped it on the floor. “Are you kidding? I was ready before you got off the plane.”
He let out a soft snort of laughter. “Me, too. So you’re ready to get this party started?”
She unbuttoned his jeans, yanked the zipper down. “I’m ready to close the sale.”
“Oh, baby, it makes me so hot when you talk like that.”
“Just wait until you see what else I can do.” She tugged at his pants, began working them down his hips.
“Whoa, woman, slow down! Amputation by zipper doesn’t sound like something I want to experience.”
“No sense of adventure. None at all.”
“Sadly, no.” He worked himself free, shrugged the pants down, kicked his way out of them. “Not when it comes to a possible amputation of one of my favorite appendages.”
She shoved the army shirt off his shoulders and dragged it down his arms. “One of your favorite appendages?”
“Okay, fine. My favorite appendage. Are you happy now?”
“Absolutely.” She caught the hem of his tee shirt, tugged it up, peeled it off over his head, tossed it on the floor next to the army shirt. “Now I’ve got you naked. And it’s my favorite appendage, too.”
“God, I love it when you talk dirty.”
She closed both hands over the aforementioned appendage. He felt thick and hot and wonderful. Tightening her grip, she stroked him gently. “Just look at you, Flash! All big and hard and ready to rock & roll.”
His eyes were closed, his expression rapturous. “Oh, baby, keep doing what you’re doing, and you’re gonna send me right into the stratosphere.”
“Poppa likes it when Momma touches him like this?”
“Poppa’s spent the last six weeks dreaming about Momma touching him like this.”
“Momma’s planning on doing a whole lot more than touching.”
Days Like This Page 23