by Sarah Remy
“God forbid.” He noticed the way the salad shook slightly on the tines of her fork, and his smile grew. “You and I were meant for each other, Abigail.”
“And the past?”
“Let’s look to the future.” In that moment, he believed he could.
Abby rolled her eyes, but her fingers twined with his. “When’s dessert?”
He laughed, and brought the palm of her hand to his lips. And laughed again when she quivered at his touch. “You never could resist chocolate.”
“Me?” She grinned fiercely back at him. “You’re the one with the addiction to sweets.”
He nuzzled her wrist and felt the beat of her pulse against his mouth. A small sigh slipped her lips, and at the sound Everett’s treacherous body went taut and hard.
“Maybe we should take dinner home.”
She snatched her hand back so quickly the silverware chimed. “No way. We’re staying here. No way are you ruining my Trellis dinner with your lecherous thoughts. Besides.” Her smile grew bright with secret amusement. “I booked the sitter until morning, after all.”
“Fine.” He shifted uncomfortably in his chair, picked up his wine, and took a long swallow. “Eat.”
When he looked up from the glass he found her studying him again, and the heat in her eyes seemed to dim the candle light.
“Eat quickly.” He suggested, and downed more wine.
They took dessert to go, wrapped prettily in tin foil twisted to resemble a swan.
Abby sat silently, the swan in her lap, and stared straight out the front window as Everett sent the car zinging through Colonial Williamsburg and up Creek Lane. A light rain pattered on the windows, leaving grey streaks across the glass.
“Cops love this corner,” she warned as they blazed past an upscale gated community.
Everett only grunted. Somehow her hand had come to rest on his thigh, and every time the Spyder bumped and her hand curled he came an inch closer to losing control. He perfume seemed to cloud the car, and the weight of the wrapped chocolate in her lap caused the hem of her skirt to edge up along her thigh.
“And there are deer around.”
Out of the corner of his eye he saw her wet her lips in a quick, nervous gesture.
His foot slammed on the brake. The car squealed, and slipped on wet pavement, and then came to a crumbling halt in the middle of the road. Abby’s eyes had gone huge.
“What?”
He silenced her with a kiss, leaning across the front seat and claiming her mouth. She stiffened against the assault and then relaxed. Her fingers reached to tangle in his hair, and he knew with a thrill of triumph that she was at least as ready as he.
He pulled away, breathing heavily, and sent the Spyder speeding back into the night. Abby sat silently, and gripped the tin foil swan with both hands.
They almost didn’t make it up the drive. He stopped again to taste her as he helped her out of the car. The rain dampened her hair to curling tendrils and tightened the dress about her body.
He ran his hands up and down her spine as he nibbled along the curve of her neck, and then reached down to cup the tight swell of her rear.
Her fingers danced along the waistband of his slacks, dripping lower, trailing wet fire against his groin. Her eyes were slanted and full of moonlight.
“Abby.” It took all of his strength to lift his mouth from the hollow of her throat. “Not here, sweetheart. Inside.”
She didn’t seem to hear him. Her hands turned their attack to his belt buckle, and the brush of warmth across his front tore at his control.
“Abby.”
“Ev,” she whispered. The buckle released and at last her quick, clever fingers found the length of him. “Shut up.”
Her hands were magic and flame. Stroking, plucking, teasing. When she put his mouth to him he gasped and his hips began to pump of their own accord.
“Abby.” He growled, pulling her away before his eager body fell over the edge. “Come up to the house.”
She only shook her head and smiled. Warm rain and cool moonlight turned her shadow to silver. He could see the high peaks of her nipples through clinging rayon, and he felt a sharp surge as passion threatened to crest.
“I can’t wait-”
“Then don’t.” She bent to unstrap her heels, and tossed the shoes onto the lawn. “Here. Now.” She settled slowly onto wet grass, pulling him after. “The night is beautiful.”
“You,” he breathed, “are beautiful.”
He knelt astride her on the grass, caressing her breasts through wet fabric, stroking the flat plane of her belly, longing to explore every inch.
Then his hand reached the juncture of her thigh, and when his fingers slipped beneath her skirt, sliding behind a scant cotton barrier, he found her hot and wet and ready, and his control evaporated at last like the raindrops on his feverish brow.
She didn’t make a sound as he rucked up her skirt and pushed aside her panties. But when the cotton tore beneath the assault of his greedy fingers she laughed aloud.
“And I thought you weren’t hungry. You didn’t touch a thing at dinner.”
“I wanted you, Abby.” He lay across her, supporting his weight on his palms, until he could look into her eyes and make sure she understood. “Always only you.”
The mischief faded from her smile, and she made a sound of pleasure, or of longing. He body thrummed against him. He sighed, and buried his face in her throat and breathed deeply. Sweet and salty and through her perfume, ripe desire.
“Are you sure?” Because he needed to hear her say it.
“Yes.” She said simply, and squirmed beneath his weight.
Lust clawed his body, rising to a fever pitch. He found her center and spread her legs and rose up, watching her face. He meant to go slow, to savor every brush of flesh against flesh, to stretch every slight friction into languorous torture, but she moved beneath him again, eyes closed, lips slightly parted, and when she breathed his name his control shattered.
He entered her on one long, hard thrust, and her hips rose to meet him. He thrust again, and her hands came around his neck and she clawed at his shirt, and again, as his blood pumped in his ears. He meant to be gentle, to bring her slowly to the peak, but he could hear her gasping beneath him, and when her legs locked around his waist, drawing him deep, nothing mattered but the rhythm and the building pleasure.
Her mouth scalded the edge of his chin and her murmurs grew deeper, longer, and then suddenly she arched back and cried out. She pulsed about him, clutching, squeezing, drawing forth.
Pleasure burst behind his skull and sizzled down his backbone. His own shout was torn from his throat, swallowed in the moonlight, as he spilled himself once, and then again.
Shaking, gasping for air, he collapsed onto his side across the grass and pulled her close against his chest.
The rain had become a downpour. It soaked them where they lay, but Everett couldn’t summon enough strength to rise. He tucked Abby’s head under his chin, and tried to smooth the dress down about her thighs. And then he found himself wanting to taste her flesh again.
She murmured, and then chuckled, a low sound of contentment. “Was that dessert?”
His heart had begun to slow, but only a little. “Hell, dessert. Is it sill in the car or did you drop it? I hope we didn’t squash the damn thing.”
“It’s on the grass. I can feel it, with my toes.” She moved lazily in his arms, turning until she could meet his eyes, and what he saw on her face made his pulse speed again. “It’s getting wet.”
“Well, then.” He kissed her lightly, and then again, more deeply. Already his body demanded more. “We should get the cake inside before it’s ruined.” His hands found her breasts, and she sighed and pressed against him. “Inside.”
“For dessert?” She asked, laughing in the moonlight.
“Later,” he said, and lowered his head for another taste.
Abby stood in the front hall, clutching her ruined shoes, and d
ripped.
Outside storm clouds had overtaken the moon, and the downpour had turned dark. Rain lashed down in nearly horizontal sheets. Wind tossed clumps of rain against the windows, and howled as Everett tried to close the front door against the onslaught.
“You’re getting my beautiful floors wet.” She winced, watching as he juggled tin foil and car keys.
“Says the woman standing in her own little lake.” He glanced over his shoulder as he locked the door. Rain had stuck his hair against his skull, turning tow to dark gold, and his mouth was curled with humor or lust or a combination of the two.
The gleam in his eyes made Abby shudder with remembered pleasure.
“You need a rug in the hall. Maybe something Oriental. Or a kilim. You could afford a nice kilim, couldn’t you, Ev?”
She knew she was talking too quickly, babbling. He shucked off his shoes, and dropped his keys. Wet fabric outlined the sculptured edges of his shoulders and clung to the front of his chest. The lawn had stained the knees and cuffs of his pants to a violent green, and water ran in tiny rivers down his thighs and calves to puddle at his feet. The water had turned the khaki material nearly see through.
Abby swallowed and looked away.
She could count the number of times she had gone to bed with a man since Chris’s birth on the first three fingers of one hand. She’d enjoyed each experience in the same way she enjoyed a splurge at the local ice cream parlor, or the completion of a particularly tricky restoration job.
A treat, time spent in the sack with a man who made her laugh or challenged her intellect. A little bit of fun and pleasure.
She had never wanted a man so badly that she’d taken him on the front lawn and cried his name aloud to the moon.
He brushed his thumb against her chin, and gently forced her gaze from the floor.
“Come to bed with me,” he said quietly, and the need was so very clear on his face that any embarrassment fled and wanton desire flared once more.
He led her by the hand down the hall. When she would have turned up the main staircase, Everett shook his head, and tucked her hostage fingers against his hip.
“This way.”
She was too eager for his touch to wonder. In the kitchen he tossed the Trellis swan on the counter, and then tugged her around the corner.
“The basement?” Surprise made her hesitate.
In answer, he took three steps down until the top of his head was level with her chin. He trailed a sweeping hand along the curve of her thigh. Abby’s heart sped up, and her body strained against his hand, hungry for more.
“All right. In the basement.” She gulped as his mouth discovered a nipple through the fabric of her dress.
“Take this off,” Everett murmured. He tugged at one sleeve.
“Here?” The light from the kitchen washed over her shoulders, but beyond Everett’s head the basement was black. “I thought you said something about a bed.”
He made a noise deep in his throat, and his fingers fumbled with the zipper at the back of her dress. He cradled her breast with his free hand and sucked through fabric, tickling, teasing with his tongue until Abby’s head fell back, and she found herself staring vaguely at he ceiling. Pleasure coursed from her breasts to her very center and then back again.
He had her out of the clinging dress much more quickly than she thought possible. The fabric fell in a sodden mass at her feet, and Abby stood beneath his hands at the top of the stairs, naked against his fierce stare.
“My God, Abby.” His hands skimmed across her body, from throat to breast to belly. Her flesh prickled and the build of heat in her core grew heavy. She heard a whimper, and realized that it was her own.
He took her mouth as he lifted her into his arms. She heard the click of a switch, and her eyes watered against the sudden light. Before she could adjust, he had her across the room and then, gently, on her back along a mattress.
He released her, trailing his fingers across her thigh.
“Just like that.” He yanked off his shirt and worked at his trousers. “I want to see you just like that. Christ, Abby, you are beautiful. You’ve always been beautiful.” His hands trembled visibly as he shed his pants.
She snorted in disbelief. And she wanted, foolishly, to weep. Then he stood naked before her and she forgot everything but the sight of him.
She held out her hand and he came into her arms, his body carved of warm flesh and sinew and bone. He felt entirely male as he slid across her, entirely wonderful.
“Abby.” He nibbled her lower lip as the satin length of him rubbed insatiably at her belly. “This time we go slow.”
Abby couldn’t seem to get enough air. Her lungs hitched as he relinquished her mouth and trailed kisses down along her collarbone, across her breasts and over her rib cage. His hand drifted along the swell of her thighs, and began to massage the core of her pleasure until tremors mounted in waves. She cried out and dissolved against him.
She could hear his breathing in her ear, harsh and strained. His tongue painted hot, wet circles against her thigh. His fingers worked her until she began to spiral away again.
She couldn’t get her bearings, the world spun about her, around the axis of his mouth and his hands and the intense, hot pressure of his body atop her own.
Her hips bucked against his palm. His mouth left her skin and through weighted lids she saw him arch against the ceiling. She thought she heard him groan.
He spread her knees and entered her just as she melted. There was nothing slow about the rush of his body. He pumped wildly, rocking hard against the mattress, grunting as he pushed deeper and deeper into her body.
His thrusts were quick and ferocious and the surge of his hips sent Abby spinning away again, spiraling, breaking into a million pieces, and then lifting up.
Flying.
From a distance, from an altitude of unimaginable miles, Abby heard the ragged cry torn from Everett’s throat as he reached his own climax. He cried out again, one long, broken sound of satisfaction, and then he collapsed against her, breath rattling in his throat.
Abby smiled, and let the last, receding currents of pleasure sweep her away.
Chapter Nine
ABBY OPENED HER EYES to opaque light and the distant squeak of gossiping birds. She blinked, and stirred beneath sheets soft and warm as flannel. Yawning, she reached across a mound of pillows for her alarm clock.
No alarm clock. Her hand bumped against carpet and jarred the sleep from her head. Memories returned in a rush that sent a sweet, burning ache through her bones. Brushing hair from her eyes, she sat up.
The sheets were the kind of cotton her best clients preferred, blue as the ocean, and they still smelled new. The mattress was thin and low to the ground, and when Abby took a peek beneath the fitted sheet her suspicions were confirmed. The mattress was plastic filled with air.
Not that she had noticed the entire night through, between quick cat naps and the relentless, incredible flights of passion Everett had stirred within her.
He’d been insatiable, insistent, demanding and wild. Like a boy with a new toy, or an ascetic suddenly overcome by the needs of his body. Not until dawn had he seemed to regain a modicum of control, and then he had taken her slowly. Tenderly ravishing with mouth and hands, and coaxing with his body until she cried out for mercy and exploded into spinning, glittering pieces.
Abby felt blood stain her cheeks at the memory. She sighed. Dawn was long gone. The sun shone through the basement window, collecting in overlapping blocks on the carpet, and she was alone between the sheets.
How like the man. She might have known he’d run off and hide as soon as the sun rose.
She slid reluctantly from the warm sheets, and looked around for her clothes. Her shoes were in a sodden pile at the foot of the mattress. She had no idea where exactly her dress had ended up. It would be ruined anyway, like her shoes.
She stifled another sigh, and stalked naked through the sunlight. Her body felt languid and li
quid and well used. And already, despite stiffening muscles and several small bruises on one thigh, she wanted more.
“Get a grip,” she scolded herself, and then squatted by a duffel left abandoned in one corner of the room.
She unzipped the duffel, and dug out sweat pants and a hoodie sporting the Seattle Mariners’ logo. Living with an eleven year old male had made her wary, so Abby sniffed cautiously at the hoodie, and was relived to find it clean.
She pulled it over her head, and then struggled into the sweats.
They bagged at her ankles and drooped at her hips. She rolled them at her ankles, pulled on a pair of fluffy white socks, and ran her fingers through her hair, trying to straighten out spikes and whirls.