by Peggy Jaeger
I took a breath, my gaze locked on his. Neither of us blinked. Or moved.
“I want to kiss you, too. For the record, I want to do a whole lot more than kiss you. But I’d like to start there and see where we go.”
“You—what?”
Actions, I’ve always felt, speak volumes. Instead of clarifying with words, I showed him what I meant.
And what I wanted.
The moment my lips pressed against his, my feet left the floor as Mac lifted me up fully against him. One firm tug and I wound my legs around his waist as I’d done the last time I was in his arms, the hem of my cocktail dress riding high up on my thighs to my hips.
With my butt supported and cradled in his warm palms, Mac turned and sat me down on the counter, stepping into the space between my thighs. He never broke contact with my lips.
Now that I’d had a sampling of how delicious he tasted and what an accomplished master he was at the art of kissing, I wanted to learn more. My head fell back as he changed the angle of the kiss and delved deeper, his tongue taking possession of mine, our breaths blending.
Pulling back from the mind-blowing kiss, his forehead grooved, his eyes squinted in the corners as he peered so intently at me he had to be able to glimpse my soul.
“Cathy.” His hands cupped my jaw.
Every nerve in my body was spliced raw from his touch. I squirmed on the cold countertop and lifted my thighs higher around his waist, tugging him in closer.
“Are you sure this is what you want?”
“What? You?”
When he shrugged, I swear his muscles snapped.
“By your own admission, you haven’t been with anyone since your husband died,” he said. “Saying I don’t want to take advantage of it sounds a little ridiculous and archaic, but I mean it. I want you to be sure this is what you want. That I’m…what you want.”
It was my turn to take his face with my hands. When I settled them across his cheeks, he snuggled into them and placed a sweet kiss across one palm. My heart simply sighed.
“I could ask the same thing of you,” I said. “Are you sure you want to do this? With me? Do you want…me?”
“I can’t find the words to tell you how much.” One corner of his delicious mouth lifted as the skin around his eyes pulled in at the corners. “Which is asinine, considering what I do for a living. But yes. I do. I want you. So much.”
He touched his forehead to mine and released a sigh filled with such longing, it literally sang through the air between us.
Or maybe that was me.
“Well, then…” I trailed my hand across his jaw, little pleasure pulses tripping across my fingers from the scruff there, and quipped, “It seems both sides are in agreement. I don’t see the problem with proceeding.”
His face went blank for a moment, and then a quick, free, and utterly charming smile bolted across it. “That sounds an awful lot like lawyer-speak.”
“Obviously, because I’m a lawyer. And I’m done talking.”
With that, I lifted my chin back up and reclaimed his lips. If I thought about it, I could probably trace this uncharacteristic boldness straight back to Nanny’s influence. The woman was nothing if not audacious and daring in her romantic life, two things I’ve never been nor even considered before meeting this man.
In the time it takes for a finger snap to echo, Frayne skillfully seduced my lips apart and then, with a slow, steady, and determined exploration that left me panting and aching, proceeded to make me forget I was anything other than a woman. Lawyer, daughter, widow, be damned.
I was a woman who wanted…craved….hungered for the man my legs were wound around. And from the feel of the material straining below his waist against me, he was ravenous as well. I squeezed my thighs tighter.
He dropped his hands to my thighs—my naked thighs—the roughened pads of his fingers pressing into them. Behind his back, my toes flexed.
I slid my hands up and around his shoulders, cupping his neck all the while nipping and sipping at his delicious lips. The thought sailed through me that I could get used to a daily diet of the taste of this man.
Frayne slid his mouth across my jaw, trailing tiny, wet kisses down the column of my throat. When he took my ear lobe between his teeth and bit down, my butt vaulted up from the counter.
“Your skin is like velvet,” he whispered as he cuddled my ass in his hands. “I’ve never felt anything as soft in my life.”
“Good genes,” I managed to say, while he nuzzled the hollow behind my ear. How I was even able to form a sentence was mind-boggling.
His shoulders shook, and when I pulled back to see his face, my heart stuttered. The dark and sad shadows in his eyes were a memory, replaced now with a glow that turned the pale blue to a brilliant crystal. His mouth was plump and wet—Holy Mother!—and the corners were lifted, two deep and adorable dimples crevassing his cheeks. The thatch of hair had fallen across his brow, delicately shading one eye. I reached up and feathered it back with my fingers. My hand settled across his cheek and temple as I did, and once again Frayne nuzzled against it, as if seeking warmth and solace. The gesture was so tender, so damn endearing, I sighed before I could stop myself.
This man, this damaged, mercurial, heartbroken man, stirred a myriad of emotions within me I was powerless to fight against. His abhorrence of my profession provoked anger and outrage. The tenderhearted manner he exhibited toward my grandmother filled me with a sense of intense joy. The single-minded and focused way he went about his research awed and impressed me. And the attention he gave to everything but himself made me want to pull him into my arms, hold on tight, and do everything I could to care for him and show him how special he was.
Frayne touched my heart in ways no man ever had. The realization was both profound and terrifying.
If I’d learned anything in life, though, fear could either paralyze you or propel you into actions you never knew you were capable of.
The kiss he gave me now was gentle and soft, his eyes open and focused on me. A question flashed in them, and I answered it the only way I could.
The only way I wanted to.
I gave him a gentle shove. When he moved, I slid out of his hold and stood, barefoot, on my kitchen floor.
“Come on.” I grabbed his hand and tugged him out of the kitchen.
Chapter 13
Without a word, I walked him up the hall stairs to the second floor.
To my bedroom.
The risers sagged and creaked from our ascent. I’d been up and down these stairs thousands of times over the years, and the sounds were white noise to me.
At the landing, I turned left, pulling him along.
Frayne’s gaze ran along the wallpapered walls, taking in the dozens of photographs grouped along the hallway. Most were of my sisters, Nanny, and George.
I wondered if he realized there were none of Danny.
Freeing his hand, I entered my bedroom and switched on the bedside light. Frayne stayed at the doorway, his gaze still on me, his head ticked to the side.
“Second thoughts?” The wisecrack was meant to hide the jumble of nerves coursing through me.
“None,” he said with a definitive headshake.
There was something in his eyes, though. “What?”
He took a step closer to me. “This is the bedroom you shared with your husband, Cathy. Are you sure you want me—us—to—” He lifted a shoulder.
Add thoughtful and respectful to every other description I’d already assigned to him.
I closed the distance between us and kissed his cheek.
“After Danny died, I redid this room,” I said. “All the furniture, the bed itself, the linens, even the drapes are new. This my room, Mac. Mine alone. George was the only one who ever slept in here with me.”
Before I could blink, his heart-stopping grin was back. “Good to know.”
I slipped my arms around his waist, kept my gaze connected with his. “You’re the only man I’ve ever invit
ed into this room. The only man I’ve ever wanted to invite.”
He pulled me flat against his body. Right before he took my lips with his again, he whispered, “Also, good to know.”
My smile was absorbed by his kiss.
While his lips did wild and wicked things to mine, he shifted and tucked one arm behind my knees, the other across my back and lifted me as easily as he had George when he’d placed him in my car. I’ve never been what anyone would call a waif, but the effortless way he carried me made me feel as light as a wisp of air.
With one knee bent on the bed, he placed me down in the center of it.
Hovered over me, his weight suspended on his elbows, he said, “I’m gonna ask one more time, because I need to hear you’re absolutely sure about this.”
I answered him the same way I had before. I pulled his head down and took his mouth with mine.
Every doubt he had must have evaporated, because he kissed me back without any hesitation or worry.
Soon, kissing him wasn’t enough. I needed to feel his skin next to mine.
That boldness gene took over again as I slipped my hands under the hem of his pullover and cotton tee and discovered another thing about Mac Frayne: he was a furnace.
My hands slid up and down his back, kneading the tight muscles, reveling in the heat pouring from him. For all the rangy, trim physique his clothes covered, the actual man was a mass of concrete, hard and carved to sculpted perfection. Feeling all that defined brawn against my hands was one thing, but now I needed to see it.
I gripped the bottom of both garments and tugged them upward. Mac got the idea of where I was leading pretty quickly. He pulled up from kissing me, a cheeky smirk across his face, grabbed the sweater and tee, and in a move so smooth I gasped, yanked both over his head with one hand, then tossed them over his shoulder.
“You’ve done that before,” I said. I smoothed my hands up from his trenched abdomen to trail across the perfection of his pecs. His nipples were two flat chocolate disks, until I pinched them between my fingers. They pebbled into solid points under my touch.
Settled on his knees, his hands fisted on top of them, he stared down at me through the wild thatch of hair flopping across his brow.
“Your turn,” he said. Before I could form a response, he slid his hands around my back and dragged down my zipper. I shot my arms up, and he yanked my cocktail dress up over my head, then casually tossed it to join his clothes on the floor behind us.
I’d partnered a strapless black push-up bra and matching thong to wear under the dress. The bra dipped low on my breasts, but provided adequate coverage and the support needed.
When Frayne’s gaze dragged down to my torso, I swear his eyes started to glow. The blue in his irises changed from crystal, to azure, to the color of ripened blueberries in the rain as his heavy-lidded gaze trailed across the swell of my breasts. Against the satin cups of the bra, my nipples throbbed, tender and taut, from the heat in his glare. He softly trailed the roughened pads of his fingertips across the flesh peeking up from the bra’s top edge. My eyes closed and my head fell back as he dipped one finger below the edge to graze across a swollen nipple.
I think I gasped. Or maybe it was a moan. I couldn’t be sure because I was having an out-of-body experience from how amazing his touch felt against my skin.
The bra had a front clasp, and with the next breath I took, he had it unhooked, my breasts now displayed bare before him. With a hand plumping each, he kissed one, then gave equal time to the other.
By now, I’d lost the ability to support myself on my elbows, so I’d flattened down on the bed, Frayne straddling me.
I arched up when he sucked one of my nipples into his mouth, simultaneously rolling the other between his fingers.
“You taste like vanilla drenched in sweet cream,” he whispered. “Delectable and delicious.”
His tongue lapped back and forth across the hollow separating my breasts, then, with clear intention, began trailing downward. He stopped at the edge of one hip, his hot breath warming my skin when he said, “This needs to go.” I wasn’t given the time to ask what he meant before he pulled the band of the thong between his lips and drew it downward, over my thighs and calves. The subtle plop of it hitting the rest of my clothes rang out, clear as a bell.
A nervous laugh started in my throat and then died quickly when his mouth came back up and swept across my mound, nuzzling my thighs apart in a silent entreaty.
Happily, I complied.
“Gorgeous,” he murmured while he skimmed one finger down the long, wet length of me. Fireworks of light exploded behind my closed eyes in the next moment as his tongue mimicked the move and then slid into me.
Then pulled out.
And slid back in again.
With my hands fisted in the sheets so I wouldn’t fly off the bed, it took all the control I could summon not to scream. Somewhere between the time he sucked my clitoris into his mouth and slipped two fingers inside me, my control snapped, wrested from me to escape in one long, uncontrollable cry of release.
In all my memories of having sex, I couldn’t remember one time an orgasm had occurred so fast and thunderously, nor made my entire body shake with such pleasure. When I was able to take a full breath again, I opened my eyes, the vision hazy around the edges but clear enough to witness the delighted smile covering Frayne’s face.
“Do you have any idea how beautiful you are right now?” he asked.
My entire body flushed from the compliment.
Frayne stretched and pressed his lips against mine. The salt and musk taste of myself on him ignited those tiny pulses again. With each pull and tug of my tongue, I writhed and fidgeted beneath him, the new throbbing in my pelvis combined with the aftershocks of my orgasm growing almost unbearable, seeking relief, begging for release.
“Take these off,” I commanded between kisses, slapping at his jeans.
He rose in a fluid line and stood next to the bed, his gaze locked with mine, a mind-bending grin traipsing across his lips. The jagged, metallic rattle of the zipper slowly being dragged down over the sizable bulge in his jeans was loud in the silent room. My toes flexed into the sheets at the erotic sound it made. Frayne hooked his thumbs inside the waistband and in one swift jerk, hauled both the jeans and his underwear down. He kicked them off and then stood before me, naked and free.
I wasn’t some simpering, fearful virgin, unschooled in the male anatomy. I’d been married, seen a man naked and fully erect with arousal many times.
Many times.
But gazing at the perfection that was McLachlan Frayne was a unique experience. A slim waist slid into narrow hips, the head of his pelvic bones visible on both sides. Two thick, corded, and powerful thighs showed proof he was a runner. Swirls of inky black hair circled his navel and spread downward in a happy trail toward the part making him a man.
I imagine my eyes dilated as I got my first full glimpse of him, because my vision went all kinds of blurry around the edges.
He was magnificent.
Fully erect, his thick penis jutted out and upward, proud and wanting.
The fact it was me he wanted filled me with indescribable joy.
I stretched out my hand to his, and with a gentle tug, he was back down on the bed, propped up on an elbow next to me. My newly discovered boldness gene took over. I pushed him down to lie flat on his back, straddled him, and held him in place with my hands on his shoulders.
“Cathy?”
“Shhh.” I bent forward and nipped at his chin, then licked the column of his throat down to the notch on his neck.
He swallowed—hard.
“Your turn,” I whispered against his skin.
I trailed a long, slow line of butterfly kisses down his neck, across those powerful pecs, and then skimmed my tongue over and through the sculpted trenches in his abdomen. Frayne’s washboard abs contracted at my touch, and heat flooded my body when he fisted the sheets underneath him the same way I had.
/> Who knew dominance could be such an aphrodisiac? I certainly hadn’t, but with each ragged breath Frayne dragged in, the knowledge I could make this man tremble was awe inspiring.
I dawdled over one hip, nibbling at the prominent bone with my lips, while my hand drifted down and skated across his straining shaft. Encircling it, I tightened my fist and gave him a none-too-subtle squeeze, while sliding my hand up and over the moistened tip. This time, I drew a moan along with the deep inhale from him. His thighs contracted, lifting his butt from the bed. His response pushed me to do it again.
And again.
Many times, in fact.
“Stop.” His hand covered mine.
I glanced up at his face and almost came again on the spot. There was no doubt about it now—his eyes were glowing.
“Why?”
Frayne shifted as I let go my grip. “Because I want to make you come again, and I want to be inside you when you do.”
There was no way I could hide the full-on body blush his words elicited. Even in the subdued light shining from my bedside lamp, it had to be visible.
Frayne grabbed my hand, and with one swift shift, I was on my back again. He covered my body with the length of his while his knees nuzzled between my legs, shifting them apart.
In a move one of Nanny’s romance novels would have described as wanton, I spread my legs.
Frayne groaned again. “Cathy, wait.”
Balanced on his elbows, he pressed his forehead against mine, closed his eyes, and took a breath. Something about that breath gave me a moment of pause.
Oh, good Lord. He’d decided he didn’t want to do this with me after all.
“What’s…what’s wrong?”
His eyes took their time opening. A small grin tugged on one corner of his mouth. “I hadn’t planned on this happening between us tonight,” he said. “Thrilled though I am that it is,” he added, the other corner of his mouth lifting, too. “I’m not…prepared.”
I squinted up at him.
He must have read my befuddlement because he clarified, “I don’t have a condom.” His eyes drifted closed again for a moment, then opened. With a tiny shake of his head, he told me, “I don’t routinely carry them in my wallet or my back pocket like other guys do. I never have.”