Her use of the phrase next time and her obvious reference of them in the future tense settled around Nick’s heart like a warm caress. Smiling into her eyes, he kidded her right back by saying, “Ah, so you fell for my devious man-plan, did you?” She nudged him playfully and told him to be quiet and enjoy the game before she changed her mind.
Their playful conversation and flirtatious exchanges steadily heated up as they cheered and jeered the ballgame playing out in gorgeous HD on Shannon’s massive flat-screen TV. At one point, Nick had thrown popcorn at her as she played cheerleader for the team opposing his.
He enjoyed doing point and counterpoint with her. She wasn’t at all afraid to challenge him and debate a point, even when arguing in sports metaphors. The woman got his adrenaline pumping on several levels for sure, Nick had to admit when blood flow to his brain got sluggish as the result of every cell in his body tuned in to the growing erection in his jeans.
When it was time for the seventh-inning stretch, Nick’s idea of the traditional short break played out as a hot and steamy make-out session that quickly blazed out of control once he’d hauled her onto his lap where he proceeded to kiss her silly.
He tasted like sin with a dash of salt and butter thrown in Shannon thought as she melted in his embrace while his clever mouth and tongue played havoc with her senses. When she let her quivering lips part, giving him intimate access to the deep recesses of her mouth, he pressed his advantage with a bone-melting oral onslaught, swirling his tongue around hers, nipping and sucking on her lips as she moaned in helpless surrender.
Shannon framed his face with her hands and held him in place as she demanded more and more of the kiss. It felt so good and so completely right. She’d never been kissed by anyone the way she was being kissed by Nick. He was shredding her senses with his intoxicating masculine presence. He was devouring her, no question about it, but she was also answering each sweep of his tongue and every groan of pleasure with those of her own.
Shannon lay back in his arms and ran her fingers up and down the muscular torso she could feel under his shirt. He was magnificent to touch, all hard-bodied and oh so very manly. It was intoxicating to experience him through touch, with each sweeping caress causing Shannon to fall deeper into the erotic haze that swirled around them.
She closed her eyes and lay her head on his shoulder, tentatively memorizing his body with a tactile exploration that made his heart thump under her touch and the erection she was sitting on top of swell.
Shannon couldn’t get enough of touching Nick everywhere she could reach. Her sense of how big he was intensified in the slow-motion examination she was conducting of his chest and arms. When he lowered his face into her hair and she burrowed into his touch, Shannon reached up and laid her soft hand against his neck, cupping and stroking his skin as she sat shivering in sensual thrall.
Her fingers eventually speared into his hair, massaging his head and making him growl low and dangerously in her ear. Shannon arched and squirmed on Nick’s lap, causing his grip to strengthen on her hips. The craving she felt to get as close to him as possible made Shannon want to crawl inside him.
His growling, masculine response to what had begun as just another series of kisses emboldened Shannon in her sensory exploration. Suddenly it wasn’t enough to touch him through his clothes. Her fingers were desperate to contact skin, feel the heat coming off his powerful body.
Nick had been leaving quick, hungry kisses along her neck and jaw. When he went searching for her mouth, Shannon yielded to his mounting need and threw herself with abandon into his kiss. From her perch atop his lap, Shannon yearned to be a part of him and sent trembling, clumsy fingers to loosening the buttons on his shirt so she could slide her palms across his chest and up over his shoulders.
When she succeeded with the buttons and stroked his amazing chest, Shannon was rewarded with an erotically charged response. Becoming bolder, her touch skimmed over his sensitive male nipples and pawed the light smattering of soft hair on his upper body. He shuddered, and she sensed more than heard a deep, rumbling groan well up from inside him.
He deepened the kiss until each of them was desperate for air. After filling his lungs, Nick zeroed in on her neck where he licked, nipped, and suckled, making her squirm all the more. When he pressed an open-mouthed kiss where her neck met her shoulder and then bit down, he all but gnawed at her like a hungry animal, marking his prey while she went over the edge.
She smelled wonderful. He inhaled deeply while his face snuggled into the hair tumbling over her shoulders. After sucking in a deep lungful of her scent, he released his breath next to her ear, bringing a shudder of awareness rippling along her body. He felt the tremor as it tore through her from where her delectable bottom wiggled on his lap, up her quivering spine, and across her shoulders. The feminine hands stroking his chest trembled.
His hands found their way under her shirt, gently caressing while the warmth from her skin seeped into his brain. She was shaking all over, moaning softly while he helped himself to her body. When his big hands finally moved to cup her lace-covered breasts, Shannon gasped into his mouth. With thumbs stroking slowly across her beading nipples, Nick got lost in the sensations crowding his brain.
He briefly thought his manhood might very well explode from the ache coursing through him. He loved the way she felt in his arms. Nothing had ever felt quite as right as this did. Shannon lit him up from inside and shook his soul with a need so strong it staggered him.
Nick caressed Shannon’s bare skin and lingered wherever his touch fell. She was wearing those soft yoga pants that fit her like a second skin and offered scant impediment to his questing hands. He swept his palm across her stomach, tracing the band of the pants. Dipping his fingers briefly under the stretchy fabric, he kept on plundering her mouth deeper still until she was writhing and moaning in his embrace. Nick didn’t think he could take much more but pure male instinct made him reach further into her pants until he touched the soft satin covering her femininity.
His fingers traced the leg openings of her panties and trembled slightly when encountering the moist evidence of her arousal. He slipped several fingers into those satiny briefs and tried not to lose his shit completely when he discovered more than just a bit of damp desire. His fingers were drenched with the hot, creamy proof of her unmistakable response to him. Nick was overjoyed and bursting with feeling as he sighed and slipped a finger between the pouting, wet lips of her sex and gently slid into her aching depths.
The temperature soared between their aroused bodies as the fire they’d been stoking burst into an all-consuming conflagration. Shannon was dimly aware of Nick’s big hand fluttering back and forth against the front of her brief satin panties while she was consumed by his voracious mouth and wicked tongue. Shaking uncontrollably, her legs fell open enough for Nick to press his advantage with a sweeping caress between her thighs that ended with Shannon arching her aching mound into his hand. When he cupped her and ground the heel of his palm against her female core, she undulated in aroused abandon and whimpered her need into his questing mouth.
It was his fingers though that got her attention. When he slid into her wet depths she nearly died from the pleasure.
Shannon cried out in helpless arousal one second and then stiffened the next. Nick reacted instantly when her reaction so abruptly changed. “What’s the matter? Are you alright?” he husked in a sexy, aroused groan.
Horrified by how far she’d let things go, Shannon struggled to get out of his arms, only to find Nick holding her even tighter. “Whoa, whoa,” he cried out. “What’s happening here, Shannon? Talk to me, sweetheart.”
“Oh god, Nick. Please let me up. I’m so sorry. So sorry,” she wailed. “I never should have let things go too far. This is my fault!”
“Shannon, babe,” Nick cut in. “There’s no fault, little one. Just tell me what’s going on. Please.”
Shannon groaned and leaned her head against the center of his chest, effectivel
y hiding her face from him. “I’m such a fool,” she whispered a moment before she raised her eyes to his.
“I’m not ready for this, Nick. I don’t want to have sex with you!” she exclaimed with genuine sincerity, bringing a frown of disbelief from Nick followed by one of his cheeky grins that suggested that she did indeed want to sleep with him.
“Okay, maybe I said that wrong. I can’t just have sex, Nick. It’s not me. Not how I work. There needs to be more than just going to bed together and I don’t…well, I don’t know what’s happening here between us.”
Shannon tried to reel in the anxiety that was tearing her up inside.
“I’m just so confused. It’s, um”—she shrugged and looked away— “all so overwhelming. Last week I never would have dreamed we’d see each other ever again, much less be together like this.”
She gripped the shirt he wore that she had unbuttoned with her own hands, desperate to make intimate contact with the skin underneath. “I can’t sleep with you just because we got carried away by passion. And not because I seduced you into a situation that got out of control.”
In exasperated confusion she cried, “Where is all this leading, Nick? Are we just scratching an itch? I can’t do that!”
The light-bulb went off over Nick’s head when he heard the growing anxiety in her voice. She was telling him something he already knew. Something he knew intimately. Shannon was the real deal. She would never be able to simply have a sexual encounter for the sake of satisfying even the most driven desires. She wanted to be loved, wanted their intimacy to mean something deep and lasting.
That Shannon wanted to believe she had been the seducer was the cutest thing she’d ever said, he decided with a deep sigh. He also realized he’d been the fool, not her. Of course she wanted more. He’d slashed and burned what they’d built between them before, and he’d be damned if he’d make the same mistakes this time around.
In his haste and determination to set things right, he’d overlooked a particularly critical step. The one where he declared his heart to her and made clear what he hoped they could build together. Shannon wasn’t the type to get involved intimately without there being more than sex on the menu.
Smiling tenderly at her discomfiture, Nick ran his hands lightly up and down her arms to ease her shaking limbs. This was an easy problem to solve.
“I don’t want to have sex with you either, Shannon.”
At that, Shannon snapped frowning eyes his way. “What?” she squeaked in an endearing blend of curiosity and embarrassment. Good, Nick thought to himself. That certainly got her attention.
“Sex isn’t nearly enough for me either, little one. It never was and never will be.”
Shannon sat there in silent suspense, not really knowing what to expect next. She felt dreadful that she’d gotten carried away and then freaked out like a scared virgin, afraid of the wicked beast her wanton behavior had unleashed.
“You ask what I want. Where I see all this is leading. I should have said this sooner, but since the party, everything has been moving so fast.” And with that, Nick pulled half a grimace, making Shannon remember that this was happening to both of them.
Fixing her with a steady look, he continued holding her on his lap, his hands stroking from time to time up and down her arms. Shannon listened to her heart and gave him her full attention and regard. A little voice inside her was whispering a hopeful prayer. Please let everything be okay. Hearing the sound of her deepest thoughts expressed so clearly helped Shannon find the confidence and faith she needed to stay where she was and trust the cowboy pirate staring so intently into her soul.
“This is not about the sex, although we would both be telling a terrible lie if we pretended that what we feel isn’t as powerful and overwhelming now as it was before.”
He waited for her agreement, which, to Shannon’s credit, she gave without hesitation, looking back at him in wide-eyed wonder with a small confirming shake of her head acknowledging that, yes, indeed, she also felt the staggering power of their mutual attraction.
Grateful for her total lack of artifice and willingness to be honest, Nick smiled gently, leaning in to rest his forehead against hers. From this position, he could feel her shallow breathing and sense her confusion, which he hoped to set at ease in short order.
“This doesn’t seem like a good time for beating around the bush,” Nick said lightly when he pulled back, “so it’s my time to be brave and fearless…to tell you what’s in my heart. You deserve that and so much more, sweetheart,”
“Simply put, I love you. Always have, always will, and nothing could ever change that. I am totally to blame for the eight years of hell we’ve both endured, and I tell you from the bottom of my heart that I will spend the rest of my life doing whatever is necessary to make it better for you, for us.”
As he wrapped his arms tightly around her waist, Shannon relaxed into his frame, laying a shaking hand on his chest. She needed to stay connected to him; feeling his strong heart thumping steadily under her touch grounded her and conjured up a sensation of coming together that she hadn’t felt in a long time.
Nodding as though he had heard her thoughts, Nick just said, “Yes,” as he let the moment speak for itself.
“I want it all, Shannon. The way it was. Every tingling, moony-eyed sensation. I want you in my life and, yes, in my bed. I want to wake up every morning and know you are there by my side. Where you belong, by the way!” His fingers tightened where he held her. “I want to talk with you about our days and make plans for the future. I want to be there when you laugh and help you when you cry. I don’t ever want you to think you’re alone again, little one.”
Nick’s heart melted just a bit when her bright eyes showed the beginning of tears welling. It was she who was brave and fearless, he thought as his humbled awareness of her fragility where he was concerned hit home with a vengeance.
“Shannon, my love. I adore you. For me, this is forever. As in always. The end-game is happily ever after and all which that implies. Fancy dress, big wedding, quick trip to Vegas, shorts and T-shirts on the beach, whatever you want, sweetness.”
Two, big, fat tears rolled down Shannon’s cheeks.
“I want the full Mr.-and-Mrs. future where I spoil you rotten and you hush that sassy mouth and let me,” Nick added with a wink bringing a tiny giggle and shy upward glance from the goddess warming his lap. “If I take over, kick me in the shins and tell me to cut it out!”
“This is for real, Shannon. For keeps. I want it all. The wife, the commitment, the future we were always meant to have. Don’t you want it, too? All of it? The house with a killer kitchen for your personal chef, who by the way just happens to be your husband! A garden full of anything your green thumb desires? A house full of love and kids, along with a suburban mommy car in the driveway. Maybe even a dog!” He ended in laughter.
Shannon had been dreamily following along as she took in Nick’s fervent accounting of where he wanted them to end up. Everything was close to approaching perfect until the word kids invaded her brain. The tears that had receded came back with alarming speed when the image of Nick and his children appeared in her mind’s eye.
The tightening in her chest told Shannon she had to tell him, and she had to do it now. There would never be a better time. He was opening himself up to her, showing a vulnerability that whispered louder than any shouted words ever could. She had to tell him about the life they’d created and how losing that spark of existence had almost extinguished the light in her soul. He deserved to know the whole truth if the future he was laying out was to have any hope.
It was now or never, Shannon thought as she opened her mouth to speak. “Nick, there’s something I need to—” And that was as far as she got before he put two fingers against her lips to effectively silence what she had been about to say.
“No, Shannon. You don’t need to say anything. There have already been too many words between us. Words have gotten us nowhere. My terrible words wh
en we parted, some of the painful things we’ve said to each other the last couple of days. It has to stop here and now. Don’t think, baby, just feel.”
Her mind did a series of impressive gymnastic moves as she considered what he was trying to say.
“No, I don’t want to have just sex with you either. I want to feel what we had before. When the time is right, we are going to make love, and when that happens, you’ll know without words how right we are together.”
Her eyes were glued to his face. “Yes, I want to marry you, but know this, Shannon—when you are ready, when you come to me and say yes, that will be as sacred, if not more so, than any ceremony or pledge could ever be. Our joining in body and spirit will be the beginning of our true marriage, little one. Have no doubt about that.”
He pulled her close then, faces in each other’s neck, arms clutched tightly around the other, and just held on. Shannon’s heart was thumping wildly as she considered what he’d said. She wasn’t entirely comfortable with Nick having cut off what she’d been about to say, but she knew he was also right about the words having driven a wedge between them.
He’d surprised her in more ways than she could wrap her mind around. Whatever trepidation she’d been nursing about motives or where their new relationship was headed had been swept away by the profound and reverent way he had spoken of their coming together.
“I know you need time to think, and while my manhood is trying to override letting you decide what’s best for you—sorry about that by the way—” he shrugged before continuing, “nothing happens that you aren’t one hundred percent okay with. Can you trust me on this, Shannon? I hope so,” he added, “because you have my heart and my soul in your hands. It’s all up to you.”
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