Still, Abby kicked off her pumps, too, and stepped with bare feet onto the pillows in front of one place setting on the crate, sitting Indian fashion within a parachute poof of skirt.
Cal sat the same way, just around the corner of the crate, and began to open the foil packets. Inside the one nearest Abby were salmon fillets in a sauce that smelled of wine, butter and dill. The second held a loaf of herbed bread. The third offered a variety of steaming vegetables—tiny new potatoes still in their skins, snow peas, fresh green beans, julienned carrots, slices of zucchini, artichoke hearts and button mushrooms.
“Franks and beans, huh?” she said as he served her.
“Disappointed?”
“Surprised. I expected you to slap a couple of steaks on the grill, not cook like a gourmet chef.”
He leaned close to her ear and confided insinuatively, “I’m a man of many talents.”
She didn’t doubt that. She just wanted the opportunity to experience them all.
As they ate, he explained about working as a dishwasher in a four-star restaurant one winter. He’d been between ranch jobs at the time, and the chef had shown him a few things about cooking.
“But I’m a lousy baker,” he added at the end of the story. “So you don’t have to worry about any competition for those brownies of yours.”
By the time they were finished eating, darkness had descended outside, leaving them in their cocoon of pillows, candlelight and pearly balloons, with only a bit of a summer’s breeze coming in through the open front windows that bracketed either side of a center picture window.
Cleanup was easy. At Cal’s insistence, Abby stayed where she was while he carried the egg crate—with everything but the wine and their glasses on it—into the kitchen and came right back.
“Out of sight, out of mind,” he said with more of that mischief in his eyes.
But it wasn’t only his eyes she was feasting on as he returned to her. It was the whole picture. Clean, careless hair, ruggedly masculine face, broad, straight shoulders atop a torso that narrowed sharply to his waist, hips just wide enough, thick, bolelike thighs, naked feet that were slightly flat, slightly wide and seemed to add to the intimacy between them just because they were bare...
How was she going to relay the message that she wanted him and be more clear than she’d been the night before?
Visions of herself crawling like a seductive cat across the pillows and slithering up his body ran through her mind.
Or maybe she could claim she was hot again and casually unfasten several of the buttons of her dress.
But somehow she couldn’t bring herself to do either of those things and instead decided on more conversation until she could come up with a better idea.
“So are any of your brothers or your sister marred?” she asked as Cal rearranged pillows to fill the gap left by the egg crate. Then he sat very close in front of her.
“Not now, no. There’s been a few weddings along the way, but everybody’s flyin’ solo these days. Unless one of ’em’s done somethin’ they haven’t told the rest of us.”
“How about you?”
“Have I done somethin’ I haven’t told the rest of them? A lot of things,” he said with a wry chuckle. “I’m the oldest, remember? I’m supposed to be the role model. What I can keep quiet, I keep quiet.”
“No, I mean were any of the weddings along the way yours? Rumor has it that you’ve never been married, but it’s just occurred to me that for all anybody knows you could have been and the grapevine just doesn’t have that bit of information.”
“No, on that score the grapevine is right. I’ve never been married. As my sister pointed out yesterday afternoon on the phone, I haven’t really been what anybody’ d call a one-woman man.”
“Well, there’s probably no threat to that now since I was just informed today that I’m not woman enough to keep a man like you around,” she joked, though there was an edge to it as her former fiancé’s words rose up on their own.
“I don’t know exactly what a man like me is, but whose dumb opinion is it that you aren’t woman enough for anyone?”
“A guy named Bill Snodgrass. I was to have married him last Saturday night.”
Cal’s expression waffled between surprise and what looked like concern for her. “The Saturday night you were celebratin’ your freedom?”
“The very same. He’d broken off the engagement three weeks before that.” Abby went on to explain what Bill had revealed to her only hours earlier as the real reason for the breakup. But she also made sure to tell Cal all her former fiancé had complained about in her—rattling off his summation of her faults.
Maybe she was warning Cal about her true self, she thought.
Or maybe she was testing him.
Either way, being completely open and honest with him seemed like the best thing to do, in case he’d overlooked the kind of person she was.
“Shy, quiet, steady, provincial and what was the other?”
“Predictable.”
Cal smiled at her, his aquamarine eyes warm with delight. “I don’t suppose it occurred to anyone that a lot of that is just what I find so appealing about you.”
Abby laughed again, wryly this time. “No, that would definitely never occur to anyone.”
“Then they haven’t walked in my shoes. I’ve known just about all the other kinds of women there are, and next to them you’re like a solid diamond surrounded by yellowed glass.”
Abby tried not to let that statement go to her head. “Is this part of the wild-women-are-shallow-and-I’m-not stuff?”
“Yep.”
“And is that where the good-girl thing last night came from?” she asked.
“This is all new to me,” he admitted. “I’ve been tryin’ to behave myself. To treat you with the respect you deserve.”
Abby let one eyebrow arch, hoping it looked seductive. “There’s respect. And then there’s respect....”
He laughed a full, rich laugh that echoed off the rafters and made the balloons sway. “Are you tellin’ me somethin’ here, Abby Abby?”
“I thought maybe you stopped last night because you didn’t want me.”
He threw his head back and groaned as if in agony. “Didn’t want you? I’ve never wanted anyone so much. It’s nearly killin’ me. I just thought you weren’t the kind of woman who would appreciate my givin’ in to it.”
“You might be surprised,” she heard herself say, the words coming directly out of the desire that was again mounting within her just at being so near him, smelling his aftershave, listening to his very masculine voice, looking at him....
“Predictable? Was that one of those things you’re supposed to be?” he said with a laugh. “Bill Snodgrass is way...way off the beam on that score.”
Cal took her glass and his, along with the bottle, and set them all on the mantel. When he came back he lay down on his side in front of her, braced on one elbow, and smiled up at her, raising his free hand to clasp the back of her neck and pull her down to him.
He kissed her. Full on the mouth. Parted lips. Hungry right from the start, as if no time at all had passed since they’d been on the fifty-yard line.
Then he wrapped his arm around her and rolled to his back, bringing her with him so that she was stretched out on her side, half on top of him, half not.
It struck Abby as amusing that they’d both gone along talking and pretending to be civilized and in control when just beneath the surface was that smoldering, primitive passion that needed little encouragement to erupt.
But erupt it did as Cal rolled once more so that Abby was on her back with him above her, to the side, one heavy thigh across hers, the bulging hardness of his desire pressing insistently at her hip.
But he didn’t do anything about it. He just went on kissing her, playing circle games with her tongue in a way that seemed as if he were working to keep things from getting out of hand too quickly.
Just don’t stop, Abby thought. Whatever yo
u do, just don’t stop this time....
She had her arms around him, her palms flat against his broad, hard back, and she did what she hoped was a sensual, suggestive massage there, holding tight even as she did. She kissed him in return the whole while, matching each thrust of his tongue with one of her own until he pulled away.
He rained delicate kisses from her chin to the sensitive spot behind her ear, down the side of her neck to follow the V opening of her dress, stopping tantalizingly short of her cleavage, leaving her moaning quietly when he did, afraid he might be stopping for good.
“Tell me what you want, Abby,” he whispered in her ear, his breath a hot burst there as he nibbled her lobe.
“I want it all,” she whispered in return, feeling very daring to say it.
“You’re sure? I want you to be sure.”
“I’ve never been more sure about anything in my life,” she said, sounding a little desperate because that’s how she felt—desperate to finally make love with this man.
Cal chuckled, a devilishly delighted sound as he recaptured her mouth with his in yet another kiss that was wide-open and hungry.
This time it was his hand that followed the edge of her neckline, only it didn’t retreat when he encountered the deepest point of the V. Instead he found the button there and unfastened it. Then the next. And the next.
It was such a great idea that Abby did the same thing with him, pulling her arms from around him to unsnap his shirt. But snaps were easier than buttons, and she managed to have his shirt open and pulled free of his jeans before he’d gotten very far with her dress.
Still, she was too eager for the feel of his skin to wait before sliding her hands inside his shirt, smoothing her way up his solid sides to hard pectorals, where small male nibs were kerneled much the way her own nipples were within the lacy confines of her bra.
But Cal was in no hurry. Even after he’d undone the buttons all the way to below her waist, he didn’t reach inside or lay it open. Instead he trailed a hand to her waist outside the dress and only raised that hand at a snail’s crawl from there to cover her breast through the fabric.
It felt good anyway, and Abby arched into his big hand, drawing her head backward, away from his kiss without even thinking about it.
Cal didn’t miss a beat, placing tiny kisses on her throat as he finally eased his hand into her dress, even into the cup of her bra, covering her bare nipple with his leathery palm.
A sigh of pure pleasure escaped her, but it was short-lived as he began to work his wonders with a hand that knew just how much to squeeze, how much to knead, how much to tease with the lightest of touches.
Abby yearned to be rid of the confinement of clothing—his and hers—so she slipped her own hands up over Cal’s shoulders to ease his shirt completely off, eager to feel her bare breasts against his chest, his whole bare body against hers.
But he wouldn’t be hurried. He took his time, exploring one breast, one nipple, then the other. He stopped kissing her to look down at her body, to marvel at her very sheer, very lacy, very sexy underwear before finally reaching around to unhook her bra and push her dress off her shoulders, leaving her only in scant bikini pants.
The denim of his black jeans suddenly seemed like armor against the tender flesh exposed to the cool evening air, and Abby forgot all inhibitions to find the snap of the waistband of those jeans and pop it open.
The zipper nearly spread on its own, so fierce was the pressure of his burgeoning body behind it, so Abby trailed her hands around to the base of his spine, urging his jeans downward from there.
But apparently Cal had lost the will to keep things slow because he shed the jeans himself in a hurry, tossing them aside before settling back beside her where he kissed her as he slipped off her panties, too.
Then he lifted his mouth from hers, braced on one elbow and looked down at her again, letting his eyes travel the length of her naked body.
“You’re so beautiful,” he said.
But Abby wasn’t thinking about how she looked. She was drinking in the sight of him. The glorious, hard, masculine perfection of his honed male body dusted in candlelight.
She wanted to touch him so badly that her hands ached with the need. She wanted to learn the feel of every inch of that sleek skin over exquisite bones, over tight tendons, over steely, bulging muscle....
She reached for him, sliding only one palm from his wide shoulders down his chest to his flat stomach, to his hips and around to that incredible derriere.
But Cal seemed far more enthralled with her body than with anything she was doing to him. He leaned over to kiss her again as he rediscovered her breasts, kneading more firmly now, tormenting her nipples with tiny tugs, rolling the pebbled crests between tender fingertips.
His mouth stayed on hers just briefly, though, before kissing a path to her breasts, before taking her nipple fully in the warm velvet wetness of his mouth. Flicking his tongue against it. Suckling. Nipping. Driving her wild with a whole new wave of desire that was a tight cord stretched from her breasts down through the very center of her to that spot between her legs that cried out for him.
As if he could hear that cry, he finally let one of those miracle hands trail down her rib cage, down her stomach, lower still, finding that spot with the gentlest of touches, teasing, urging her to open like a rosebud to the marvel of his caress until she knew she couldn’t last much longer without the fullness of him inside her.
So great was her need that it gave her the courage to reach below herself, to find the long, hard length of him, to explore it, to do a little teasing of her own so he’d know the same urgency she knew.
And he did because only moments passed before he tore his mouth from her breast and finally rose above her, nudging her knees apart with his own, easing his much greater weight onto her, searching, seeking with his body for the opening of hers. That same opening that was craving it so desperately.
He was careful—almost too careful—as he found his way inside her, easing in so cautiously she thought she might scream before he’d completely joined them.
But join them he did, deeply, deeply embedding himself within her.
For a moment that was how he stayed. As if it felt too good to alter.
Yet as good—as glorious—as it felt, neither of them could wait long for more.
At first he only pulsed inside her. Almost as though he were teasing her. Then another. And another. Each slightly stronger than the one before, slightly more forceful, more powerful.
Abby’s muscles flexed around him involuntarily, bringing her hips along for the ride to push up into him. And when she drew back, so did he, just before easing in again. Then out. Then in. In what were gentle thrusts. At a measured pace that promised more, that gradually built anticipation, desire, need...
Then it increased as if he couldn’t control himself any longer as that desire, that need mounted.
Or maybe that was only how it seemed to Abby because that’s how it was for her.
Each drawing out, each plunge back in again, was another flicker of what was to come, each one brighter, sharper than the one before.
Brighter, sharper and more intense until the flicker caught flame and burned in a white-hot explosion that wrenched her upward. She clung to Cal’s back as high-pitched groans sounded in her throat with each of his thrusts into her until she couldn’t so much as breathe, couldn’t so much as make another sound, couldn’t do anything but give herself over to wave after wave of pleasure. Pleasure that seemed to lift her up, to leave her suspended in midair as he stiffened above her, exploding within her, driving in so deeply that it was impossible to tell where her body ended and his began, truly becoming one with her in a way that melded more than their flesh; it melded their spirits, maybe even their souls.
And then he relaxed from the rigid power of his own climax, breathing hard into her hair, the weight of him a parachute that helped her float back down to earth very, very slowly....
He held
her tightly until taut muscles eased and flesh became pliable again. Then he rolled them both to their sides, their bodies still joined, and pressed her cheek firmly to his chest.
She could feel him relaxing all around her, inside her. She could hear his breathing deepen. She knew he was falling asleep, and she was too spent to stay awake herself.
But even as she was drifting off she couldn’t help thinking about something he’d said earlier—he’d never been a one-woman man.
And she had to wonder suddenly if that had been a warning.
7
NO MATTRESS ON THE FLOOR of anywhere had seemed as much like heaven as the one Cal was lying on when he woke up the next morning just after dawn. There was only one reason for it. Abby was in his arms. Her small body was curved perfectly to his side. One thigh rested over his. He could feel the pillowy warmth of her breast against his rib cage. Hear each even breath she took. And with just the flex of his arm around her, he could press her closer still, hold her firmly enough to give himself the sense that he could keep her.
Yep, heaven.
Especially when it all came after a night full of lovemaking. Wild, abandoned lovemaking. Soft, slow lovemaking. Quick, playful lovemaking. Twice downstairs on the pillows in the living room. Again up here in his room, on the mattress. And still he didn’t feel as if he’d had his fill of her. As if he would ever get his fill of her...
He didn’t understand what Bill Snodgrass had found wrong with her. No one else could hold a candle to Abby, as far as Cal was concerned.
He was crazy about the way she looked—all fresh faced and wholesome. He was crazy about the sound of her voice, her laugh, the way her eyes lit up when she did.
How could that not have been enough for the other guy?
For himself, Cal could talk to her for hours on end, and listen to her for just as long without being bored. She was fun and funny in her own understated way. And she had a smoldering, just-below-the-surface sexiness that was a lot more powerful than any of the up-front, flashy versions he’d encountered. A sexiness that was held in reserve for just one man. Just one man she chose to share it with.
Downhome Darlin' & The Best Man Switch Page 14