Abby, Get Your Groom!

by Victoria Pade

  He stretched out alongside her as he plundered her mouth with his, and again found her breasts with a hand that was tenderly forceful now, that took control, kneading and squeezing and gently pinching and twisting and circling diamond-hard nipples, arousing her more and more by the second.

  His thigh was over hers and she let her hand travel along that muscular weight to his hip where she drew feather-light fingertips forward until she found the long, steely length of him and enclosed him in a firm grip.

  He moaned his pleasure, his mouth leaving hers to kiss a path downward, replacing his hand at her breast to take her into that warm velvet that her own mouth knew so well. Sucking and nipping and nibbling, showing her more of the talents of that tongue that flicked against the sensitive kerneled crest.

  Her back came slightly off the mattress in response, her spine arched and his hand followed the flat curve of her stomach to drop into the valley between her legs.

  She gained a new appreciation for the size of those hands then. And his abilities, too, as he raised the level of desire and need in her.

  Then he was gone, using one of those condoms from the nightstand before he was back again. Settling between her welcoming thighs, bearing his weight on outstretched arms with his hands on either side of her head, he lowered his mouth to hers once again and, at the same time, came into her in one lithe movement that made it seem as if he was just coming home.

  Home to a body built especially for him to embed himself in. A body that greeted and received him as if he alone was what it was meant for.

  Abby clasped her arms around his back and urged him down onto her, not caring that kissing gave way when so much more was happening.

  She raised her knees to wrap her legs around his waist, her calves pulling him as deeply into her as she could manage. And then she found the rhythm of each thrust, of each retreat, of each returning glory that was the movement of him into her, of her taking him inside.

  With each thrust growing increasingly more powerful and swift, they found harmony in every rise and fall of bodies striving together, working in unison, aiming for the peak of it all.

  That divine peak that—when Abby reached it—exploded within her like nothing she’d ever known before and transported her somewhere outside of herself to an ecstasy so blissful she never wanted to come back.

  Hanging on to that, to him, she just let wave after wave carry her in its wet, wild embrace until everything in her was spent and depleted and she couldn’t hang on to it any longer, until it began to slip away from her with promises to come again.

  Until the feel of Dylan plunging into the depths of her in a climax of his own made her want to relish every moment of that as much as she’d wanted to savor everything else from the very beginning of this.

  So she gave herself over to that, to him, holding him tightly with fingers that dug into his back and thighs that cradled him, all while he found that same paradise in her.

  Then everything slowed and slowed some more.

  Except breathing that took another minute to catch up before it slowed, too.

  All of Dylan’s weight settled onto her. Her legs fell from around him. And for a while that was how they lingered. Peaceful. Satiated. Contentedly one.

  Abby felt as if she could stay that way forever. More, she wanted to stay that way forever, with him inside of her.

  With him never letting go of her.

  Then Dylan raised his upper half and looked down at her.

  “Okay...wow!”

  She knew her smile was likely too big to conceal anything, but pretended indifference anyway and said, “You college boys and all your fancy words.”

  He grinned a weary grin. “Wow says it all. That was...wow.”

  He kissed her as if to convince her, made a very quick trip to her tiny bathroom then returned to lie on his side, pulling her to him and keeping her tightly up against him with those strong arms around her and one thigh that pulled her in as close as it was possible for her to be.

  “I want the night,” he told her. “The whole night—can I have it?”

  “I want the whole night, too,” she said without compunction, knowing that if she only got this one, she at least wanted all of it.

  “So, a little rest,” he said and nodded at the nightstand where more protection waited, “and then we put those to good use?”

  “Okay,” she agreed.

  He kissed her forehead, his lips lingering there for several minutes before he whispered, “You’re something, Abby Crane. Something so, so special.”

  She merely smiled, closed her eyes and said, “Just don’t waste too much of my night with that resting stuff.”

  He laughed. “I promise.”

  Then she felt him relax around her and knew he’d drifted off.

  But she didn’t need to rest as much as she needed to absorb everything she could of being there in his arms like that.

  So she just stayed awake, snuggled so wonderfully against him, her naked body molded perfectly to his.

  And like the few things in her past that she’d been grateful to have even just once, she engraved it all into her mind, every sensation, taking solace in the fact that there was more to come.

  More to come tonight, at least.

  More to come of this one night she’d given herself with him.

  Even if not more to come after that...

  Chapter Ten

  “Dylan!” Abby said, startled to find him—or anyone—sitting on the hood of her car when she left the Beauty By Design special occasions salon alone and after dark.

  Lindie Camden’s wedding had been ten days ago and that was the first time Abby had been face-to-face with Dylan since he’d left her apartment the following morning.

  After the initial fright passed and it sank in that he was there, she had to fight the compulsion to rush to him and leap into his arms. She had to fight to keep from showing that the mere sight of him was enough to make her melt inside.

  But fight she did, squaring her shoulders, raising her chin and holding her ground as she said a curt, “What are you doing here?”

  He let out a disgusted half sigh and shook his head. “I’m wondering why the hell you’re playing cat and mouse, why the hell I have to ambush you just to be able to see you and why the hell you won’t just talk to me.”

  She was standing several feet away and didn’t dare move any closer. All she did was shrug as if it wasn’t any big deal that she’d been sneaking out the back door of the salon every time he’d come in trying to find her. That she’d left orders with everyone to say they didn’t know where she was. As if it wasn’t any big deal that she hadn’t opened her apartment door to him any of the dozen times he’d been there knocking, or that she’d ignored his every text, every email, every message from him in her voicemail, every request through China for her to call or see him. As if it was no big deal that she’d put all her energy into not crossing paths with him in any way.

  All the energy that she hadn’t been expending crying and missing him.

  “There’s nothing to talk about,” she said firmly. “You did what you set out to do—you found the lockbox, helped me know who my parents were and why I was abandoned. I’m doing the consulting work with your sisters and Jani about improving your salons—at least, we’ve had one meeting about it to get started. And you set the wheels into motion for buying Sheila out so Beauty By Design will be mine. You said yourself that you wanted your brother to take that over and handle it, and Derek is.”

  “I also told you that I wanted Derek on that so business wasn’t what you and I were about. So we could be free to see where things could go between us. And you’ve been dodging me ever since.”

  There was no denying the truth so she didn’t try.

  “Is this because I didn’t call
the next day? Because the first time I did call it was just about business to see if you’d take our offer? Is it because I let a couple of days go by before I called to just talk?” he asked. “I know that was bush-league and I’m sorry for it. But I had to sort some things out—”

  “It’s not about phone calls. That night of the wedding was all there was ever going to be.”

  “What? Why?” he shouted, clearly stunned to hear that. “You can’t say that night wasn’t amazing!”

  Again Abby merely shrugged to give the illusion that that night hadn’t rocked her entire world when it had. When that night was part of the reason she’d been grieving the loss of Dylan even more than she’d grieved the loss of Mark.

  But her shields were up to protect herself—protection that that night had left her all the more aware of needing because it had been as amazing for her as he was saying it had been for him.

  “That night and how I came away from it feeling is the reason I needed to sort through things,” he said, as if he thought she would change her mind if he could just explain himself.

  “I came back from Europe after Lara with a plan,” he told her. “First I had to make things right with my family—that was my priority. Then, when that was taken care of, I had every intention of keeping a low profile for a long time when it came to women and relationships. Lara was such a disaster. And the problems she caused just kept rippling out, spreading into everything...”

  He shook his head again, and Abby stood there looking at him in the dim golden glow of the streetlight. He was wearing jeans and a hoodie. There were circles under his eyes—like there were under her concealer—that made her think he wasn’t sleeping any better than she had been. And that scruff she liked so much shadowed a face that was even more handsome than she remembered. But for the first time, that bit of beard didn’t look like a time-of-day or a too-busy-to-shave thing. Instead she had the sense that it had come out of lack of thought about his own appearance because he was just too tortured to care.

  But she shored herself against letting that affect her. She’d done what she’d done because she didn’t see any other option. Regardless of whether or not it caused them both pain. In the long run it was for the best.

  “I wasn’t even going to date for probably the rest of this year and into next,” he was saying. “And then when I decided I was ready again, I was going to take it slow with anyone I was even remotely interested in. I was going to make sure that I got to know her so well that there wouldn’t be any surprises. No underlying issues that I didn’t know about. No traps like with Lara and that crazy-ass drive she had to stir up trouble where there wasn’t any before. I was going to make sure that whoever I ended up with was stable and steady and grounded. And I’ll be honest with you, at first I was convinced that that wasn’t you—”

  “You thought I was unstable and shaky and my head was in the clouds?” she asked facetiously, holding on to that admission that he’d had negative thoughts about her. It was exactly what she’d expected, what she was most afraid of. His confirmation validated her fears.

  “No, of course I didn’t think that.” He slid down from the hood of her car and stood in front of it.

  His Jaguar was parked beside her compact sedan and she wished he would just go to his own car so she could get in hers and escape this and the effects of seeing him again.

  But he continued to block her getaway. So she stayed standing there. Wishing that she didn’t have to. And at the same time grateful for every minute more of the opportunity to see him again.

  “What I thought at the very beginning was that anyone who had grown up the way you had—shuffled around, without parents or a family, without discipline or with too much of the wrong kind of discipline or abused or...or who knew what—was really likely to have issues.”

  All a part of what Mark had thought.

  She didn’t say that. She said, “And if your spoiled rich girl had issues, how could I not?” More sarcasm.

  “Yeah,” he admitted. “But then I got to know you and everything...took off. In a flash. When I wasn’t ready. When the last damn thing that was supposed to happen happened, and all of a sudden I was head over heels—more head over heels than I’ve ever been for anyone—including Lara, who I was engaged to. And we had that night of the wedding...” He shook his head yet again, his expression forlorn and yet still reflecting some of that amazement he’d spoken of a moment before. “That night with you was like nothing else and I really had to think about things.”

  “Things,” she parroted.

  “Things like if I’d gone off the deep end. If what I was feeling was real, and if I should try to go after what I wanted. Or if I was just obsessed or something—”

  “Obsessed...” She repeated the word because in the past ten days she’d begun to wonder if she was obsessed with him. Why else would she be so miserable at the end of something she’d known would end? Something she’d basically ended herself? And yet “miserable” didn’t even do justice to the way she’d felt these past ten days.

  “Yeah, obsessed,” he said. “Because I couldn’t...can’t...stop thinking about you, and needing to be with you every minute. Wanting to share everything with you and have you there with me for everything—big, small, good, bad and everything in between. I can’t stop thinking that I want to be there for you for everything, to go to bed every night and wake up every morning with you beside me. I can’t stop feeling like there’s just this huge hole if you aren’t with me, if I’m not with you...

  “But what I came to realize,” he went on, “was that I hadn’t gone off the deep end. That, yes, maybe I am a little obsessed, but that’s only because I’m in love with you. Bad timing or not. Ready or not. Everything I’m feeling, everything I want—regardless of whether it was what I’d planned—just boils down to that. To this...”

  He reached into the pouch pocket of his hoodie and took out a small velvet box that looked like a ring box.

  For a moment he held it in the palm of his hand.

  Abby had no idea if he meant for her to take it or not. But she knew she couldn’t so she slipped her hands into the back pockets of her jeans to repress the temptation to reach out for it.

  He turned just enough to set the box on the hood of her car and focused on her again.

  Abby had some trouble taking her eyes off that ring box but, with a strong effort, she managed it. “Maybe you’re just a sucker for unstable women,” she said glibly, defensively.

  “Yeah, that’s the thing—the more I thought about you and everything I’ve come to know about you, the more I knew that regardless of how you grew up, you aren’t unstable. That maybe because of the way you grew up, you’re someone who can weather the storms and upheaval with grace—the way you did learning about your family history.”

  He took a step toward her and Abby stood up straighter, ready to move back if she needed to.

  “The more I thought about you and everything I know about you,” he continued, “The more I knew that you’re someone I can trust. In every way. To look out for me, for my family, like you did with Lara at the salon that day. And, God knows, you’re who I want to look out for. I realized that even though you could have come out of growing up in foster care so much differently, so much harsher, you came out of it as this really great, kind, wise person who doesn’t feel entitled to even what you should feel entitled to. You’re smarter than me and my whole family when it comes to seeing through people like Lara. And you’re somebody who has your feet firmly planted and your head not in the clouds...”

  He sighed, shook his head once more and said, “The worst thing I can say about you is what I’ve been butting my head up against for the last week. The underlying issue you do have is this—” He made a frustrated gesture with one arm that shot up into the air before he put both his hands in the hoodie’s kangaroo pocket.

&n
bsp; Those hands that she remembered the touch of too, too well...

  “I know what you’re doing here, Abby,” he said solemnly. “I know you’ve gone into self-preservation mode. Whether because I didn’t call the way I should have or—”

  “It isn’t because you didn’t call,” she reiterated.

  “Then what the hell is it?” he demanded, his voice louder. “Tell me so I can fix it.”

  “So you can fix me?” she asked with more snideness, more challenge. The word reminded her why things couldn’t work between them and triggered more strength to deny herself and him—despite all the good things he’d said about her and the fact that he’d told her he loved her.

  Which was making this all the more difficult. Because, yes, her feelings for him were even deeper than what she’d believed was love for Mark.

  “So I can fix the problem, not you,” Dylan insisted. “With everything I’ve just said to you, how can you believe that I think anything about you needs fixing?”

  “Maybe not right now,” she said. “But down the road? I’m not up to Camden standards and never will be.” It was the phrase he’d used about Camden Superstores’ salons and the people working in them. But she thought it applied to her, too.

  “Camden standards?” he echoed with disbelief.

  “I overheard you and Cade that Sunday when China and I were at your grandmother’s house for dinner,” she said. “I didn’t mean to, but I did. I heard him warning you to keep it cool with me. I heard you tell him I’m a fish out of water with you all—”

  “Whoa! I remember that conversation with Cade. In the first place, what he was saying wasn’t about you, it was about me. He could see that I liked you and he thought I needed to keep it cool because I’d been so clueless when it came to Lara and I needed to regroup before I started anything up with anyone else. And what I said—if I recall—was not that you were a fish out of water with us, but that I was sticking close to you because I didn’t want you to feel like a fish out of water—which was what you were afraid of, if memory serves.”