by Nina Bangs
They should talk. Ten years ago they’d made spectacular love on that beach. But when it was over, it was over. That was at the root of her anxiety now. If it was all about sex, she didn’t want any part of it. Been there, done that ten years ago. Fine, so she wanted something deeper, more meaningful, right? Well, no. Deeper and more meaningful might tempt her to stay in Galveston. What did she want? That depended on which body system was answering. Right now there was a catfight heating up between her brain and the sluts in her basement.
“We should talk.” Her mature self applauded.
Leaning down, he touched her throat with his mouth. Her heart beat hard and fast beneath his lips. He smelled like Irish Spring and toothpaste. Her list was growing. Paint, Irish Spring, and toothpaste smelled sexy.
“No.” The warmth of the one word against her skin brought a shuddering response that surprised her.
“Why not?” She knew why not, but the question gave her a moment to search for guidance from her know-it-all mature self. Instant gratification or deep and meaningful? What to do? Okay, soul searching done. Call her shallow, but his totally delicious body was as deep and meaningful as she wanted to get right now.
“Because I’ve had a hard-on all week imagining you naked in this bed. A man can’t paint in high places with a hard-on. I think there’s some kind of local ordinance against it.” He moved his mouth to the sensitive skin below her ear and traced lazy circles with his tongue.
Mistake, mistake, mistake! Amanda sighed. Her mature self may as well shut up. It was a big fat loser. She was going to ignore her common sense and ten years of accumulated lessons learned. She’d go with what she wanted just because she wanted it. Her desire for Con went beyond the hurt feelings of a seventeen-year-old, beyond her fear of any complication that would interfere with her New York career. If New York couldn’t stand up to one night with Con, then she needed to find out now.
“We can’t have you turning into an outlaw.” Leaning forward, she slid her tongue across one of his nipples. He sucked in his breath. “Of course, there’s something really sexy about an outlaw with a hard-on.”
His soft laughter spurred her on.
“Just call me the Lone Arranger. I can arrange your furniture or a hot night of sex.” She laid both palms flat against his chest. “Kinky or otherwise.” His skin was still damp from his shower, and his nipples pressed into her palms. The pressure registered as an anticipatory clenching low in her belly. “I’m here to save you from a life of crime, restore Sweetie Pie to perkiness, and find out if you’re still as spectacular as I remember.” She reached between them with one hand and yanked his towel from his hips. As she let the towel drop to the floor, she glanced down. “Everything does grow bigger in Texas.”
“Well, hell.” His voice was husky with need and more than a little surprise. “Kinky or otherwise? I like it. I knew my wicked woman was hiding in there somewhere. Looks like Ms. Neutral has shifted into first gear.”
She leaned into him, feeling the length of his bare body pressed against her. It had been so long, and she was so eager. “Wrong, oh great and magical painter of snakes. It’s been a lot of years since I’ve traveled the open road”—she slid her hands over his arms, his torso, and his thighs to indicate the road she had in mind—“and I’m shifting right through to fifth gear.”
His answer was to put his hands on her shoulders and lower his head to cover her mouth with his. She kept her lips closed so he’d understand the walls might be breached, but she wasn’t flinging the gate open for him. Not right away, anyway.
Walls. Uh-uh, didn’t want to think of walls, or her job, or the snakes now. She wanted to immerse herself in Conleth Maguire and maybe recapture a little of what she’d left behind ten years ago.
He traced her lower lip with his tongue and then gently nipped it. Okay, fifteen seconds was long enough to make her point. Time to fling the gates open. She parted her lips and met his tongue with an eagerness that told her she’d wanted this for longer than she realized.
With a low moan of joy, she savored the taste of toothpaste and the essence of what had always made him an irresistible temptation to her. The pressure of his lips increased, signaling his escalating excitement.
He dropped his hands from her shoulders and stepped away, his breathing ragged in the quiet room. “We need to take our time, sweet-heat. Ten years ago, we ripped each other’s clothes off, fell on the sand, and went crazy. This time we should savor it.”
“Right. We’re adults now. We’ll walk to the bed, I’ll calmly undress—”
“No way. I’ll calmly undress you.”
From the length, breadth, and stiffness of his erection, Amanda doubted his ability to do anything calmly. She, on the other hand, had spent ten years training in the “calm” arena.
She reached for a button on her blouse with shaking fingers. Calm. She took a step toward the bed. Calm. She slid her gaze up Con’s beautiful male body and thought about raking her fingers through his dark hair. Calm. She met his gaze.
He was heat, flame, and she was a damned moth. If she singed her wings, so be it. “What the hell, I can’t wait.” She pulled her blouse from her skirt and fumbled with the buttons.
Con joined her in a tangle of fingers and muffled curses. She was never quite sure who was responsible, but her blouse fell to the rug in a flurry of flying buttons. She kicked off her sandals, shimmied out of her skirt, and wrestled with Con for the privilege of ripping off her bra and panties.
As soon as he retrieved his foil package from the night table, she pulled him down with her onto the bed chanting her mantra of the moment, “Quickquickquick.”
He eased her onto her back. She spread her legs so he could kneel between them. Since they were doing the mature love scene, she’d allow for about, say, three minutes of foreplay. Hey, she didn’t want to rush things.
She pulled his head down to her breasts. It’d been a lot of years. Maybe he’d forgotten where they were. But when he slid his tongue across one nipple and then nipped it, she immediately forgot where she was. He closed his lips around her nipple, and the triple assault of heat, tongue, and pressure narrowed her world to only one sense: touch.
Burying her fingers in his hair, she let the silky strands slide through them. Her nipples were sensitive points of pleasure-pain, and she arched her back just in case he was thinking of abandoning them.
He did. The rat. With complete unconcern for her three-minute foreplay time limit, he kissed a searing path over her stomach and then her inner thighs. She knew where he was headed, and she’d explode if he touched her there with his mouth.
Grasping his shoulders, she rolled, and he rolled with her . . . over the edge of the bed and onto the floor. They almost took Sweetie Pie and Jessica with them. When she finally managed to disentangle herself from the bed-spread, wonder of wonders, she was straddling him. The view was to die for. A smooth, unbroken expanse of fine Texas male. All of his muscles were clearly delineated as he tightened them in an effort to last through those endless three minutes. Poor baby. He wouldn’t have to suffer much longer.
“Geez, Maguire. I’d forgotten all of this.” She illustrated all of this by splaying her fingers across his incredible abs. She hadn’t really forgotten, but she sure didn’t want him to think she’d obsessed over his body.
“Maybe you should feel around to see what else you remember.” His voice sounded strained.
As she gazed into his hazel eyes gleaming with carnal knowledge and erotic promises, Mandy swore she saw the shadow of his Druid ancestor. Because Con was definitely magic.
Reaching between his legs, she walked her fingertips over his balls, and finished off by gliding her fingers over the rigid length of him. Amazing how emotion could feed off the senses. His erection was strength sheathed in warm satin, and just touching it made her want to cry. No, that was wrong. A body part couldn’t make her cry, but the total wonderful package that was Conleth Maguire certainly could do the job.
&nb
sp; He clasped her wrist. “Stop. I can’t take anymore.”
Good. Three minutes up. Her body clenched around the anticipation of an enormous orgasm, a Texas-sized orgasm. Wow, it felt good to be home. Something about that thought bothered her, but she couldn’t think coherently enough to figure it out.
She needed him deep inside her. Now. Moving her body over his hips, she lowered herself until the head of his erection nudged between her spread legs. Oh, yesss.
“Wait.” The voice of the devil. “I need something.”
Like her undying curse? While she searched for one evil enough for the occasion, he reached up and felt around on the bed until he found the foil package. He seemed to rip it open in slow motion. Arrgh. It took him a good hour to put it on.
Finally finished, he lifted her back into position. “Ride me hard, sweet-heat. We have a lot of pleasure to catch up on.”
Closing her eyes, she savored her tactile impressions. The weight of his hands on her thighs, the pressure of his cock pushing into her, spreading her, tempting her to let go. No way could she lower herself slowly onto that spectacular male display. She wanted all of him at once.
With a cry of triumph, she drove down on him, feeling him slide smoothly into her, filling her. She stilled, holding onto the sensation of complete connection, and then she began to move. Raising herself and then pushing down, she renewed over and over her sense of fullness. He picked up the rhythm, driving into her deeper and harder with each thrust.
Suddenly, all of her senses kicked back in. She moaned as he rolled her nipples between his fingers and the frenzy of their thrusts gained momentum. His breathing was a harsh rasp, and his scent of clean male and sexual excitement fueled her drive to orgasm. Frantic for more contact, she leaned forward and clamped her teeth in his shoulder to keep from screaming as he drove into her so hard she knew she’d shatter into a million shards if she didn’t somehow anchor herself.
Her orgasm caught her, flung her high, and then rolled over her in wave after wave of unspeakable pleasure. She felt Con stiffen, straining toward that last moment before climax, and then he shouted as it took him.
As her spasms slowly faded, Mandy released Con’s shoulder. What an incredible trip. “That was unbelievable.”
“Unbelievable.” Con was still breathing hard. He turned his head to look at his shoulder. “There’re teeth marks.”
She offered him a satiated smile. “Did I ever tell you about my vampire ancestors? Hot sex brings out my need to feed.”
He returned her smile, but there was an emotion she didn’t recognize in his eyes. “It was worth the bite. It couldn’t have been this great ten years ago. Ten years ago I was a lot weaker. This kind of sex would’ve killed me.”
When they’d gathered enough energy, they moved from the floor back to the bed. Con glanced at his clock. “That took us all of ten minutes.”
Mandy smiled. “That long? I’m glad we’ve matured.”
CHAPTER ♦ FOUR
“I’m driving into Houston tomorrow to buy wall sconces. Maybe I’ll cruise on over to the Galleria and scope out red dresses.” Mandy turned on her side to face him. “You’ve put me in a red-dress mood.”
He tried not to look too hopeful. “How about red walls? Are you up for Ming Red? The owner of an old Victorian house in town had me paint—”
She scowled. “Don’t push it, Maguire.”
He tried to whip himself into a berserker frenzy over wall colors. It didn’t work. He’d expended all his energy on the sexual frenzy of a few minutes ago. “So what turned you into a cream kind of woman? In high school—”
She reached over to lay her finger across his lips. “Don’t say it. My color schemes were loud and proud of it. Those were my wicked woman days.”
“I liked her. A lot.” Con never missed an opportunity when it was pressed against his lips. He clasped her wrist and then closed his lips around her finger while he held her gaze. Slowly, thoroughly, he twirled his tongue around her finger, implying that his mouth was capable of so much more than what she’d already experienced.
Her eyes darkened, heated. Message received. He released her finger.
Mandy looked away before speaking. “I didn’t inherit my preference for cream. Mom and Dad are earth-tone advocates.” She glanced back at him and grinned. “By the way, they’re loving retirement in Arizona. Anyway, you know I’m an only child, and they had me late in life. Something about that combination must’ve turned me into the overachiever from hell. They never put pressure on me, but I sure put it on myself. I had to be the best in everything, and if I had to change into something totally not me in order to be the best, I did it.”
Con propped himself up on one elbow to study her. “Was it worth it?”
Her gaze turned distant, and he knew she was seeing the teen she’d been. “I sure thought so at the time.”
“How do you feel about it now?” He held his breath, afraid she’d change the subject. They’d shared lust and a few laughs during her senior year, but they hadn’t shared anything real of themselves.
Mandy rolled over onto her back and stared at the blue ceiling. “I don’t know. All those things: the straight A’s, the cheerleading, the student council—while I made sure I was just bad enough so no one would think I was geeky—made me feel accepted. Acceptance was my holy grail.” She reached between them and clasped his hand. He squeezed it. “Who knows why certain things obsess us. It’s the now thing to blame every kink in our psyches on our parents, but Mom and Dad were innocent.”
He laughed. “I must’ve driven you crazy. I was so laid back I was unconscious. My grades were okay, but I didn’t burn a lot of brain cells during high school. Just enough to get by. Football was a natural for me, so I did it. If I’d had to work hard to be good, I would’ve blown it off.”
She didn’t laugh. “I was jealous. You didn’t let anything get to you. Life just flowed around you.”
Now she’d really shocked him. “And here I thought my attitude frustrated the hell out of you.”
She remained quiet so long he thought she wouldn’t answer. “Did you ever go to art school?”
Con nodded. “I worked for Dad during the day and went to U of H at night. Since graduating, I’ve gotten good enough to sell some of my paintings. I’ll probably always keep my day job, though, because I like the physical labor. It balances the other half of my life.” Here goes the big question. “Why’re you telling me everything now?”
Mandy turned her head to look at him. “Because we didn’t talk ten years ago. Maybe if we had, things would’ve been different.”
Left unsaid, but understood, was that maybe she wished things had worked out between them. His instant rush of emotion left him wary.
He sensed she’d done enough soul baring for one night. Con wouldn’t press her for more. “We were kids, and kids are dumb.”
“Oh, I almost forgot, you asked about the ‘cream’ me. It’s my decorating persona, and I’ve done well with it. When I got to New York, I researched my target customer base, decided on an image that would get a positive response from them, and became that image. It worked in high school, and it’s worked in my business. And yes, sometimes I even paint walls bright colors, but not these walls. I still think they should be cream.” She frowned.
For a moment, he thought she was aiming her frown at him, until he realized she was looking over his shoulder. “What?”
“Umm, Sweetie Pie looks energized. Please tell me I’m wrong. I want her to be limp and droopy, because I really don’t want to believe she got off on our lovemaking.” Mandy sat up to get a better view of the plants.
Con didn’t give a damn about Sweetie Pie. Mandy took his breath away. He’d accepted she was beautiful in a cool elegant way, but this . . . She was gorgeous in a way he hadn’t seen before. Her cheeks were still flushed from sex, her lips swollen from his kisses, and her eyes soft with lazy sensual fulfillment. And her hair was tousled. He wanted to lean forward, touch that soft m
outh with his lips, and bury his fingers in the silky strands of blond hair.
“Con, look at Sweetie Pie.” She wasn’t going to give it up.
Silently wishing an attack of aphids on the hapless Sweetie Pie, he turned over to look. Geez, he needed out of this place. Everything that happened here was creepy, and he didn’t have a high tolerance for creepiness. Sweetie Pie looked like the Plant Fairy had given her an adrenaline shot. And Jessica looked like she’d put out a batch of new leaves. No way would he make love again in front of these leafy voyeurs. Listen to yourself. You’re nuts.
“Simple explanation.” He tried for casual, but it didn’t quite come off. “All our heavy breathing put a lot more carbon dioxide into the air. Sweetie Pie and Jessica are loving it.”
Mandy’s expression said that was a bunch of crap. He thought so, too.
“Maybe I should go back to my—”
“No.” Now that he had Mandy in his bed, he was revved for a hot night of love. Not in front of the plants, though. The total stupidity of that thought made him wince. Sparkle had said the plants fed off their energy. They couldn’t see. Still . . . The solution seemed simple. He’d turn off the lights. For just a moment, though, he wondered about their night vision. This place is turning you into a wacko, Maguire. “Stay here tonight.”
She nodded. “We can talk some more about cream walls. And I haven’t even gotten started on blue butterflies. But first I need a shower.” She swung her legs to the floor, stood, and then wiggled her fantastic little behind all the way to the bathroom. She’d kill him, but he’d die a happy man.
As soon as he heard the water running, he got up and went to the door. Con figured someone would be waiting for him on the other side. Flinging open the door, he looked down. Yep, mini-snoop was waiting.
“Geez, man. You’re naked. Do something about it. You don’t come to the door like that. Nuns could be collecting for charity. Girl Scouts could be selling cookies.” Deimos kept his gaze focused somewhere over Con’s left shoulder.