Kiwi Strong (New Zealand Ever After Book 3)

by Rosalind James

  “Where are we going?” I asked. “I can’t quite decide. I thought it would be casual, but you look too good for casual.”

  He smiled, just a little. He still had that scar beside his eye, and I wanted to run my finger along the white line. I wanted to kiss it, there where his pulse beat. He said, “I’m wearing jeans, Daisy.”

  “Mm,” I said. “You are. Maybe I like you in jeans, or maybe it’s the white shirt I like.”

  He took a breath, took a curve, and said, “I’m trying to cool down right now. So you know.”

  When he pulled up to the restaurant ten minutes later, though, tucked into the inner ring of the Octagon, I said, “This can’t be it.”

  “What can’t be it?” he said.

  “Bacchus,” I said, then realized. “Oh. We’re going to one of the other places. The Vault, or something. Sorry. It’s fine. Anywhere’s fine.”

  He didn’t say anything, just climbed out of the car and handed the key to the Bacchus Wine Bar’s valet, saying something to him. I didn’t hear it, because I was busy climbing out myself. I said, scrambling around to the pavement, “Gray. I’m not dressed for this place. You said trousers. Bacchus isn’t trousers!”

  He put his arm around me, his hand resting on my hip, and said, “Do you trust me?”

  There went my heart. And my breath. I said, “Yes.”

  “Then trust me now,” he said, and opened the door for me so I could step in under his arm.

  He was more than a head taller than me. He was so much bigger and stronger than me. And for once, that thrilled me as much as it scared me.

  “Hi,” he told the fella who came out to meet us. “Takeaway order for Tamatoa.”

  “Oh,” I said. “You could’ve just said.”

  “Where’s the fun in that?” he said. Then he collected his bags, and we reversed the whole process. The hand on the door. Me under his arm, and, yes, if there was ever a sexy position, that was it. The valet again, who’d barely had time to drive the car around the Octagon. The car door held for me again. And finally, driving away. Driving north.

  I said, “If I ask where we’re going, will I spoil the surprise?”

  “Yes,” he said. “I worked hard. Act pleased.”

  I laughed, and when he wound his way up the hill and pulled into a carpark at the Botanic Garden ten minutes later, I wasn’t even surprised. Even after he took a couple more bags out of the boot, and a little chilly bin.

  I said, “You’re going to have to abandon your principles and let me carry something.”

  “Just this once,” he said, and I smiled and took the Bacchus food. Once again, too many bags of it.

  “This way,” he told me, and in a few minutes, I knew where we were headed. The Rhododendron Dell. The bushes were in full, glorious flower, avenues of them overhanging grassy walkways, and I followed Gray all the way to the end. To the lawn overlooking the city, the harbour, and the green sleeping-dragon shape of the Otago Peninsula beyond, and on the other side of us, the glossy green of rhododendron leaves, the brilliant reds and pinks of their frilly blooms.

  He said, “Hang on,” set down his bags, pulled a red-checked tablecloth out of one of them, and flapped it open with a flourish. I laughed, and he said, “Yeh, go on and laugh. I had to look three places to find it,” which made me laugh some more. After which he said, “You can sit down now, if you’ve finished mocking my efforts.”

  I didn’t. I set down my bags of food, stepped into him, put my arms around his neck, and said, “I love your efforts.”

  “Yeh?” he said. “I thought—flowers. Good food. Wine. But nothing to make you nervous.”

  “I love it,” I told him again, then stepped a little closer, pulled his head down to mine, and kissed him. I smelled his scent, felt the warmth and the solidity of him, and let myself enjoy all of it. I let myself press up close, let his hands settle over my lower back and pull me in, let myself run my hands over the back of his strong neck.

  “You got a haircut,” I said.

  “Yeh,” he said, and kissed me again. “I did. I did it for you.”

  We sat on his red-checked tablecloth and spread red-checked napkins in our laps—they still had the price tags on, which just melted my heart—and he opened a tall, thin bottle of wine frosted with condensation and pulled out two glasses.

  “Dry River Martinborough Pinot Gris,” he told me, tipping the golden liquid into the glass I held. “Goes with everything we’re having, or so the fella said.”

  “Mm,” I said, sticking my nose into the glass, then taking a sip. Deep and luscious, full and spicy. Ripe pear, I’d call that. Apricot, too, maybe, and ginger. Delicious.

  So was our dinner. He’d got three things, because, as he told me, “I wasn’t sure what you’d like best.” I took off my sandals and sat cross-legged, looking out over flowers and hills and city and sky, and shared everything with him. Rich pork belly on sticky rice, with bok choy and apple dressing. Brown trout fried to golden perfection and laid over mustard mashed potatoes. Crispy polenta with mushroom ragout, asparagus, and a sesame/soy dressing. The very best Kiwi cuisine, hearty in flavor, fresh from the paddock and the sea and the garden, and with influences from everywhere.

  I said, in the midst of this hedonistic excess, “I’m eating so much better since the girls came. Going to get fat, probably. I need to get my surfboard and wettie out and shiver off some kilojoules, or you won’t love me anymore.”

  “I was thinking that myself,” he said, and when I stared at him, outraged, he laughed and said, “For myself, I mean. Oriana’s too good, and so are you. Maybe I won’t tell you what we have for pudding.”

  I’d had more than two glasses of that Pinot Gris by then. I wasn’t sure, because I’d stopped counting. That was probably why I set my wine glass down, swiveled around, lay back, and put my head on his thigh. “No,” I said. “Tell me. I want to be decadent.”

  His hand was on my hair, smoothing it back, and then it was on the side of my face. “We’ll let you be decadent,” he said. “Rhubarb crème brulee and lemon curd cheesecake.”

  I sighed. “Maybe a bite of each. If I don’t have to sit up to get them.”

  “I think I can arrange that,” he said, and then he fed them to me. One luscious bite at a time.

  We drank a little more wine, then, and watched the light turn gold over the city, then begin to fade, and Gray said, “If we don’t leave now, we’ll be shut in all night. They lock the gates, eh.”

  “Not so bad,” I said.

  “Bit cold, maybe,” he said.

  “Oh, I don’t know,” I said. “We have our tablecloth.”

  He laughed and nudged my head with his thigh. “Come on, lazy. Up you get. Places to go. Things to do.”

  I groaned, but pushed up to sitting, scrambled to my hands and knees, and started to gather up plates and silverware. Gray put his hand on my lower back, and I stilled. He said, “Sorry. You’re too pretty, that’s all.”

  I sat up on my knees, shoved my hair back, and said, “I am?”

  “Yeh,” he said. “You are. And I’m dying to touch you.”

  “Then,” I said, unable to believe the words that came out of my mouth, “let’s go someplace where we can do it.”

  45

  Sixteen Again

  Gray

  We’ll call that a hurried job of packing up.

  When I’d slung everything into the boot again, though, and Daisy had slid into the car again, and I’d shut her door again and gone around to my side again, I sat a second and said, “Time to think.”

  “No,” she said. “I’ve done enough thinking.”

  “Going home, though,” I said. “It’ll be barely half-past eight. Your sisters still awake. My mum still awake. Xena whining outside the bedroom.”

  “Oh,” she said. “True. For a man with three houses, you’re oddly lacking in privacy.” Sounding breezy, but I didn’t think she felt that way underneath.

  I thought about checking into a hote
l. About walking into a room dominated by an enormous bed, about the door slamming shut behind us, about pressure, about nerves. And then I asked her again, “Do you trust me?”

  She swallowed, and I saw it, even in the fading light. Nerves. “Yes.”

  I leaned across the console, took her head in my hand, and kissed her. Thought about doing it better. About the plumpness of that lower lip, the deep bow in the top one. Thought about sliding my hand slowly inside that filmy little blouse. I drew back, picked up a wayward tendril of dark hair, and told her, “Out here, Outside, we don’t rush into things, not when a woman’s just starting out. We take it slow. It’s not the Joining Hut. It’s not about your duty or my expectations. It’s about your pleasure. Step by step. I think you told me that was your motto. Let’s try that instead.”

  “Gray,” she said, “I’m finally ready to do this. I’m not nervous, for once. Or I am, but I’m not freezing up. Don’t you think we’d better do it quick while I actually want to?”

  This time, I laughed. And then I leaned back in my seat and laughed some more. I said, “Get it over with, you mean, before the feeling passes? How about not? How about enjoying it instead?”

  “Fine,” she said, and now, she sounded cross. She also had her arms folded over her chest.

  “Fireworks,” I told her.

  “Excuse me?”

  “I told my mum, maybe the first day I knew you, that you were fireworks, and I loved fireworks. She told me I didn’t. She said I loved sparklers. They’re pretty, and you wave them around a bit, until they go out.” I reached across again, brushed my thumb all the way down her jaw, my fingers drifting down the side of her neck, watched her shiver, and said, “I’m not settling for sparklers anymore. So you know.” Then I kissed her again, because how could I help it?

  “You had this conversation with your mum,” she said, when I’d started the car and we were rolling through the gates, practically the last ones to leave.

  “I did,” I said, and headed north. “But then, my mum’s a wise woman.”

  “Also,” she said, “you’re comparing me to all the other women you’ve slept with. Poor form, surely.”

  “You did some comparing yourself,” I pointed out. “Except that you didn’t. You told me how you felt. That’s what I’m doing, too. Telling you how I felt, and how I’m feeling now. Telling you it doesn’t feel the same. Telling you I want to do it right.”

  “So where are we going?” she asked.

  “Just wait,” I said. In fact, we were nearly there, taking the rising road at an easy pace in the fading light, my body knowing the curves.

  She said, “Oh. Signal Hill. I’ve run this heaps.”

  “So have I,” I said. “Seven, eight years ago. Pity I didn’t see you.”

  “I wouldn’t have been running it then,” she said. “Also, I’d have been twenty. Trying to make it through nursing school. And you’d have been …”

  “Some arrogant arsehole of a footballer,” I said, pulling into a spot in the corner of the Signal Hill carpark, because the drive was all of two minutes from the Botanic Garden. “Thinking he was all that. I’d have noticed you anyway, though. And you’d have sent me on my way pretty smartly.”

  “Because I’d have been terrified,” she said.

  “Mm. Maybe we could’ve got through this together, though. What d’you reckon? Got you before you had to try with those other blokes. Got me before I got to be any more of an arsehole.”

  She unclipped her seatbelt and opened her door, and I said, “Let’s sit a moment instead.”

  “Oh.” She shut the door, and I unclipped my own seatbelt.

  “This is what you do,” I told her, “when you want to touch her, but you don’t have your own place yet. You come up here to see the lights.”

  “The lights are better from the viewpoint,” she said. “You have to walk up the track.”

  I laughed again, and after a second, she did, too. I was still laughing when I kissed her, when I felt the shape of her smile against my lips. Her hand was on my shoulder, and my hand was in her hair, cupping the back of her head. She tasted like sweet white wine and lemon, and her mouth was delicious.

  Around us, the sky darkened, and pinpricks of light began to shine against the cityscape. The black arms of the harbour stretched wide, and beyond the lumpy form of the Otago Peninsula, the sea was blacker still. In the car, though, my lips traced over Daisy’s perfumed skin, finding her ear, and I felt her shiver. My fingers rubbed against the silk of her hair, and her own hand was at the back of my neck, soft and strong and all the way female. I whispered in her ear, “This is how we do it,” nibbled a little, and she moaned. Then I worked my way slowly back to her mouth and kissed her again. Not a bit how I would’ve as a teenager. How I would as a man. My tongue traced the bow of her upper lip, and I told her, “This is my favorite.” Then I bit the plump curve of lower lip, keeping it gentle, and said, “Except for this. Open your mouth for me, baby. Let me kiss you right.”

  She did it. Tentatively, and the power and the tenderness coursed through my body like wine. I kept it slow, kept it easy, both my hands around her head now. Touching my tongue to hers, and feeling the charge in her, because I’d been right. There was a current running between us, bright and warm as gold.

  I kissed her until I felt her body go pliant, until she was kissing me, too. Her tongue a little bolder, her breath a little quicker, her hand gripping my shoulder and holding on. Until she started making those little noises in the back of her throat that a woman just couldn’t help, and grabbing me harder. I left her mouth, then, and drifted my slow way over her cheek, down to her neck.

  When I kissed her there, in the tender spot under her ear, she jumped. And gasped. I asked, “How does that feel?”

  “G-good,” she said. “Do it some more.” So I smiled against her smooth, almond-scented skin and did it. I kissed her neck until she was shifting in her seat and grabbing my head. Until she was moaning.

  The windows had long since fogged up, and I was uncomfortable as hell. Halfway over the console, hard enough to pound nails, my hands itching to slip her filmy little blouse all the way off, to put my hands and mouth all over her.

  I didn’t. I kissed her neck, and I trailed my fingers around the side of her head and brushed them down her throat, along the delicate hollow above her collarbone, over her shoulder, slipping under her blouse. By the time I got my fingers on the sensitive skin under her shoulder, just above her breasts, she was gasping, and I was biting just a little.

  She was trying to say something, and I wasn’t listening. The blood was pounding in my head, and everywhere else, too, because my hand was slipping farther down. My fingers gliding delicately along, going under the silky little thing she was wearing beneath that blouse. Coming closer. Circling, because I didn’t want to touch her yet. Not … quite … yet.

  And then the moment when I did.

  Daisy

  I was getting felt up in a carpark. And it felt good.

  He still wasn’t grabbing. He was just touching. His fingers light, rubbing over my nipple, which was so hard, it almost hurt. His mouth was still at my neck, his teeth grazing me there. I was being devoured, one bite at a time. Overwhelmed. I couldn’t think anymore.

  I said, “Gray.”

  “Mm?” His head came back up, and he sucked my lower lip into his mouth, then held the back of my head tighter and plunged his tongue in deeper. He kept doing it, and I was riding that motion, that sensation. The electric shocks from his hand on my breast, his tongue in my mouth, stabbing straight down my body. My trousers feeling much too confining, because I wanted his hand there, too.

  “Gray,” I said again.

  He stopped kissing me and laid his forehead against mine. He was breathing harder, too. It wasn’t just me, and the knowledge gave me a surge of power. I held his head, and this time, I was the one kissing his mouth. Tasting. Nibbling. I said, between kisses, “I think we should … go somewhere.”

&
nbsp; His whole body stilled. I felt it. I pulled back and said, “Please. All right, maybe Outside, you wait between times, or whatever. I don’t want to wait. I’m dying.”

  He started to smile, and then he smiled more. He eased himself back into his seat, tugged some at the front of his jeans, laid his head back, blew out a breath, and said, “One second.”

  I’d never done this. Not voluntarily. I did it now. I reached my hand out and drew a finger down the length of him, and then I cupped my palm over him and held him there. He said, “Daisy. Don’t.” It was a groan.

  “Oh?” I asked, and got another of those surges. “Thought you liked it when I teased.” I touched him again. I didn’t know much about men in a personal sense, but I knew them in a nursing sense, and there was a lot of Gray.

  He put a hand around my wrist and said, “Wait. Seriously. Wait.”

  “All right,” I said. “But I thought that was a bit of a fantasy.” It wasn’t like I actually knew how to do it. I could give it a go, though. How badly could you get it wrong?

  He laughed, even though it still sounded a little strangled. “Yeh, your first time with me’s going to be going down on me in the carpark. How about no. We’ll save that for the second time. If you’re sure, though …” He lifted his hips from the seat and grabbed the phone from his back pocket.

  “What are you doing?” I asked. My mouth felt swollen. My neck felt tender and sensitive. My entire body felt wound up to breaking point, but without the breaking. Where was my bloody breaking? “I don’t want to wait until tomorrow,” I told him, “or next week, or whatever you’ve decided is the right timetable. I’m not sixteen, and I want to go somewhere we can do this now.”

  He scowled at me. “I’m trying to be tender.”

  “Well, stop being tender,” I said. “You’re meant to be a … a leader of men. A decisive, take-no-prisoners tough guy. I’m here waiting for you to do it. I’m ready to be swept away, damn it!”

  He looked gobsmacked, and then he grinned. And finally, he started to laugh, and after a minute, so did I. He leaned over again, grabbed the back of my head, kissed my mouth, and said, “Right. I’m sweeping you away. I just need five minutes.”