Kiss Me Hello (Sweetest Kisses) (16 page)

“I’m half-undressed, which is more than we can say for you.”

Sid digested that sorry reasoning for about one second. “Get off me.”

He was gone in a single, lithe move. His weight and warmth surrounded her one instant; he was flat on his back beside her the next.

“The jeans have to go.” She worked at his belt buckle, some tricky arrangement intended to serve the misguided cause of adult male chastity. “Damn you. No more belts when we’re getting lucky. Understand? That’s a rule.”

He stilled her hands with his own and got the thing undone. “Better?”

“Marginally. Shuck ’em, MacKenzie, or I’ll chew through your jeans in the next five minutes.”

“Your enthusiasm is wonderfully reassuring,” he said, lifting his hips and losing the jeans. “If a little violent.”

And there he was, six feet plus of naked, beautiful male, laid out before Sid in the fading light.

“Oh…my.” She drew a single finger along the considerable length of his erection. “My, my, my. Why on earth would you need reassuring about anything, ever, MacKenzie Knightley?” She stroked him again, once, twice. “I want to get my mouth on you.”

“Sidonie?”

She stopped mid-lean, her hair spilling onto his stomach and glared at him. “Another rule: no intense discussions when I’m about to indulge myself with your tender and willing body.”

“Two things.” Mac threaded his hand into her hair, which prevented her from taking him into her mouth. “First, fair is fair. Let me take your clothes off, Sidonie.”

That was fair, also probably a good idea. Once she focused on the bounty before her, stopping to undress would destroy Sid’s momentum, and even aroused as she was, a niggle of disbelief refused to leave her. She pulled her T-shirt over her head and fussed the straps to her bra, only to find Mac’s fingers closing over hers.

“Let me do it.”

“You want to undress me?” She tried to read his expression, but his features were damnably composed.

“I’ve thought about it.” He drew a single finger slowly down her arm. “Thought about it a fair amount, in fact.”

Just like that, Sid’s bravado collapsed into self-consciousness.

Into shyness.

“You’ll take too long,” she said, drawing in a breath.

“There is no such thing as taking too long when a man and a woman are about to be intimate for the first time.”

Maybe not in his book. “You said there were two things. What’s the second?”

He leaned up and kissed her, slowly, lingeringly, and then he hovered near on the strength of his abs and put his lips close to her ear.

“I haven’t permitted myself to share this with anybody in about ten years. I. Will.
Not
. Be. Rushed.”

I am in such trouble.
Abruptly, Sid couldn’t get her breath. “Ten years?”

“No intense discussions allowed.” He levered up to his elbows. “Not now.”

“But
ten
years
, MacKenzie?” She subsided onto her back, the enormity of their actions crashing over her. This
meant
something to Mac, meant a lot. For him to be here with her, naked and aroused in the moonlight
mattered
.

“Why me, MacKenzie? You’re a beautiful man, inside and out. Why me?”

“Hush.” He leaned over and kissed her belly. Sid’s hand settled in his hair, wanting to hold him there. “We’ll talk. We’ll talk as long as you like, but not just now. Now we love.”

His breath fanned against her abdomen, and all the wanting in Sid shifted. She went from needing to
have
satisfaction, to needing to
give
it. Arousal subsided into a vast, aching tenderness, one that accepted what loneliness, grief, and emotional exhaustion had to do with the path each of them had taken to that moment.

“Take your time, MacKenzie. Take all the time you need.”

He quieted against her, his cheek pillowed on her stomach, and instinct urged Sid to take the moment to learn him in a different way. She petted him, stroked her hands over every inch of his back, his shoulders, his face. Ran her hands through his hair over and over again, cradled him against her belly, and focused on him.

On the shape and feel of him.

The texture.

The scent.

The rhythm of his breathing, the sigh of his exhalations. She brushed her fingers over the soft down secreted in his armpits, traced the shape of his ears, drew her palms across the span and muscle of his shoulders.

To luxuriate in touching Mac this way soothed her—fed a need that had been building forever—and it aroused. Raw, sexual hunger built low down and radiated out, until Sid felt desire literally in her hands.

As if he read her mind, MacKenzie braced on his hands and hung over her for a long moment before slowly lowering himself so only their mouths touched.

This kiss was different, more tender, more intimate. He didn’t tease with his tongue, he tasted; he invited Sid to taste him. He drew on her tongue, offered his own for the same pleasure, built an entire language of give and take without saying a word.

Sid’s fingers wrapped around his wrists, and longing threatened to consume her. “MacKenzie, I need you.”

“Trust me.”

He undressed her slowly, like the sun in spring steadily, relentlessly brings life back to places too long left in cold and darkness. His mouth was everywhere, his hands as well. Mac knew how to use his body to reassure and torment, pressing into Sid as he kissed her, taking his warmth and presence away for a progression of instants, then giving them back somewhere different.

And always, he moved slowly. Reverently. His kisses were slow; his hands were slow.

Sid whimpered her need into the solid muscle of his shoulder. “I can’t take—”

He kissed her into silence, his hand moving down her body. After an eternity of stroking her neck and shoulders, tracing her collarbones, and gliding his thumb around the base of her throat, he folded his fingers gently around her breast.

Sid moaned, closing her own hand over his to hold him there. “Please, MacKenzie.
Please.
”

She was on fire, her breasts heavy with want, her nipples peaked and aching before he moved his hand lower, stroking over her abdomen.

“You’ll come for me,” he whispered, combing his fingers through her damp curls. She couldn’t respond, her wits deserting her as he passed a single finger up the crease of her sex. “You’re wet, Sidonie, wet and hot. Ready.”

He didn’t even need his mouth—she could not have
endured
his mouth—he found the seat of her desire with his fingers, and set up a slow, massaging rhythm. Just as Sid approached a point of no return, his hand would still, and he’d soothe her with lazy kisses, then gently torment her again.

“MacKenzie, you precious, precocious bastard. You have to let me—”

He leaned close, his erection pressing against her hip. He kissed the place where her neck and shoulder joined, then whispered in her ear.

“
Now
.”

A firmer pressure where he’d only teased before, and in two passes of his fingers, Sid came apart. From a great, brilliant distance, she heard somebody moaning, long and low, while her body seized up in the ecstasy of need fulfilled. She couldn’t breathe; she could only cling and shake, and cling more tightly still.

Mac laid her back on the blanket, smoothing one warm hand gently over her hair. She wrestled him over her with the last of her strength, needing his body to secure her in her own.

Now, we love.

She bowed up into the warmth and strength of him and cried. She wept for all the nights when there had been no loving, nobody to love her, nobody for her to love. She wept out her fear and loss and soul weariness, her bewilderment at the place life had taken her.

She cried out brokenheartedness and rage and simple wretched grief, and she cried in gratitude for the beauty of what had just been given to her.

And all the while, MacKenzie held her.

When she heaved her last sigh and drew in a breath that didn’t shudder, Mac rested his cheek against her temple, but he didn’t say anything.

He didn’t need to. His body told her he was ready to listen if she needed to talk.

Sid kissed his throat.
I’ll be all right.

He snuggled her closer.
You
sure?

“MacKenzie.” She needed to say his name.

“Sidonie. My Sidonie.”

Exactly what she needed to hear.

“Close your eyes,” he said, kissing her eyelids. “Rest.”

* * *

Life had started denying MacKenzie Knightley perfect moments more than twelve years ago. The death of his father, then his mother, had contributed to this sorry lack, but not caused it. He’d told himself perfect moments were for youth, for the idealism and innocence of a soul unfamiliar with heartbreak.

Tonight, life had proven him wrong.

To lie down on this blanket with Sidonie Lindstrom had taken all of his courage. They hadn’t known each other long, and tough discussions lay ahead; but she’d knocked him on his figurative ass with her grit and her tenacity, then flattened him emotionally with her tenderness.

She loved fiercely, and she would hold up to fierce loving too.

The moments when she’d held Mac and given herself permission to truly learn him, to touch him, had been perfect. The moments when she’d surrendered to pleasure in his arms had been sublime.

Now she dozed in his embrace, another precious gift.

“MacKenzie?”

He kissed her temple. “Right here.”

“I want to plant a garden.”

She was half-asleep, her voice drowsy. She cuddled into his side, stretched, then hiked a leg over his thighs.

What
had
she
said?
“Where the hog house was?”

“Is that a good idea? A dumb idea? I think it would be good dirt, because the pigs were there long ago. It’s level, and already dug up and smoothed.”

“Graded, and, yes, it’s a good idea. What will you plant?” He’d have to build her a fence to keep the rabbits and deer out.

Mac thought she’d fallen back asleep, and this funny little exchange was something she wouldn’t recall when she was dressed and bossing Luis around in her kitchen.

“I want to plant food. That’s what you do when you live in the country, isn’t it? You plant food?”

An image of Sidonie planting a package of nachos and ordering it to sprout into a nacho bush assailed him.

“Vegetables,” he said, “as opposed to flowers.”

“I want flowers too, but around the house. The house wants flowers, and maybe the barn does too. Did you bury the raccoon? I went back to give it a funeral, and I couldn’t find it.”

Not half-asleep, but still sweet and drowsy, and this version of pillow talk suited Mac just fine.

“I buried him. I showed Luis where, in case he ever has to do something similar.”

“I want to plant some flowers there too.” Her hand drifted over his stomach, sending tendrils of lust south.

“The place used to have lots of flowers. Nobody has separated the irises. Nobody has given the bulbs their bonemeal. You can do that, Sid. Make the flowers bloom again.”

“Good.” She closed her hand around his half-subsided erection. “I think it’s time for something else to bloom again too, MacKenzie Knightley.”

He let her play while he considered her declaration. Simply to bring her pleasure, to share that with her, had been an entire feast to a starving man. They still needed to get some things out in the open—she’d take umbrage at his profession, but Sid was reasonable too. A criminal defense attorney was not an ambulance chaser; she’d admit that.

First they had more important ground to cover, because Mac had yet to hear from her the words that assured him their dealings would be exclusive.

“Have I rendered you speechless?” she asked, cupping him gently. “You damned near render me speechless. Witless.”

Mac’s cell phone went off before he could answer. At first, he couldn’t place the low rhythmic vibrating, but the phone was in the pocket of his jeans, humming against the folding knife he usually carried when he wasn’t in the office.

“Your phone.” Sid reached over him and fished in his clothes. Her breasts pressed snugly right against his scrotum, and Mac understood why a man’s eyes might cross involuntarily. “Here you go.”

“Maybe I was going to let it ring through.” But by the phone’s light, he could see Trent was calling, and the only calls Mac invariably took were the calls from family.

“Mac here.”

“Glad I caught you. Can you come stay with the girls for a bit?”

Now? His brother wanted him to damned babysit right now?
For every perfect moment, there were progressions of imperfect moments on either side of it. Long progressions.

“Everything OK?” Mac managed.

“Not quite. James has found an intruder on Vera’s property, and he’s asking Hannah and me to get over there as his backup. I’m thinking it might get ugly.”

Vera wouldn’t call the cops, because this was apparently a family problem, while James would not intervene in any manner that trespassed on Vera’s wishes.

“Don’t let it get ugly, Trent. That woman is James’s best, last hope.”

“We’ll tell her that. Can you be here in fifteen?”

“Twenty.” Mac ended the call.

The moon had edged over the horizon, and the temperature had dropped. The peepers were singing bravely against the chill, while Mac wanted to howl.

Sid yanked her T-shirt over her head. “You have to go?”

“Family calls. I am so sorry.”

She passed him his clothes. “Family comes first, MacKenzie. That’s a rule that goes on the whiteboard.”

“We never did finish that discussion,” he said, stuffing his legs into his jeans. He paused when he should have been buttoning his cuffs, and leaned over to push Sid’s T-shirt up and get his mouth over one tight, rosy nipple. “A reminder of things we still need to address.”

Her expression was a little puzzled.

“I didn’t let myself do that before.” He patted her breast and tugged her shirt down. “Didn’t think I could keep to my plans if I did.”

“You and your plans, mister.” She crawled across the blanket to get her jeans, giving Mac a lovely view of her naked backside. He shut his eyes and buttoned his shirt by feel.

“What about my plans, lady?”

“I will get even. You reduce me to a quivering mass of gelatinous protoplasm and then ride off into the night.”

“Are you complaining, Sidonie?” He’d intended the question to be teasing, but her answer mattered.

“Bitterly.” She passed him his boots, and her smile was wicked. “You are doomed, MacKenzie. A marked man. Your virtue is in jeopardy.”

“A comforting thought, because I’m off to watch princess videos and make Uncle Mac’s signature taco popcorn. Trent said James has a situation on his hands, and I got the short straw.”

Except it wasn’t the short straw, not really. James and Trent would straighten out whatever was going on at Vera’s, aided and abetted by Hannah, who was a whiz-bang negotiator and mediator. Mac would have the little girls to himself for a change.

“Your socks, sweetie.” Sid stuffed them into his hand. “I’d volunteer to go with you, but I don’t like leaving Luis alone when he might be coming down with something.”

“He’s coming down with a growth spurt, most likely.” Mac stopped between pulling on one boot and the next. “Sid, I didn’t think before I set up that keg this morning. That had to be a temptation to a kid like Luis.”

“What do you mean, ‘like Luis’?” Her tone held a hint of defensiveness as she wiggled into her jeans. “He’s a good kid. The best kid.”

“He’s a typical kid, whatever that means. He’ll be sixteen in a couple weeks, and beer and boys have a natural affinity for each other.”

Sid stared at her bare feet. “He was probably tippling. My mom was killed by a drunk driver, so I tell myself I have to chill, you know? To not overreact. Luis will experiment, and the safest place for him to do that is right here, surrounded by people who will keep an eye on him. But it’s hard. Being a parent is so hard.”

Her words triggered a memory Mac had tucked away earlier in the day: Luis had said both Sid’s mother
and
her brother had been killed by drunk drivers. Maybe Sid had had more than one brother and had lost them both—God help her—or maybe Luis had been too tipsy to get his facts straight.

“He’s a good kid,” Mac said, doing up his belt. “He’ll use common sense most of the time, and we’ll ride herd on him the rest of the time. Kiss me.”

He didn’t wait for her to acquiesce. He pushed her flat onto the blanket and took her mouth in a long, wet, branding kiss that had his jeans fitting too snugly.

“I’ll call you.” Mac rose and pulled Sid to her feet. “I am not just saying that, so don’t start tormenting yourself with second thoughts and rationalizations, and all the mental anguish of taking a little risk.” He folded up the blanket as he lectured, then took her elastic off his wrist. “Turn around.”