Snowflake Bay (18 page)

“Fi, I want—”

“Yes,” she said, immediately. Almost too immediately.

Which was a perverse thing to think given they both apparently wanted the exact same thing. And yet, in the back of his mind, he couldn't shake what she'd said about not knowing if her attraction to him was long-delayed wish fulfillment, or something real, and current, with potential for more.

It was the very idea of more, and what kind of more had come to mind, that finally did make him pause, and maybe, belatedly, come to his senses.

He paused, groaned when she hooked her heels behind his legs and pulled him more snugly between hers. Because it was just too damn good, he stayed there, but lifted his head and urged her to open her eyes, look at him, too.

“Don't go getting all logical and rational on me now,” she panted, apparently seeing something in his expression, “or I might have to hurt you.”

He barked out a hoarse laugh at that.

“Remember, you liked that part where I was direct and honest,” she said dryly, then leaned in to nuzzle his neck.

It was the combination of her humor and assertiveness that made him want to strip her bare and take her right there on the counter, first with her legs wrapped around him, then again with her bent over something handy so he could hold her hips and get a prolonged, delicious look at her very fine—

“Yes,” she breathed, as he gripped her thighs and took her mouth again.

There would be time to sort it all out later. She wanted him and he didn't give a damn why at the moment. She had to feel it, had to know it was more than some past desire driving her to do this, accept this, want this. Take this. As to that more he wanted . . . he'd sort that out later, too.

Ben slid his hands up her thighs, his thumbs drawing a direct line along the tender flesh of her inner thighs, where the air between them got hot and moist. They both groaned when he brushed his thumb along the seam of her pants, making her jerk against the pressure. His body jerked, too, begging to be freed and allowed its own chance to press against all that damp, dark, heat.

He continued to stroke her with his thumb, as he broke their kiss and leaned her back so he could lower his mouth to her nipples, both of them constricted into hard points, clearly visible through the soft cotton of her T. He pulled one into his mouth, desperately wishing he could make the barriers between his tongue and her soft flesh disappear, but willing to take whatever substitute he could get.

And then she was bucking against his thumb and he was torn on whether he should take it away so he could unzip her jeans and yank them and whatever else she had on under them down her legs . . . and continue his dual assault on her most sensitive parts. Her hands fisted in his hair, answering that dilemma and keeping his mouth right where it was. He grinned and greedily accepted the direction.

“Ben, Ben,” she gasped. “Oh!”

And then she was shuddering and shaking, coming apart all over him, all around him, as he continued to suckle, continued to stroke, coaxing her to ride the sensation for as long as she was able, wondering if he could hold out long enough to get his pants off. Never in his life, even as a green kid copping his first feel, groping around in the dark with Mary Ann Grenoble, had he ever felt so on the edge of losing complete control.

Fiona's response to him was earthy and primal, and she didn't bother pretending otherwise. She was loud and she was demanding, and she didn't give a damn what he thought about that, which only made him more desperate to sink deep inside of her and see what other depths they could reach together. He was half certain it might kill him. And he'd arrive at the pearly gates grinning like a madman.

Then she was pushing at his head, squeezing her thighs closed against his thumb, and grappling at the waistband of his jeans. He didn't have to be asked twice. He made sure she was stable on the counter, then all but clawed off all three layers of Henley, long underwear, and T-shirt he'd worn under his hoodie in a single over-the-head yank. He watched her unbutton her jeans and tug at the zipper, revealing a scrap of emerald-green silk that drove him tottering ever closer to the edge.

He went to shove down his jeans, then at the last second snagged his wallet out of his back pocket . . . which was when he remembered. “Shit. Shit, shit, shit.”

“What?” she panted, her eyes dark and languorous from her recent ripping orgasm, but the color in her cheeks still heightened and her breath still coming in guttural little gasps as she hurried to get them both to where they really wanted to be.

“Condoms,” he said between clenched teeth. “I don't have any here.” He used to keep one in his wallet, but the last time Annalise had tried to seduce him back into her life, she'd torn that one open with her teeth. They'd been in the back of her father's limo at the time, sitting in the parking lot of an outdoor trade show, where she'd ambushed him at his company's booth and he'd followed her out to the car only to keep her from making a scene. She hadn't gotten her wish, so that one had gone to waste, but he'd never replaced it. It was as much for a psychological barrier to her ever being able to get that far again as because he simply hadn't needed to have one in there.

He didn't have any in the farmhouse, either, as he hadn't lived there since he was in college, and even then he hadn't exactly been in the habit of bringing women home and up to his childhood bedroom.

In the interim between then and now, his folks had moved their master bedroom downstairs and his old room had become his mother's sewing room. Their old master had been renovated into a bedroom suite with sitting room and full spa bath, all done back when his grandmother was alive, under the assumption she'd come to live with them in her golden years. She'd ended up in a full-time care facility instead, and the room had remained unused . . . until he'd come home to move his parents south and take over the place. He was thankful for the new space, one that wasn't his folks' old bedroom, or his childhood room, either.

All that mattered at the moment, however, was that there weren't any condoms there, either.

“I—are you safe?” she asked. “I mean, have you ever had—?”

“Annual checkups,” he said. “I get a company plan discount for being healthy,” he explained. “But, Fi, I don't want you—or us—to take any—I mean, that's one of those risks you spoke of earlier that—”

Now she pressed her fingers over his lips. “It's not a risk. I have an implant. It helps me with other issues. I—it's been a while for me. But even with that, I always used protection. There was never anyone who—” She paused and looked down, then stopped unzipping her pants altogether, when she realized what she'd said.

He cupped her face, urged her to look at him. “Fiona, we don't have to—I mean, we can wait. I want you. I want this. I . . . want,” he finally said. “God, do I want. Like I want my next breath.” He rubbed his thumb over her lip again, and it made him ache so hard it was a physical pain not to lean down and take, then move between her legs and take again. “It's not now or never is what I mean.”

“What if it is?” she said, in a half whisper.

He frowned then, and pulled his thoughts away from what it would feel like to push inside her for the first time, to feel her coming apart while wrapped around him and not just pressed against him. “Why would it be?”

“You're temporary. Your life is in Portsmouth. I just got home, and I know I have a lot of questions about how I want to proceed with my business plans, but one thing I haven't questioned, not even for a second, is whether coming home was the right thing to do. I'm so glad to be back, surrounded by people who matter to me, people I will take personal joy in helping, as well as just being part of a community that I love. It took leaving to make me realize that I had everything I wanted all along.”

“Then why let things get this far?” he asked, not upset, but sincerely curious. “What did you want from this? From me?”

“I honestly wasn't thinking that far ahead. I already did that and my conclusion was to leave it alone, to not risk ruining a long-standing family relationship. Then you put your hands on me and I don't know . . .” She smiled, but it wasn't coquettish or designed to be cute and disarming. It was sincere befuddlement and amusement he saw there. “I like your hands on me, as it turns out.” She lifted her shoulders in a short shrug. “So . . . I didn't stop you. It wasn't callousness or indifference, but come on, Ben, this is a physical thing most likely. We'll jump each other, then wonder what the hell we were doing and go back to our respective lives. We're adults, as you keep pointing out, so I guess if I thought anything, it was that it was a mutual thing, so no harm, no foul.” She shook her head. “Honestly, I didn't even think it through that far. I just . . .” She looked at him and her smile was dry. “I took a risk.”

There wasn't much he could say to that, he supposed, given that was the exact argument he'd made to get her to this point. “Is that how you still see it?”

She laughed. “I don't know. We didn't get there yet. Well, I mean, I might have gotten there, you know . . .” She drifted off, but though her cheeks went bright pink, she didn't try to duck from the truth of what she'd just said, either. “How do you see it? I mean, how else is there to see it, really?”

He wasn't sure at what moment he'd known Fiona McCrae was never going to be just a passing fling for him. He'd have said it was that kiss in the parking lot. If there was such a thing as rockets going off, figuratively, they had for him right then. But that was probably just a strong second to right that very moment. She was perched on his kitchen counter—on his parents' kitchen counter—with her wild curls even more disheveled than usual, like a man had had his hands buried in them, a look of distinct feminine satisfaction gleaming from her beautiful amber eyes, her shirt bunched up and wet from his mouth, her jeans half unzipped, and her heels still hooked behind his thighs, smiling with such wry self-deprecation and openness that . . . he knew she was the kind of woman he wanted by his side. And under him. And on top of him, too. She would always give as good as she got, in every way a man and woman could give and get. That was the kind of woman he wanted, had always wanted. He just hadn't been smart enough to realize he'd already met her.

“I just see it as the beginning,” he said. “No one can know how anything might end. So why dwell on that?”

“Because it might save you a lot of grief later?”

“That's a risk I'll take,” he said. “Every time.”

Her gaze dropped to his mouth, then she got a little more flushed, before looking back into his eyes. Her smile was wry, as if she realized how silly it was to be embarrassed about getting all hung up looking at him, considering she'd been coming not five minutes ago.

“How is it some man hasn't already snapped you up and kept you in the lifestyle in which I'd love to keep you? Which is mainly naked except for whatever that green silk thing is you have on under those jeans. That you can keep.”

“Aw, you're so generous.”

He grinned. “You lucky girl, you.”

Her smile shifted for a brief moment then, but he couldn't have said what was going through her mind when it did. “I guess all those countless other men didn't recognize the hotness that is this.” She gestured to her disheveled self. “Because either they were too busy checking out their own hotness, or, you know, more likely it was hard to decipher my many, oh so many, gifts when I keep getting all tangled up and tripping over the wrapping.”

“They were just too shortsighted to see that was part of your charm. Also? Makes you easier to catch when I'm chasing you around the house.”

She smiled at that, added in a little eye roll, like he was just being kind, when she had to know, had to have felt, how exceedingly honest he was being about the strength of his attraction to her.

She was still leaning back on her hands, making no move to tidy herself up, which was fine by him. Even his tongue ached to be back on her somewhere, somehow.

“So, what about you?” she asked. “Why aren't you wrangling a few rug rats and juggling PTA and Little League baseball games?”

He'd thought about having a family from time to time. Mostly realizing he couldn't really imagine it with Annalise. Maybe it was because they'd actually been kids together, but he had no problem seeing Fiona as a mom. The more terrifying part was that for the first time, being a dad didn't sound like the scariest thing in the world. “Anything I say right now will just sound like a corny line designed to get you naked.”

That earned him a laugh. “So go with the truth instead. Did the right one get away?” She made a fake coughing sound into her hand as she said, “My sister.” Still smiling, she sat up straighter so her shirt hung loosely away from her torso as she gripped the edge of the counter in her hands. “Or have the women of Portsmouth just all gone collectively dumb and blind?”

It took him a moment to register the compliment. His attention was temporarily snagged by the wet spots on her shirt . . . spots made by his own mouth and tongue, and the fact that her nipples were still prominently visible pressing through them. Even when she wasn't trying, she was sexy as hell.

“I, uh—” He looked up at her. “I'm sorry, what?”

She lifted a foot and bumped the side of his thigh with it. “Men.”

“Again, you lucky, lucky girl.”

She laughed outright then and the tension shifted, somehow becoming even more intimate, even as the more aggressive part of sexual tension eased into something more familiar, as if this weren't their first time and there was no rush. In their case, familiarity only seemed to breed the desire to become that much more familiar.

“Have you ever been close?” she asked.

He shook his head. “I dated someone I met in college for a few years after we graduated.”

“Annalise Manderville,” she said, then smiled at his raised eyebrow. “Don't go getting a swelled head. I didn't stalk you. Your parents talked about her. She's the reason you went to Portsmouth after graduating. Her family is from there.”

He could have told her that it was way too late for the head swelling, only not the one she meant. “That's been done for over a year now. And was off and on a long time before that.”

She gave him a considering look. “Any chance of it being on again?”

He shook his head. He couldn't speak to what Annalise was thinking these days, but in this case, his was the only opinion that mattered. “I ended it, and that's not a decision I've ever regretted.”

“Is it hard still being in Portsmouth with all your mutual friends and her family?”

“It's a big town. Small in some ways, I guess, but not in the ways that matter to me. We otherwise really didn't run in the same circles.”

She flashed him a quick, conspiratorial grin. “Must feel kind of good having that big magazine spread come out, though.”

His responding grin was swift and sincere. “I'd be less than honest if I said I wouldn't mind being a fly on the wall when her folks see it, but no, I otherwise honestly don't care.” He didn't want to waste time talking about Annalise. “So, you don't think you'll feel you're stagnating here? You handled some pretty big-name clients, doing very prominent, noticeable work.”