by Liliana Hart
“Have you been awake long?” she asked.
“A while. I liked watching you sleep. And I wanted to do something special for you.”
“I don’t smell breakfast cooking, so I’m guessing it’s something else?”
He chuckled and wrapped his arm around her, pulling her closer. “I promise I’ll feed you soon. But first things first.” He kissed her softly, lazily, rubbing his mouth across hers in such a way that flamed the embers of desire she thought had burned out the night before.
“Merry Christmas,” he said.
She leaned into him and rested her head against his chest. “Merry Christmas. I guess it’s been a while since I’ve said that to anyone.”
“You’d better get used to it. The MacKenzies are big on Christmas.” His fingers trailed up her spine. “I love you, Annabeth.”
She let out the pent-up sigh she’d been holding and relaxed against him. She hadn’t been sure what would happen once they were both faced with the light of day. It seemed she’d loved him so long that it didn’t seem real for him to finally return the feeling.
“I love you too, Grant.” He kissed her softly, dreamily, and the heat inside her began to stir once more.
“Come with me,” he said, pulling back the covers.
The floor was cold beneath her feet as he led her into the living room. She’d never been in Grant’s home before, but she recognized it as being his. Pine floors ran throughout the country cottage and a rough brick fireplace dominated one wall. Overstuffed chairs and a couch circled the hearth, and a seven-foot fir tree sat decorated in the corner by the hearth.
Soft blankets were spread out on the floor in front of the fire, and orange juice and fresh fruit sat in a basket next to the makeshift bed. He led her over to the fire and pulled her into his lap.
“We’ve been given a second chance to do things right, Annabeth. To love each other completely for the rest of our lives. And I, for one, am grateful that wishes really do come true.” Grant pulled out a tiny box that made Annabeth’s breath catch in her throat.
“This ring belonged to my Grandmother MacKenzie. She gave it to me when I turned twenty-one, just a few months before she died. She told me that she just had a feeling that I was the one who needed the ring. The one who knew exactly who it belonged to. It turns out she was right. Marry me, Annabeth. Belong to me.”
Tears gathered in her eyes as he slipped the ring around her finger. A brilliant sapphire surrounded by diamonds in the shape of a flower sat on a simple silver band. She nodded silently, too overcome with emotion to speak.
Instead, she kissed him once more, showing him her love the only way she could think of. Grant lay hard and heavy against her hip, and she pushed him back so he lay on the blankets.
“I’ll marry you, Grant MacKenzie. And I’ll love you forever. But it seems to me that if we’ve been given a second chance, we ought not to waste it.”
She straddled his hips and took him in slowly, impaling herself on his hard length and feeling the stretch of her inner muscles that had been so well used the night before. Her breath caught once he was inside her fully, and then she began to rock against him, rising up and down on his shaft and feeling every ridge of his cock against her flesh.
Annabeth was completely lost to her own pleasure. Her neck arched back so her hair tickled his thighs, and she skimmed her hands up her body until they cupped her breasts.
“Yesss, Grant. I’m going to come.”
He sat up beneath her and took her nipple in his mouth, grasping her hips and thrusting into her in short, sharp bursts. Moans and sighs and the slap of flesh against flesh accompanied the sound of the crackling fire. Grant rolled them so she lay beneath him, and he gripped her hands above her head as he continued to rock into her.
Every nerve ending she had felt like it was ready to explode. Pleasure seeped from the depths of her womb to the ends of her toes and crackled along her spine until she was crying out her release. Grant thrust one last time and she felt him swell within her as he flooded her inner walls with his come.
A long while later, they still lay in each other’s arms, enjoying the simplicity and contentment this new love brought.
“We’ve got to get up and get dressed, sweetheart. I’m surprised we haven’t had MacKenzies knocking down the door by now. They’ll show up before too long, wondering where I went and why I’m not there to open presents. Of course, they don’t need to know that I opened my own present right here this morning.”
Annabeth smacked him on the shoulder as he laughed at her embarrassment.
“How are you going to explain this to your family, Grant? This is going to be a surprise to them.”
“They’re your family now too, love. They have been since you were a little kid. We’re just going to make it official now, and they’ll love just as much as they always have.”
A door slammed from outside and what sounded like the footsteps of an army crunched over the snow. Grant and Annabeth both hopped up from the floor and put on the first available clothing they could find, both laughing like fools as Grant’s clothes swallowed her.
Annabeth looked at him with love shining in her eyes. “Thank you for being my family, Grant. You’ve made me believe in Christmas again.”
When twenty-seven MacKenzies burst through Grant’s front door, they found him kissing Annabeth Martin with every ounce of love and passion one man could possibly have for a woman. Since Grant and Annabeth didn’t pause for a breath to greet them, all twenty-seven MacKenzies turned back around and closed the door behind them, leaving the couple to their privacy.
Charlie and Dane were just glad they could hold the broken door over Grant’s head in the future.
After seeing his brother in such a sad state over a woman, Cade couldn’t have been happier to be leaving Montana for Texas. His four cousins and now his brother had all been shackled down. There must have been something in the water, and he couldn’t get out of there soon enough. He’d be damned if he found himself in a similar situation.
Enjoy a sneak peek of Cade MacKenzie’s story, Seduction and Sapphires. Available at all retailers.
Neighbors were a pain in the ass.
Especially neighbors who made as much noise as possible at the crack of dawn. Did no one have consideration for their fellow man anymore? She wasn’t asking for much, dammit. Just a little common courtesy.
Bayleigh Scott rolled toward her nightstand to look at the old-fashioned alarm clock with the giant hands and noticed it was just shy of 6am. She groaned and pulled the pillow over her head, trying desperately to block out the grinding noise from what sounded like a fleet of semis outside her window. She’d closed her shop at ten the night before but hadn’t gotten home until after one because she’d been doing inventory. Not even five full hours of sleep. And she had to be back to open at ten since her assistant was out sick.
When the pillow failed to have the effect she was looking for, she tossed it across the room and felt the slow flush of anger work through her body.
“Who the hell do these people think they are?” she muttered, throwing back the covers and stomping to the bay window in her bedroom.
She could only see the back deck of the house next door from her window, and she scowled as she noted the ferns already hanging from baskets on the porch, the dimmed sconces attached to the posts giving her a good view in the darkness.
“Making yourself right at home, aren’t you?”
She let the curtain drop and stomped through the house, tripping over the edge of the rug and bumping her shin against the table she had at the end of the couch. The coffeepot beckoned, so she punched the button to start her morning caffeine as she made her way to the kitchen window. She had the perfect view of the neighbor’s front yard.
Bayleigh winced as the screech of the truck lift going up and down assaulted her ears. It wasn’t like the noise would bother anyone else. Most of her neighbors turned their hearing aids off after eight o’clock and didn’t turn
them back on until the sun rose. There was no way her new neighbors were another little retired couple like everyone else on the street. They were probably party animals or reprobates. Maybe both.
Powerful lights were set up so they could unload the truck that was backed into the driveway, but all she could see was the shadows of men as they unloaded the furniture. They didn’t even need that stupid lift. They were just being lazy. There was no reason for the truck to be on at all.
Muttered curses propelled her out the front door before common sense could take hold. She never did well on little sleep and no caffeine. It wasn’t her fault. She liked to think of it as a medical condition. She’d just explain politely about the noise, and surely they would take care of things from there. It was the decent thing to do.
The cool October air slapped against her skin, reminding her she was only wearing the cotton boxers and tank top she’d slept in. Chills raced across her skin and she tripped over the hose that ran across her sidewalk. She’d forgotten to roll it back up after watering her flowerbeds the previous morning.
She paused for a moment, wondering if she’d made a mistake when she felt three sets of eyes look in her direction. The sudden stillness of the night was unnerving. She couldn’t see the two men in the shadows clearly, but she got a heck of a glimpse of the man standing closest to her. The Devil in disguise. The sudden urge to cross herself had her squeezing her fingers into tight fists. She wasn’t even Catholic for Pete’s sake.
His scowl was black and menacing and he narrowed his eyes at her in warning, automatically putting her back up. She wasn’t going to be intimidated by the likes of him. At least not by much.
Bayleigh straightened her shoulders and marched across the tiny patch of grass that separated the two houses. She climbed into the cab of the big white truck, the cracked seats scratchy against the backs of her legs, and turned off the ignition before taking the key. She jumped out of the truck and watched warily as the three men gathered close, their arms crossed over their bare chests and various looks of surprise pasted on their faces. Maybe Satan was having a convention, because surely all three of these men were fallen angels of the worst kind, or hardened criminals at best.
They were muscled and bare-chested, and their jeans hung low on narrowed hips. It was obvious they were related, and her gaze passed over them all quickly. But she couldn’t seem to take her eyes off the one in the center—the one who’d made her lose her common sense with just one scowl. There was something in his eyes that had her taking a step back before she remembered she was standing in the middle of a safe neighborhood. She wouldn’t be intimidated on her own property. She looked down and took a quick step back so she was actually on her own property, and crossed her arms over her chest, daring him to say anything.
The Devil’s dark hair was longer than she liked on a man, almost to his shoulders, and his eyes were as black as coal. Probably because he’d been hauling it in hell before he’d decided to move to Fort Worth, Texas. A short beard covered his face and a wicked looking tattoo swirled over his shoulder and part of the way down his arm. His chest was scarred, and she couldn’t even begin to imagine what had happened to him to cause such marks. Her gaze lowered, following the black smattering of hair that disappeared beneath his jeans, and all rational thought left her head as she noticed the sizable bulge behind his zipper.
“You’ve got some mighty friendly neighbors, Cade,” the man next to the Devil said, his smirk evident in the slow drawl of his voice. “She can’t take her eyes off you.”
Bayleigh felt heat flush her cheeks, and she brought her eyes back up to meet his. The keys bit into the palms of her hand reminding her she had them, so she tossed them to the walking hard-on a little harder than was probably necessary. He snapped them out of the air and glared in her direction, and the urge to turn tail and run was prevalent in her mind, but instead she turned around and calmly and put one foot in front of the other.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?”
She knew it was him that spoke without having to turn around. His voice slid across her skin like rough velvet, and she shivered at the demand in it. Not that she expected the Devil to be an easy man or be without a modicum of power, but she liked to think she had enough self-control to ignore the dangerous seduction of his voice and keep walking.
She eyed the distance to her front door and looked back in his direction. He’d taken a couple of steps forward, and there was no way to get away from him if he came after her. He narrowed his eyes as if he could read her mind, and shook his head slowly, warning her not to try it, so she swallowed her fear and turned around to face him.
She was an idiot. Running would have been the smart thing to do if the look on his face was anything to go by. She could have made it. Maybe.
“Most of us sleep here in the middle of the night,” she finally said with more bravado than she felt. Never let them see you’re afraid. Her father had repeated the mantra constantly during her childhood. “I figured since it was your first day in the neighborhood, you might want to start out on the right foot.”
“You thought wrong,” he said. “And this is far from the middle of the night. The sun’s already coming up. Maybe you’re just lazy.”
Bayleigh’s eyes narrowed at the insult. She’d never been accused of being lazy a day in her life. But while her father’s advice rattled around in her brain, something her mother always told her came to mind, just as it had every time she’d moved from school to school and had to deal with the inevitable “new kid” bullying.
Kill them with kindness.
So she smiled as sweetly as possible and said the only thing she could think of to strike terror into his heart.
“You know, there are a lot of elderly people that live on this street.”
“So?” he growled. “And then there’s you. Let me guess. You’re single?”
“I’ve been engaged,” she said, narrowing her eyes.
“I can see that worked out well for you. I take it he couldn’t manage to bring himself to the altar?”
“Something like that,” she said softly, the old feelings of not quite being good enough surfacing before she could tramp them back down.
“Look, I’m sorry,” he said. “That was out of line. I promise I’ll leave everyone on the whole damned street alone if they’ll leave me alone.”
Bayleigh felt the beginnings of a headache forming at the back of her skull. Between the lack of sleep and the one-two punch her new neighbor had just delivered, reminding her of her former fiancé and the myriad of inadequacies she hadn’t realized she’d had until she’d met him, she decided she wasn’t in the mood to be nice after all.
“Oh, no. No need to apologize. If anything, it’s my fault for getting in at one this morning after working a fourteen-hour day,” she said sarcastically. “It was inconsiderate of me to expect you to move in after the sun came up. Tell you what I’ll do to make it up to you.”
She smiled—a smile that her brothers would recognize as trouble. Her new neighbor must have recognized it too, because his eyes narrowed to black slits and the muscles in his arms bulged as he crossed them in silent warning.
“You don’t really mean that about having everyone leave you alone,” she said sweetly. “You seem like such a friendly and outgoing guy. I’ll make sure to mention how great you are to everyone over the next couple of days. Before you know it, the whole street will be knocking on your door and introducing themselves. It won’t be a month before you’re hosting the neighborhood barbecue. You’ll also be picking up prescriptions, mowing lawns, and eating macaroni salad with every meal so you won’t hurt their feelings.” She batted her eyelashes at him as he seemed to pale before her eyes. “Welcome to the neighborhood.”
Laughter followed her into the house and she slammed and locked the door behind her. She knew it hadn’t been him laughing. Dollars to donuts a smile had never cracked that face. The Devil didn’t smile. It would pay to remember that. And so
what if she’d been slightly attracted to him? Bad boys were supposed to be attractive to the opposite sex. It was a hormonal rule. But then he’d had to go and open his mouth.
Tears threatened to fall as she recalled his words. He’d been exactly right. She’d been engaged for over a year, and Paul hadn’t been able to go through with the actual wedding. He’d liked her well enough as a friend, but she was too outspoken for a corporate attorney’s wife. Her body was too curvy. Her language not lady-like enough. And how could she expect Paul to spend his life with a woman who didn’t respond to him in bed?
It’s not that she couldn’t have orgasms. She had great orgasms with her vibrator. It was just that sometimes it took her longer to get there than her lovers had thought was reasonable. She’d just be warming up, and all of a sudden, they’d twitch and groan and it would all be over. The last date she’d been on was three years ago, and she hadn’t even bothered to move it into the physical stage. The thought of disappointing anyone else had been more than enough to keep her celibate.
Paul had been a bastard. She knew that now. But at the time he’d chipped away at her self-esteem until she’d barely recognized the person she’d become. She barely ate, trying to slim down the curves he found so distasteful. She barely spoke, knowing if she didn’t talk then nothing would come out of her mouth that would embarrass Paul. And she faked her orgasms just so he would think she was putting a little effort into their lovemaking.
She knew Paul had been a controlling prick by the time their wedding date had come around, and she thanked God every day that he hadn’t shown up to the church that day. He’d saved her a hell of a lot of grief in the long run, but he’d damaged part of her, and she was still working like hell to get back to the person she really was. To not let those old doubts sneak up on her.
