A Dark & Stormy Knight: A McKnight Romance (McKnight Romances)

by Quint, Suzie

“Water doesn’t scare me.”

  He challenged her bravado with an arched eyebrow.

  “Unless I can’t see or touch bottom,” she amended.

  Sol propped himself on one elbow to look down at her. “Since when?”

  “Since I was about ten and got caught in a riptide at Corpus Christi.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Well, I never told you.”

  “So that’s why you never wanted Eden to come up here.”

  “I prefer a lifeguard around when she swims.”

  He plucked a blade of grass to chew on the end. “None of the kids would let anything happen to her.”

  She took a deep breath. “I know. This is me being overprotective. I wish you’d told me you were letting her swim here.”

  He looked away, his gaze skimming the pond, as though hunting for a place where he wouldn’t feel guilty for withholding that information. “I was gonna, but we kinda got sidetracked on that other decision I made.”

  About Eden barrel racing. Yeah, the swimming hole was nothing compared to that.

  He dropped back down to lie beside her. “Remember when I said everyone would be busy with chores?”

  “You mean just a little while ago? Yes, Sol, I remember. I’m not senile yet.”

  “I may have lied.”

  She pushed up on one elbow. “Are you kidding me?”

  “Well, they should be busy with chores, but except for a few things like milking the cows, there’s generally some flexibility to when they get done.”

  She slapped his shoulder. “You mean any one of them could have shown up while we were . . . While we . . .” She choked on the thought.

  Sol made an amused sound, as though repressing a laugh. “God, you are so easy. Of course, I’m teasing.” He caught her shoulder and pulled her down so her head lay on his chest. “In theory, someone could have shown up. In practice, it’s a huge long shot.” His finger drew circles on her shoulder. “But I’ll bet you remember that little rest stop in West Texas.”

  “Oh, Lord.” She hadn’t thought about that in years.

  It had been the middle of the night when they’d stopped at the deserted rest stop on their way home from their elopement. They’d been married only a few days, and their not-so-great first time together was already long forgotten as they took every opportunity to explore their freshly sanctioned marital status. When Sol followed her into the ladies’ room and into a stall, events had followed their natural course.

  They’d nearly been busted by a couple of women who came in to use the facilities. They’d both felt surges of adrenaline as they’d frozen in the stall. After the women left, the adrenaline residue had fueled some wild activity that had culminated in mind-shattering orgasms.

  “That could have been a disaster,” Georgia said.

  “But it wasn’t.”

  “I wouldn’t have felt the same way if it had been someone we knew. Like your family.”

  “Yeah, maybe so.”

  He stroked her cheek and kissed her hair then tilted her face up and kissed her tenderly.

  Tender was something she couldn’t take right now. It felt too much like good-bye. “Make me feel you. Really feel you.”

  They might not have slept together as often as married people did, but they’d been together enough over the years that they understood each other. Sol would know she was asking him to be a little rough, a little demanding.

  He gave her one more long, tender kiss, sliding his hand over her bottom as he did, followed by a slap to one cheek. She arched her back at the sting, her blood leaping in her veins, every nerve ending awake and wanting.

  “On your hands and knees, woman.”

  Georgia slid off him and assumed the requested position, a shiver of anticipation running through her as he knelt behind her. He stroked down the small of her back to mold his hands to her bottom. “So pretty.”

  She wiggled her butt, wanting more. Wanting him to abandon the tender touches and take her. When he slid one finger inside her, she pushed back against his hand.

  “Easy, honey. I’ll give you what you want.”

  “Sometime soon, I hope.”

  Sol chuckled. “In good time.” He stroked her back with the hand that wasn’t busy elsewhere. “I love seeing you from this angle. You look so sleek and sensuous. Full of sweeping arches, like a mountain road with curves you have to lean into.”

  He inserted a second finger and used them both to pump slowly into her. Georgia curbed her impatience and focused on the slide of his fingers.

  “You feel like hot, wet satin inside.”

  Sweet, pretty words. Words that needed to stop before they turned her heart to mush. “Truth or dare, Sol?”

  His fingers left her. He grasped her hips, holding her steady as he bent and kissed her just below the small of her back. “Truth.”

  She made the sound of a game show buzzer. “Wrong answer.”

  His laugh was light and easy. “I bet I can guess what the dare is.”

  “I’ll bet you can.”

  He laid a hand on her hip.

  She closed her eyes and pictured him grasping his erection, preparing to guide into the slick folds of her sex. The image was so hot, she felt like she might turn into a puddle of want.

  “Oh, God, I love coming at you from behind.” His voice was husky with desire.

  She pushed back, trying to impale herself, but he pulled back, never quite breaking contact. “Not yet. I’m savoring.”

  “There are things I’d like to savor,” she told him even as she stopped pushing. Sol was not going to let her dictate their pace. Not in this position.

  “I wish you could see this, honey.” He dragged his head through her sensitive flesh. “It’s so hot being this close to you, knowing I’m one thrust from being inside you. I love the way your flesh pinks up and your lips plump, and there I am, as hard as I can get, on the edge of pushing into you. I love the way my cock looks up against your sex. I love seeing the head starting to enter you.” He matched his action to the words, giving her the tip of erection. “It’s so damned hot.”

  Listening to him describe it was hot. The thick, lust-filled sound of his voice was even hotter. She pushed back again, wanting to feel him, but he rolled his hips back, keeping himself from going deeper. “Don’t worry, babe. We’ll get there,” he promised. “Oh, will we get there.”

  Still just barely inside her, he leaned over her back, one hand on the ground to support himself. He reached around her with the other and found her clit. His fingers drew soft circles around it, driving her to the brink of insanity. She could feel the nub tighten, wanting more. A moan came from deep in her throat.

  He laid his fingertips on her clit and pressed, gentle but firm. Georgia hissed in a breath. And then he started pushing deeper inside her, so slowly. A snail’s pace. His fingers worked in a slow rhythm against her clit as he entered her. Press. Release. Press. Release. Her sensitivity heightened, the anticipation almost painful.

  She thought she might come just from this. “Oh, God. Sol.” But she didn’t. His calculated touches brought her to the edge and kept her hanging there. Her arms quivered and she let herself sink forward until she rested on her elbows.

  “Can you spare a hand?” Sol asked.

  She didn’t question why; her mental faculties had deserted her long ago. Instead, she shifted her weight onto her left shoulder and reached back. Sol abandoned her clit, a move she thought she should protest. Before she could, he caught her hand in his and brought it between her legs.

  “Feel this.” He pressed her hand against her mound then slid it toward the lips of her sex. She felt his shaft slide between her fingers and into her hot, vulnerable flesh. When he pulled back, he was wet with her juices. His hand rested on top of hers, feeling it, too.

  “That’s us, Georgie. That’s you taking me into your body.” He kissed her shoulder. “You bring me to my knees, baby.”

  He was right. This was hot as hell.
She didn’t think she could form words. She was wrong. “Fuck me, Sol.”

  He kissed her shoulder again before he straightened up behind her. “Brace yourself.”

  She dropped her hand to the ground and pushed herself back up from her elbows, getting ready for what was coming.

  He pulled back, almost leaving her body, then slammed back into her, driving himself into her so deep and hard, she almost felt the vibration in the tips of her fingers. They groaned in unison. He did it again and again. “Oh, God.” And then he started in earnest. Hard, fast, deep strokes that pummeled every raw, demanding nerve ending inside her and left her gasping with pleasure.

  When he threaded his fingers into her hair and drew her head back, she felt his control of her. He could do what he wanted with her. In this position, she had no way to stop him. Her vulnerability stimulated her arousal.

  His breathing had gone ragged and, every few strokes, he made a guttural noise that heightened her carnal desires. If she was physically defenseless, he was sexually vulnerable, a slave to his desire for her, and that spiked everything another notch as his grunts now came with every thrust.

  She fed on his noises, just as she knew he fed on hers. The ratchet inside her tightened. She was going to break into a thousand pieces under his assault. It was going to be spectacular.

  She felt it start then hang there on the edge. Her mouth opened but she couldn’t draw a breath. Every thrust pushed her closer to the edge. Small mewling sounds escaped her lips each time his body slapped hers, but she still couldn’t pull in air. Then Sol growled and she fell over the precipice, existing only in the shuddering pulses that wracked her body.

  ###

  Sol thought he’d never breathe normal again. Her hand lay boneless on his chest over a heart pounding so hard, he was afraid it would fail him. He didn’t know how he’d held on so long, except through sheer, butt-ugly stubbornness. Determined to show her a better-than-”nice” time in the way she’d asked for had nearly killed him. He’d had to blank out all stray thoughts toward the end, afraid he’d think something sensual that would trigger him and leave her unsatisfied. But he’d done it. He’d never seen her come so hard. And that was all it had taken to nearly blow the top of his head off.

  If he’d fallen on top of her, he’d have crushed her. Instinct, more than thought, had brought him to the ground beside her. Even though he was sweating from all his exertions, he tugged her close and smoothed her damp hair. He felt more than heard her breath hitch. Easing back, he tried to lift her chin, but she pulled out of his grasp.

  “Georgia? Honey? Are you crying?”

  “No.” She sniffed.

  Sol brushed his thumb across her cheek. It came away damp. “Oh, God. Did I hurt you? I’m sorry, honey. I didn’t mean to.”

  “No.” She brushed her cheek. “You didn’t h-h-hurt me. That was . . .” Sniff. “Spectacular.”

  “Then why are you crying?”

  “I just . . . I don’t . . .” She drew a shaky breath. “I don’t know,” she said on a wail that opened the floodgates.

  “Oh, baby.” Sol rolled her up in his arms. He felt awful that she was crying, but he also felt good. Great even.

  Her tears had to mean he’d touched her heart, didn’t they? That he’d broken through that plate-mail armor she’d wrapped it up in to keep him from getting close to her again. It shouldn’t have taken him so long to figure out he should court her. His mama always said you caught more flies with honey than with vinegar. Why hadn’t he listened?

  He held her and rocked her until the tears diminished. When he figured she was nearly done, he softly kissed her mouth, her cheeks, her eyelids. “So I did better? No more, ‘that was nice’?”

  Georgia gave a shaky laugh. “That was a lot better than ‘nice.’“

  “Good. It’s nearly sunset. I think we should head back.” Lord knew he didn’t want to, but if they didn’t get back before dark, someone would notice they were missing and send out a search party. That could be embarrassing.

  “Right.” Georgia nodded and started gathering up her clothes. With her jeans in one hand, her shirt and bra in the other, she said, “I don’t see my panties.”

  They started searching. “Did you throw them on the bank?” Sol asked as he scanned the bushes nearby in case they’d gotten caught in the brush. He feared they were missing in action for good.

  “I didn’t throw them anywhere,” Georgia said as she pulled her jeans on sans underwear. “You took them off me. What did you do with them?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t remember. I was a little distracted.”

  “You wouldn’t have let them float away, would you?”

  He shrugged sheepishly. Hadn’t she just heard him say he’d been distracted?

  She looked at him in horror. “Oh, Lord, Sol. What if one of the kids finds them?”

  “Then we blame Maddie and Zach.”

  She hit his shoulder, but a second later, she was laughing. “You tell no one—no one—about this. Ever.”

  He laughed and grabbed her, so she couldn’t hit him again. She struggled for a second, which was nice because she was still bare from the waist up and it felt good to be skin-on-skin with her. When she settled down in his arms, he dropped a kiss on her lips. “I swear. No one. Get dressed, Georgie. You can walk around if you don’t want to get wet again. I’m going to swim across.”

  The water still held enough heat from the day that he felt no shock when he dove in. On the other side, he pulled on his dry jeans. Georgia was still carefully picking her way around the pool—he should have remembered there were thistles in her path—when he heard a phone trill. The sound came from Georgia’s purse, which hung by the shoulder strap from her saddle horn.

  “That’s probably Eden,” she called. “Would you get it?”

  Sol found the phone but the call had already gone to voice mail. He tapped missed calls, but Eden’s name didn’t come up. Daniel. Who the hell was Daniel?

  Deep breath. He was not going to jump to conclusions.

  When Georgia picked her way over to him, he turned the phone, so she could read the name.

  She gulped and looked up at him as though trying to gauge his reaction.

  Sol cocked an eyebrow at her. He didn’t want to think she looked and sounded guilty.

  “He’s a . . . a friend. In Dallas. In fact, he’s Deanne’s dad. You’ve heard Eden talk about Deanne, haven’t you? Of course you have. I think you took both of them for ice cream once, didn’t you? Or maybe it was pizza. Anyway, she’s Eden’s best friend. Daniel’s her . . .” She stopped as if she’d realized she was babbling. “Her dad,” she finished lamely.

  Sol handed her the phone and walked over to the bush he’d hung his shirt on earlier. He had no doubt Daniel was Deanne’s father, but if that was all he was, Georgia wouldn’t have tried so hard to explain him away. He was such a fool. He’d really thought her tears had meant something good.

  Instead, it was the worst possible news. He’d known Eden’s best friend lived with her divorced father, but Sol hadn’t suspected he was the competition. Worse, Eden and Deanne had been friends for at least a couple of years, which meant the son of a bitch had been around long enough to really get to know Georgia. The odds that Sol could drive him off with his normal repertoire were virtually nonexistent.

  She was silent while he buttoned his shirt, put on his socks, stomped into his boots, and picked up his hat. He didn’t break the silence until they were mounted and on the trail back to the ranch. “Truth or dare, Georgia?”

  A pause, then, in a small voice, “Dare.”

  He pulled on the reins so hard, his horse danced sideways. “What the hell? Why do you always take the dare? What is it about being honest with me that freaks you out so bad?”

  Her shoulders were hunched as if she was trying to be invisible. “You don’t like my truths.”

  “There’s lots of things I don’t like. Being lied to is pretty close to the top of the list.”r />
  “I haven’t lied to you.”

  “But you won’t tell me the truth either.”

  “That’s not so,” Georgia said, starting to come out of that hunched posture. “You keep asking me why I left you, but you never believe what I tell you because you don’t want to.”

  “Now that’s not true.”

  Her spine was straight now. “You’re right. You used to believe me. Then one day you got it into your head that there was some other reason.”

  He gazed into her eyes for several long moments. Enough to make her fidget in the saddle. Just a little.

  “When you love someone,” he said, “you know when they’re telling you the truth and when they’re not. You may not want to admit it but you know. What you’ve said about feeling stifled, well, that’s almost true. True enough that I spent a long time wondering why it didn’t feel right to me. It was like my heart and my head couldn’t agree about what was happening. Then one day, Daddy was talking about turnin’ off your brain and listening to your gut. Soon as I did that, I knew there was more to it.

  “So, Georgia, let’s try this again. Truth or dare?”

  He saw her jaw set and knew she was going to pick truth, and no matter how much he didn’t like her answers, they’d at least be honest.

  “Truth.”

  He wanted the truth from her, but suddenly, he was afraid to hear it. Afraid she’d confirm all the worst fears he’d tried so hard to deny, but after all these years, he couldn’t just say, “Forget it.” It was time to face reality. But the question that came out of his mouth wasn’t the one that had been making him crazy for years. “Why were you crying today?”

  Georgia’s jaw worked as if she were tasting the words before she gave them to him, seeing if they were poisonous enough. She met his eyes. “I was crying because I was sad. Because as nice as this afternoon was, it’s the last time we’ll ever be together . . . like that. If I want to get married again—and I am getting married again—I can’t keep doing this.”

  Sol felt as though he’d taken a mortar round in the chest. He sucked in a deep breath then another. Gideon was right. She was getting married again, and the way she said it, he wasn’t even in the running.