by Brenna Lyons
His hands skated up the planes of her stomach and ribs beneath the sheer fabric to tease the nipples jutting out against the fabric in invitation. Katie rolled her head forward to watch him with heavy-lidded eyes as he caressed them to full arousal.
The end came quickly for both of them. Katie panted his name just before she screamed out her release. Keith moved his hands to her hips and anchored her to him as he arched beneath her and joined her in the momentary oblivion.
In the quiet that followed, he listened to her breathing as it slowed and became more even. His hands still on her hips, Keith moved his thumbs over the soft skin of her stomach. Even now, she might be carrying a baby they made together. The thought sent a spike of pleasure through him. Unless Katie had just passed her fertile window before their first date, it was possible—or soon would be.
“Steven,” he murmured.
Katie met his eyes in confusion. “What?”
Keith drew her down to kiss him then rolled her over and pulled back to run his hand under the nightie and rub it in slow circles between her naval and the dark triangle of curls. Katie’s breath hitched in response.
“If we have a boy, I want to name him Steven. What do you think?”
“Isn’t it a little early for this?” she asked breathlessly.
“Hoping? Never.” He lowered his hand to include the curls in his caress. “When are you due for another period?” he asked without taking his eyes off of what his hand was doing.
“The eighth or ninth, I think. I can check,” she replied quietly.
Keith did the mental math and smiled wider. “Perfect,” he decided.
“What’s perfect?” Katie’s breathing was ragged again and she was squirming against him.
“If your cycle follows the standard, you were ovulating just about the time we threw away our protection.”
She groaned.
Keith’s hand stilled. “Does that bother you?” he asked fearfully.
Katie raised her hips against his fingers. “No, it doesn’t, and no. Don’t stop. Please.”
He met her eyes and started moving his hand over her again. Katie shuddered in response.
“Steven,” he mused again. “It’s my grandfather’s name.”
“Make it Steven Christopher and you have a deal,” Katie breathed as she tightened her internal muscles around him and he hardened in response.
Keith smiled widely. “Steven Christopher Randall. It is a deal. What if it’s a girl?” he teased.
“We’ll buy a baby naming book on the way to my place. I promise, Keith. Please.”
He surged into her, groaning as her body gripped him tight. “We’ll read it in bed,” he decided.
* * *
Carol answered the door and startled at seeing Keith wrapped around her sister. She bit back a wide grin as Katie greeted her.
“Hi, Carol. I hope you don’t mind. I dragged Keith along.”
“That’s never a problem. There’s plenty of dinner to go around. Come on in.”
A small hickey on Katie’s neck caught her eye. Carol had wondered at Keith’s announcement that Katie was at his house at eight o’clock on a Sunday morning—once she recovered enough to think at all. It seemed she hadn’t misunderstood after all. Carol had seen little of Katie in the last week, but apparently Keith had no such deficiency in his life. She was glad they were finally working out whatever was keeping them apart.
Keith kissed Katie with playful passion before disappearing to seek out Kyle. Carol watched as her sister’s eyes followed his back while he took the stairs two at a time. Katie sighed and sank into the couch.
Carol grinned as she folded in next to her. “Well, I see you’re playing doctor with the good doctor,” she teased.
“No, we’ve moved beyond playing doctor. We’re playing house now.”
“That sounds promising.”
Katie wiggled her fingers, showing off an emerald and diamond ring. “How promising does this sound?”
Carol squealed in delight. “Is that what I think it is?” she asked.
“I’m in the market for a matron of honor. Think you’d be interested in the job? The pay sucks, but I’ll feed you well and show you a hell of a party.”
“You two work fast.”
“We have a lot of lost time to make up for.”
“So, are you going to be a June bride?”
“Absolutely not.” Her stern look dissolved into an impish grin. “We’re looking at a few weeks out.”
Carol’s mind shut down. Her smile disappeared into hopeless disbelief. “Weeks?” she croaked.
“Don’t say it. I know it seems like we’re rushing it—”
“Seems like? You two are the definition of intense. How do you expect to pull this off?”
“We get our blood tests and license right away. While we wait for those, we set up a chapel—that little Methodist Church up on Cobden is pretty. Becky Mancini got married there right after graduation, remember?”
“What about the guests?”
“What about them? We make a list of our uncles, Sherry and Ed, and Keith’s friends and family and send out invites as soon as we arrange the church.”
“You’re insane.”
“I’m in love. I think it’s the same thing, but I could be wrong.”
“No. You’re right.” Carol sighed. Being in love was like being insane in many ways. She decided that long ago.
Katie laughed heartily. “Good. Then, you won’t give me too much shit about this.”
“So, were you playing house last week when I called?”
“No. We were still playing doctor then,” Katie teased her.
“What’s the difference?”
“We were avoiding the subject of where we intended to go with it. We were still pretending we could go to bed together and make each other feel the way we do without making it permanent.”
“What do you think now?”
“I think I should have done this fifteen years ago.”
* * *
Katheryn met Keith on a long lunch break, and they rushed over to his family doctor with the forms she picked up at the courthouse to get their blood tests. The GP was a kindly older gentleman who had apparently been Keith’s doctor since he was a little boy.
“So, are you going to introduce me, Keith?” he asked with a warm smile that lit his pale blue eyes and made her smile in return.
The younger man laughed heartily. “I guess I better. This is Katie O’Hanlon, my fiancée. Katie, this is Steven Flarehty—doctor, busybody, and my grandfather.”
Katheryn blushed deeply and offered the old gentleman her hand. His eyes crinkled in amusement as his strong, warm fingers closed around hers. Katheryn couldn’t believe she hadn’t seen the resemblance before. Even with his silver hair and many wrinkles, he looked very much like an older version of Keith. She realized that Keith must look nothing at all like his father, though she never met the man for comparison.
“So, you’re Steven,” she mused. “You could have warned me, Keith,” she mumbled in his direction.
“Not on your life. I wanted him to meet a relaxed Katie instead of a nervous wreck.”
“Too late,” she asserted.
Steven pulled her hand through his crooked arm. “Nonsense. There’s no need to try to impress me. You’ve already done that. Anyone who can get this boy to settle down must be special.”
Katheryn cracked a smile. “Really? I wasn’t aware that Keith was such a ladies’ man.”
Keith darkened and cleared his throat. “Well, that’s enough of that,” he decided. He tried to draw her to his side.
She held to Steven’s arm tighter and strolled beside the older man while he led them back to an exam room. “Oh, I don’t think so. I think I’ve found an ally,” she decided.
Keith followed them back, looking very discomfited while Steven complained about his quest to get his grandson settled down. Katheryn nodded and raised her eyebrows at Keith for effect.
“Did you ever think he was serious?” she finally asked.
Steven looked uncomfortable for the first time in the conversation. “Well, that’s hardly something I should discuss with the woman he’s going to marry.”
“No, Grandpa. Tell her, please. It’s probably the only safe ground I have in this conversation.”
“All right. If you insist. Yes, there was a young lady in high school that he pined over endlessly, even into college. She made him crazy—depressed, angry, all the classic symptoms of a man in love. I never did get to meet her, and I always wondered why that was.”
Katheryn felt her cheeks burn. “She was a fool,” she decided miserably.
“Well, I don’t know about that, but I always wondered what became of her.”
Keith laughed lightly and wrapped his arms around Katheryn’s waist, planting his chin on her shoulder. “I finally convinced her to marry me,” he confided in a conspiratorial tone.
Steven laughed heartily. “Well, I guess that was safe ground, after all.” He winked at Keith. “Are there any other blood tests I should be doing today?” he asked in amusement.
Katheryn’s face darkened again. “Is there some strange fixation with reproduction in this family?” she demanded quietly.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” Steven joked.
“You’ll take that as a no,” Katheryn instructed. “You doctors take all the fun out of real life.”
Keith kissed her throat gently. “Oh, I wouldn’t agree with that, but it’s still a no, Doc. When she’s late, I’ll drag her into the bathroom with a test stick and do it up right.”
“That sounds interesting,” she mused. “Well, let’s change the subject. Do you like Kung Poa, Doctor?”
“Yes,” they answered in unison, then Steven continued. “Yes, I do, and call me Steven, please.”
“Good. Keith, we’re having your grandfather over for dinner. Anyone else we should invite?”
“My father and grandmother,” he suggested.
“Fine. It’s your family, you work out the details.”
“Yes, Ma’am. Anything else?”
“A list of wedding guests from you.”
“This should be interesting. Cops to the left. Doctors and lawyers to the right.”
“Complaints?” she asked with a raised eyebrow.
“Not if I’m smart,” he quipped.
Steven laughed. “I always said you were a bright boy underneath it all. Now, let’s get those blood tests.”
By the time they left the office, dinner was set up for Thursday evening, and Katheryn had calmed considerably about meeting Keith’s family.
“Grandpa said the tests will be ready to pick up Wednesday afternoon,” Keith reminded her.
“I’ll pick them up Thursday morning, and we can hit the office at city hall for lunch?” she suggested.
“It’s a date. What’s next?”
“I’ll call the church when I get home. Is three or four weeks long enough for you?”
“Can we get it that fast?”
Katheryn nodded. “Becky said it was sort of like a little wedding chapel. They had scheduled a wedding every few hours the day she got married, and it’s not even the heavy season for it. I just have to find an open weekend.”
Keith wrapped an arm around her waist as they walked, avoiding the crush of downtown pedestrian traffic that never seemed to lessen from early morning until nine or ten at night. “Buy those invitations. I’m marrying you the first free slot you can find for us.”
“Well, it will take a few weeks at least. We apply for a license on Thursday, and there’s the seven to ten day wait there, especially with me having an out of state license.”
“Good. There should be some planning involved,” he teased.
“Overrated.” She raised an eyebrow at him. “Why? Planning on wearing a tux?”
“Takes too long to take off,” Keith joked, leaving Katheryn to wonder when he had learned that. “What about you? What are you wearing?”
Turnabout was fair play, she decided. Katheryn bit her lower lip and feigned deep consideration. “Can’t wear the dress you bought me. Black is bad luck at a wedding.”
He stopped and stared at her. “You’re kidding, right?”
“Of course I am. I know exactly what I’m wearing. In fact, I plan on dropping it off with Carol in a few days.”
Keith smiled crookedly and started walking again. “Don’t scare me like that. So, what are you wearing?”
“You’ll find out at the church.”
“I’m curious,” he commented.
“You’ll live.”
He shook his head. “Do you ever plan anything?”
“Not in the conventional sense. I’m so used to my plans falling through that I plan for every eventuality and do what needs done when Murphy kicks me.”
“Murphy?”
“Murphy’s Law personified. Whatever can go wrong, will go wrong and at the worst possible moment. Murphy and I are on a first-name basis. I should warn you about that before it’s too late.” Katheryn smiled grimly at the truth of that.
“That sounds unusual.”
“The only way to beat Murphy is to outperverse him. Trust me on this one.”
“So, what happened on our first date?” he teased.
“Excuse me?” she asked in confusion.
“You didn’t plan ahead for that.” He raised an eyebrow suggestively.
Katheryn felt a blush come up. “Actually, I overplanned,” she admitted. “I decided I wasn’t going to bed with you, and I was determined to stick to it. So of course, I didn’t.”
“I like your determination. So, what went wrong? It wasn’t me, was it?” he drawled.
She laughed. “You are full of yourself, aren’t you? Of course, it was you. You have the most disconcerting way of touching me and making me forget common sense.”
“Do I?” He was trying to hide his amusement, but his lips bowed up the beginnings of a smile and his eyes glittered.
“If you hadn’t said something when you did—” Katheryn shook her head. “I was so far gone, you could have taken me without me considering the consequences until it was far too late.”
Keith furrowed his brow. “You don’t still think this is all a mistake, do you?” he asked fearfully.
“No. Don’t think that, please. From my point of view that first night, it could have been a huge mistake. It wasn’t. If I affect you even half as much as you affect me, we’re too dangerous to keep apart.”
“Too dangerous?”
“We’re like compounds that are potentially dangerous alone—explosive or suffocating, like tanks of hydrogen and oxygen. But mix them together and you get water. Not only benign but life giving, invigorating.”
Keith stopped suddenly and swept her into his arms. “Give me half a chance, and I’ll show you invigorating and life giving,” he breathed.
Katheryn bit her lip in restraint as her body reacted in fierce arousal to the offer and his touch. “Come home on time. This is a concept I think we should practice.”
* * *
Keith wasn’t sure what Katie had planned, but he couldn’t stop speculating on it all afternoon. Okay, that wasn’t quite true. Kyle seemed to be making a point of giving him something to think about other than marriage and children where his aunt was concerned.
This time, Ty interrupted a discussion of Torri and Gerr’s recent standoff over Torri crossing Gerr’s range. Kyle got the familiar, faraway look in his eyes, and Keith tensed for what would come next.
“You and Aunt Katie aren’t doing it right, you know.”
“Doing what right, Kyle?” he asked calmly.
“Aunt Katie isn’t Amur. She’s Bengal,” he stated simply.
Keith laughed nervously, trying desperately to remember the difference between the female tigers of the two sub-species. “What does that mean?” he asked finally, giving up all hope of unraveling it himself.
“When tigers have babies, the
male stays with the female for a month in her range—except for Amur. Those females will go to the male if he doesn’t come to her.”
“Really?” he replied casually. There was no use denying what Kyle could see in his mind, but Keith was damned if he was going to discuss his mating habits with a four-year-old. “What happens then?”
“The male leaves and returns home to his own range. Tigers are solitaries. They don’t get married, and only Amur females ever stay in a male’s range.”
“Maybe, I’m an Amur, and Katie is playing by my rules,” he suggested, bristling internally at the thought.
Kyle scowled at him. “You’re not a tiger at all. You’re prey. She won’t hunt you, because she’s weak, but other tigers nearby are strong. You can’t have her while she’s a tiger, but you can have her if she stops being a tiger. She’s not strong enough to defend her family. She never was.”
Keith sucked in his breath and suppressed a shiver. “Why would other tigers come into Katie’s range to hunt me?” he asked.
“You’re very good prey, very important.”
That time, Keith couldn’t suppress the shudder that passed through him. “How can Katie stop being a tiger?”
“She knows how. All she has to do is give up.”
“Somehow, I can’t picture your Aunt Katie choosing to become prey,” he commented with an edge of acid.
“She has already chosen it. If you’re not the predator— If you don’t hunt, you’re prey.”
Keith shook his head solemnly. “No. Not really. If you can fight off attackers and are in no danger of being eaten, you’re no one’s prey.”
“She’s prey because she’s not willing to hunt. If she doesn’t hunt, she can’t protect what’s hers. She can’t have it both ways. Either she’s true tiger or true prey.”
Before Keith could form another question, Kyle’s eyes cleared again.
“Are you and Aunt Katie going to have babies someday?” he asked brightly.
“Yeah. I think we might,” Keith replied weakly.
“What are you going to name them?”
“I don’t know. Your Aunt Katie and I need to decide that when it’s time.”
