Keep On Loving you

by Christie Ridgway

  I’ve been engaged. Three times, to three separate men.

  And because he didn’t want to consider that any longer, nor the reasons behind her clear aversion to marriage, Zan bowed to impulse and the desire for her that always dogged him. He snatched Mac close to slam his mouth against hers. It was the most direct route he knew to not thinking, and it worked like a charm. There was a quick stiffening of surprise, and then she moved into him, practically crawling into his lap.

  He speared his tongue into the hot sweetness of her mouth and ran his hands over the warm, silky, bare flesh of her back. Her fingers went to his head, and she forked her fingers in his hair, held on.

  His head slanted, hers followed, and the kiss went harder, deeper, wetter. He felt the rush of thick blood to his cock and the tremor of Mac’s slim body. His lips moved to her jaw, her neck, and then he needed more mouth to mouth. Her tongue tangled with his, and something new overcame him, with the familiarity of her taste in his mouth. The tightness in his gut loosened, and even though his heart pounded hard against his ribs, it wasn’t pain he was feeling...but ease.

  This was all so easy. Hot and erotic, but...easy.

  Natural.

  He continued kissing her until he figured they both needed air. Tearing his mouth from Mac’s, he looked down into the dazzled and dazzling depths of her eyes. Her mouth was swollen and her cheeks were pink and her chest moved up and down in the same ragged time as his.

  Finally, she whispered to him. “What do we call this, Zan?”

  A word resonated inside him, at first a murmur, then a whisper, then in a tone low and sure. Belonging, it said. Belonging, belonging.

  “Lust,” he replied, lying to her. Then he came at her with the truth.

  “And we’re going to do something about it, finally, tonight.”

  * * *

  MAC CLIMBED THE steps to Zan’s grandfather’s house in her bridesmaid dress, coatless, hatless, scarfless, one hand behind her back.

  She didn’t feel the cold.

  Some of that had to do with the amount of champagne she’d imbibed. Most of it had to do with the anticipation fluttering in her belly as she took in the glow coming from the windows and the lights burning on either side of the double entry doors. She’d been mad at him that night at Mr. Frank’s, at his presumptions and assumptions, but now there wasn’t room inside her for any emotion but one.

  Lust. And we’re going to do something about it, finally, tonight.

  Bowing to the inevitability of that—okay, thrilled by the inevitability of that—she pressed a trembling finger to the bell. The door almost immediately swung open.

  Her palm went to her jittery belly. Wow. Oh, wow.

  Zan stood in bare feet, his dark wool slacks and his dress shirt untucked and unbuttoned. His tie was gone and his hand was wrapped around a rocks glass with a couple of inches of amber liquid at the bottom.

  He looked sexy and sophisticated, an ad for all things expensive and potentially dangerous: luxury liquor, fast cars, private jets.

  It was Zan Elliott, all grown up, all man, and Mac suddenly felt shy and awkward and as if she should have reconsidered draining that last flute of champagne.

  “Sheesh, girl,” he said and grabbed the wrist not tucked at the small of her back to pull her inside. “It’s freezing out.” Peering over her shoulder and into the night, he frowned. “How did you get here? I don’t see your car.”

  “Poppy and Ryan dropped me off.”

  One of his brows winged up as he shut the door behind her. Then he led her to a parlor off the foyer, where logs were snapping and popping in the fireplace. “You told them—”

  “That I owed you an hour of packing up.”

  Now he looked even more skeptical. “They believed you were coming here to pack boxes after a family wedding and in your tissue-thin bridesmaid dress?”

  “Don’t forget tipsy,” she informed him.

  His smile grew slowly. “You’re saying they believed a tipsy woman came here to pack boxes after a family wedding, wearing her tissue-thin bridesmaid dress.”

  She shrugged. “They didn’t dare question anything, not after they noted my displeasure upon catching this.” She whipped her hand from behind her back to display the ridiculous spray of flowers that made up the replica bridal bouquet. The one that Shay had thrown to the gaggle of women that Mac had been forced to join.

  Zan grinned.

  “I kept my hands down and my eyes closed, I swear. But once again, just like at Brett and Angelica’s, it hit me square in the face. I actually ate rose petals.”

  He leaned down and sniffed her cheek. “You smell like roses.” His mouth touched hers. “You taste like roses.”

  The light kiss made her head spin and her belly squeeze, so she stepped back, determined to be as sophisticated as he looked. That was the way to survive this, she was sure. “You should have saved me. From the bouquet and from drinking too much champagne.”

  He shrugged. “You had to stay and I had to go before throwing you over my shoulder and carting you off to my cave.”

  Her eyes rounded because the idea of Caveman Zan was even sexier than Classy Zan. But she forced herself to breathe and sauntered over to the love seat before the fire. Tossing the bouquet on a side table, she dropped onto the cushions. “My feet are killing me.”

  Zan followed and then stood over her, watching as she hiked up her long skirt to expose her ankle and the buckles of her strappy sandals. Her hands stilled as she stared up at him, backlit by the flames.

  Danger, she thought again. Demon. He’ll make you burn.

  “Need help, baby?”

  Oh, yeah, she needed help. Because she was going to combust, and who was going to gather the pieces of her back together if that happened? Popping up from the cushions, she dashed to the bar set up in the corner of the room. Glass, ice, water.

  “That’s vodka, baby,” he said, coming up behind her. “A tipsy woman should try this.” His fingers brushed a bottle of water she’d overlooked.

  “Yeah. Hah. Thirsty.”

  Ice clinked in the glass as Zan drew one finger down her spine, bared by the dress. Why hadn’t Shay opted for outfits of burlap? With long sleeves and monk hoods, please.

  His mouth brushed along the slope of her shoulder. Her naked shoulder.

  “Oh, God,” she whispered to the water as she brought it to her mouth. She was way, way too turned on.

  “Hey, sweetheart?” he called, that fingertip now drawing intricate patterns on her back.

  Closing her eyes tight, she tried not to think of Adult Zan stroking her skin. She tried to remember Boy Zan, who used those hands to make grass-blade whistles, mud castles and snowballs.

  It wasn’t working.

  “Sweetheart?”

  “Um, yes, Zan?”

  “I told myself I wasn’t going to ask...”

  “Go ahead, ask.” Anything to give her a moment to get a handle on this simmering need for him. Another second and she’d take him down to that fancy rug and tear off his clothes, just like the rowdy mountain girl she was at heart.

  “I was wondering about those three engagements.”

  Cold flooded her bloodstream. She jerked away, muscles going taut, then moved fast to put space between herself and Zan.

  “Honey...” His tone held quiet concern. “Sorry. Just forget—”

  “No!” She tempered her volume. “I mean, no, not a problem.” She was a mature woman, one who could handle the question. “What do you want to know?”

  “You have three dresses, three engagement rings?”

  “I never made it to the dress-buying stage,” she confessed. “The rings I returned, of course.”

  Her gaze on her bare hands, she hoped this was the end of the interrogation.

&nb
sp; It wasn’t.

  “Did...did they break it off?”

  She shook her head.

  “Then what caused you to run?”

  She bristled. “I didn’t run. I’m still here, aren’t I?”

  “You didn’t make it to the altar. Three times.”

  “I couldn’t marry them because...” Her throbbing head made it hard to think. Perhaps it was a prehangover, perhaps the pins from the updo were digging into her scalp. She fished for the little metal buggers, taking them out one by one so that her hair fell around her shoulders. “You remember my dad left my mom and us for a time.”

  “You were pretty young.”

  “Still.” She dropped the handful of pins beside the bouquet and fluffed the ends of her hair. “I remember the tension when they were fighting. My mom’s sadness when he was gone.”

  “So you’re saying you couldn’t marry three different guys because you were convinced all three of them would ultimately leave you?”

  “Something like that,” she said, trying to make light of it. She couldn’t bring herself to point out that he’d left. “Trust issues.”

  “You couldn’t marry them because you thought you couldn’t count on them?”

  No, I couldn’t marry them because not one of them was you!

  The words poured into her consciousness before she could feel them coming. Before she could call them back. Before she could build a dam to keep them out.

  “Trust issues,” she said again, whispering, because it couldn’t be Zan who had prevented her from saying “I do.” Zan had left the mountains and he’d left her, and she’d had no hint that he’d ever come back or that he’d ever want to.

  Not one of the 117 postcards had carried the message “Wait for me.”

  “Trust issues,” he echoed, coming closer. He cupped her jaw in one big hand and traced her lips with his thumb. “So are you going to trust me with you tonight?”

  She couldn’t take the way he was looking at her, tender and warm, the same way he’d looked at her that first day, right before that first kiss when he’d gone from being her friend to her first love. She’d been crushing on him for years, of course, getting his attention in any way she could, knowing he was handsome and funny and her Zan. But not until she’d felt his lips on hers had the seed blossomed in her heart, a wildflower blooming inside a wild mountain girl.

  She’d been so happy...until she’d been so unhappy.

  Zan’s thumb moved over her mouth again. “What’s going on in that head of yours?”

  And because she didn’t want him aware of what was roaming around in there, she went on her tiptoes and kissed him.

  Until they were breathless.

  Until he was clutching her behind and she was gripping his shoulders.

  Until she knew the inevitable was going to happen that night, the explosion, the flames, the burn, and she had to find a way to take the serious edge off it or she wouldn’t outlive the experience. So, after breaking the kiss for air, she gathered in oxygen and gathered her guts and recalled that playful girl she’d once been.

  “Want to play strip hide-and-seek?” she asked, throwing him a cheeky grin.

  If she had to do it all over again, she would have come up with the idea when she had on more clothes. See, the rules she established gave the hider to a count of one hundred. The seeker got to two hundred.

  If the hider was found by the seeker before the final number was spoken, he or she had to remove an item of clothing.

  They took turns doing the hiding and seeking.

  Lucky she’d never gotten around to removing her sandals, because they gave her some extra opportunities. But, finally, he was standing there, a smirk on his face, his arms folded over his bare chest, and he said, “Strip,” because he’d found her wedged in the broom closet in the butler’s pantry.

  And he knew she’d taken off everything but the tissue-thin bridesmaid dress—while he still had on his pants and whatever was under them.

  Note to self, Mac thought, next time don’t suggest strip hide-and-seek in an unfamiliar house to the person who’d once lived there.

  “Strip,” Zan said again.

  Eeek. The childish game brought out the child in her, it appeared, because Mac gathered the skirt of her dress in her hands and—

  Took off at a run.

  Her bare feet on the stairs made hardly a sound and his were not much louder, but she could feel him following and a bubble of glee rose up her throat. Eagerness pinwheeled through her body, every part of her buzzing with excitement and a smidge of belly-curling fear, like a person felt when the roller-coaster car was tick-tick-ticking up the big hill.

  On the second-floor landing she didn’t pause, but her mind didn’t have much of a plan, because she fled into the dimly lit master bedroom and found herself without a place to go from there. Pulse thrumming, she stood on the middle of the rug and could only heave in great gulps of air as he passed through the door, all muscles, smooth flesh and those dark pants.

  “That’s fine about the dress, baby,” he said, prowling closer. “I’d rather take it off you myself.”

  Then he bypassed her entirely and went to the fireplace opposite the big bed. It was gas-powered, she remembered, and the flames went whoosh and the room went from dimly lit to romantic, so Mac’s insides went whoosh, too. She twisted her fingers together at her waist and wondered again how best to handle this.

  Then, as he turned to her, she was taken back in time. It seemed uncomplicated then, so simple, to step inside her teenage skin, and be the person who didn’t worry much about tomorrows, who could be playful instead of watchful, who reached out without fear because Zan had been her playmate for so many years and now they merely had a new field for that play.

  Perhaps he read that on her face. As he stepped toward her, he smiled, and it only widened as she met him halfway. “Hello, there,” he said, his voice low.

  “Hello,” she said and ran her palms from his solid, rippled abs to his chest. His nipples were hard points against the soft cups of her hands, and she brushed them with the edge of her thumbs before leaning in to taste one with the tip of her tongue.

  His fingers clutched her waist as she took him between her lips and sucked, and she loved the helplessness of his low groan.

  She continued to suck and nibble as his fingers searched for entry into her dress. It was a complicated setup—a fastening at the neck and a hidden zipper along one hip—and she lifted her head to grin at him. “Ten points if you can figure it out.”

  His brow quirked, and he looked as calm and in control as before despite the flag of color along each cheekbone. “We’re keeping score?”

  I already won, she thought and circled her tongue around one areola.

  Then Zan found the snaps at the nape of her neck, and he popped them open so the bodice fell to her waist. He filled his hands with her breasts and she froze, her body giving one big shiver of delight. His thumbs brushed her erect nipples and they tightened to hard, achy points, and in retaliation she cupped his sex, with her palm and fingers forming the shape of it over the thin wool.

  Zan pinched the beaded points of her breasts. “Game on, baby,” he said, then found the hidden zipper.

  The rest of her dress slithered to her ankles. She’d lost her panties during hide-and-seek, and he stared at her bare body until her legs were restless and the center of her was pulsing and wet. Then he went down on his knees, opened her with this thumbs and feasted.

  She tried holding back needy, urgent sounds, but it was good, so good. Heat and arousal flashed through her as his mouth on that soft flesh made her feel both vulnerable and cherished.

  The climax was twisting inside her already, and she gripped his hair to pull him away. He glanced up, his mouth gleaming in the firelight, slick with her juices
, and another shudder rolled down her back. “Too soon,” she whispered to him.

  But he ignored her warning and leaned back in to lavish her with long, broad strokes of his tongue. One hand gripped her hip, and from every point of contact more ribbons of heat and sensation curled around her until she was wrapped in insistent desire.

  She looked down to see if that need was marked on her flesh—she felt as if it must be—only to see him glance up again. Their gazes met, and then his eyelids lowered to half-mast and he took that bundle of nerves at the top of her sex between his lips and sucked, soft, and then harder, and then without mercy.

  She shook with sensation. Mac’s orgasm burned along the paths of those ribbons and she was aware of him watching her face until her own lashes dropped and she could only tremble with the waves and then the aftershocks of delirious pleasure.

  Girl Mac had thought orgasms were the most amazing invention on earth, not at all minding those seconds of handing control to Zan and the pure demands of her body. Adult Mac had become more circumspect, always holding something of herself back by her silence, a strategic piece of clothing, the need for alone time immediately after climax.

  But she was still in her throbbing, hypersensitive teenage skin, so when Zan picked her up to take her toward the bed, she threw her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist. Her wet, throbbing center met his hard abs and she ground against them, without shame or decorum, and he said, “God, Mac,” and fastened his mouth to hers.

  Once he was naked, they rolled around on the sheets like rambunctious puppies, fighting for the top, bucking up when on the bottom, finally turning so they could tease each other’s sex with their mouths. Mac fondled Zan’s balls as she took him deep between her lips and he licked her again—so delicate and tender this time that the climb to orgasm was in delicious, excruciating tiny steps. When it finally shuddered through her, he spun her back so her head was to the pillows and he rolled on top of her.

  This time, she didn’t fight for the dominant position, she only opened her thighs and opened her arms, and as the climax continued to pulse through her, she welcomed Zan into her body.