Though he knew he should go before things got too far out of control--because when things ultimately went out of control, it was going to be one of her made to order fantasies--Levi couldn’t help himself. His legs had turned to lead, were rooted to the spot and his hands had taken on a life of their own. They were determined to slip and slide all over Natalie’s body. They slid down her ribcage, around her back and settled over her magnificent ass.
How long had he wanted to do that? Levi wondered, as he filled his palms with her sweetly curved rump. How long had he wanted to suckle her ripe bottom lip, exactly the way he was doing now, or pull her tongue deep into his mouth? How many times had he thought about holding her? Kissing her? Bending her over a chair and taking her until her eyes rolled back in her head and his balls burst from the pleasure?
As if on cue of the thought, Natalie reached between them and cupped him over his jeans. He jerked hard against her and felt his breath leave him in a startled whoosh.
“You’re trying to kill me, aren’t you?” he choked out, pushing against her clever palm.
She found the snap, then the zipper whined as she pulled it down. “Killing you would hardly serve my purposes.” She wrapped her hand around him and stroked. “I need you both stiff and alive.”
An unexpected bark of laughter erupted from his throat. He’d been around her long enough to know that she had an outrageous sense of humor. He just wasn’t used to encountering it under these particular circumstances--like her hand down his pants, slipping and sliding over his dick with enough skill to have him prepared for launch and ready to detonate at any second.
He needed to distract her, Levi thought, or he didn’t have a prayer in hell of holding it together. In fact, a few more strokes and he was going to lose it.
Not like this, dammit. The next time he came, he fully intended to be inside of her.
Time to turn the tables.
Levi reached down, slipped his hand beneath her dress and made a determined trek up the inside of her thigh. He found a ridiculously small triangle of silky fabric over her curls and smiled against her lips when he realized it was gratifyingly damp. She squirmed against his fingers and made a little mewling sound in her throat.
Predictably--thankfully--her hand stilled against him.
He rubbed her, wishing that he’d had the forethought to bring a condom. Admittedly, sleeping with her tonight hadn’t been in his plans. Tonight he’d planned to move in and test the waters.
What he hadn’t expected was the physical equivalent of a nuclear bomb.
Of losing any pretense of control.
He should have, but he didn’t. Furthermore, there was a reason he’d wanted to wait, though for the life of him right now he couldn’t remember it. Something about fulfilling her fantasies, but at the moment all he wanted to do was fill her. With himself.
Right here against her front door. Hadn’t that been one of her fantasies, Levi thought as he backed her up and slipped a finger between her nether lips. He unerringly found the little nub at the top of her sex and thumbed it, pulling a broken breath from her chest.
“You don’t play fair.”
“Fair’s for pansies,” Levi said, dipping a finger inside, then coating her with her own juices. He felt a single bead of moisture leak from his dick and a sweat break out across his forehead.
God, how he wanted her.
To hell with plans. To hell with everything.
He kissed a path down her throat, then licked a path over the top of her breast and watched it pucker for him. Pouting nipples, hot pussy...
Doomed. Utterly doomed.
“Natalie, I didn’t-- I don’t have any protection. You wouldn’t happen to--“
“What?” she asked, her voice a tortured wail as she worked herself against him, hovering on what he knew was the edge of climax. The straps on her sundress sagged, revealing her cleavage. “You didn’t bring anything?”
“No,” he admitted. She clamped around him, her greedy sex clutching his fingers. So damned responsive, he thought. And so very, very close. He hooked his finger around and angled up, then knuckled her clit harder.
Her mouth opened in a silent scream and seconds later she spasmed hard around him. Her breathing came him labored little puffs and she clung to him, seemingly unable to stand.
A moment later, a satisfied smile curling her lips, she looked up and her gaze tangled with his. “Then the next time you come to my door you need to take a note from the Boy Scouts,” Natalie told him. “And be prepared.”
Another laugh rattled out of his chest. “Duly noted.”
He pressed another kiss to her lips.
Make no mistake--he would be.
CHAPTER 8
Dear Levi, do you remember that time you sacked that guy on the beach for hitting his girlfriend? Did you know that’s the moment you melted my heart? Did you know that’s the instant I fell in love with you?
“I can’t believe you didn’t just tell him you were the one who’s been writing the letters,” Winnie admonished, exasperated. “I don’t understand what the big deal is now. I could see it before--the possibility of humiliation and all--but now?” She pulled a shrug and shook her head, looking as though she’d like to shake her instead. “I just don’t get it. He likes you, you little neurotic moron. Tell him.”
Thankful that the bakery was empty and that no one was privy to Winnie’s unusually loud advice, Natalie popped a bite of iced sugar cookie into her mouth and nodded. “I will. Really.”
“When?” her friend pressed.
“Today.” Her cheeks puffed as she exhaled mightily. “If the letter does come today, then I’ll tell him.”
“If you don’t, then I will,” Winnie threatened.
Natalie felt her eyes widen, certain that her friend had to be joking. “You wouldn’t,” she breathed, slightly horrified. What the hell was wrong with her? She’d been a bit out of sorts since the moment Natalie had come in a few minutes ago.
Winnie rolled her eyes. “Of course, I wouldn’t. I just hate to see you blow this.”
Marginally mollified, Natalie leaned against the counter. “I’m not blowing it. Didn’t you hear anything I said? He told me that he’d wanted to kiss me for years, that the only reason he’d never made a play for me was because he thought that Adam and I might eventually become a thing.”
Winnie’s eyes widened significantly and she snorted. “Him and everybody else,” she said.
Ah, Natalie realized. Now they were getting somewhere. Adam. “How did seeing Adam go the other day?”
Winnie immediately busied herself wiping down a display case. “Fine.”
“He said you’d come by.”
“I took your advice and fixed him a care package.”
Natalie watched her closely. “Yeah?”
Winnie’s face crumpled in frustration. “I’d been better off if I’d been a petite four,” she all but wailed. “Oh, Natalie, I just need to forget him. I need to move on, to let it go...and yet I can’t. I’ve tried.”
“What happened?”
She smiled sadly. “Nothing. That’s just it. He barely looked at me and had less to say.”
Natalie frowned. “He was unfriendly?” That didn’t sound like Adam.
“Not unfriendly. Just...uninterested. I mentioned coaching my softball team--something he would have been interested in before--but he only grunted. I told him about training for that 10K I’m running in the fall and he muttered a weak congratulations.” Her small shoulders lifted in a fatalistic shrug. “I wish I’d never gone over there. Seeing him was hard enough. Seeing him and realizing that he can’t even drum up the enthusiasm to make small talk with me? That’s worse.”
Natalie tsked under her breath. “Winnie, I’m sorry. I don’t know what to say. Adam’s just been Adam with me, you know? I just assumed--“
Winnie’s lips twisted with bitter humor and her violet eyes glazed with unshed tears. “He’s always been ‘just Adam’ with you, Nat. Yo
u have no idea how much I envy you that.”
“Oh, Winnie,” Natalie said, her voice thick as she pulled her friend into a hug. “I’m so sorry. I wish I knew--“
The bell tinkled over the door, interrupting what she was about to say and Adam’s low whistle filled in the rest of her sentence. “Damn. If I’d known I was going to get to see a little girl on girl action along with one of the best cookies in the world, I would have been coming down here every morning.”
Winnie’s wide gaze swung to Adam and she blinked, then quickly dashed away the lone tear which had escaped.
Naturally, Adam didn’t miss it, Natalie noticed. His questioning gaze swung to her and she aimed an I’ll-deal-with-you-later look in his direction.
He merely blinked innocently. “I’ve been looking for you,” he told her. “I went by the gallery first, but when you weren’t there I figured I’d find you here.”
Winnie turned away and pretended to check on the éclair case.
Torn between both friends, Natalie crossed her arms over her chest. “Why have you been looking for me?”
“Because I can’t get anything out of my tight-lipped brother and wanted to know how things went last night.”
Natalie pressed her lips together to keep from smiling. “Things went fine. He liked my lasagna.”
Adam stared at her. “That’s it. I practically shove the two of you together, spend a lonely night at home in front of the television when I could have been watching a miserable chick flick with you and that’s all you’re going to give me? He liked my lasagna?”
Natalie shrugged, enjoying this more than she should. “’fraid so.”
Adam’s outraged gaze swung to Winnie, evidently hoping that she would give him the scoop. Winnie merely grinned. “It’s damn good lasagna.” Her gaze bounced back and forth between the two of them. “But I will tell you this--“
Natalie whirled on her friend.
“--they didn’t watch a chick flick.”
“Winnie!” she admonished, outraged.
A wide grin split Adam’s face and he turned to stare at her. “Well, well, well. If you didn’t watch a movie, just what did you do?”
“She didn’t say that we didn’t watch a movie. She said we didn’t watch a chick flick.”
Adam chewed the inside of his cheek. “What did you watch?”
“I’ll never tell,” Natalie said, because she knew it would infuriate him.
Adam looked to Winnie and she silently willed her friend to be strong. “Well?”
“They watched The Shining.”
Stunned at how quickly her friend caved, Natalie’s mouth dropped open. “I can’t believe you just did that.”
“You’ve got too many secrets,” Winnie said archly.
“Not anymore,” Adam remarked, staring across the street at the post office. A smug grin she absolutely didn’t trust curled his lips. “Levi’s got a handful of mail and he’s wearing a smile so big I can count his teeth from here. Oh, and look. He’s headed toward your gallery.” To Natalie’s absolute shock, Adam poked his head out the door and bellowed across the way at his brother. “Hey! She’s down here!” He rubbed his hands together, then hobbled over to a chair and sat down. “In absence of popcorn, I’ll have one of those little cake thingies. Come join me, Winnie. We’re about to have ringside seats.”
Natalie gaped at them.
Adam tsked and shook his head. “I can count your teeth, too, but obviously for different reasons.”
“Asshole,” Natalie said. “Would you shut up?”
“You were going to tell him today anyway,” Winnie pointed out.
The sugar cookie she’d eaten only moments before churned in her belly and she resisted the pressing urge to flee from the store. This had been coming. She knew it. She knew the letter was going to get here. She knew he was going to find out that she’d been the one writing him.
She knew it...and yet she wasn’t prepared.
Two seconds later, Levi appeared at the door. His pale toffee gaze--hot and happy and confused--slammed into hers before he entered the store.
She saw the envelope in his hand, recognized her address stamp from where she stood. Nausea hit and, hand over her mouth, she bolted to the bathroom.
Five minutes later, after brushing her teeth--she always carried a toothbrush and paste for this very reason--Natalie steeled herself for what was to come and opened the door.
Levi stood there, leaning against the wall in the small hallway away from the main dining room. He looked up from the letter in his hand.
“You’ve got to quit doing this,” he said, jerking his head toward the bathroom. “This is not the kind of thing a guy wants to inspire in a woman.”
Natalie crossed her arms over her chest and rubbed the back of her calve with her other foot. She gestured toward the letter. “You know perfectly well how you inspire me,” she said. “Especially now.”
Levi’s caramel gaze caught hers. “I don’t understand. You’d put a return address on this one. Why couldn’t you just tell me? I all but asked you last night.”
Natalie looked away, feeling a flush creep up her neck. “Er...the thing is...I didn’t exactly put the return address stamp on there.”
A line emerged between his brows and an unsure smile curved his lips. “I’m not following.”
“It’s okay,” she said. “You can’t always know everything.”
“Natalie.”
“Lacey, my miserable-ass assistant, did it,” she admitted, releasing a pent up breath. “In a rare instance of efficiency, she noticed the letter on my desk, stamped it and took it to the post office along with my other promotional mailings.”
A slow grin slid over Levi’s lips. “You mean this was an accident?”
She nodded and lowered her head. “Of epic proportions. You were never supposed to know it was me.”
“Never?”
“At least not until I was ready to tell you.”
Levi moved forward, put a finger underneath her chin and lifted her head. “Would you have ever told me?”
“I was going to tell you today. You can ask Winnie. That’s what we were just talking about.”
“You could have told me this morning,” he pointed out. “When we were combing.”
Too true, she knew. She was such a coward. “That wasn’t the right time.”
He chuckled softly and she felt that wicked laugh in her belly. “Why not?”
“Because I was thinking about other things.”
“Like what?”
“Like what I’d written in those letters.” Like kissing him, and rolling around the sand with him and feeling his wonderful bare ass beneath her hands and the hardest part of him pushing in and out of the softest part of her. She’d been thinking about licking him from one end to the other and savoring the smell of him and wrapping her legs around his waist.
Levi’s gaze darkened. “You mean like how much you want me?”
An embarrassed chuckle vibrated out of her mouth. “I think we’ve pretty much established that.”
“Do you remember what I told you last night?” he asked, sidling closer to her.
Her gaze searched his. “A-about what?”
He backed her against the wall and planted a hand on either side of her head. He was about to lay siege again, Natalie realized, and he was bringing the heavy artillery. “About not wasting anymore time.”
“Oh, yeah.”
“Want me to tell you where I went before I dropped by the post office?”
He nuzzled her neck and her breath hitched in her lungs. Longing knifed through her and heat slickened her folds. Her nipples pearled beneath the thin fabric of her bra. “Wh-where?”
“The drug store. I might not be a Boy Scout, but baby, I’m prepared.”
* * *
Levi started to back her into the bathroom, but Natalie retained just enough sense to halt him. “Not in there,” she said between kisses. She’d just tossed her cookies--literally--
in there. “Here,” she said, dragging him toward Winnie’s store room.
She looped her arms around his neck and, with a little jump, wrapped her legs around his waist. Levi determinedly pushed inside the small, darkened room, then closed the door with his foot.
“Lock it,” she mumbled against his mouth.
“They’re not coming in. I told them we’d need some privacy.”
Natalie chuckled, suckling his bottom lip. “Sounds like you thought of everything.”
Levi fed at her mouth, kissed her until every bone in her body felt like it had melted. He dragged her shirt up over her head and tugged the strings of her bikini top loose with his teeth. He growled low in his throat. “Do you have any idea how many times I’ve dreamed of doing that? This damned bikini drives me nuts. You drive me nuts.”
Pleasure bloomed in her chest as she dragged his shirt from the waistband of his jeans. “You’ve always had a pretty depraved effect on me, too. As you well know.”
“Wanna know a secret?”
“You know all of mine,” she pointed out. “I think knowing one of yours is only fair.”
Levi drew back and his heavy-lidded gaze tangled with hers. She saw desire and need and something else...something more elemental and altogether dangerous. “I wanted it to be you. I would lay there at night in the barracks and picture you doing the things to me that you’d written. It was your face I saw when I read your letters. It was you I wrote back to.” He released a shaky breath. “It was you, Nat, all along.”
“Oh, Levi,” she said, her heart in her throat. He had no idea how much that meant to her. How deeply that “secret” he’d just shared affected her. Though now wasn’t the time, she felt the backs of her eyes tingle.
Levi kissed one lid and then the other, then his mouth slipped lower until it covered her own. His lips brushed hers once, twice, and then it was though something snapped between them. The tentative grasp on control gave way and suddenly he was kissing her until she thought she couldn’t breathe and ultimately, didn’t want to if it meant he’d stop.
Clothes vanished--her bikini top, his shirt, her shorts, his jeans. Her bikini bottom and his boxers later, they were rolling around on the floor of Winnie’s pantry--bits of flour and sugar everywhere--completely naked and completely, totally happy. She landed on top.
Men Out of Uniform: 6 Book Omnibus Page 90
