Stirring Up Trouble

by Kimberly Kincaid

  Gavin turned to fall into place next to her. “Sure. How about you plate, and I’ll man the microwave?”

  “Look at you, breaking out the fancy techniques. You’re a culinary tour de force over there.” She handed him a plate loaded with chicken, capers, and artichokes, and even lukewarm from the restaurant, it smelled divine.

  He took the plate, stepping close enough to fill her senses with the masculine scent of his skin and the dark, seductive smile that was like her own personal brand of Kryptonite. “I’m trying to impress you. Is it working?”

  “Not even a little bit, Microwave Man. I’m not that easy.” But the traitorous tingle of heat percolating at the seam of her jeans negated every last syllable.

  Well. Didn’t that just add a whole new dimension to the pants on fire part of things?

  “Guess I’ll just have to try harder,” he said, bringing the microwave to life with a handful of touches. Oh, God, if she didn’t come up with a distraction, stat, he was going to find out exactly how easy she was, right here in the kitchen.

  Cut it out! She’d come over here in an honest-to-God act of concern, not to get laid. So she blurted out the first thing she could think of that didn’t make her want to whip off her shirt just to feel him on her skin.

  “So, um, how’d you get to be such a wine expert, anyway?”

  His shoulders eased up by a fraction and he took the second plate from her. “Not the flashiest answer going, but it started in culinary school.”

  A tiny smile poked at the corners of her lips, and she enjoyed another sip of Chablis before answering. “Come on. Of all the things you could’ve become an expert on, you chose wine?”

  “Hey, don’t knock it,” he said, handing her the first plate with a wry smile. “Why, what would you pick?”

  “Something different every day. And I’m not knocking it. I just meant there are a bazillion things you could’ve chosen. Why wine?”

  “Oh. Well, I think it kind of picked me, to be honest. We studied a lot of different regional cuisines, and I always came back to the ones that centered around wine pairings—mostly Italian and French, but of course there are others. I was fascinated by how the wine enhanced the meal and made it an experience. It didn’t take long for me to discover that wine could actually be the experience.”

  “I never really thought of wine as its own complex thing,” Sloane admitted, turning the idea over in her mind as she walked the steaming plate to the table.

  “Most people don’t. We’re conditioned to do things as quickly as possible, eating and drinking included. It’s just a means to an end. But wine is one of those things you’ve got to take your time with, otherwise you miss the point. It’s the journey, remember?”

  Her face flushed at the reminder of his words from the night of Carly’s wedding, but looking away from Gavin’s piercing stare right now wasn’t even on her menu of options. “I remember.”

  “Isn’t writing the same way? I mean, you don’t race through it just to get to the end, do you? You must enjoy the process part a little bit, too. Look at how hard you work on putting it together.” He pulled his plate from the microwave, crossing the kitchen to place it on the table across from hers, and Sloane’s gut twanged at the reminder of the book she shouldn’t be writing.

  She was tempted to button her lip and brush the whole thing off. After all, the wine was flowing, and they were supposed to be relaxing. Talking about the fact that her writing process vaguely resembled a fricking corkscrew right now was only going to jack her stress-o-meter sky-high. She’d tried all afternoon to start an outline for her Greece book, just as she had for the last couple of weeks. For four hours straight, she’d trolled travel Web sites in the hopes that one of the images would serve as the spark she’d so desperately been searching for. Her pencil was sharp, her Post-its were at the ready, just begging to be scribbled upon.

  But the only thing Sloane could think about was the outline for the other story, and before she could even blink twice, she’d cranked out another chapter and a half.

  “I do enjoy the process,” she started slowly, liberating her wineglass and moving to sit across the table from Gavin’s inquisitive stare. “But it’s not always that easy. Book ideas move fast, and they don’t always obey the laws of logic or reason. Sometimes, the end result arrives first, and it’s right there in my brain. If I don’t rush for it, it might disappear, or change, or something, and then I’ll miss it entirely.”

  “So you just keep your eye on the prize and never stop moving.” He cut his chicken with surgical precision, each stroke swift and efficient, and Sloane wondered how something so mundane could be so unexpectedly sexy.

  “I can’t stop moving,” she said, emphasizing her point with a shake of her head. “There’s too much to soak in. If I go slow, I’m bound to miss something important.”

  Gavin took a few bites, his brow pulled low in thought before he said, “Did you ever stop to think that if you go too fast, you might miss what’s right in front of you?”

  Sloane took a bite of her own, and not even the rich, earthy flavors of the food could distract her from the irony of it all. “If that’s the case, then I can’t win either way.”

  “Not necessarily.” He settled his gaze on her, and her muscles gave an involuntary tug around her bones as his words darkened with suggestion. “It’s possible that you could have the best of both worlds.”

  “How’s that?” Sloane managed, but her heartbeat had already kicked into full hammer mode. A small part of her warned that she still didn’t need the distraction of getting involved with someone, even casually, right now.

  But the part of her that wanted him to kiss her until she could no longer stand canceled that other part right out.

  “You just have to strike a really good balance.” Gavin pushed back from his spot across the table from her, and there was no mistaking his destination. She stood so fast that she forgot to put down her fork, and he took it from her fingers with a lazy smile.

  “If you slow down just enough, I bet you’ll find what you’re looking for.”

  Reason flooded her senses now, reminding her that she could blame sleeping with him once on a flight of fancy, a mutual heat-of-the-moment thing. But sleeping with him twice—hell, feeling the way she felt right now—well, that bypassed impulsive and went right for the heart of stupid. Five weeks from now, she’d be living out of a suitcase, writing an exotic novel and saving her hard-earned career.

  But right in this moment, she wanted his hands on her.

  Sloane arched toward him in one swift motion, searching and finding all at the same time. Gavin’s breath left him on a heated exhale while he slanted his mouth over hers, diving in for just a brief taste before cupping her face.

  “We need to work on your idea of balance,” he murmured, smiling against her lips. She fought back the whimper being generated by her chest—and a couple of parts due south.

  “But I don’t want to miss what’s right in front of me.” She angled her body closer, dying to drink in the electric feel of his touch, but he drew back just before she made contact.

  “Then slow down and find it.”

  Gavin tilted her face so their lips met again in a gentle rush of skin and heat. But rather than coaxing her mouth open to delve farther, he kissed her with soft intention, letting the place where their mouths came together rise to a slow simmer. When she parted her lips in encouragement, he didn’t give in. Instead, he slipped a palm around her neck, stroking her sensitive skin with just enough pressure to make her bite back a groan.

  He swept his tongue over her bottom lip, drawing it gently between his teeth before letting go to start over again, and holding back went from unlikely to impossible. Urgency flared, deep in Sloane’s belly, and it guided her arms around the leanly muscled landscape of Gavin’s shoulders. His body tensed under her hands, but he refused to be swayed. Instead, he kissed her with just enough sweet persuasion to move the breath from his body to hers, teasing her
lips and tongue with a dark suggestion that made every cell in her body spark to life.

  Sloane arched up even higher, tightening her hands into fists over his navy blue T-shirt. Gavin pulled back just enough to look at her, gifting her with a mischievous smile.

  “If you keep that up, going slow isn’t going to be much of an option,” he said, not advancing, but not pulling back either. Oh, God, the hard plane of his chest was as close to her body as it could be without touching, and the innuendo of that delicious contact forced her to close the space.

  “You say that like it’s a bad thing.” Her murmur fell into the spot where his collar met his neck, and she turned to trail eager kisses along his angular jaw. She skimmed her lips back toward his, searching for more, and the friction of his freshly emerging stubble beneath her hypersensitive mouth tightened her nipples to hard points.

  “It’s not a bad thing.” He caught her face between his palms, his eyes glittering a dark, sensual brown. “But I don’t want to rush. Not this time. Not tonight.”

  Gavin placed the barest hint of a kiss on her mouth like a promise. “I want to show you what’s right in front of you, Sloane. But you’re going to have to let me. What do you say?”

  Chapter Twenty

  “Yes. God, yes.”

  Sloane whispered the affirmation against Gavin’s mouth, and even though he hadn’t thought it possible to want her more than when she’d shown up unexpectedly on his porch, flushed with cold and yet so blazingly hot at the same time, his body proved him wrong. The idea of finally being able to have her slowly, to learn and relearn what she sounded like when he touched the gentle hollow above her collarbone, skimmed his fingers around the divot of her navel, grazed his teeth over the perfect slope of her breasts—all of it made him hard without so much as a touch from her. The look on Sloane’s face as she’d talked about plowing through life at warp speed had only made him want to slow her down all the more.

  Starting right here in the kitchen.

  With his chest still molded to hers, Gavin swung her around. He guided her backward through the kitchen until they reached the first available flat surface, which turned out to be the refrigerator. Good enough, he thought, angling Sloane against the smooth expanse of stainless steel, gently trapping her body there with his own.

  “Oh!” Her Cupid’s-bow mouth parted over a shocked gasp as he pressed her more tightly to the cool surface, and he dropped his lips to hover right over her ear.

  “Don’t worry. I’ll keep you warm.” He couldn’t resist tracing the outline of her bare earlobe with his tongue, sampling the way she tasted there, and she moaned over his shoulder.

  “It’s not that it’s cold,” she said, turning her head so their gazes were level. Her eyes went dark with desire, the color of cut sapphires, and she dropped her hand to the tight fragment of space between their bodies to cup his erection with nimble fingers. “It’s humming.”

  His eagerness to take his time and pleasure her superseded the screaming want surging through him, and he reached down to capture her wrist. With a careful yet firm gesture, he crossed it over her other one and pinned them over her head with a wicked grin.

  “Let’s see if we can make you hum, too.”

  With slow ministrations, he worked the buttons on her plain white shirt, popping them open one-handed while letting his mouth follow their path. He dipped past the indentation at the base of her throat, committing her throaty sighs to memory as he brushed his tongue over the delicate vein in her neck where her pulse fluttered like a live wire.

  The small swell of her breasts, honey-colored and perfect, found the curve of his mouth as Sloane pressed against him with a groan that came from deep in her chest. Gavin nearly matched it when he freed enough buttons to expose her bright red lace and satin bra. He should’ve known he’d find something completely unexpected beneath that demure top, but the sexy shock of discovery filled him anyway.

  “God, you’re beautiful.” He kissed the top curve of one breast, just enough to tease himself with the spicy taste of her skin, and she bowed against him in a wordless reply. With the last of the buttons on her shirt liberated, Gavin was able to focus his free hand on the space between her breasts, where they rounded together like soft summer peaches.

  There wasn’t enough time in the world for this.

  “You’re driving me crazy,” she breathed on a ragged voice. “I mean it. I’m going to lose my mind like this. Please let me touch you.”

  He paused, trailing a fingertip along the low-cut crimson lace that barely covered the modest rise of her cleavage, and grinned into her hot skin. “Nope. You’d better get used to it, because I’m going to do this to you in every room in the house before the night is over.”

  Sloane arced up into him at the same moment he closed his lips over one taut nipple, swirling the fabric out of the way with his tongue, and she cried out at the intimate contact. Fueled by nothing more than the desire to taste her indefinitely, Gavin dropped her wrists, sliding his palms behind her shoulder blades to undo the closure on her bra.

  Her nipples were tight peaks, exquisite beneath his hands and mouth as he alternated between them, learning every subtlety with care. He touched and nibbled and stroked, ghosting over the outer rim of her areola with the pad of one thumb, tightening with need of his own when she shuddered at the barely there touch. But it wasn’t until he cupped her with both hands and slid his tongue to the fragile, dewy skin in the tight space between her breasts that he almost lost his composure entirely.

  Because Sloane was losing hers. Oh, fuck. She was going to kill him like this.

  So he did it again. And again.

  “Oh my God. You’re . . . you can’t . . . oh God.” Her jumbled words spilled over the top of his head, and she reached between them, not to touch him this time, but to touch herself. She cradled her breasts in her palms, angling up to encourage unfettered access to her body, and with one final pass of his tongue over her gloriously hard nipple, she came undone on a keening sigh.

  Gavin lightened his touch by lazy degrees, bearing the weight of Sloane’s body as she went from arched tightly against him to languidly wrapping her arms around his shoulders. Without thinking twice, he hooked one arm under her shoulders and used the other behind her knees to lever her off her feet.

  “What are you doing?” The combination of velvety satisfaction in her voice and the way her sinuous hip slid against his aching cock nearly made him veer off course, but he managed to make it through the living room and toward the darkened hallway that led to his room.

  “Relocating. I want to watch you come like that until the sun rises.” His purposeful stride hitched as Sloane tensed beneath his hands, and he slowed to a stop in the shadowed archway of the foyer. “What’s the matter?”

  “Nothing.” She buried her face in his neck on the pretense of kissing him there, but her muscles were too stiff, making the movement almost wooden.

  Dread pinched at him, and he settled her on her feet. As badly as he wanted her, he couldn’t live with himself if Sloane regretted any of this tomorrow. “If you don’t want to do this, it’s okay. We don’t—”

  “No! It’s not that at all.” She hugged her arms around her body, crisscrossing her open shirttails over her chest to cover up. “I just, um. I’m fairly certain that was . . . it for me. Not that we can’t still . . .” She trailed off, squeezing her eyes shut on an exhale. “I just don’t want to disappoint you.”

  Snippets of past revelations slowly filtered through Gavin’s brain, falling into place one by one until the whole picture hit him like a sucker punch.

  She really hadn’t ever had an orgasm with anyone else before. And if she’d never had one, she sure as hell must think that having more than one was nothing other than pure fiction.

  He was going to change that if it was the last thing he ever did.

  “Sloane, listen to me.” Gavin touched the side of her face as though he could soak up her vulnerability through his skin. “You
are a lot of things, but believe me when I tell you, disappointing isn’t one of them.”

  “But I—”

  “You’re beautiful.” He stepped in to kiss the space behind her ear. “You have this great laugh.” Another kiss, this one on the soft line where her neck met her shoulder. Christ, he’d never wanted to make love to anyone so much in his life. He twined his fingers around hers and lifted both to his chest. “It gets me right here. And you never, ever do what I think you’re going to.” He cupped her face between his hands, kissing her gently so the words became reverent, but she pulled back anyway.

  “I’m sorry.”

  Gavin laughed, just a soft expression to mark the irony of it all. “How can you apologize for the best thing about you?” He kissed her again, this time with the firm intention of punctuating his words. “It’s not your fault nobody ever took the time to really find you in there. That nobody showed you what a goddamn treasure you are.” The words tumbled out, intense and fierce, but he meant them. And what was more, Sloane had clearly never heard them.

  She was a canvas, covered with all these bold strokes and brilliant colors, and she had no fucking clue how stunning she was.

  Their kiss became as pure as his words, and once again, Gavin found himself completely caught up in her. The lush bow of her mouth, the way her tall, lean frame fit against his like two pieces of a puzzle, the vibration of her sigh when he finally gave in and kissed her hard. He’d known he wanted her the minute he heard her voice on the phone tonight, like a beacon of goodness in the middle of his still-roiling emotions.

  He just hadn’t known he wanted her to stay.

  Sloane kissed him then with so much tenderness wrapped in her trademark heat that he couldn’t wait any longer. He guided her down the hall and through his bedroom door, not stopping until they’d reached his bed. He undressed her slowly, reveling in the way that she had a different response for every touch, every taste. And each one of her answers made him desperate to pleasure her, not just for the satisfaction of it, but to show her firsthand what he saw when he looked at her.