by Jill Shalvis
Now, when he could have bought nearly any other house he wanted, he wouldn’t have traded it for the world. In the years since, he’d purchased places for his parents and his brother, but he’d stuck with this one for himself. It meant something to him that he’d come from nothing. That he’d rebuilt this house from nothing.
That he’d made himself a home.
He opened the front door, watching Kenna take in the airy, open space that was his living room.
“This is great,” she said. “Are we going to—”
“Make love.” He pulled her to him, slipped his arms around her. “We’ve had sex, fast and hot and reckless. But we haven’t made love, Kenna, long and slow and sweet.”
She laughed a little, and backed up. “But I didn’t have anything against the fast and reckless sex.”
“Are you nervous because I used the love word now?”
“Don’t be ridiculous. Nothing makes me nervous.”
“I think I’m making you nervous.”
“Wes…”
“We’re still different, you know. Nothing’s changed there.”
“Not that different, I’ve come to realize.”
“Different enough.”
“Let me show you we’re not, let me prove it.”
She looked so excited and nervous and terrified all at the same time, poor baby.
He knew just how she felt. He pulled her close again, trailed his mouth along her jaw, loving the feel of her body against his as they swayed together in the middle of his living room. “I should tell you…I work hard and play hard. I thought women were just a part of the play. They’re not. You’re not.”
“I know.”
“You work hard and play hard, too,” he said, and let that sink in.
They weren’t that different.
“Come see the rest of the house with me.” He showed her the kitchen, the deck…his bedroom.
She laughed at his unmade bed, then squealed when he scooped her up and tossed her onto it. Her cheeks were flushed, her eyes slumberous. Her long hair tumbled over her shoulders.
She looked so good in his bed, he planned on keeping her there a while.
A long while.
She came up to her knees in the middle of the mattress, looking right at home there. Kneeling on the bed with her, he cupped her face, kissed her jaw, her throat, nibbling at the corners of her mouth before he finally settled his lips over hers, scooping her closer, loving the feel of her warm curves against his body.
As he undressed her, he felt her pulse hammer beneath his fingertips. He intended to go slow, give as much pleasure as possible, but as he peeled off her clothes, exposing her body to his gaze, his own pulse hammered in his head.
So hot, so…his. Her body curled into him, her breasts and hips flush to his, moving, arching as the need built to unbearable heights.
Tugging his shirt free, she tossed it aside, then ran her hands over his chest and arms with a look of wonder on her face. “You’re so beautiful.” Then she shoved him to his back on the bed and pulled off his pants.
He’d barely taken a breath before she straddled him, wrapping her fingers around his erection, bringing him to her hot, wet—
“No,” he managed to say through his clenched jaw, and rolling, tucked her beneath him. “Not yet.”
Her hands, caught in his, flexed as she stared up at him. Not yet? What did he mean not yet? “Why not?”
“I told you. Long and slow and sweet. Or at least at a speed somewhere below wild and crazy. We’re going to make love, Kenna. Haven’t you ever made love before?”
Panic wove around her heart. “Wes—”
His tongue circled her nipple.
She nearly jerked out of her skin. “I don’t think—”
“Perfect,” he murmured. “Go with that.” Lifting up a fraction, he blew on her wet skin. She watched him watch her intently as the tip beaded tightly under his administrations. Then he drew her into his mouth, and she writhed against him, helpless, mindless against the onslaught of emotions.
“Easy,” he whispered, trailing his mouth over her quivering belly. “We have a long way to go.” His tongue dipped into her navel, then lower, until she felt his warm breath on the inside of her thigh.
“Wes—”
He kissed her, there. “Yum,” he said, and used his tongue.
She nearly shot off the bed, but he held her still beneath him, slowly, surely, purposely driving her out of her mind. Because he knew her, because she’d let him know her, he was able to torment her, for one long, humming moment holding her quivering and shuddering on the very edge.
“When…I can…breathe,” she panted. “I’m going to…so torture you back.”
He treated her to one perfect stroke of his tongue and sent her skittering into an earth-shattering climax. Surely such intensity, such unbelievable reverence and desperation had never existed before now. Her entire body shuddered and clutched, and finally, she felt his weight shift, felt him reach for a condom.
“Oh, no,” she managed, and flinging her hair from her damp face, sat up. “My turn.” She shoved him to his back, looking over his body, from his broad shoulders to his tough chest and flat belly…
To the part of him standing at attention. Needing attention. “Hmm. Look at that.”
“Kenna—”
“Shut up, Wes.” She took her time looking, then touching, then tasting…and only when the breath was sowing in and out of his lungs as if he’d run a marathon, when his body was gleaming, when he’d whispered her name over and over in a plea that made her wet all over again, did she sit back on her heels. “Yep, that should do it. We’re even.”
“Condom,” he begged, and reached for the night stand.
She helped him, then put her lips to his damp shoulder, surprised when he cupped her face for a sweet, tender kiss. “Now,” he said, and rolled her beneath him. “The slow, the tender. The gentle.” As he eased into her she was blown away by the sense of homecoming, a rightness, a joy that couldn’t be explained.
It was the most intimate thing she’d ever experienced. She stared at him, her anchor, her lifeline. He’d been right about one thing, this was more than that mindless sex she’d come for.
If that’s what she’d really come for.
He smiled as if he knew, as if that was okay with him even, and began to move, and she nearly died.
Definitely more than sex, but she had no idea what to do with that knowledge other than close her eyes and let it take her.
CHAPTER 19
KENNA WOKE UP to the early sun shining in her face. Squinting, she sat up and blinked.
She was naked, still in bed. But not hers.
The room was warm from the rays blaring in the window. The scent of the ocean wafted in, too, ruffling the gauzy curtains.
There were other sights. Three discarded condom packets on the nightstand. And Wes’s pillow, which she’d stolen, lay in her arms. Like a silly lovestruck teen, she smashed her face into it, inhaling deeply. She couldn’t wait to hold him again, couldn’t wait to look into his eyes and—
Hold it.
The scent of bacon and something cinnamony came to her then, and she lifted her face in time to see a shirtless Wes slipping back into the room, holding a tray. He wasn’t wearing his glasses, so he was giving her that adorable, sexy, squinty-eyed look that told her he was straining to see.
She was glad for the lack of glasses on his part, because it hit her right then, like a one-two punch.
She’d fallen all the way in love with him. Heart-pounding, pulse-drumming, howling-at-the-moon, crazy-about-him love.
Clearly mistaking her half awed, half horrified expression for lust, he grinned wickedly and set down the tray. “Hungry?”
“Um…yeah.” She put a hand to her belly, knowing it wasn’t hunger pangs making it quiver.
“You’re going to sidetrack me from my mission,” he said hoarsely, staring at her body as he put a knee on the bed.
; The top button of his jeans was undone, and feeling shameless, she reached for the others. So she’d fallen in love with him. So what? He didn’t have to love her back, not right now, not yet, not as long as he kept looking at her like that.
“Wait.” He put a hand over hers on his jeans.
He looked suddenly so nervous that she sat back. She would have reached for the sheet to cover herself, but he’d sat on it. “About last night,” he said.
Oh, no. Nothing good ever started that way. He was going to dump her. She tried to tug the sheet free, but Wes simply place a hand on either side of her hips and leaned over her. “Kenna—”
“I need my clothes.” They weren’t on the floor. She couldn’t be dumped while buck naked. “Wes, where are my clothes?”
“Yeah, about that, too. I’ve taken your clothes hostage.”
“This isn’t funny.”
“We’ll get to that. Kenna, you’re amazing. I want you to know that. You’re independent and smart and incredible under pressure. I love watching you work.”
She stopped craning her neck for sight of her clothes and went still. “This is about…work?” She wished he’d release the sheet because she was beginning to feel very, very naked here.
He laughed and shook his head. “Okay, no. You know what? Starting over now.” Reaching out, he drew a strand of her long hair through his fingers, smiling with a sort of soft tenderness that quite frankly stole her breath. “This is not about work. This is about what’s going on between us. I want it, Kenna. I want all of it. And I want it to be permanent.”
She forgot all about her missing clothes and stared up into his dark, dark eyes. “Did you just…in a very roundabout way…say you love me?”
“Yes.”
Her mouth went dry. Her heart, her poor confused heart, started a heavy, erratic beat. “Do you think you could say it again with the words this time?”
“Kenna.” He blew out a huff of air and hauled her up to her knees in the middle of the bed to face him. “I’m holding your clothes hostage in the same way you’re holding my heart. I’ve imagined falling in love before, it was always a sort of long-term thing, something for down the road. Far down the road.” He cupped her face. “But apparently, love isn’t something you plan for. I certainly didn’t plan this, but from the first moment I saw you—”
“Don’t you say you fell instantly for me,” she said, shaking her head, trying to back away. “I know I drove you crazy. There was nothing instantaneous about how you felt for me.”
“Oh yes,” he said with a ragged laugh. “Yes, there was. You drove me crazy, you might always drive me crazy—” He laughed again when she smacked his chest. “But God, Kenna, I’ve never felt like this for anyone, have never loved another so very much.”
It was hard to talk with her heart in her throat, but she managed. “How did I ever imagine I could walk away from you?” she wondered. “From this?”
“Walk away?” He looked startled. “You were going to walk away?”
“I didn’t know how, especially after I fell in love with you.”
“Okay, stop. I have to see for this.” He scrambled around on the nightstand for his glasses and jammed them on. “Say it again.”
“I thought it’d scare you off,” she whispered.
“Seeing?”
“No.” She laughed. “The words.”
“Hey, nothing scares me.” He rolled his eyes when she sent him a long look. “Okay, so it was a valid fear.” He put his forehead to hers. “I’m so sorry. You are going to marry me, aren’t you? Make me the luckiest man on earth?”
She pulled back. “Have you given thought to what you’d be marrying into? My father. My mother. Serena. The tortuous Monday-night family dinners—”
“I can deal with any of it, all of it.” He tugged her into his arms. “As long as you’re part of the package. Say you will.”
“I will. Oh, Wes, I so will.”
They sealed the vow with a long kiss, then Kenna pulled back and smiled. “Can I have my clothes, now?”
He ran his gaze over her and slowly shook his head. Then he tossed her back down, following her with his long, hard, powerful body. “Not…quite…yet.”
EPILOGUE
KENNA SAT in her new office in the Teen Zone. It was the same size as her Mallory Enterprises office had been, which meant barely big enough to breathe in, much less work in, but she loved it.
She was surrounded by stacks of paperwork, but she loved that, too. She knew what each stack needed, and what to do, and she was working her way through them.
With a grin on her face.
That was what happened when one finally got the right job, she supposed, you walked around with a stupid, goofy smile and drove people crazy because you were so ridiculously happy.
Lyssa poked her head in the door.
“Hey, there,” Kenna said.
“So you did it.” Lyssa’s eyes were shuttered with the anger-sadness-perpetual irritation of a teenager.
“Did what?”
“Finished the classes you needed to be a counselor here for real.”
Kenna tossed her pencil aside and leaned back. “Yep.”
“I suppose that’s why this came.” Lyssa straightened and brought her hands around to the front, hands that were filled with a bouquet of wildflowers. “From Wes. The card says he loves you. Yech.”
Kenna laughed. “Oh, love grosses you out, now?”
“It’s just that you’re soooo over the moon for him. I mean, it’s embarrassing. You’ve only been dating him for like—I don’t know.”
“Two years,” Kenna said.
Lyssa sniffed. “That’s not long enough to be so over the moon.”
Kenna laughed. “Two years is pretty long.”
“Is he really your Prince Charming?”
“Well, I hope so, since I’m marrying him this weekend.” Hard to believe but she, the unconventional, slightly erratic, definitely different Mallory was going to marry a suit—the cool, calm, boardroom man, Mr. Weston Roth.
She was really going to say “I do,” move into his little house on the beach…
And have wild, reckless sex whenever she wanted.
She couldn’t wait.
Serena had married Josh the year before and claimed marriage was better than anything she could imagine, even better than say…sex in a hot tub. And from Serena, that was quite an endorsement.
Not that Kenna trusted her cousin any more than she used to, but she was looking forward to proving that marriage was awesome all on her own.
“It’s not too late to back out, you know.”
Kenna laughed in shock. “Lyssa!”
“Kidding. I do like him, he’s cute.” The teen lifted a shoulder. “For an old guy, anyway.”
“He’s thirty-five.”
“Like I said, old.” Lyssa put the flowers on the one free corner of Kenna’s desk, then looked around the room with disdain. “My bedroom might actually be bigger than this. You should complain.”
“I like it.” She and Sarah had painted the room in a soft rose, trimmed it in white. There were pictures on the wall, one of her and Sarah covered in said rose paint, one of Sarah with a bunch of the kids, and one of Kenna, Wes and Josh.
That one was her favorite.
“So…” Lyssa nodded toward the complicated-looking forms in front of Kenna. “Whatcha doing?”
“Trying to get us a grant.”
“Why? Your dad is rich as God.”
“Lyssa.” She had to laugh. True to his word, her father had donated her Ferrari money, and with it, over the past two years, they’d spruced the place up and even added two full-time staff—herself included. “This one will get us enough money to get another Teen Zone across town.”
“Who cares about them?”
“I do,” Kenna said gently. “And Sarah does, and everyone who works here. We want as many kids as possible to get to come to a place like this—” She looked up and saw Wes standing in th
e doorway.
Her heart tipped on its side. Pathetic that it still did that, but she figured it boded well for the marriage.
And especially the honeymoon.
He gave her a slow smile that spread warmth through her body. “Ready?”
“For what?”
His smile widened to a naughty grin behind Lyssa’s back, and Kenna blushed.
Blushed.
“Um…yeah.” She stood. “We have to go….”
“Where?” Lyssa wanted to know, looking back and forth between them suspiciously. “Ah, man, you have that stupid grin on your face, too,” she said to Wes. “Jeez, I’m so outta here.”
When they were alone, Wes took Kenna’s hand and pulled her close for a hug.
“What are you doing here?” she asked.
“I needed to clear my head.”
“Uh-oh. Work driving you mad? Who is it, my father or Serena?”
“The thought of you, Mrs. Roth.”
“Hey, I’m not Mrs. Roth, yet.”
He pulled back and looked into her eyes. “Regrets?”
“Are you kidding? The only regret I have is not deciding sooner that you were worth my time.”
“Ah. Speaking of that, when did you decide?”
“I think it goes all the way back to when I pulled you into the pool.”
“Really, and why is that, almost-Mrs. Roth?”
“Because,” she said with a grin as she set her head on his shoulder, loving that he made her feel feminine just by holding her. “That’s when I saw you all wet and annoyed for the first time. You look good all wet and annoyed, Wes. You look real good.”
He laughed and hugged her tighter, and she felt at home in his arms as she’d never felt anywhere else. “I love what you’ve done here,” he said. “What you’ve done for the kids. And I also love—”
“What, this chartreuse-colored sundress?” With a smile, she pulled free and preened and danced in a little circle for him, knowing darn well one needed sunglasses just to look at her.
“Nope.” He smiled into her frown. “What I love is you, Kenna. Always you.”
* * * * *
SPECIAL EXCERPT FROM HARLEQUIN BLAZE
