Whatever that had to do with the price of horse poop. Sid took a bite of raisin bread lest she start shouting.
A long moment later, she tried for reason, despite the emotional nature of the conversation. “You can’t blame yourself for your dad’s death, Mac. He made choices, and he’s the one who took the risks that led to the accident.”
Mac set the rest of the raisin bread on the counter. Slowly, his arms came around her. “Where’s Luis, Sid? Inskip said the boy’s a natural on the loader.”
The subject was officially, if gently, changed. “He’s working at the riding stable until he has a lesson this afternoon. Left to his own devices, I think he’d live there.”
“And leave his girls?”
“Leave me, in any case. You should eat the rest of your raisin bread.” Sid slipped away from Mac before the lump in her throat overcame her composure, and why the hell was that?
“You have a hearing date for Luis yet?” Mac asked as he finished off the raisin bread.
“Soon.” Sid set the butter dish on the counter beside him. “I’m hoping it will be the same old, same old. We get more and more tense as the day approaches, and then it’s five minutes of nothing in the courtroom. His case plan remains return home or relative placement, and nothing changes.”
Mac slapped a fat dab of butter onto another slice of raisin bread. “How long has he been in foster care?”
“Better than two years.” Nearly three.
“His plan ought to be changing to adoption, Sid, or independent living.”
For a horseshoer, Mac knew a lot of what had been covered in foster parent training, but then, his sister-in-law was a former foster kid.
“Luis would go for independent living,” Sid said, “not for adoption. I’ve asked and asked until it feels like I’m torturing him.”
“He’s torturing you by saying no.” Mac held the bread out for her to take a bite. “You ever considered therapy with him?”
Good stuff, raisin bread, especially with butter. “No, because family therapy presupposes you’re both holding your own in individual therapy, or that you could. Luis hates talking about his situation.”
“It’s killing you that he won’t talk about it.”
The lump in her throat was becoming an obstruction, making it hard to breathe. “I mind more that he won’t tell me why he doesn’t want to be a family with me. But if I love him, then I respect his silences. He’s a kid doing the best he can.”
“Come here, Sidonie.”
She stopped wandering around the kitchen and tried to assess Mac’s mood, but as usual, he gave away little he didn’t want to give away.
“Why?”
“Just come here, stop thinking and fretting, doing whatever females do when you can’t clean or cook or fuss a problem into oblivion. Louie has a few things to work through. Give him time. He’ll come around.”
She took a step toward Mac, toward the low, soothing reason in his voice. She liked the way he Frenchified Luis’s name. Luis would like it too.
“Guys can be slow,” Mac went on, holding out his arm. “Be patient with us.”
Sid let his arms settle around her again. This embrace was different, more personal.
“James said you put him through his paces.” Mac’s hand began to move on her back in a caress already both dear and familiar. “He was bragging on you. Said you’re a damned Wharton MBA.”
“La-di-flippin’-damn-da.”
“You should be proud of yourself, Sid. We don’t see too many of those out this way.” His nose traced the curve of her ear, which tickled in odd places.
“Take me to bed, MacKenzie.”
“You’re saying that because you’re out of sorts, we have the house to ourselves, and you want comfort.”
She pulled back enough to glare up at him. “None of which outweighs the fact that I want you.”
“Ah, Sidonie.” He didn’t answer her in words, but started in kissing her. His mouth was a slow-moving force of nature over hers, warming her up from the inside, sending her blood singing through her veins, and bringing her to life in places low and lonely.
“Is that a yes? I’m in the mood for a yes, MacKenzie Knightley. A yes from you right this instant would be nice.”
“You don’t have to invite me into your bed twice. Just tell me you’re sure about this, Sid.” His lips brushed along her neck, pausing so a warm current of his breath caressed her throat.
“I’m damned sure, MacKenzie.”
He switched sides. “We need to talk.”
“Not here,” she said, pressing close. “Upstairs. My bed. Now. And economy of words is one of your best features, MacKenzie.”
He smiled slightly as she led him by the hand up the steps, and as they reached Sid’s bedroom, the first gusting patter of raindrops hit the roof.
“Perfect.” She bounced down on the bed, intent on shucking out of her socks. “I love a rainy day spent lazing in bed.”
“You think I’ll let you laze in bed with me, Sidonie?” His question held both humor and threat.
She liked the threat better. “You’ll need to catch your breath if we’re in this bed together for any length of time, buster. Pride goeth, and all that.” She stood to get out of her yoga pants and tried to think up something that would taunt him into a retort.
In the next instant, he was on her, and Sid was flat on her back across the bed, nearly six and a half feet of MacKenzie Knightley blanketing her body.
“I love it when you spout biblical allusions while you’re getting naked for me,” Mac growled.
He didn’t give her a chance to speak, but sealed his mouth to hers and kissed her breathless. Witless, mindless, breathless.
Kiss me hello, why dontcha?
“Don’t make promises you can’t keep, MacKenzie,” she managed when he let her up for air. “I want you.”
“You’ll have me.” But the damned man climbed off her, and Sid wanted to wail with the ache of his absence. She lay on the bed and watched as he undressed as if they had all the time in the world.
As if a woman wasn’t nigh panting with desire for him just a few feet away.
A woman who by rights ought to be getting naked herself.
Chapter 14
Mac undid his cuffs and pulled his shirt over his head. Worn denim this time, going frayed at the elbows and around the collar, but it fit him wonderfully. A T-shirt that looked so white it proved that, already, Mac Knightley had spent time outdoors shirtless in the sun. That belt of his, the one with the trick buckle, came off next. He piled his clothes on the chair at Sid’s desk. Hung the shirt over the chair back, then the T-shirt, then the belt.
“Like what you see, Sidonie?”
Loved what she saw. “Show me some more, and I’ll let you know.”
He sat on the bed next to her, and his running shoes hit the floor, then a pause. She expected him to stand and lose the jeans, but found him regarding her instead.
“Time to unwrap my present.” He put a hand on her belly. She felt the heat of his touch through the loose cotton top she’d put on first thing in the day, and with just that one hand, he held her motionless.
A small panic beat against her insides, right under that hand. This time there’d be no cell phones ringing, no horses getting loose, no interruptions—no escape. This time, Mac would be inside her, where she needed him to be.
This time, no hiding and no turning back.
“Last chance, Sidonie. Tell me you’re sure.”
He brushed his palm up over her ribs, pushing the fabric aside to expose her vulnerable belly—over the womb that would not conceive. Sid watched his face, mapped the intensity of his focus and saw utter commitment to his purpose.
“I’m sure, MacKenzie.” She covered his hand with her own, and when she let him go, Mac straightened, and the je
ans joined the clothes on her chair.
His endowments were in proportion to the rest of him, something Sid hadn’t noticed before quite the way she noticed it now.
“We’ll go slowly,” he said, putting a knee back on the bed. “Until we can’t go slowly anymore.”
Another threat, a wonderful threat, and a promise of more pleasure than Sid could withstand. Mac hooked his hands under her arms and hefted her back a couple of feet so she lay across the middle of the bed. When Sid didn’t move, but merely watched him to see what he’d do next, he smiled a slow, sweet, piratical smile and straddled her middle.
His erection was in her immediate line of sight, the washboard of his abs and the sinewy thickness of his thighs the backdrop. Surely the time to start back in with the kissing had arrived.
Mac scooted a few inches lower and grasped Sid’s wrists, spreading her arms to either side. She closed her eyes, the better to revel in his heat and weight, and his voice very near her ear.
“Will you be bossy now, Sidonie?”
She lifted her middle up to push into him.
“I’ll take that for a maybe.” Mac’s voice held a smile, and the idea that he was amused helped Sid find her courage. She arched up and found his mouth with her own.
She’d surprised him. He was still for an instant before he kissed her back, and when she wanted to pillage and plunder, he kept the pace slow. His grip on her wrists was as gentle as it was implacable, and his kisses held the same qualities: sweet, savoring, tender, but with more than a hint of command in them.
Sid turned her head to breathe, to admire the look of Mac’s clothes draped over her chair.
“Why should you get to be the boss, MacKenzie? There are two of us here in this bed.”
He shifted. He was so damned much bigger than Sid was that he could hold her wrists against the mattress and still curl down to get his teeth on her shirt. He nudged it up, inch by inch, using his mouth.
The fabric slid up her rib cage, then over the swell of her breasts. She’d owned the shirt for years—the next thing to a comfortable old rag—but it had never felt naughty against her skin before. He paused when another nudge and slide would have exposed her left nipple.
“I’m asking you to let me be the boss now, Sidonie, because you trust me to do this properly.”
He’d said the one right thing, the words that made all the difference. She allowed him to call the shots, and he knew it, and he made sure she knew he knew it. Mac didn’t want to get this wrong, in other words, and needed permission to find his way to their way.
“I do trust you,” Sid said, “and you will, do it properly that is.”
“Every. Time.” He let her hands go and slid her shirt up those last two inches, exposing both breasts, then sat back and simply stared. “You are so damned pretty. I’m intoxicated looking at you, Sidonie.”
Not drunk, intoxicated. Oh, yes, he was going about loving her properly.
A touch of anxiety laced through Sid’s anticipation. Properly was a heady proposition for a lady who’d lectured herself for years about life on the shelf not being all that bad.
Mac folded down and rested his cheek on the slope of her breast. “The scent of you, Sidonie…” He inhaled through his nose and exhaled a moment later, a warm, sighing-out breath.
Had any other man taken the time to savor the scent of her? Sid brought her hands up, abruptly near tears, and buried her fingers in Mac’s hair. She held him like that, his cheek against her breast, feeling protective and vulnerable and aroused all at once.
He crouched up and caged her with his body. “Stay with me, Sidonie. There are two of us here in this bed, you know.”
She slid her arms around him. “Kiss me, MacKenzie. Please.”
She thought maybe he’d tease and argue with her, but he only studied her for a moment before slipping one hand around to cradle her head in his palm.
By virtue of his hand, his long limbs, and his weight, he held her still, but Sid was kept busy focusing on his kisses, on the delicate invitation of his tongue, on how he welcomed her into his mouth, into his loving. He moved away, but only far enough to run his nose up the column of her throat, then return to join their lips.
And gradually, Mac’s lack of hurry, his due and deliberate pace, communicated itself to Sid. She’d braced herself to be ravished—and she had every confidence she would be, thoroughly—but she had no defenses whatsoever against being cherished.
* * *
Mac was the starving man at a banquet, and this time, the place of honor had been reserved for him.
The whole banquet was his, in fact, which made him only that much more determined to lay everything he had, everything he was, at Sidonie’s feet. He could come simply from kissing her, and briefly considered letting himself do that—to take off a little of the pressure, or maybe take it off, only to increase it all the more.
Sid was moving against him, arching into him in a slow, seeking rhythm he doubted she was even aware of.
Mac was aware of it, by God. Aware that the only thing between the woman beneath him and one glorious, joining thrust was the soft material of her yoga pants and his own self-discipline.
“MacKenzie.” She cradled his jaw against her palm and hid her face against his throat. “You’re scaring me. Stop thinking.”
Mac was respectful of the challenge ahead of them, but scared wasn’t on the agenda. He rolled them, so Sid was on top. “Better?”
“Not that kind of scared.” She straddled him, intimately, no hesitation about matching up the parts that wanted to match up most. In her gaze he saw uncertainty, but he prayed there was no real trepidation.
“Tell me what kind of scared, Sidonie. We have all day.” He let his fingers run along the undersides of her breasts, couldn’t stop himself from touching her.
“I’ll… You’ll… This isn’t just a hookup.”
“Of course it isn’t. You deserve more than that, and you know it now.” He closed a thumb and forefinger around one nipple, and her eyelids went to half-mast. “You have more than that to give.”
She would give it to him. He tugged on her breast gently; her eyes closed, and her shoulders dropped.
“Do that again, please.”
He did, both breasts, and spent long, happy minutes pleasuring her with only his hands on her breasts. A light touch of the fingers, a caress with his palm, a delicate brush over the ruched flesh of her nipples, and she was swaying into his hands, her body humming with what he could give her.
Whatever else Sid was, she was not scared. Not scared anymore. Her body knew better, and as for her heart, Mac could hardly blame her. He slid his hands lower, down rib by rib, to play around her navel, then to trace the bones at the crests of her hips.
“Eyes closed, Sidonie. See with your body.” The way he was seeing with his hands. The feel of her skin was incredible. Soft, warm, pliant, and alive. She had freckles sprinkled across her chest and down her arms, but not on her breasts, not on her flat belly. He untied the drawstring of her pants, the line about packages tied up with string flitting through his mind.
A favorite thing, indeed.
He watched her face as he stroked his thumbs over the fabric where reddish-blond curls hid. She arched forward, her expression that of a woman listening intently to a faint, sweet melody on a soft, warm breeze.
“Relax, Sidonie. I’m not even touching you.”
Ah, but Mac was moving her. He could tell that from the tension in her neck, the lift of her chin that had her hair falling down her back to brush his thighs.
He’d walked into her yard this morning, aware only of the need to be with her, to assure himself she was hale and happy. He hadn’t called—what if she’d said it wasn’t a good time for him to come by?
But she’d been waiting on the same porch where he’d shelled endless gallons of peas, shuck
ed bushels of sweet corn, snipped acres of beans, and read entire libraries of police procedurals.
Her hair had been loose for once, no bra, just two pieces of black cotton fabric covering her on a cool, overcast Sunday morning.
She’d looked adorable, sitting on her swing, money jar at her elbow, the classifieds spread in her lap. Sidonie in her own element was sweet, dear, and precious, but also, to Mac’s starved body and lonely eye, hot.
Through the cotton of her yoga pants, he used his thumb to start a slow, rhythmic pressure against the seat of her pleasure.
“MacKenzie.” A little surprise in her voice, some relief too. She kept her eyes closed, but grabbed his free hand and placed it over her breast. He didn’t oblige her immediately, but instead enjoyed the weight and heft of one rosy, perfect breast against his palm.
“Damn you.” She covered his hand with her own, and closed his fingers around her nipple.
“Greedy, Sidonie. I like it when you’re greedy.” He gave her a small pressure, and her hips rolled forward against his thumb. Greedy and hungry, both.
He made a study of her, increasing pace and pressure, only to back off and urge her within kissing range with a hand at her nape. When she was kissing him back enthusiastically, he’d drift his mouth down to close it over a tight nipple, all the while aware of her rocking herself against his touch.
She was growing damp and her breathing was deeper. Mac was damned near throbbing with a want he fully intended to satisfy, but not until he’d taken the best care of his lady that discipline, imagination, and manual dexterity allowed.
He eased his hand away from her breast, and again intensified both the pressure and the speed of his thumb.
“This time, you let go for me, Sidonie. For both of us.”
She made a sound of want and wonder, rocking harder against his hand.
Kiss Me Hello (Sweetest Kisses) Page 23
