He came to stand beside her. “Any interesting games?”
“A game of Candyland much the worse for wear, a box of dominoes with only six dominoes in it. Oh, and Scrabble.”
“I’ll challenge you to a game of Scrabble. Loser has to sweep the floor.”
She thought about it. “That’s fair,” she agreed finally.
They settled down on the couch with the Scrabble board between them, illuminated only by the dim wavering light from the hurricane lamp nearby. Outside, the wind rattled the windows. Waves repeatedly battered the pilings beneath them, and every once in a while, the house would draw itself up, suck in its breath, and give a little shudder.
Karma ignored the weather as much as she could and studied the letters in her rack before slapping down the word EAST. Slade promptly added the letters B and R to the beginning of it, making it BREAST.
She raised her eyebrows.
“It’s a word, right? It’s legal, right?” His expression was one of mild amusement.
“Uh-huh,” she had to admit, and she added an E and an A downward from the T to make the word TEA.
“Oh, this one’s easy,” Slade told her. He added a T to the end of T to make the word TEAT, looking up at her afterward with an air of studied innocence.
“Slade,” she said, suspecting that it wasn’t by accident that his two words so far had sexual connotations.
“I know what you’re going to say, but keep in mind that I’m a cattleman and that cows have udders.”
This was too much, and she wasn’t about to let him get away with it. “I’m pretty sure that the Diamond B has beef cattle, not dairy cattle. Your experience with udders is probably nonexistent.”
“Udderly true,” he said with a straight face. “And besides, it’s your moo-ve.”
It was all she could do not to throw a couch pillow at him. Instead she slapped down an O, an S, and another S next to the last T in TEAT, creating the word TOSS, which was what she would do at this point to get rid of him if she could.
He got it. She thought he might comment, but he didn’t. Instead he made good use of the last S and arranged a K, and I, and another S above it, making the word KISS.
“Which,” he said softly and with the enterprising look that she was coming to know so well, “wouldn’t be a bad idea.”
Ignoring the tingle that rose from somewhere she’d rather not think about at the moment, Karma made a show of arranging her letters on her rack. “You agreed to no funny business,” she reminded him.
“That was when all we were talking about was taking your aunt’s ashes out to sea. That was before getting caught in the storm and washing up in this extremely cozy little place far away from the rest of the world. It was before survival became an issue.”
“It’s not an issue. We’re going to be fine.” The word thrummed in her ears like a heartbeat—fine, fine, fine. But were they? Was she?
“Of course we are. But in the meantime—”
Without hesitating, Karma plunked down a T and an O and a P after the second S in KISS. This created the word STOP. “Which means the game is over,” she said, springing up and dumping the board and its contents into its box.
But it wasn’t, and she knew it.
“Does this mean that you sweep? Or do I?”
“I’ll do it.” Karma went to the closet and hauled out a broom, which she proceeded to wield with great efficiency. Slade forced himself to remain silent as he sorted out the board, racks and letter tiles.
When he straightened from putting the Scrabble game back on its shelf, Karma was spreading a large beach towel on the floor.
“What’s that for?” he asked.
“I could use some calm and lucidity,” she said. She sat down on the towel and crossed her legs in a position that he recognized as the Half-Lotus, eyes closed, hands placed palms up on her knees.
“Guess I’ll try some of that too,” he said. He went in the bedroom, found a towel in the old trunk, and spread it out near hers. “There’s nothing,” he said, “that I need so much as some freeing up.”
She opened one eye. “It seems to me,” she said, “that you’re getting much too freed up as it is.”
“I don’t understand why, if I’m good enough for those clients of yours, I’m not good enough for you.”
She opened the other eye. “I didn’t say you’re not good enough for me. I want to protect our matchmaker-client relationship, that’s all.”
Slade settled himself on the towel. “What if I told you that’s not important anymore?”
The light from the lamp flickered across her face, gilding it with light. “We have a contract. I’m supposed to find you a wife.”
“What if I told you—”
“Please, Slade. Don’t tell me anything. I’m not in the mood to hear it.”
“Even if I said you have some of the prettiest hair I’ve ever seen? If I told you that your figure really turns me on?” From this angle, the shorts gave him a view up the inside of her thigh. He tried not to look, but he was, after all, a normal guy. She wasn’t wearing panties; apparently she hadn’t found any dry ones in the trunk.
Karma seemed to be ignoring what he’d said. He knew she’d heard him, however. How could she not? They were only three feet apart. He could have reached over with his hand and flicked a bit of lint off her tank top. He wondered if he dared to hope she’d do another backbend today.
Reluctant to push her too far, he tried to concentrate on his own Half-Lotus position. That only brought to mind his extreme discomfort—his hips ached and his knees hurt, for starters, and on top of that, the foot that was angled across his thigh had gone to sleep. At the point when he was ready to shout for mercy, Karma rose fluidly to her feet.
“Now what?”
“Now a few Sunrise Salutations. You can follow along with me if you like,” she said. She lifted her arms up high so that her nipples stood out against the jersey, and then she bent backward as Slade contended with another stiffness, this one in a place that could cause serious embarrassment for him if she noticed.
While he struggled to subdue his errant anatomy, Karma bent and planted her hands on the floor on either side of her feet (which meant that he had a great view up the back of her shorts), shot one foot and then the other out behind her (so that her breasts hung downward, looking lush and full), and then gracefully angled up, chest out, buttocks down (so that he could imagine other uses for this particular position).
“Remember? We did this in class.”
“Uh—yeah. Sort of.” In class he hadn’t been able to observe Karma this closely as she went through the motions of the Sunrise Salutation, and now, watching her buttocks rise high in the air as she assumed the position called Downward-Facing Dog, he swallowed hard. With Karma’s derriere propped so enticingly in the air in front of him, he could think of a lot of things he’d rather be doing right now than yoga.
“And that’s all there is to it,” she said when she had finished. “Now you try it.”
His desire for her had settled into an ache in his belly, difficult to ignore with her standing so close and looking so fetching. He could see, however, that she wouldn’t take no for an answer.
He positioned himself with his hands pressed together in front of his chest in the Prayer Position, feeling stupider by the second. No self-respecting cowboy would be doing something called the Sunrise Salutation. No rancher had any business doing yoga. He wasn’t comfortable with New Age stuff, and he opened his mouth to tell her so.
Then he realized that she was prepared to do this right alongside him, and for the life of him, he couldn’t summon the wish to make her stop. He wanted to see her go through the whole thing from Prayer Position to Downward-Facing Dog to the conclusion of the exercises, to watch every sensual move as her body so effortlessly flowed from pose to pose. To imagine how her body would move against him if they were—
“Ready?”
He nodded and thought how good they would be together
. How utterly and completely in tune they would be physically. He knew she was keeping the skill level moderate for him as they progressed through the yoga sequence, that she deliberately held herself back to accommodate his slower pace. Which is what he would do if they were in bed together. He would take his time, savoring it, letting her learn about him as he learned about her, and he would make sure she found her pleasure before he took his.
“No, no, no,” she said, scrambling up when they were side by side in Plank Position, bodies perpendicular to the floor, feet supported on toes, arms straight down, hands with fingertips spread on the wooden floor. “You’re sagging in the middle.”
She bent and reached under his torso to tap him on the belly. “This is supposed to lift up, and it’s right above your second chakra. You won’t be getting the full benefits of the pose if you don’t do it right.”
The touch of her hand was what did him in. He felt so attuned to her, so ready to emote, that to his horror his stomach sagged, his toes curled, and his elbows relaxed. He felt as if he were watching from a long way away as his hands slipped, flew out from under him, and he fell.
Down he went, taking her with him, landing on top of her with a gentle “Umph!”
Well, not on top of her, exactly. On top of her arm. He turned his head so that he could look full into her face. She made no attempt to move, only stared deep into his eyes. She looked startled. Bewildered. And, to his amazement, overcome with—lust?
While he was registering the heretofore unlikely possibility that Karma might actually be as hot for him as he was for her, he also dealt with the fact that the fall had knocked nearly all the air out of him. He gulped a couple of gasping breaths to refill his lungs.
“Are you—are you okay?” he stammered when he could finally speak.
“I don’t know,” Karma replied softly. “I seem to have found new benefits to that pose.” She had made no attempt to reclaim her arm, no move to put distance between the two of them.
“You—have?”
Solemnly she nodded. He didn’t want to move himself off her arm. He liked it where it was. But he rolled over on his side, never taking his eyes from her face.
“Karma,” was all he could say, the only word in his vocabulary, the only thought in his mind. “Karma.” He reached out and brushed his fingertips along the curve of her cheek.
He saw her swallow. She was so close that he could see that the tips of her eyelashes were golden, so close that he could smell the scent of her sea-washed hair.
“We shouldn’t—” she began, but he didn’t want to hear it. And so he did the only thing he could do to stop her. He lowered his mouth over hers and gathered her into his arms.
His skin warmed to hers, his arms molded her to his body, and he was gratified by her quick intake of breath and the tremor that followed it. Right, this is right, he thought to himself, glorying in all the long length of her as he guided her hips closer to his. The texture of her mouth was soft and smooth, her lips full and silky against his. Outside a roll of thunder shook the little stilt house on its pilings, but it was a mere echo of the thunder pounding in his own blood.
“You can tell me to stop,” he said roughly, “if you want to.”
“This isn’t—one of—the standard yoga postures,” she said between nibbles on his lower lip. Her voice was low and laced with the slightest hint of huskiness.
“Thank goodness for that,” he said, because now all he felt was pleasure from his head to his toes.
He was surprised to feel her lips curving beneath his, and then she laughed. He had never heard a more welcome sound.
He laughed, too, from pure enjoyment, and as he moved to hold her even closer, she said, “Maybe we’ll invent some new postures, what do you think?”
“I think,” he said unevenly, “that sounds like a real good idea.”
6
NEW POSES ELUDED HIM, however, as his fingertips feathered up her back to tangle in her hair and his mouth sought out all the places he had dreamed of kissing since the moment he realized that he was attracted to her. Her nape, her earlobe, the hollow of her throat, the other earlobe—warm and salty to the taste, all of them.
Karma was definitely the more experimental one. She was as curious about his body as he was about hers, and she was definitely not the type who laid back and let the man do all the work. She kissed his eyebrows, his nose, ran her hands along the muscles in his back and tunneled her fingers through the hair on his chest. She bit his neck and laughed when he was startled.
“Let’s call that position Bug Looking For Bites,” she said as she rolled over on her back and pulled him on top of her.
“Only if we call this one Dog Lying On Treats,” he told her, and was pleased when she laughed.
“Once you get started, are you always this eager?” he asked playfully, staring down at her.
Her eyes became serious, her expression somber. “No,” she said. “No, Slade, I’m not.”
He would have liked an explanation, but he didn’t want to talk. Instead he crushed his mouth down upon hers, their lips fusing until he felt her tongue unfurling against his. He didn’t know when he had ever known a woman to take the lead as Karma did. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he filed away the thought that this wasn’t merely biology—two people mating. It was chemistry—two people so attuned to each other that their mating promised complete gratification. That wasn’t something he had expected. But it was something that he wanted. Oh, yes, he wanted this to be more, to be everything, to be all.
He wanted this to be love.
But how could he think about that now? With Karma touching him, teasing him, smiling at him in that tremulous way? Shaken by the depth of his feeling for her, he bent and kissed her nipple, which was pebble-hard beneath the thin jersey of the top she wore. If she had objected, he would have stopped, but instead she guided his mouth to her other breast, raking her fingers through his hair and making a sound deep in her throat that let him know that he was doing this right.
He slid his hand up under the jersey and trailed his fingertips along the bottom curve of her breast. Her eyes opened wide, and he said, “Do you like this?”
“How could I not?” was her reply. His eyes never leaving hers, he pushed the fabric up and out of the way so that both breasts were exposed to view. They were pale in the dim light, the nipples long and rosy.
He jolted back to reality. “I don’t have any protection. I didn’t expect this.”
“It’s okay. I won’t get pregnant. I take birth control pills. Not because I need them for—well, you know. I haven’t had a boyfriend in a long time. I kept taking them for my complexion.”
“I’m glad you did,” he said. He reached for her again.
“Wait,” she said, and he moved to one side, propping himself on his elbow as he watched her slide the shirt over her head in one lithe movement and toss it to one side.
He reached out to cup one breast in his hand, his thumb rolling upward to tease the nipple. “You have,” he said unsteadily, “the most beautiful breasts I have ever seen.”
“Doubtful,” she said, looking down at herself, and at the expression on her face, all he could do was pull her into his arms.
“I’m being honest. I wouldn’t tell you that if it weren’t true.”
“They’re too small,” she murmured as he took one nipple into his mouth and explored it with his tongue and teeth. She closed her eyes and braced her hands against her shoulders.
“Not too small,” he said. “And the perfect shape. Let’s stop talking and enjoy. And lean forward.”
She did, and he filled his hand with one breast while kissing the other, pulling her over him. It seemed that his senses were full of her—touching, tasting, smelling, seeing—and he was glad that she wasn’t that tiny delicate woman he had come to Miami Beach to find. No, he liked Karma, and he liked her the way she was—a woman he could sink into, a woman who could match him length to length, a woman like no other he had
ever known.
A woman with a desire as strong as his if her present occupation was anything to judge by, because she was pulling the waistband of his shorts down.
“Boxers,” she said.
He thought he hadn’t heard her correctly. “What?”
“You wear boxers, not briefs. White silk. And the pattern’s kind of cute.”
His lips twitched. “That’s our black Diamond B Ranch brand. My father once ordered several dozen pairs of boxer shorts with our brand and handed them out to every guy who works at the ranch.”
She smiled. “You’ve got to be kidding.”
“Nope. You’d have to know my father. He has a sense of humor. But I admit that I like silk underwear.”
“It’s very sexy,” she said.
“I’ll pass that information along to our ranch hands,” he said with a grin.
Speaking of hands, he wanted Karma’s to be caressing something more relevant than the silk of his boxers. He slid quickly out of them, shoving them aside as her hands closed around him. Her fingers were cool against his heat, calm against his urgency.
“We could move into the bedroom,” she suggested, her words all breathy and rushed.
No, they couldn’t. Not with her hands working their magic on him, not with her body so eager to be explored. Even one minute apart from her, even one second, would be too long. For an answer, he tugged a pillow off the couch and positioned it under her head. “Later,” he said.
“Well, then,” she said, and before he knew it, she had slid out of her own shorts. He couldn’t speak, he was so moved by her beauty. Her skin was creamy and white where her bikini had protected it from the sun. The small trim triangle of hair at the apex of her thighs was pale and soft, and when he was touching her there, he felt her frisson of anticipation, her eagerness that he would bet was every bit as strong as his.
“I would never have guessed that you were a highly sexed woman,” he said. “I wouldn’t have known from the way you acted.”
“Maybe that’s why I acted that way,” she said softly. “Maybe I knew that there would be no turning back.”
Life Is A Beach / A Real-thing Fling Page 10
