"Gee, it's windy out here." The light breeze had died to waiting stillness. "Guess I need something to hold my hair down." She pulled the cap from the back of her shorts where she'd stuck it while Matt was taking his shower. Bunching her hair on top of her head, she pulled the cap over it. "There."
Matt straightened away from the car, his gaze narrowed on the red cap. "That's my lucky cap. I won every game I played when I wore that cap. You kept it all these years?"
"Well, if you can keep old stuffed cats, then I can keep lucky caps." She knew her smile was shaky. "Will it help me win any games?"
"Absolutely." He wasn't smiling at all. "But we're not playing games tonight, so you may as well take it off."
"Make me." The old childhood dare came easily.
She didn't wait for him to come to her, but sauntered the few feet that brought her face-to-face with him. "Make me feel, Matt. Make me feel everything."
"Everything? Any time limit on this?"
"Guess we should be out of here by sunrise." How about the rest of my life?
He frowned. "Only eight hours. That'll be pushing it." He reached for her blouse. "Better get started."
She shook her head. "Uh-uh. Only the hard-to-reach spots. I'll do the rest." He'd tortured her with his body for two weeks. It was payback time.
Slowly, carefully, never taking her attention from her task, she unbuttoned her blouse, then slid it off and dropped it to the sand. She glanced up.
"A white bra. I have a thing about white bras and hot women." His gaze was Texas heat, naked want, and something deeper. Something that quickened her heartbeat, her breathing.
A wicked grin played across those tempting lips, and his eyes glittered with amusement. "I was wrong. Games can be fun." Holding her gaze, he unbuttoned his shirt, stripped it off, and dropped it on top of her blouse.
His broad expanse of tanned chest was covered with a thin sheen of sweat in the still-humid Galveston night. The scent of hot male and desire made her want to bury her face against him, feel his smooth flesh, the hair-roughened areas, his texture.
Instead, she turned her back to him. "Hard-to-reach area."
He fumbled at the clasp of her bra, and she thought she'd scream with her need to be free of the cloth, free to feel her breasts pressed against his bare body.
The bra finally fell from her, and he dropped it onto his shirt.
She started to turn into his embrace, but he stopped her. Wrapping his arms around her, he pulled her back against him. She felt the pull of his muscles, the rise and fall of his chest. She felt protected, as she'd always felt protected when he was near.
"Matt, remember the storm that caught us here on my sixteenth birthday? The wind, the lightning? Storms always scared me." He'd held her then, wrapping his body around hers, keeping her safe.
"Then maybe you need to be scared now."
His husky warning vibrated through her.
"Scared isn't always bad, Davis."
"Hmm."
His breath fanned her neck, and she gasped as he gently kissed the base of her neck behind her ear.
"Hey, I'm up for some dangerous living if you are, sweetheart."
Cupping her breasts in his hands, he ran rough thumbs over her sensitive nipples, and she caught her breath on the bare-nerve pleasure of his touch. "Don't distract me, Davis. I'm not finished." Distract me, distract me.
"We won't be finished for a long time." He ran his tongue down the side of her neck. "Any more hard-to-reach areas?"
She shivered at the warm slide of his tongue. "You'll be the first to know." Undoing her shorts, she wiggled her hips as she began to pull them down, felt the rub of her behind against the rock-hard erection beneath his jeans, gloried in his low moan.
"Sweetheart, do that again and you'll think fourteen years ago was extended foreplay." He moved his hands down her bare sides and grasped the top of her shorts, which now rode low on her hips. "I'd better take your shorts the rest of the way."
She nodded. A wasted motion. His attention was elsewhere. So was hers. It was on the scrape of his fingers down the length of her legs, the realization that he'd pulled her panties down along with her shorts. "A no-wasted-motion kinda guy, huh?"
"Damn straight."
She shivered at the warm breath of his laughter, then the brush of his lips across the exposed hollow at the base of her spine. She stepped out of her sandals, then kicked her shorts and panties onto the growing pile of clothes.
"That's all there is. Your turn now."
"Hey, slow and easy. Enjoy the journey, sweetheart."
"Look who's talking, Mr. Everready." She held her breath as his tongue trailed a searing path up her spine; then she exhaled sharply as he turned her to face him.
"Right. And I never run down because I only turn my light on for special occasions." He circled her nipple with the tip of his finger. "Umm, I have a hard-to-reach area. Think you can help?"
"Where? Where? Tell me." Just point the way and turn me loose.
"My arms don't want to do much bending. Can't reach my jeans. Tennis elbow, I think." He leaned over and took her nipple into his mouth— moist, hot.
She fought to remain coherent. "You play tennis?" Mistake. He'd have to abandon her nipple to answer.
He straightened, then grinned. "No. But the kid next door keeps serving his tennis ball onto my porch. Have to keep throwing it back to him. Stiffens the old elbows right up."
"Makes sense to me." She reached for the snap on his jeans with fingers that shook.
He sucked in his breath as she rubbed her knuckles across his stomach, but she somehow managed the snap, then slowly eased his zipper down. As the material parted and she started to slide the jeans down over his hips, her fingers froze.
No underwear. Just hard, aroused male. Licking suddenly dry lips, she reached out, touching the warm, exposed flesh of his lower stomach. "Briefs?" She'd reverted to her one-word vocabulary.
"Nope." He sounded as though he'd just finished a long race. "When Francois totaled my car, I threw on my jeans and shirt. Didn't have time for much else."
"Oh." She skimmed her fingers over the area in question. Much lower. Just to make sure. Yep, still bare.
"Damn it to hell, woman. You're killing me."
His explosive outburst made her blink, but little else. She was still mesmerized by his size, his length, his growth rate. Sure, she'd seen him in the kitchen, but out here, with only the sand and surf, he took on a primitive quality that excited her, made her want to wrap her fingers around…
When she didn't respond, he uttered a low growl, then stripped his jeans off and flung them to the ground. "Okay, now invite me into the damned car."
"Why?"
"Just do it!"
"Is this like a vampire thing? You can't get into your car unless I invite you in?" Her babbling did serve a purpose. It gave her time to adjust her breathing, slow her heart rate, come to terms with the sheer presence of Matt Davis and the things he could make her feel with merely the touch of his finger.
"Funny, Hawkins." He raked his fingers through his hair and she watched it fall in a dark curtain across his bare shoulders.
"Fine. You want the truth? You have to invite me this time. It's your night, and this time around you make the decision."
"Really? My decision?" The moonlight bathed his hard-muscled body in a cool glow, but the glow spreading in her heart had the sun's heat at its center. "Consider yourself invited."
She slipped around him, pulled open the back door, then slid inside. "Wow, Matt. I'd forgotten. You could have dinner for twenty in here." Glancing up, she found he hadn't followed her, but had leaned into the front seat and was fumbling with his tape player. "What're you—"
Suddenly music filled the car. Even turned low, she recognized it. "I can't believe it. 'Don't You Want Me.' I haven't heard that in fourteen—"
He slipped into the backseat, and she forgot the rest of her sentence. The area she'd thought spacious a minute ago now see
med full. Memories, emotions, and sexual tension jostled for position.
"Yeah. I've carried that tape around for almost three years." Even in the darkness, she could see his flush. "I mean, you know, the song has memories."
Her heart melted. Okay, so it was a cliché and hearts couldn't melt. But hers sure felt like it. She knew if she glanced down at the floor, she'd see it lying there, beating in time to the words throbbing in her mind. I love you.
"Right. Memories." Why hadn't she realized it sooner? Matt was the only man she'd ever wanted with a need that was almost pain. She'd tried to make excuses, explain her desire away, but her heart had always known.
"Come here, Matt." She beckoned him to her. Fourteen years ago he'd made love to an immature teen. Tonight he'd make love with a woman. His woman, even if he didn't realize it yet.
She'd propped herself in the corner of the seat, and he moved over her, pulling her down flat. "Are you inviting me in, sweetheart?"
"Hmm." Reaching up, she touched one flat male nipple, then rose to slide her tongue across it. She marveled at his shudder, her power to touch him with such a small gesture, his power to touch her.
"I'm inviting you in. Here." Slowly, watching his gaze follow her, she slid her fingers between her legs. Felt the moisture, the heat, her readiness.
His groan followed him down as he covered her mouth with his. She opened her mouth to him, welcomed his hot need, met it with her own.
Skimming her hands down his sweat-dampened back, she grasped his buttocks, gloried in the clenched tension of his muscles, the soft moan against her lips.
"Touch me, Ann. Everywhere. Feel my need, my love." He trailed kisses over her jaw and down the side of her neck.
He'd said something important. She knew it. But she couldn't concentrate, couldn't think. And when he took her nipple into his mouth, rolled his tongue over it, then nipped gently, she thought she'd scream with raw sensation.
When he abandoned her nipple, she tried to pull his head down to her again, but he resisted. Damn it, this was her night and her decision, so…
The metaphorical lightbulb went on. No, this was their night. The joy, the pleasure, only came when they shared it.
"Isn't it time to take off your hat and stay a while?" His husky murmur fanned her heated flesh.
"I suppose so, but Mama always said a lady should leave something to a man's imagination." She offered him an exaggerated pout.
"Oh, I've imagined things you couldn't dream of. Time to let down your hair, woman." He pulled off her cap, and her hair tumbled around her shoulders.
He sailed the cap out the open window, then looked down at her with eyes that shone with passion, want, and, yes, love.
Her joy index shot off the scale. "Where were we, hmm?"
"I know where I was." He slid down her body, and her sensitized skin registered smooth flesh and the hard ridge of his erection.
Instinctively she spread her legs, wanting him inside her. Now. And she didn't give a damn whether it had been three minutes or three hours. For the first time, she sympathized with Matt's need fourteen years ago. "Please…"
"Soon, sweetheart, soon." His promise trailed down her leg just before he kissed her toe. "Pink toenails. I love pink toenails."
She groaned. "Great. A man with a fetish."
He kissed her ankle. "Uh-uh. I have a higher interest."
He kissed a path up her leg, and when he slid his tongue along the inside of her thigh, she clutched convulsively at his shoulders, felt his muscles bunch beneath her fingers.
She waited breathlessly for what was coming. Knowing, wanting so badly that tears slid down her cheeks.
He touched her with his mouth. She cried out at the exquisite sensation as his tongue found and stroked the swollen nub that would send her into uncontrolled spasms.
No. Not without him. Grasping his hair, she pulled, forcing him up until he towered over her, his breath coming in hard gasps. Reaching between their bodies, she cupped him, letting the weight of him, the realness, flow through her. Then she ran her fingers along the length of his arousal, finally closing her hand around him, tightening her grip, feeling the throb of his life force, his groan of pleasure-agony.
"I can't wait, love." Each word was a tortured gasp. "I wanted it to be long and sweet, but I need you too much."
For just a moment, time froze as she looked up at her first love, her last love. "I love you, Matt Davis, and I want you inside me so deep I'll never lose you. Long and sweet can wait for next time when I can taste you, put my lips around you and—"
He stopped her litany of "next time" with a kiss, and when he nudged her thighs farther apart, then plunged deep within her, she rose to meet him with a primal cry of joy, forever wiping out memories before this moment.
She grasped his buttocks, pulling him deeper inside her until each stroke seemed to touch her heart. His motion was the rhythm of the sea, each plunge flinging her to the crest of higher and higher waves until she touched the stars, the heat and sizzle of exploding universes. She cried her wonder and heard his hoarse echo of her cry.
And when she finally lay exhausted and overwhelmed with the pure wonder of what they'd experienced, he tucked a strand of her damp hair behind her ear and leaned close. "I love you, Ann Hawkins. I've loved you since I was six years old, and that's a long time to keep a man waiting. Marry me so we can cook up trouble for the next fifty years or so."
"Sounds like a winning recipe to me." She paused, listening. "Three minutes and fifty seconds."
"What?"
He nuzzled the side of her neck, and she inhaled the scent of salt air and satisfied male. "The song. 'Don't You Want Me. ' It lasts three minutes and fifty seconds. This time the song finished before we did."
His muffled laughter was warm against her neck. "Barely, sweetheart. Barely."
"Hmm." She stroked the side of his face, reveling in the prickly male-in-the-morning feel of his jaw.
"Now what're you thinking about?"
He slid his palm the length of her thigh, and body parts lazy with repletion started to perk up.
"Our wedding." Leaning up on one elbow, she studied him. "I'm thinking about the cake. I don't want a white cake. Too ordinary. I have a wonderful idea for a chocolate cake, rich and sensual. I think I'll call it…"
"Hmm?" He'd transferred his attention to her breasts, and her body began tuning up for another burst of music.
She smiled. "I think I'll call it Sweet Redemption."
Epilogue
Ann woke to tangled sheets, warm male, and a pile of empty Chocolate Delights packets that should send the company's stock skyrocketing.
Sighing, she cuddled closer to Matt and stared out the window at waves rolling in off the Gulf. In the distance, a shrimp boat rose and fell with the swells.
"Awake, princess?" His husky morning voice flowed over her.
"Princess? Wow, a title upgrade. Do I get a raise?"
"Uh-uh. You get me."
Literally, if the growing pressure against her hip was any indication. Enjoying her newfound freedom to explore his body, she slid her fingers along his bare thigh. "You have no idea how many years I've wanted to do this."
"Guess we'll have to work hard to make up for lost time then." He moved against her and her breath quickened.
"Umm, and I love your bed, Davis. It inspires me to—"
Pounding on the front door interrupted any inspired revelations.
"Rats!" Matt rolled out of bed and pulled on his jeans. "There're only two people who'd have the guts to show up here at…" He glanced at his clock. "Uh-oh. It's a little later than we thought, princess."
Ann followed his gaze. "Oh, my God. It's eleven o'clock. The chocolate man."
Scrambling from the bed, she hurried into her shorts and top, then followed Matt to the living room.
Matt had already let Jolene and Francois in, and as she entered the room three pairs of eyes fixed on her.
"Ah, women in love are beautiful in the
morning." Francois clasped his hands together.
Ann blinked. "How did you know?"
Francois winked. "The French know these things."
Jolene snorted. "Horse poop. Anyone with eyes in their head could see you two were crazy about each other. Why, when you two looked at each other over the Jell-O molds, I knew—"
Francois put his finger to his lips. "Hush, my foie gras. We must tell them about the chocolate man."
Matt cast Francois a grateful glance. "Did you finish?"
"Oui. It is magnifique. The ladies loved it."
"Of course they loved it, Franny. The chocolate man is sportin' your Eiffel Tower." Jolene cast Ann a woman-to-woman glance. "This big." She held her hands apart to indicate size. "It's really just a giant Twinkie, but Franny likes fancy French names."
" Eiffel Tower ?" Matt looked horrified.
"Ladies?" Ann was puzzled.
"Yep." Jolene settled into the story. "The woman who ordered the chocolate man came over to inspect it this morning. Brought a few of her friends. They were all real impressed." She cast Matt a sly glance. "Some of them women said they knew you. Swore they'd never look at you the same again. They all sent along their phone numbers."
Matt groaned and sank onto his couch. "My face. We didn't disguise my face."
Jolene laughed. "You're famous, hotshot. Why, we got five orders for chocolate men just from that group. They said once they spread the word we'd get dozens of orders. And they all wanted their men to look just like this one." She threw Francois a kiss. "Franny's already working on his Arc de Triomphe. Thisbig." She offered her general size estimate.
Matt looked as though he were in shock as Ann herded
Jolene and Francois to the door. Just as she was about to close it behind them, Jolene stuck her head back in.
"Hey, told you to watch out for Sweet Sin. That's powerful stuff."
Ann leaned against the closed door and sighed deeply. Then she walked back to where Matt still sat staring blankly at the far wall. Sitting beside him, she put her arm around his waist and hugged. "Look at the bright side. Your face could be the trademark for a thriving new industry."
He groaned. "It's not my face I'm worried about."
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