Big Sky Wedding

by Linda Lael Miller

  The when wasn’t all that clear, either—she’d agreed to attend the barbecue only because Casey wheedled her into it, and anyway, Zane Sutton had been the last person she’d expected to run into at Hutch and Kendra’s barbecue, if only because he was new in the area. Duh. She hadn’t expected to see him at the Boot Scoot the other night, either, but she’d been thunderstruck at the sight of him, back there in the Carmodys’ yard, with friendly chatter and the delicious scent of food being cooked in the open air all around, and a certain sweet sorrow had overtaken her, too.

  There were so many couples—newlyweds and long-time marrieds and every sort of pair in between. Even Casey, temporarily on her own, was secure in the knowledge that Walker, on the road at the moment, would be home soon, and once again enfold her in his love, as well as his arms.

  Zane seemed to be concentrating on the road, the windshield wipers barely adequate against the driving summer rain as they drove toward Three Trees, lightning splintering the world around them at regular intervals, thunder crashing in the big sky far above. He’d turned the heater on as they left Whisper Creek, but the warmth had promptly fogged up the windows, so he’d switched it off again, in favor of the defroster.

  They didn’t talk much as they passed through Parable and then covered the thirty-odd miles between there and Three Trees, but there didn’t seem to be a need for words, anyhow.

  The air inside that truck was so charged with electricity that Brylee figured she’d get a shock if she touched anything.

  Zane didn’t ask her what was going on in her mind, though he must surely have wondered, nor did he inquire whether or not Casey knew she’d left early.

  It was slow-going, because of slick roads and low visibility, but they reached Three Trees soon enough; it was a blur of neon and asphalt and Main Street businesses as they passed through.

  Zane drove on, without saying a word except to ask if she was cold—she wasn’t—and turned in at the Timber Creek gate without any prompting from his passenger.

  “Around back,” she directed, when he would have turned onto the concrete skirting in front of Casey and Walker’s garage.

  Rounding the big house, he spotted Brylee’s SUV, pulled up beside it, looked over at her with an uncertainty she suspected was foreign to him and waited for a cue. Walk her to the door? Wait in the truck until she was safely inside before driving away?

  “Come in,” Brylee heard herself say. “You’re soaked. You can grab a shower, and I’ll get you some of Walker’s clothes to wear. You’re probably not the same size, but close enough.”

  Zane opened his mouth. Closed it again.

  Brylee suppressed an urge to giggle hysterically, at Zane’s bewilderment, at her own impetuous actions, at the rain and her wet hair dangling around her face in soggy ropes and the globs of mud coating her feet. Gumbo, that was what Montanans called the incomprehensibly sticky slop, and the name suited it perfectly.

  She pushed the passenger’s-side door open and climbed down, holding her sandals in one hand and draping her purse strap over the opposite shoulder, and then dashed for the door that led into her apartment, Zane beside her.

  Snidely met them in the kitchen, curious and probably relieved not to be alone anymore. Snidely, though Rin-Tin-Tin fierce in some ways, quailed whenever a loud storm broke. Thunder could send him scrabbling under her bed for shelter, and lightning made him whimper so pitifully that it broke her heart.

  Brylee paused long enough to reassure the dog, then headed through the apartment and crossed into Casey and Walker’s territory, leaving a trail of muddy footprints that would just have to be dealt with later. She greeted their dogs, three chocolate Labs and a sweet mutt called Doolittle, and went straight on to the laundry room.

  Sure enough, there was a basket full of clean clothes on the folding table across from the washer and dryer, and Brylee flipped through the various garments until she found a pair of Walker’s work jeans, a lightweight sweatshirt and a pair of socks.

  She drew the line at borrowing underwear, and figured Zane would be on the same page where that was concerned, so he’d just have to make do without. Delicious thought.

  The family dogs—there were a couple of cats around somewhere, too, but they’d made themselves scarce—trooped after her when she returned to her own apartment, still on a mission, and though she couldn’t have said precisely what that mission was, she had her suspicions.

  Zane waited in the kitchen, carrying on a one-sided conversation with Snidely, who lost interest as he greeted the other dogs with sniffs and some tail-wagging.

  “Here,” Brylee said, handing Zane the clothes she’d just purloined from Casey’s laundry room. “Put these on before you catch your death of...something. The shower is that way.” She pointed.

  He grinned then, and she saw a fire kindle in his eyes, warming her through and through, which was unsettling, considering she hadn’t been cold in the first place.

  Zane didn’t head for the shower right away, though. Instead, he took Brylee’s hand. A white-hot charge jolted through her, and he asked the question without saying a single word.

  She bit her lower lip and nodded yes.

  Which was how the two of them wound up in her bathroom, kissing desperately and repeatedly, all the while peeling off each other’s clothes.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  “IT’S TOO SOON for this,” Zane gasped, as they stood under the steady spray of Brylee’s shower, clinging together, bare-ass naked and reveling in it. Kissing again and again, finding it impossible to stop, except to draw in brief, ragged breaths.

  “I know,” Brylee agreed, and she slid her arms around his neck, loving the hard smoothness of his skin, the magnificent contour of his chest and shoulders, the lean power of his hips and thighs.

  “And I don’t have a—” Zane managed, between yet another kiss and the one that would inevitably follow.

  Brylee, figuring there would be plenty of time for regrets later, had planted herself squarely in the present moment; she felt fully alive and one thousand percent female. Her left brain was on hiatus, leaving her imagination and her body at the controls. “Condom?” she finished for him, when their mouths broke apart again.

  Zane nodded. Water poured down over his head, beading in his eyelashes, flowing in rivulets between well-defined chest and arm muscles. “And our first time together isn’t going to be in the shower.”

  So there would be a first time, then. And that implied that there would be other times, didn’t it? Glory be.

  Brylee had been intimate with very few men, and not one of them had offered her an out, the way Zane just had. Nope, it had been full-throttle, zero-to-sixty in seconds, a two-body free-for-all.

  “What’s wrong with making love in the shower?” she teased, wanting to prolong the moment, to prolong everything, running the tip of one finger lightly along the line of Zane’s breastbone. The hair on his chest was golden, lighter than his hair, and surprisingly fine, almost silky.

  He groaned and drew her against him, his fingers interlaced behind her bottom, even as he continued to argue. “Nothing,” he said, in a rasp, “it’s just that—”

  Brylee laughed, exultant, fully herself in a way she’d never dared to be before, ever, at any point, in any situation of any kind, in the whole of her life. “Fine,” she said. “We’ll use the bed.”

  She turned off the shower spigot then and slipped past Zane, making sure to brush against him so that all relevant points of contact touched, generated sparks in the process. She grabbed a towel for herself and then tossed a second one to him.

  He caught it with slightly unsteady hands and began to dry himself off while Brylee wrapped her towel around her upper body, toga-style, tucking it beneath her armpits. The bottom of the swath of terry cloth barely reached the tops of her thighs.

  Even then, Zane wasn’t through making his case, which seemed to be promoting celibacy. “There’s still the problem of—”

  Brylee rolled her eyes, laugh
ed again. “I happen to have a few on hand,” she said, opening a cabinet where she stored various articles one might expect to find in any ordinary bathroom. She ferreted through tubes of various sorts of pastes and creams and ointments, over-the-counter cold remedies, most of which were probably past their expiration dates, though this certainly wasn’t the time to find out, the usual hair-care products and a carton of tampons. In the way back, she found it, a small box tucked away behind all the other stuff. She handed it to him.

  Zane eyed the supply of condoms with an expression of mingled relief and concern. Whatever misgivings his mind might be entertaining, his body said, Go for it.

  Brylee hoped he wouldn’t raise any awkward questions, especially the kind beginning with words like who and when.

  “Don’t ask,” Brylee advised pertly, turning to head for her bedroom.

  Zane could follow or not—his choice.

  They’d reached a crossroads, she supposed. Go or stay, put up or shut up.

  He chose to follow.

  Zane wore his towel wrapped around his waist now, and he set the condoms on the nightstand and then reached for Brylee, pulling her close again, a low growl-like sound rising from his diaphragm.

  Passion surged through her, along with a strange and crazy joy, and a whole tangle of other emotions, all of them jubilant and fiery and—okay—brazen.

  “Fresh out of excuses?” she asked, with a little smile. Lordy, he was a wonder, a cowboy with the body of a classic Greek statue, come to life.

  Zane chuckled. “Fresh out,” he conceded.

  And then he kissed her, not feverishly like before, but deeply, thoroughly, with just the right combination of gentleness and strength. She loved that his muscles were chiseled and lean, rather than bulky, but that observation soon vanished, along with every other coherent thought in her head.

  If the kiss outside the Boot Scoot had been jarringly, fiercely, damnably good, this one raised the bar, well into the realm of the transformative, the impossibly perfect, the predestined. It was a bold claiming, it was reverent homage; it was as all-consuming as a wildfire racing out of control, gobbling up everything in its path.

  Brylee knew it for sure then, that there would be no second-guessing this time around, no retreat. She’d fled from the last kiss, dashed home from Parable in a tizzy of confused desire, berating herself the whole way. Now, no power on earth could have made her turn tail and run.

  She wanted this dangerous thing, wanted Zane Sutton, the way a drowning person fights for air, and consequences be damned. She was a grown-up, not a child, and she was tired of shunting aside perfectly normal human needs, tired of denying herself the pleasures her body and even her soul were wired to crave. Tired of pretending that what she had—money, independence, a well-earned confidence in her own abilities—was enough.

  Because it wasn’t. Not for her.

  The kissing went on for a long time, slower now, generating sensations so profound, so poignant, that tears of amazement stung Brylee’s eyes at intervals, fell like rain into the broken canyons and dry meadows of her heart, each one a seed of wholeness and healing, certain to take root and then thrive.

  They soon wound up on the bed—she didn’t recall the mechanics—and she grasped at Zane as he laid her down, poised himself above her, nibbling at an earlobe, stroking her from breast to thigh, again and again, ever so slowly and ever so gently, until she thought she might implode with the need to be joined with him, have him inside her, make him part of her.

  But the man refused to let her set a faster pace; every move he made was separate and distinct from any other, a miniature eternity in its own right. He savored one of her breasts, then the other, at his leisure, and he made no secret of the fact that he was enjoying her far too much to be rushed.

  His attention to each luscious detail of loving her made her feel beautiful, desirable, even cherished. It also made her that much more desperate.

  Brylee whimpered and tossed her head from side to side on the pillow as the pleasure built inside her, rising to impossible heights, surpassing even those, and then subsiding, like an ebbing tide. Just far enough, though, to drive her even closer to the brink of dissolving in a huge burst of fire and light.

  “Soon,” she choked out, at long last, “Zane, please, soon—”

  But Zane only chuckled and made his meandering way down the hills and hollows of her body, already quivering as every nerve came alive under his mouth, his hands, his tongue.

  And then he was at her very core, the apex of her femininity, easing her legs apart, preparing her.

  Only an instant after she realized what he was about to do, and gave a long, guttural and completely involuntary groan of surrender and false protest, she was in his mouth.

  He nibbled, he teased, he feasted. The feeling was exquisite, unrelenting.

  A ball of fire rolled up from Brylee’s very center, split itself into separate blazes to shoot down her legs and along her arms, wringing a low, lusty shout from her that came from somewhere deep, deep within her. Her toes and her fingers curled with the effort to hold on, to keep from hurtling skyward in ecstasy.

  The release, when Zane finally allowed her to have it, shattered Brylee into sweet, tremulous fragments, each one aflame and trailing sparks. For a few moments, she couldn’t see or hear or think—only feel.

  It was glorious.

  Afterward, he took his time kissing his way back up to her mouth, pausing to tease her navel, to taste the hard peak of each breast, to arouse her all over again, so that she gave a soblike croon of hungry welcome when, at last, his lips found hers again.

  “You have to be sure about this, Brylee,” Zane said, very quietly. “We can still stop, if you say the word, but if this goes much further—”

  She opened her eyes, her hands still trailing up and down his back, dreamily now, instead of the frantic haste of before, each finger tracing a path from Zane’s strong shoulders to his firm buttocks, following the same course, over and over. Instinctively, she entwined her fingers in his still-damp hair, as she’d done while he was pleasuring her moments before, and she murmured, “No more talk, cowboy. Just make love to me—right now.”

  Zane grinned, reaching for the box on the nightstand, taking out a packet and tearing it open, and finally putting on the condom, his every motion smooth, practiced, unhurried.

  No doubt about it. This wasn’t his first rodeo.

  He studied her face once more, his eyes solemn and searching, alert to any sign of reluctance on her part, and then he eased himself inside her, just far enough to give her one last shimmering mirage of a chance to say no.

  And to make her want him even more.

  When Brylee bit her lower lip and arched her back instead of putting an end to their lovemaking, wordlessly offering herself, he took her in a single, deep-driving stroke, filling her with his hardness and power and heat in ways that were more than physical, pausing in her depths, letting her body seize around him in spasms so delicious she wasn’t sure she could bear them.

  Slowly, Zane began to move on top of Brylee, inside Brylee, conquering her and yet surrendering to her, and she matched his rhythm with her own, thinking she might die of the wanting and the need if he didn’t bring her to an almost immediate climax and, at one and the same time, praying these sensations would never, ever end.

  She’d enjoyed sex, whenever she’d felt close enough to a man to make herself vulnerable, which hadn’t been that often, but this—this—was so much more than she’d even guessed was possible.

  Their pace increased slowly, their bodies grew slick, and both of them moaned as the friction intensified, Zane’s cries torn from him, low and ragged and hoarse, Brylee’s responses eager and greedy for more of him, all of him, body and soul.

  When their restraint finally snapped, it happened simultaneously, causing them to flex in unison, straining wildly, taking and giving and, most of all, sharing.

  Brylee soared, breathless and dazed, long after Zane had
recovered his control, and he murmured gently, senselessly, in her ear, while she came apart in his arms.

  Nonetheless, his meaning was as clear as if he’d spoken every word in plain English: It’s okay, let it happen, let go—you’re so beautiful—I knew it would be like this. I knew.

  By the time Brylee crashed back into her everyday self, with the virtual impact of a skydiver sans parachute striking hard ground from a very great height, Zane had already begun to kindle new desires in her.

  He succeeded admirably.

  And the lovemaking, this lovely communion of two bodies, went on—and on. Brylee couldn’t have said for how long, but she was pretty sure the condom supply was destined to give out soon.

  Time shifted; the past and the future blended seamlessly into one magical now. The rain stopped hammering at the roof. The light changed.

  An hour might have passed, or a day, or a decade—Brylee had no way of knowing, didn’t care. She’d been lost in Zane Sutton’s touch, his words, his kisses, for what seemed like always.

  “I have to go,” he said presently, his head resting beside hers on the pillow, his breath warm in her hair and soft against her ear, one leg sprawled over both of hers, a welcome, steely weight against her skin.

  Brylee didn’t object to Zane’s leaving; she had too much self-respect for that. Nor did she ask when she’d see him again, or if he’d call soon, or what he was feeling—physical satisfaction, certainly, but was there some regret, too?

  She didn’t dare explore his feelings, since her own were confounding enough. She was happy and, somehow, sad, too. She was at once mended and broken, restored and ruined. She was completely, deliciously sated, but she knew Zane could stir her, make her need him again, turn her right back into the she-wolf she’d been only minutes before, clawing at his back, pleading with him for more and then still more, making plaintive, howl-like sounds when another release overtook her.

  If he’d chosen to do that, anyway. Which he didn’t.

  She couldn’t say anything at all. Doubted, in fact, that she would have the strength even to whisper his name, let alone make any speeches.