by JoAnn Ross
She polished off the rest of her wine, then stood up and held out her hand. “And I think it’s time we begin making up for that lost time.”
He stood up, as well. His eyes were heartbreakingly sad, but she could also see a familiar spark of lust. “I didn’t tell you that story to get a pity fuck out of it.”
“I’m so horribly sorry about what happened up there on that mountain. To Opie; to all of you. But believe me, Lucas, that’s not the reason I want to make love with you.”
Granted, his story had made her want to weep. To take him to bed and comfort him with sexual healing.
But Madeline realized that was the last thing he needed.
She’d always been a control freak. Perhaps it came from her parents falling from the sky. Perhaps from working in a male-dominated world where kitchens were like chaotic circuses needing the stability of a ringmaster to keep everything running smoothly. Or perhaps it was merely her nature.
Whatever the case, she understood that Lucas didn’t need her to control this situation. To soothe his pain with gentle hands and tender touches.
What he needed was the freedom to exorcise his demons with passion.
And because she loved him, and because he’d reawakened something inside Madeline, something that had remained dormant all during her marriage, she framed his tragically handsome face between her palms.
“You want me, Lucas?” Their eyes met and there was a flash of heat like a bolt of lightning over the sea. “Then take me.”
47
The challenge hovered between them, from her to him and back again. A sizzle of electric charge, like that first day he’d kissed her on the seawall so many years ago, arced between them.
Her scent floated on the rain-softened air, filling his head, flogging his senses, making coherent thought difficult.
Lucas had sworn that after all this time, after how he’d hurt her, he’d do things right. That he wouldn’t allow his hunger—or hers—to rush him.
“I do want you.” He traced a line down her cheek with a finger, stunned to find that his hands—the same hands that inserted IVs in the midst of raging battles—were far from steady. “So much I ache.”
Unlike the other night, when he’d carried her into the bedroom, he took her hand and they walked the short distance to the bedroom.
“I’m sorry I lied, Maddy.” He pushed some wild curls away from her face. “It was a stupid, fucked-up lie that I’ve regretted from the moment you ran out the door.”
She lifted her chin. Passion had turned her eyes to gleaming pewter. “Then here’s your chance to make up for it.”
“Oh, I fully intend to do exactly that.” He took hold of the bottom of her pretty sunshine-colored sweater. “Lift your arms.”
She did, shifting to help him pull it over her head. He tossed it across the room, where it landed on the back of a chair.
Practical gray cotton framed her voluptuous breasts. Forget the Grand Canyon. Or the northern lights. Maddy’s breasts were the true, natural wonders of the world.
Her nipples were the color of ripe strawberries, which brought up a fantasy of spreading chocolate on them, then licking it off. Which, in turn, had him wishing he’d thought to buy some Hershey’s syrup while he’d been picking up that wine.
Next time.
His lips dipped into the cleavage framed by the cotton as he inhaled her scent.
“Lord, you are one tasty woman.”
“It’s the lotion.” It took only the touch of his mouth on her warming flesh to make her tremble. “Gram makes it from the essential oil of peaches, vanilla, and coconut.” The possessive touch of a palm to one of those amazing breasts brought her to full arousal.
“It’s not peaches I’m tasting.” While his mouth stayed busy with her breasts, his hands whipped the thin gold belt through the loops of her jeans and sent it flying across the room. “It’s temptation.” He pulled her down onto the wide bed with him and got down to business. “And sex.”
The metal zipper of her jeans going down sounded unnaturally loud in the silence broken only by the surf below them, the sigh of the wind in the top of the fir trees surrounding the cottage, and their heavy breathing.
“Lucas.” She arched her hips.
“Soon,” he promised.
He slipped a finger beneath the elastic waistband of the cotton panties that were as utilitarian as her bra, combed a hot path through a narrow line of silky black curls, then skimmed a touch along the slick, moist folds.
She was as wet and willing as he was hot and hard, and Lucas knew that if he lived to be a hundred, he’d never forget the way her flesh gleamed like pearls in the rain-silvered light.
She reached for him. “I want you inside me.”
He wanted that, too. The problem was, he knew that within two seconds he’d go off like a rocket. And wouldn’t that be a great way to convince her they belonged together?
“Soon,” he repeated, slipping his fingers inside her.
First one.
Then a second.
As she lifted her hips, he slid in a third and began to move them. In. “Sometimes I thought I’d exaggerated this,” she managed on a whimper. Out. “In my memory.” In. “But I didn’t.” Out again.
She was writhing against his touch, seeking relief.
“You’re still so amazingly hot.” In, deeper this time. At the same time he flicked the sensitive, swollen nub with his thumb. The sound, as the orgasm ripped through her, was half cry, half scream.
“That’s one.”
She’d gone limp. But not for long, Lucas vowed.
“If you’re expecting multiples, you’re going to be sadly disappointed.” Her eyes, which still blazed with hunger, suggested otherwise.
“I remember differently.”
Avoiding her touch as she reached out for him again, he yanked the jeans down her legs and tossed them on the floor next to the belt.
“That was then,” she said on a gasp. “When I was crazy with teenage lust.”
“And this is now.” They may be gray cotton, but her panties were cut high on the thigh and low on the hip. He’d been with women who always fancied up in silk and lace, but none of that fuck-me-big-boy underwear had ever turned him on as much as these. “So get ready for some serious, grown-up lust.”
He ripped off his own clothes, sent them scattering, then dispensed with that last barrier between them.
Their teeth clashed as his mouth took hers. Then he moved on to feast on her hot, moist body as she, in turn, devoured his. Determined to hang on to his control, he dragged his mouth down her long, smooth legs, then back up again to nip at the tender skin between her thighs, then stroked the marks with his tongue while she clutched at the hot, tangled sheets.
His tongue dove into her while his fingers stroked. This time she keened as the climax rocked through her.
“That’s two,” he said against her trembling thigh.
“I don’t remember you being so egotistical.”
“Maybe because I didn’t fully understand how lucky I was.” He hadn’t spent the past ten years in a Trappist monastery. But he’d never met a woman as responsive as his Maddy.
“You were always amazing.” He traced slow, lazy circles in those moist ebony curls.
She rolled over, changing their positions, circling his aching erection with her fingers. “I think it’s us,” she said, as she explored him from root to tip. “Maybe it’s that we’re amazing together.”
“You won’t get any argument from me there.” Her tongue followed the trail of sparks her fingers had made. When she went to take him in her mouth, Lucas caught hold of her hair and lifted her head. “Next time,” he said, trying not to pant like the animal he was. “Because I need to be inside you.”
He grabbed blindly for his jeans on the floor, but she was faster, diving over the top of him, snatching them out of his hands.
“Is this what you’re looking for?” she asked as she retrieved the foil package from the front pocket.
>
“Madeline—”
“You never call me by my full name.”
Appearing blithely unthreatened by his growl, she teasingly held it out of reach, her eyes laughing.
Tormenting him further, she tore the package open with her teeth, then, with hands that were a great deal steadier than his and that demonstrated a skill she definitely hadn’t possessed at eighteen, slowly smoothed the latex over his stone-hard erection.
Then lowered herself over him. Just enough to dampen the tip with hot, slick moisture.
“This is your revenge, isn’t it?” he asked between clenched teeth. “You’re getting back at me for ten years ago.”
“I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.” She lowered herself another millimeter. “Besides, I’ve always heard that revenge is a dish best served cold.”
Although he wouldn’t have thought it possible, he swelled further when she began rubbing against his length.
“And cold is definitely not a word I’d use to describe you, Lucas Chaffee.”
All he’d have to do would be to press his heels on the mattress and thrust upward to end the erotic torment she was putting him through. But Lucas understood that for many complex reasons, which weren’t solely about him and perhaps even partly about the damn Frenchman, the tables had turned. Maddy needed to take back the control she’d surrendered to him.
“I love you,” he said. Even enough, for just this one time, to allow that cheating husband into the bed with them. “More than I’ll ever be able to say. But I’ll never lie to you again, Maddy. And I’ll never give you any reason to be sorry for this night.”
Her eyes sheened over the teasing laughter.
She met his gaze. Then nodded.
“I believe you.”
Then, with anticipation sparking in the air around them, she lowered herself the rest of the way down.
The shock of hot flesh against hot flesh made Lucas shudder. From her sharp gasp, he knew he was not alone.
She began rocking against him, giving him full access to those lush breasts that had starred in a lot of his personal wet dreams over the past decade. He licked them, sucked them, rolled her berry pink, hard nipples in his mouth.
There were no words. None were needed.
Lucas knew that if he lived to be a hundred, he’d never forget the uncensored passion on her face as she rode him, her wild curls tumbling over her shoulders, her head flung back, her eyes closed.
They’d both changed a great deal during their time apart, but one thing that had not changed was the way their movements were so perfectly matched to each other’s. As he rolled her over, her body moved fluidly, lifting to meet his as his hips pistoned. Deeper. Harder. Faster.
The convulsions started deep inside her, clutching, then radiating outward like a tsunami, a long, powerful crest that pushed her over the edge, taking Lucas right along with her.
When she laughed and wrapped her arms around him as he held her tight, Lucas wished they could just stay here forever. In this cottage. In this bed.
Which was, of course, impossible. So for now he’d take all that he could get and worry about tomorrow later.
But as her eyes, looking like mist shimmering beneath a late-summer sun, met his, Lucas was struck with a possessiveness that nearly rocked him to the core.
Mine.
Now all he had to do was convince her of that.
Fortunately, the SEAL motto he’d lived by for the past ten years was “Ready to lead, ready to follow; never quit.”
And Lucas had no intention of quitting where Maddy was concerned.
48
For the next two hours, they did their best to make up for lost time. Finally, lying sprawled on the mattress, looking like the very hot, very satiated male he was, Lucas said, “I’m not sure, but I think that might have done it.”
He ran a hand down her back, over her butt, which definitely did not have buns of steel. Madeline had worried about that, but sometime earlier, when he’d kneaded her cheeks and told her how much he loved her ass, she felt every bit as sexy as he kept telling her she was.
“For a while, anyway,” he amended. “But if we don’t get out of this bed, I may end up killing myself.”
She pressed a kiss against his chest. Which could have easily appeared on a recruiting poster for Navy SEALs. “I couldn’t think of a better way to go.” She stretched, feeling stiff in places she hadn’t even known she could ache. But it was a good feeling. And she’d definitely felt the burn.
The thought made her laugh.
“What?”
“I just figured out how to fund Gram’s restaurant,” she said.
“How’s that?” He was playing with her hair, seemingly fascinated by the wild texture she was certain must look as if she’d stuck her finger in a light socket.
“Workout tapes.”
He lifted his head. “You’re going to make workout tapes?”
“You don’t have to make it sound that ridiculous. I work out.” She’d walked Winnie for Sofia just last night. Of course, unlike so many of those X-ray New York socialites Maxime had been supposedly feeding at lunch, including the thin-as-a-piece-of-spaghetti Katrin, she ate. Because what was the point of cooking if you didn’t love food?
“I also happen to love food. Almost as much as sex.” Just a few hours ago, that order would’ve been reversed. Actually, sex would have been much farther down on her list.
“I love your body just the way it is.” He drew her closer so they fit chest to chest, thigh to thigh. “See, everywhere you have a curve.” He skimmed a touch down the side of her breast. “I have a hollow.” He kissed her, a slow, deep kiss that had her drifting back into the mist. “We’ve always been a perfect fit. And you’re the most voluptuously hungry female I’ve ever known.”
“I am, aren’t I?” She loved that description. Nearly as much as she’d loved that mind-blowing, multiorgasmic sex that had earned it.
“The hottest, most responsive woman on the planet,” he said. “But I still don’t get where the workout tapes come in.”
“Think about it. Do you know how much money the physical fitness business brings in?”
“Haven’t a clue.”
“Me, neither,” she admitted. “But I’ll bet most of those people walking to nowhere on treadmills and climbing endless stairs that never take them anywhere would much rather burn calories having hot sex.”
“That would be my preference. As long as you’re the one I’m having hot sex with. But I’m not sure the world is ready for the idea.”
“Why not?”
“Because if everyone was having sex, who’d build your restaurant? Or work in it? Or get out of bed long enough to eat in it?”
“So much for your claim of being a go-with-the-flow kind of guy. Are SEALs always so practical?”
“We think in logistics. Cause and effect.”
“Says the man who doesn’t think ahead to stock his refrigerator.”
“Why do that? When the world is filled with people who actually like to cook?” He pressed his lips against her temple. “Like you.”
“Which I might consider doing if you had anything but takeout and beer in your fridge,” she said. “So given that you’re claiming I killed your libido—”
“Not killed.” He frowned at that idea, showing that despite his amazing stamina and his hard, hot body, he still possessed a typical male ego. Which she found appealing in its own way. It made him more human. Less of a superhero. “It’s just recharging.”
“Well, I suppose we might as well get some work done while it is. Why don’t you show me your idea for the restaurant design?”
“I’m not doing the design,” he said. “Because I don’t know anything about how stuff is used. But I do have a cool program Dad’s friend sent me that’ll help me make your design work.”
“Is it on your laptop?”
“Yeah.”
“Great. Then we won’t have to get out of bed.”
He laughed at that. “Talk about being practical.”
He retrieved the laptop from its case on the counter and joined her beneath the rumpled sheets.
“The first thing I was thinking,” he said as he turned it on, “was that, given that you’re big on being organic, you’d also want the restaurant to be LEED certified.”
“I hadn’t gotten that far yet in my thinking, but yes.” LEED, an acronym for Leader in Energy and Environmental Design, was an internationally recognized green building certification. “Lowering our carbon footprint is a natural for the menu.”
“That’s what I figured. It’s also good business.”
“It’s obviously going to cost more money.” She was proud of the amount she’d negotiated, but worried if there’d be enough to purchase all the items she’d need to become LEED and green-dining certified.
“Up front, true. But it’s a great marketing tool that should bring in customers and get your restaurant a lot more press coverage, which is great free advertising. Once you get people in the door, your food will turn them into repeat customers. Meanwhile, by doing something as simple as adding inexpensive, low-flow aerators to faucets, you can save sixty gallons of water per hour, resulting in a twenty-five percent decrease in water usage.
“Also, by composting, which Sofia’s already doing, and recycling, you can expect to decrease your garbage-collection bills by somewhere around fifty percent.”
“Okay. Now I am officially impressed with your homework.”
“SEALs don’t believe in doing anything halfway. And homework is a way of life. I always memorized all the medical records of any new teammates.”
“All of them?”
“Well, you can’t exactly stop to read through stacks of papers in the middle of a battle,” he pointed out. “You know what they say about the devil being in the details.…Wait until you see this.”
With a few clicks of the keys, he brought up a three-dimensional model of the building as he saw it, and using the items in the software program’s library, began moving the hot and cold lines and dishwashers and pasta cookers, and all the other things she’d need around the floor, with a mere click of the mouse.
