“Too late. The thoughts are out of the barn, rampaging across the scenery. Can’t you feel ’em?”
“Ah,” she gasped as another brushload of hot icing defined the wider parts of her design—the roper’s horse, his shoulders, his face and hat. And yes, she could feel Jack’s thoughts running wild across her body, everywhere he meant to touch her and would. And soon, she prayed. Please, soon. Before she melted.
His brush lifted away and her hips rose again, an instinctive offering. Turned toward the icing bowl, Jack glanced over his shoulder. His eyes seemed to darken. “Hang on. Almost done.” He swung back to dab more icing, glazing the horse’s galloping legs, the whirling lines of the lariat.
This was heaven, this was hell. He was deliberately going slow, torturing her!
But at last he was done. He set the brush aside. “So. Shall we have a look?”
“It’ll never come out. I’m too hot.”
“Your lips to God’s ear.”
“I…mean, the icing will have melted.” Her tongue felt lazy and slow in her mouth. Her skin was on fire, hot tides surging from her breasts to her toes, swirling behind her navel.
“Then I’ll just have to cool it and try again.” Jack lifted the stencil away. “But wait!”
The design was picture-perfect, a sugary horseman galloping toward the ragged hem of her shorts. “And now what?” She laughed, delighted, embarrassed. “Do we take a photo?”
“You have to ask?” Jack dropped to his knees beside her. “You never wrecked a sandcastle before?” Dipping his head, he licked the outer edge of the design. “Um, yesss…”
“Ohhhhhh.” She fell forward to support herself on his hard, warm shoulders. Oh, no…yes…oh, please!
Hot and supple, wet and rough, his tongue traveled her thigh, sending a tidal wave of sensations ahead of it.
“Sweet!” he murmured fiercely against her, kissing and licking. “So sweet… Oh, sugar, oh, Abby, oh, sweetheart, have I died and gone to heaven?”
Bending over him, laughing, she traced the shape of his shaggy head, the wide strong lines of his face and jaw. “You.” Crazy man, gentle man, clever man, her man. You. No one but you! She tugged on his ears, bringing him up for air and a kiss—their tongues swirling brown sugar…caramel…traces of butter and exquisite tastes of each other.
“I can’t get enough of you!” He leaned away, grabbed the legs of her chair and spun it around to face him. Settled between her knees, he addressed himself to her inner thigh—lapping and nibbling till she yelped and giggled and squirmed. Then he licked her clean in three long swipes and looked up, appalled. “That can’t be all. I’m starving!”
“Oh, we can’t have that.” Abby dipped a forefinger into the icing bowl, let him suck it greedily off her fingertip, while she ruffled his hair with her free hand. Leaned down for another caramel kiss.
“Hey.” Jack caught her waist. “Come down here, I’m getting lonesome.” He pulled her off the chair, and she landed with a laughing yelp, kneeling astride his folded legs. His hand on her bottom kept her from sliding away. “Ah, that’s more like it. But…” He groped across the table, found the icing bowl, brought it down to their level. “Supplies. Might be here awhile.”
Scooping up a fingerful, he smeared a line of burnt sugar across her lower lip, cocked his head to admire the effect, then sucked it off. Swept his tongue into her, growling wordless delight, sipping sweetness while he curled his hands around her hips to urge her closer…closer…closer in a rhythm as slow and dreamy as their languid kiss, slower than their thundering heartbeats.
When they pulled apart, they were gasping for breath. “What’s…under here?” Jack plucked at her T-shirt.
“Haven’t a clue.” Another kiss like that last one and she wouldn’t know her own name!
He smoothed the hem an inch up her stomach. “Then maybe I should check?”
“Mmm.” She smiled, too shy to say yes, and she couldn’t say no. Lifted her arms like a child while he tugged it slowly up her body, then tossed it across the room.
“For sure I’m in heaven!” he whispered, sliding a fingertip back and forth along the rim of her lilac brassiere. “A double serving of heaven.”
What he was doing was heavenly, and now his fingertip was circling her nipple. Desire spiralled higher and higher. With a tiny whimper, she arched her back. Take more. Take all of me.
His hands found the clasp between her breasts and he unclipped it with shaking fingers—slipped the brassiere off her shoulders, his eyes never leaving her. “So beautiful. Abby, you’re so beautiful!” He cupped her with one hand, shook his head, marveling, then bent to tongue her slowly…then even slower.
“Ohhhh!” She rocked against him, wet and needy and trembling. Closed her eyes. Do with me anything you will. His mouth moved away and she whimpered. Only do it!
Heat and grittiness circled one nipple then the other as he glazed her with icing. “Gilding the lily, I know,” he admitted huskily, “still…”
He dipped his head and sucked it off her, his eyes darkening when she whimpered, “I can’t take much more of this!”
“Oh I’ll bet you can.” He iced her again. Ate it off her, bending her backward over the hard bow of his arm.
“Please, oh, please…” she whispered—and he closed his teeth delicately over one throbbing peak.
“O-oh!” The room blossomed into darkness as she shut her eyes. A kaleidoscope of colors expanded behind her eyelids, exploding out from the wet, sucking heat of his mouth. Arms locked around his neck, she hung on, shuddering, crying out, while the rest of her sailed a short tour around the starry cosmos.
And returned at last to her own kitchen to find him roughly murmuring, “Abby, Abby, oh, Abby…” Jack brushed his face back and forth through her hair, kissed her temple, rubbed her shoulders. “Sweetheart?”
She managed to laugh. Opened her eyes. “I’m f-fine. It’s just—” Like nothing I’ve ever felt before. Too rich, too powerful for words.
“Overdose of icing?”
“Something like that.” But much, much scarier. If Jack could do that to her, half trying, on a kitchen floor…with only his mouth…
He stood, bringing her up effortlessly along with him. “I’d say you need to lie down, but I’d be lying. I need to.”
She smiled, swayed against him, hooked her fingers over his belt. “Sounds good to me, too.” She backed toward the doorway, pulling him after her. “There’s something upstairs called a bed.”
They made it as far as the living room couch.
THERE WERE ALL KINDS of reasons for his dad to be late, Skyler told himself for the first half hour as he sat outside the terminal on a bench that overlooked the runways. Eyes fixed on the horizon, he recited them one by one. His dad could’ve hit headwinds. Or bad visibility. Or storm clouds to fly around. Or maybe the plane had needed something on inspection. His dad was a stickler when it came to maintenance. If he’d made them change the oil…
Or maybe he’d overslept? He’d hitched a ride on one of his airline’s jets to Denver last night and was planning to rent a plane there. But if he’d stayed up late last night, hanging out with the flight crew…
He jumped violently as the phone in his backpack rang. He scrabbled for it as it rang again. “Dad!”
“Sky-boy, guess where I am?”
He squinted eagerly toward the east. “Almost here?”
“Nah, I’m still on the ground in Denver, looking up the tail of a mighty fine little Albatros jet. They’ve got a string of us backed up for a mile or more, cussin’ and fussin’, waiting our turns to take off. Whole darned field is locked down. Line squalls rumbling through, just one storm after the other. Bad chance of wind shear. They take that seriously out here.”
“Oh.” Sky felt his face going hot. “Can you— When will you—” It was over two hundred miles to Denver. By the time he reached Trueheart…
“Soon as I can, partner. Shouldn’t be long now. I can see a patch of blue open
ing up, over the front range. Once conditions clear, they’ll be glad to get rid of us. Reckon I’m ninth or tenth in line.”
“So when—”
“Maybe you should go on back to the house. Have some lunch, and I’ll call you when I hit the halfway mark.”
“Mmm.” His mom had fussed so much the first time, he didn’t want to go through that again. And something about a Real Adventure required that you set your face from home and kept moving away, growing freer and braver and more capable with every mile you traveled. If he had to turn around and go back, somehow the magic would be spoiled. “I’d rather stay here. There’s a soda machine, and Mom packed me a snack. Packed us a snack.” He’d wanted his dad to remember the sandwiches she made for special occasions, chicken salad with walnuts and celery on sourdough.
“Well, okay, but it’s gonna be a while. You go ahead and chow down.”
“I will.”
“Conditions still clear there?”
“Not a cloud in the sky.”
“Then I’ll call you soon as I’m up and on course. Can’t imagine this’ll last much longer.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
THEIR FIRST TIME wasn’t tender. It was all tumbling bodies and caressing limbs and giddy laughter on a barely wide enough couch—riven by one moment of motionless astonishment. Jack, oh, Jack!—bigger, heavier, hotter, harder than Abby could ever have hoped or imagined. In her, over her, his heart hammering against hers, his weight pinning her deliciously down. Shock waves of delight shivering out from their point of contact.
Slowly he shook his head, brushing her lips with his own. “Tell me I’m not dreaming! I’ve dreamed this so many times.”
She arched up against him, bringing him even deeper—and shuddered from her toes to her chin. “Does that…feel like a dream?”
“Dream of an earthquake, nine on the Richter scale.”
“Or…this?” She hugged him internally, her breath feathering out with the effort it took to keep the rest of her from moving.
“Oh… I think California just fell into the ocean. I’d better go…check…it…out.” Somehow he eased a half inch farther into her.
Thrusting toward ecstasy.
“Ah-hh-hh!” She sang one note of dawning delight and could hold still no longer. Wrapped her legs around him and they were off again—flying, swooping, surging, teasing. Chasing each other higher and higher, laughing and incredulous that anything could possibly feel this good. That they were here, together, at last. Astounded that such excitement had no apparent end, that it could peak and rise and peak and climb and—
“Oh—ahhh—!” Abby pressed her open mouth to his shoulder and muffled her cries against him.
If he’d been holding back, Jack held back no longer. He came with a ragged shout, driving her down and down and down into swooning darkness. Their mouths clung; he groaned inside her—murmured her name, Abby thought—and she took that sound with her, like a trophy, off into smiling sleep.
SHE WOKE—minutes later? Hours?—when Jack shifted his weight onto his elbows, started to pull away. “No!” Curling her hands around his hard buttocks, she shook her head fiercely. “Oh, don’t go!” I’ve been empty and aching for so long, lonely for years, and now—
“I’m not going far,” he promised her huskily. “But sometime or other you might want to breathe, so—” Carefully he turned them both till they lay side by side, still joined, legs entangled, her breasts flattened to his chest. “Better?” He framed her face with a big hand, brushed his smile over the tip of her nose, her cheeks, her eyebrows, her lashes. “Abby, oh, Abby…” He shook his head. “I’ve got no words for this. Off the charts… Ten thousand on a scale of ten.”
“Iridescent, like a peacock feather,” she agreed drowsily, hooking an arm around his neck and snuggling closer. “Opalescent, like the inside of a shell.” Rainbow trouts. Neon. Butterfly wings. He was so wonderfully big; she’d known it visually, but to fill her arms with him, to be so joyously, bountifully filled.
He caught her bottom lip between both of his, tugged on it gently, sucked it thoughtfully. “Mmm.” Pulled back an inch at last to say, “But we’ve got this problem…”
“No.” She squinched shut her eyes. No problems, please. She felt as if he’d solved all her problems forever. Don’t tell me this is only a fling. I know it. You know it. But please, please, let’s pretend for a little while longer. Just for the day.
“’Fraid so. Something tells me we’ll be needing another one of those happy raincoats—and soon.”
“You only brought one!”
His silent amusement rocked them both. “Oh, no. I came determined and I came prepared, with pockets crammed. But where did we lose my jeans?”
Pockets full of joy! When had she last been this happy? Not for years and years. She smoothed a hand down the damp, hard planes of his sculpted back. “Haven’t a clue. Shall we find ’em on the way to the shower?”
JOINING EMMA at the cash register, Kat set her book bag down with an audible clank.
“So…what’ve you got in the bag?” Emma inquired with a grin while the saleslady folded Kat’s selections. She’d picked three more camisoles, just like the ones Abby had helped her choose. Except these were yellow, pale green and blue.
“In my bag?” Kat rounded her eyes and shrugged. “Oh…stuff.”
“A Lego set?” Emma guessed.
Kat snorted. “That was back when I was a kid!”
“Rock hammer and rocks?”
Time for a distraction. Kat shook her head, then stood on tiptoe to touch one of her camisoles. “Don’t these ever come in camouflage?”
After the department store, they bought fish lures for Kat, then a pair of black lace-up boots with high-stacked heels for Emma. They passed a tattoo parlor and Kat begged for a Mickey Mouse tattoo—now that would show Sky—but Emma said, “No way,” not without her dad’s permission. Then they headed for the movies. “I thought we’d have supper there, afterward.” Emma nodded at a restaurant they were driving past.
“I want to eat in Trueheart. At Mo’s Truckstop.”
“Really? But your dad said we should— Um, that we could eat anywhere in Durango we like. And that place has terrific vegetarian dishes. Desserts to die for.”
“I’ve gotta eat at Mo’s. And Dad said today’s my choice.”
Emma sighed. “No accounting for taste, but sure, Katteroo, you’re Princess for a Day. You going to bust out and have a steak burger?”
“Steak burgers are made of cows, who have feelings just like anybody else. They’re sacred in India. I’ll get a grilled-cheese sandwich and a double order of fries.”
“Yum! And for dessert?” Emma parked outside the movie theater.
“It’s El Rancho Night at Michelle’s Place. We can have chuckwagon brownies.” Kat scrambled out her door, then leaned back in to snatch up the book bag she’d almost forgotten.
“Hey, you don’t have to lug that around. I’m locking up.”
“No. I’d rather carry it.”
SKY HAD CHECKED the phone so many times, making sure he hadn’t accidentally shut if off, that he’d grown tired of putting it away. It sat ready on his lap. He rubbed it with one finger while he stared at the only cloud in the sky.
Please, let his dad be coming up fast behind it. Any minute now his plane would burst into view…
The door to the terminal opened and Mr. Halliday leaned out. “No sign of him yet?”
Silently, Sky shook his head.
“You tried to phone him?”
“Dad doesn’t like to be called when he’s flying. It messes up his concentration. He said he’d call me.”
“Good enough. Well, if you feel like company, come on up to the tower. Nice view from there, and I’ve got the radio on. You can monitor the traffic.”
“Um, thanks. Yeah. Maybe later.”
The cloud turned gradually from snowy-white to hazy purple, then oozed off over the rim of the earth. Another twenty minutes crept
by, then the phone rang and he snatched it up. “Dad?”
“Nobody else. I’m finally blowin’ this joint and headed your way. But, Sky, I’ve been thinking…”
“I know.” It was nearly three. And after all his bragging to Kat.
“We could fly after dark, but the traffic on the coast is fierce. And we’d arrive pretty late. Tuckered out. So what would you say to Las Vegas instead? Swim in one of their big ol’ pools, then catch a magic show? Tigers and babes and stuff.”
Not half as good as Disneyland, but then, Disneyland had never been the point. Still, he’d begun to picture them there, and it was hard to let the picture go: he and his dad, happy together, riding all the rides. It would have been such an excellent trip. And somehow the distance and the trouble and the cost and the time would’ve been proof that his dad still cared. “It’s okay. We don’t have to do anything. I just wanted to…” To tell you that we’ve got to put it all back together. You’ve got to hurry, before it’s too late. “To talk. Maybe you could stay here tonight? We could go out to supper. Mom could come.”
“She’s probably made other plans, buddy.”
“No, she hasn’t. She’s just moping around the house. She was sad that we were going without her.”
“Was she?” His dad sighed heavily. “Well, tell you what, Sky. Let’s think about Vegas. I’ll be there in an hour, tops, and then we’ll decide, okay?”
He hadn’t said no, Sky told himself, switching off the phone. His dad hadn’t said no or even “We’ll see,” which was another way of saying no. So they were still at “maybe”? And if he could turn that “maybe” to yes…
THEIR SECOND TIME started as joyfully frolicsome as the first, in Abby’s claw-footed bathtub. But its sloping sides made vertical lovemaking perilous, and they’d run through so much hot water in their soapy foreplay there wasn’t enough left to fill the tub. Besides, Jack’s legs were too long.
He laughed, scooped her up and stood. “Hey, mermaid, what’s wrong with a bed?”
“Thought you’d never ask!” She hooked an arm around his neck, its muscles agleam with water.
Kelton's Rules (Harlequin Super Romance) Page 23
