He snorted.
There were only a few actual books on the shelves: The Big Book of Animal Husbandry was one of them, and it was indeed pretty big. Propped on cinderblocks it would have made an excellent coffee table.
“So sweet of you to go looking for husbands for all of your animals.”
“Ha ha.”
He seemed a little tense about her exploration, but he was letting her do it.
“I liked it better when you could see the books people thought they ought to read lined up in their living room, like Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and Siddhartha and stuff like that, and when you get closer to them, the ones they actually read in their bedroom. The Ludlum books and whatnot.”
“I have all of the those on my Kindle.”
“What are all those little boxes?”
“That’s my art installation.”
“They look like tie boxes.”
He sighed. “That’s because they’re tie boxes.”
She looked up at him. “Are . . . ties inside the boxes? Is this a fetish?”
“Why, feeling inspired?” He’d perked up.
She ignored that but gave him a little smile just to give him something to wonder about. “Do you sneak off to a job as a stockbroker when I’m not looking?”
Too late she realized that “stockbroker” was basically the opposite of everything he’d ever wanted to be. But he was tracking her pretty intently with his eyes. As if deciding how well she went with his décor. Or perhaps planning a sly way to get her to sit down on his bed.
He hesitated. “Where do you think I got most of my money?”
She paused before she followed that up with, “Where do you get your money?”
“I’m actually a fantastic investor.” He said this simply. “Grew it from scratch. Kind of like my crops.”
“Seriously?”
“I never joke about money, Harwood. I have absolutely nothing against coming by it honestly.”
Well, this was rather interesting. She studied him, freshly intrigued.
He hiked a brow nonchalantly.
“So where do you get the ties?”
There was a funny little beat of silence then.
“My brother sends them to me.”
She wasn’t certain whether the cautious way he delivered the sentence was because of his decidedly ambivalent relationship with his brother or because he just hadn’t wanted to tell her that because it was just too much intimacy for seven thirty in the morning.
Most likely he anticipated that answer would just lead to more questions.
“So, on the subject of goats. Do you mind if the Hummingbirds meet all your goats today and learn about them?”
“No,” he said shortly. “Not at all,” he added.
She studied him for the truth of that. As far as she could tell, he was perfectly sincere. Despite himself, Mac liked sharing what he knew.
She would wager good money that Mac had actually had a good time with the Hummingbirds the other day.
She could feel a treacherous little glow starting up around her heart at the thought.
“I was thinking after that I can give them lunch at the picnic table and maybe you could tell them about winter vegetables. What do you think?”
He regarded her pensively for a long, silent moment, as if he were mulling a philosophical conundrum.
“I think . . .” he said thoughtfully, “. . . you should take off your shirt. Right now.”
Chapter 20
She froze. The breath knocked from her for a millisecond.
Instantly something like invisible lightning zig-zagged between them.
They stood across from each other like a pair of gunslingers.
And then he smiled. Slowly and crookedly.
An implacable smile.
She tipped her head, considering another few seconds.
Then she curled her fingers into the hem of her T-shirt. And leisurely, as if she was just rolling out of bed after a good night’s sleep and indulging in that first stretch, she furled it up over her head.
She gathered it into one fist. Dangled it for an instant.
And let it fall into a little pink heap on the floor. As coy as a maiden dropping a hankie.
She was a little chilly without it.
She wouldn’t be for long, that much she knew.
“Now,” he said thoughtfully, “I think you should take off your bra.”
He made it sound like an oh-so-reasonable suggestion. His voice had gone hypnotically soft.
They locked eyes.
He wasn’t blinking.
She hesitated.
But only for effect.
Then she reached around behind her. Her hands were already a little clumsy with anticipatory nerves.
And she slipped the clips free, and peeled the straps from her shoulders, and slid it down one arm to drop right on top of the T-shirt.
She stood, nude from the waist up, her nipples already going hard in the chilly air.
She had the pleasure of watching his eyes darken to black.
She half suspected wolves looked like that before they pounced on something delicious.
“Now take off your jeans.” He employed the same civilized, reasonable tone. Though it was a trifle tauter now.
The room suddenly seemed as silent as a vacuum. They were the only two people in the world. He stayed in the doorway. A sort of self-imposed distance, she imagined. His way of making it that much hotter for himself.
When she lowered her hand to her waistband, his eyes followed it as if they were on an invisible tether.
She watched him while he watched her hand settle on the snap. And then she thumbed it open. The tiny click was as momentous as a gong sounding.
She dragged the zipper down in a leisurely fashion.
She went at this in a very matter-of-fact way. She wasn’t going for burlesque. This somehow didn’t feel like a whimsical occasion.
And she pulled at the waistband and freed her jeans from her hips and managed to get them off without needing to hula-hoop them down. Magically, her underwear didn’t go along for the ride.
And while they weren’t anything Victoria’s Secret would put in a storefront window, they were black and featured lace and they didn’t say “Tuesday” on them.
She was now naked save for them.
His lips curved very, very slightly.
But the heat in his eyes, the tension in his jaw, was making her lightheaded.
“And now . . .” His voice was husky. “I think you should take off your underwear.”
She waited again, a little smile on her own face.
And she heard his breath catch when she finally moved.
She slid them down exactly as if she was about to step into the shower, maybe with a little less speed, and kicked them from her toes to land lightly on top of her jeans and T-shirt and bra.
She had a peculiar sense of floating over her nude self while the fully clothed Mac smiled like King Henry VIII contemplating a feast.
For a good thirty seconds or so.
She’d never felt more naked or more purely like an animal, willing to do just about anything to get what she wanted, and that meant, in this moment, doing everything he wanted. And to think she couldn’t even get lazy old Corbin to do it in front of a mirror.
“Now . . .” His voice was a hypnotist’s voice. Dreamy. “I think you should turn around, put your hands against the wall . . . and close your eyes.”
She rotated toward the wall with the casement window and pressed her palms against the cool stucco, like a perp about to get frisked for weapons.
And she closed her eyes.
Nothing happened.
There was no sound.
No movement.
Unless one counted her lungs. Her breath shuddered in and out, swiftly. In and out.
In the dark behind her lids, she imagined she could feel his eyes on her, planning what he intended to do to her. And within seconds im
agination and anticipation colluded to fire her nerve endings into a state of a sort of raw eagerness as efficiently as a well-applied tongue or a skillful hand.
And it got even better when she imagined him watching her. His own arousal banking by the second as he filled his senses with the sight of her.
Imagined his hand moving to his zipper, sliding it down.
The silence felt acute. Her hearing was suddenly a superpower. Off in the distance a goat bleated.
And then . . . then there was a faint rustle. She latched on to the sound with a desperate hope.
Suddenly she could smell him, his earthiness and an underlying tang of soap.
Behind her, the inch or so of space between them heated so palpably it was almost as if he was against her skin.
Oh but not quite.
It definitely wasn’t quite the same.
And still . . . he made her wait.
Seconds more. And a few more after that.
She shuddered and arced like a snapped power line when his fingertips finally landed lightly on her skin, and when they glided from her shoulder blades to her waist, she groaned raggedly and shamelessly.
His erection pressing against her bare bottom. His chest against her back. He was still wearing a T-shirt, and this somehow was even more erotic.
“I’m going to make you scream louder than Melissa Manchester,” he murmured, softly, right into her ear, and she started to laugh but she stopped when he applied his tongue and traced slow curlicues there followed by strategic little hot breaths, and continued in that fashion down her throat, sending zaps of bliss to the far reaches of her body, her scalp, her fingertips, down to the soles of her feet. And he followed this by sliding his hand up to cup her breasts, to nipples that were so rigid it was a wonder sparks didn’t shoot from them when he chafed his thumbs across.
“Jesus . . . sweet oh sweet Jesus,” she moaned, like someone at a revival meeting. Awestruck by the staggering wonderfulness.
His hand made its way down and slipped with alacrity between her legs and discovered her wet indeed.
“Spread ’em, Harwood,” he ordered.
She did.
And he trailed kisses down along her spine, and the kisses were followed by his featherlight fingertips, down, down, down, until he kissed that wildly sensitive little place at the base of her spine, and then managed to maneuver his torso between her legs, which was both comical and graceful as if they were Chinese acrobats, and now he was in front of her looking up. He slid his palms up over her thighs and delicately touched his tongue right there.
A bolt of pleasure nearly lifted the top off her head. “Holy Mother . . .”
He did it again. And again, and then he performed what amounted to calligraphy with the very tip of his tongue. Oh dear lord, could pleasure blind you? She closed her eyes.
“Yes.”
And then he stopped.
Her eyes opened again. “Mac . . . please . . .”
“Am I on the right track?” His voice was a laughing purr. His eyes were full of wicked lights.
“Don’t . . . talk . . .”
And this time he took orders from her. He set up a rhythm. The sinewy talent of his hot, satiny tongue was a revelation. He took cues from her shredded breathing, her moans, her thrashed-back head and undulating hips, her fingers curling into his hair to urge him on, to hold herself up. A tsunami of pleasure was building, building, building.
And when it hit, as he’d promised, she screamed quite shamelessly.
He caught her in his arms before she could crumple to the floor like a marionette, and danced her backward a few feet and deposited her on his bed, and clambered onto it alongside her, hovering over her like a conqueror. Admiring his handiwork. Sporting a glorious erection curving up his belly.
“Off!” She seized a handful of his T-shirt as if she was a teen who’d gotten hold of Harry Styles. “All of it.”
He ripped it off over his head and flung it across the room. He yanked off his jeans all the way.
And she sighed again as she reached up for him, dragged her hands over satin skin stretched over those drum-taut muscles, slid her hands into those delicious hollows of muscle on his butt, perfect for gripping when things got fast and hard. He hissed in a breath with the pleasure of her touch, his stomach contracting. And so she let her hands glide over him, her fingertips tracing those fissures of muscle.
He slid his hands into hers and pressed them flat and she locked her legs around his back.
And she looked up at him, and he looked down into her eyes, and she had a hunch that the realization that this was the first time that they had ever lain together, skin to skin, struck them simultaneously. His expression suddenly went serious and very nearly shy. She touched his face and she didn’t know why. As if the unguarded Mac, the sweetness she’d always known, was there and she wanted to protect him, acknowledge him, feel him once more before that boy was gone.
He stroked into her deeply, slowly. At first.
And then faster.
Very like they’d discussed earlier about painting.
“Oh my God. Oh God.” His words were really tatters of breath as he moved. “Avalon.”
And then they collided hard, over and over, in a perfect, greedy rhythm, until their breath came in shredded gusts, until the cords of his neck drew tight, until he rose up over her, his head thrown back, his eyes closed, and shouted her name.
She held on to him, terrified and joyous all at once, as he eased himself down over her. She could feel his heart beating right against hers.
“Should we high-five each other?” she suggested a few seconds later. Still somewhat breathlessly.
“Low five,” he said, and gave her bottom a contented little smack.
She curled into his bent arm and he pulled her into the curve of him, and she rested her head on his shoulder which went up . . . and down. Up . . . and down. As his breathing resumed regular rhythms.
“So you’ll sell me the house now, right?” he slurred happily.
She laughed. “What is it you said a few days ago? Over my dead body.”
“Funny. For a minute there I thought I might have actually killed you . . . with bliss.”
“For a minute there I think you did. I saw a bright light and everything. The only thing that brought me back into my body was the prospect of maybe doing this again.”
He smiled. Eyes closed. “Gimme a second or two.”
There would very likely be a picture of him next to the word replete in the dictionary.
“What do I have to do to get you to sell me Devil’s Leap?” she teased.
He breathed in and out, still wearing that faint smile. He appeared to be mulling.
“Fellatio,” he suggested sleepily.
Is that all? she was tempted to say, like the strumpet she’d clearly become.
Out loud she issued a faux-scandalized, “Mac Coltrane!”
Her head was bumped up and down on his shoulder as he laughed silently to himself.
And then he sighed again.
With her cheek against his chest, his arm looped to hold her against him, their calves twined. Silent minutes went by. That satiety expanded into something that felt horizonless. As though the two of them were floating on a raft on a safe and beautiful sea, a warmth, a peace, heady and at the same time righter than anything.
When she was sixteen, she really knew almost nothing much about the physical part. The mechanics, sure. You could read about those. But not about its variations, and how it could be boring with one person and incendiary with another.
But she’d called this feeling, the one she was feeling right now, love, without questioning it.
She still didn’t know if it was a feeling to be trusted when it came to Mac Coltrane. And just that little notion alone crept in and sobered her, crisped up the hazy, blurry edges of postcoital bliss. And again she remembered yesterday’s gesture: the casual affection that almost was withdrawn before something like tenderness o
r surrender—his—could be construed.
She thought about this as his breathing was growing more even.
“Can I . . . ?” She gestured at the tie boxes.
He hesitated. “Knock yourself out.”
She leaned over and plucked up the lid on one box. It was navy blue and featured a scattering of mountain goats. The kind you might count if you were trying to get to sleep.
“Goats?”
“Yeah,” he said shortly.
“So he knows about the goats?”
He didn’t reply.
She closed it carefully. She lifted another lid. Inside was a striped red-and-gold tie and there was a 49er helmet on it.
“You always liked the 49ers.”
“Yep. Still do. I’m irrational that way.”
The 49ers could not seem to win for losing in recent years.
She opened another box. It was a tie featuring a scattering of mountain bikes.
“You loved that Ritchey P-29,” she said.
Mac said nothing for a time. “I told you before, Ty has a very fixed idea of what I should be.”
“While you have no fixed ideas about anything.”
“Ha,” he said. Not sounding amused.
She gingerly, carefully settled the ties back into place, abstractedly fussing with their alignment as if she were an engineer and something critical would topple if they were a hair out of place.
And then she turned to him.
“And yet you keep them. The ties.”
This yielded stony silence.
“Where is Ty now?”
“New York.”
The short answer made his displeasure at the direction of the conversation known.
“Why the inquisition, Avalon?” he asked, a moment later.
“It’s not an inquisition.”
This wasn’t entirely true.
He closed up. She didn’t know whether he was even aware of doing it. It was subtle. He slid his hand out from beneath her head and folded it under his own. He shifted a little so that his hip wasn’t touching hers. He now occupied a space on the bed described by himself alone.
“It was probably pretty hard for him, too. The whole thing with your dad. And at least he’s trying. It’s a gesture. A symbol.”
“And we know how you feel about grand gestures, huh, Avalon?”
Dirty Dancing at Devil's Leap Page 22
