“Okay, okay.” She left off teasing him to consider her options. “So you think I could do that. Just get a . . . get a glimpse of him to satisfy me until Juliet returns? I don’t think an invitation to Knitters’ Night at Malibu & Ewe would work, but I suppose I could drop by his offices or something.”
His shoulder brushed hers when he shrugged. “Or something. If you want, I’ll help you with that.”
She pinched her bottom lip between her thumb and forefinger and continued thinking, her gaze on the bookshelf across the room. “I suppose I could make an appointment . . . not with him, but with one of the other doctors in his practice, and then hope I see him in the hallway. What could I say I wanted a consult about? What do women my age typically see a plastic surgeon for?”
Her gaze shifted to Gabe’s. “Breast augmentation, right? I could say I wanted breast augmentation.”
His eyes didn’t move from her face. “No.”
Cassandra glanced down at her D-cups and made a face. “Right. How about breast reduction? I’ve often thought about—”
“No!”
His vehemence startled her. There was a little flush across his cheekbones though his gaze was still trained on hers. She narrowed her eyes. “Gabe?”
“Don’t change those at all, okay? They’re perfect just as they are. Trust me on this.”
Wow,
she thought. “I didn’t realize you’d ever really noticed me, um, like that. I mean, particularly, um, there.”
Though she’d deny it to her dying breath, she’d tried using “there” only about a zillion times to get his attention when he was sober. He’d never seemed to notice. When he was drunk, he always talked about his proportions, not hers. “And frankly, with the exception of you, men usually can’t seem to help themselves when faced with . . .” She made a vague gesture toward her chest.
Gabe swallowed. The flush on his cheeks deepened and his hand came to her face, his thumb brushing back and forth against her bottom lip. “If I didn’t pay proper homage to your incredible body when we were in bed the other night, I was not only drunk I was a fool.”
She didn’t hear a word he said. Her mouth stung where he was touching it and she could only stare at his face as his gaze finally, finally, shifted from her eyes and moved to a spot south of her collarbone.
In that moment, everything changed between them.
Her breasts swelled and their centers tightened as the heat of his leg still pressing against hers shot up her torso. Flames erupted around them, swallowing the oxygen in the room. Her head spun with the sudden onslaught of a combustible, sexual burn.
She couldn’t catch her breath. Where had the fire been all this time? How had Gabe managed to keep it smothered? He wasn’t managing now though, because there was definitely sex in the air, rising off their skin to mingle in the atmosphere. His hand dropped from her mouth to her thigh. More heat. She started to tremble.
“Cassandra,” he said, his voice hoarse. His gaze returned to her eyes, then dropped to her mouth where it lingered for a moment. Finally, it shifted lower again. “Cassandra, I didn’t do right by you, did I?”
She shook her head, unsure what he was referring to. He wasn’t doing right by her right
now
. Because if he didn’t move that hand from her leg and touch her someplace better, preferably one of those tight, aching someplaces he was staring at, she was going to burn up with want. She didn’t know why things had changed between them or what the change meant exactly; but if she could really read auras, theirs were mingling in an explosive combination of simmering yellow and passionate red.
She licked her lips, trembling as he continued to look at her. It was like there was a beast under her skin, a hot, sexy, demanding beast that didn’t remember Gabe had been kicked out of her life.
Touch me, damn you,
it wanted to shout at him
. Touch me
. But when Cassandra opened her mouth, a sultry voice—her voice—said something else altogether.
“Is this what you meant when you said everyone wants a chance to size up a person before they make their move?”
Six
The great gift of family life is to be intimately acquainted with people you might never even introduce yourself to, had life not done it for you.
—KENDALL HAILEY
The half-laugh, half-groan sound that Gabe made in response to Cassandra’s question rubbed against her skin like she was desperate for him to do. Maybe he heard her silent plea, because finally his hand slid upward from her leg, slowly smoothing the soft khaki covering her thigh, passing the front pocket, skimming the waistband to the cotton knit of her Henley T-shirt. The flesh over her ribs twitched as his palm tickled her there and then it was cupping her left breast, still not touching, damn him, but transferring his body’s heat to the already sizzling temperature of hers.
She didn’t move.
She had to move.
Then they both moved at once, and she fit her swelling, aching flesh to his hand just as he moved to cover her.
He groaned again.
Her belly—no, lower—clenched. But she held still, not wanting to spook him, not wanting to rush the delicious sensation of his hand over the soft fullness beneath her bra.
“Look at me,” Gabe ordered.
She was afraid to. She was afraid of what he’d see in her eyes, so she lifted her head but let her lashes drift half-closed. His mouth came against hers.
She jolted into the kiss, her nipples tightening unbearably with just that first touch of hard mouth to willing lips. This wasn’t one of those casual, howdy-neighbor busses he’d been doling out lately. This was a man’s demand, a demand that she open immediately for the swift surge of his tongue. Fire flashed over her body as he thrust inside her.
Cassandra widened her mouth—he gave her no choice—and Gabe, usually detached and often so distant except in her fantasies, went greedy on her, feeding her long kisses, commanding kisses, drugging kisses. She leaned into him as she took each one, leaned into that maddening hand that just held her breast, caging it but not caressing it. Her fingers speared into the long hair at the nape of his neck.
He tore his lips from hers and raced more kisses over her cheek, against her ear, across her jaw and then down her neck. His mouth was hot there, open, and when he sucked at her skin, a stab of pleasure speared between her thighs. Swallowing a moan, she squeezed them together to sustain the bright flash of sweetness. Gabe pulled back to stare down at her, his breath coming fast, his nostrils flared.
“Jesus, Cassandra,” he murmured. “Jesus, you make me dizzy.” His gaze dropped from her mouth to focus on his hand, the one over her breast. With a deliberate movement, his fingers flexed.
She gasped, even though the touch was muted by the thin layer of molded foam that was the bra’s cup. Her breasts had always been sensitive, but who could have thought just this whisper of feeling would make her blood burn in her veins? His thumb swiped over the center and she closed her eyes, trying to absorb as much of the sensation as she could through that damnably thick material. She’d bought into the bra maker’s hype—
Perfect Under T-shirts!
—but she could kill the advertisers or the intimate apparel designers or someone, anyone, because this ridiculous thing was surely invented to dull a man’s touch.
Gabe’s touch.
He slid his thumb over her again and she hoped he didn’t hear her frustrated little whimper.
“Baby,” he said, and she knew from the tone of his voice that he had. “Obviously I didn’t do this right before. I suppose I didn’t do right by you at all, selfish ass that I am. But I can make it better now.”
Better was a million buttons away. She could feel him begin to unfasten them and she flushed hot again, wondering why he didn’t just lift the damn shirt and then dispel with the ugly, confining, can’t-feel-anything-with-it-on bra. This was taking so long . . .
And the anticipation was making her feel so good, she realized, as pleasure pulsed in little bursts between her legs. She was aching there, too, feeling swollen and open and needy. She whimpered again, and Gabe flicked her a glance, a tight smile curving his mouth.
“Shh, baby,” he said, leaning down to deliver another kiss. This one was gentle, sweet, but his tongue was in it, too, and she rubbed hers along the velvety surface of his. “This time I’ll take care of you, I promise.”
She quivered. Men had never made her promises. She’d searched all her life for one who might, but maybe her longings and her lonely soul sent them running in the wrong direction. Or maybe it was because she had looked at the wrong men. Wrong men like Gabe, who was so preoccupied with his ghosts that he couldn’t see the rest of life going on around him.
But he seemed to see her now. His fingers had unfastened buttons as far as a point just below the lower edge of her bra. “There,” he whispered, again in that soothing voice. “There now.”
In one sure movement, he pushed the sleeves of her Henley off her shoulders, taking the bra straps with them. He slid all the material down, until her arms were trapped at her elbows and the cups of that infernal
Perfect Under T-shirts!
dropped, releasing her breasts.
She trembled harder. He gazed at her bare flesh, his breath coming fast again. Cassandra glanced down, noting the stiff jut of her dark pink nipples and the way her swollen flesh quivered along with the rest of her body.
Gabe’s thumb brushed across the tip of her nipple. She looked for sparks, the pleasure flared and flamed just that much. “My imagination wasn’t this good,” he said.
“You . . . you’ve been thinking about my breasts?” She wiggled a little, trying to move her arms out of their trap.
“Hold still,” he said, and he caged her breasts again with his fingers, touching, but not really touching. “If you don’t hold still I’ll stop.”
He couldn’t stop! She closed her eyes and surrendered, willing her muscles to relax even as every cell and every nerve was on alert for his next move.
“Nice,” he said, and he rewarded her by rubbing his thumbs around each areola, tracing a light circle. Reward, punishment, it was all the same because in seconds it wasn’t enough.
“Gabe, don’t tease.”
He laughed, a low, sexy sound that had her thighs clenching again. “Silly darlin’, this is all about the tease.”
“Gabe.”
Then his mouth was on hers again, his tongue thrusting deep, just as his thumbs rasped across her nipples.
Her back arched, her mouth took in more of his tongue as she gasped, her fingers curled into fists at her sides. Who would have thought this would feel so good? He chafed her tightened flesh again and she felt another burst of wet pleasure between her thighs. She moved into him, still constricted by her clothes, but so turned on she needed to get closer, to press nearer, to put all her soft parts against his hard ones.
Gabe controlled that urge, too. Instead of letting her rub against him like she wanted to, he gripped her at the shoulders and held her away from his body. “No,” she protested, breaking the kiss.
“Shh,” he said again, and kissed the corner of her lips, her chin, the notch of her collarbone. Then he dipped his head deeper and she held her breath until she felt the touch of his tongue on her nipple.
Gasping, her back bowed. He slid an arm around her so that she had support against her shoulder blades. With his other hand, he plumped up one breast and latched his lips around its throbbing center.
And sucked.
Her mind spun, her nipple throbbed, her center melted. She moaned, and kept on moaning as he kept up the heated pressure. His tongue was working, too, flicking the stiff nub, lashing it with sensation that she never wanted to end.
But end it he did, and she cried out until he’d transferred his mouth to her other breast and tweaked the now-abandoned wet nipple with his fingers, pinching just enough to add a little bite to the delirious, drugging sweetness.
Her knees slammed together, and she couldn’t help but rock her hips against the cushions. She knew what she wanted, but Gabe wasn’t hurrying, Gabe refused to be hurried, as he shifted from one breast to the other, tasting her and teasing her.
“Please. Please, Gabe,” she heard herself whisper to him in a hoarse voice. She struggled to free herself from her shirt again, though she was really struggling to free herself of the tightening, maddening coil of pleasure. For that, she knew, she needed more nakedness, and Gabe naked, and a bed, and more of him—her darkest, deepest fantasy—against her.
“
Please
, Gabe.”
His mouth still busy at her breast, he lifted his gaze to meet hers. Her lungs ceased to function. Time stopped. It was exciting, erotic beyond any of her late-night imagin ings, to look into Gabe’s dark eyes, the expression in them burning, as his mouth continued to suck at her breast, his cheeks hollowing.
Her womb clenched, releasing more slick heat. “Gabe,” she mouthed, her voice robbed of sound as her body throbbed with want. “Please.”
She saw the satisfaction in his eyes. Without taking his gaze from her face, he slid his palm away from her free nipple and slid it down her body. He found the juncture of her thighs, still tightly pressed together. The heel of his hand ground firmly against the soft pad of flesh at her mound.
Moaning, she felt her thighs part. It was what he wanted because he made a hum of approval and then slid his hard fingers into the narrow gap. He had to feel her heat, the dampness, but she couldn’t do anything but tilt her hips to meet his firm, knowing touch.
Through the thin cotton of her pants and the light fabric of her panties, he found the exact right place to rock and roll. He did both, taking her closer . . . and closer . . . And when his teeth bit down on her nipple, she reacted like a band groupie to her favorite singer’s signature song . . .