So easy, it would be so easy to unzip his pants, tug her panties to the side and slide up inside her… He pushed his hand up her skirt to cup her ass and realized it would be easier than he thought. She wasn’t wearing any panties.
Christ. He had to get a grip, or this would be over before it started.
“Sweetie, let’s go inside,” he whispered. “We have all night. I’m not going anywhere.”
Her eyes were wild in the dim green glow from the dashboard lights, her lips dark and full from the pressure of his. “I want you so much. I want to give you everything.”
The words drew out something primeval and possessive inside him, the need to cherish her and protect her and above all else, claim her as his own. Erase all memory that she’d ever belonged to anyone else, that she’d ever given
anything
to a man who didn’t appreciate her and didn’t treasure her with his entire being. She was the one who deserved everything, everything he had to give.
The journey up to their room was the longest of her life, and the click of the door behind them shutting out the rest of the world, the sweetest sound she’d ever heard…aside from his voice.
She dropped her purse to the floor and toed off her sandals so the thick carpet could well between her toes. Even the swish of her skirt around her legs was sensuous as she turned into his embrace, standing on her tiptoes to reach his lips with hers. His arms encircled her waist, lifting her against him to ease their distance in height. It was her natural response to wrap her legs around his waist, to better press the throbbing apex between her thighs tight against his erection. She moved her hips, loving the friction, stoking it, their mutual groans mingling as their mouths did.
This had to be wrong. Nothing that wasn’t damningly sinful could feel so good. The man was the devil, to do this to her, to turn her into this madwoman strung out on his touch. As he gathered her weight higher in his arms and planted her back hard against the wall of their living room, she was limp as a dishrag, clinging to him to hold her up. Still, she operated on enough strength and instinct to reach down and unbutton his pants, fingers desperate to enclose his cock, to stroke it so that he made more of those delectable sounds. And then to guide it deep, deep inside her.
His flesh was hot and hard in her hand. He closed his eyes, his head falling back as she used both hands, one then the other, to glide over him from base to tip. He was already damp with his pre-come, and it thrilled her that she did this to him. At the feel of his girth in her hands, her own moisture had doubled so that the inside of her thighs felt dewy. The empty ache in her womb intensified, and she tried to adjust herself to take him. He lifted her higher, shifted his hips and teased her clit with the head of his cock, sawing it back and forth so that her bud tightened and pulsed.
“Oh, God!” she cried. She fisted his shirt in her hands until she almost ripped it.
“Not yet,” he murmured, halting his motions amid her cries of protest. Those cries stopped abruptly when he plunged into her, because for a moment, she completely ceased to be. Every cell in her body imploded with agonized pleasure. Every ensuing thrust drove a cry from her throat, and she tried to meet them, to give back to him, but her movements were pathetic echoes of his. Everywhere she was weak and helpless, he was strong and rigid and straining.
Wrong, wrong, this has to be wrong…
“Don’t leave me,” he murmured, looking into her unfocused, barely seeing eyes. She recognized her own words from last night.
“I’m right here,” she said, more of a whimper than a declaration.
“Do you know how good you feel?”
“I hope…as good as…you feel… Oh, Evan…”
His lips encircled her nipple through her black halter top, the moisture soaking through to her flesh. She’d foregone a bra tonight, as well.
“Should’ve taken this fucking thing off,” he growled, and even through the pleasure wreaking havoc on her thoughts, she laughed. Then his teeth grazed her nipple through her shirt and she lost all capacity to make any sound beyond cavewoman grunts.
Evan slowed his movements and adjusted her weight so that he could pull her away from the wall. She clung to him as he walked their entangled bodies over to the couch, then toppled them over on it.
“Put your foot on the floor,” he whispered, and she did, opening herself up wide to him. He grasped her other calf and lifted it against the back of the couch, holding it in place with his arm braced on the back. “Pull up your shirt.” She did, slowly, running her hands over both breasts as she went. Her cheeks burned hot as fire, her breath came in wild pants. If she didn’t get a grasp on it, she feared passing out.
“Jesus,” he murmured. “Keep doing that.” As she caressed herself, shuddering beneath him, he watched her hands move before lowering his lips to one pink, distended nipple peeking between her fingers. His tongue flickered over it, grazing her knuckles along with her pebbled flesh, soft and wet. She moved her fingers underneath the swell to give him easier access, and he responded by sucking it until she thought it would burst. But he held his hips torturously still, surely staving off his own orgasm. Thinking of her first. That knowledge sweetened her, but she was still desperate for him to move again, to fuck her like this. She waited on him, sobbing her impatience. He was still thick and pulsing inside her. Oh, if he didn’t move soon she would have to…
“I’m finding it difficult,” he said suddenly, “to deal with the knowledge that you get even tighter just before you come.”
The words jarred loose her desperation for him. “Please, Evan.”
He drew a deep breath and kissed her, his mouth playing gently across first her top lip and then her bottom, tender caresses she tried to capture, to pull in, because she wanted his tongue in her mouth. He evaded her, even when she tried to raise her head, a wicked little grin curving the corners of his lips. Almost imperceptibly, he began withdrawing his shaft from her, slow as the moon crawled across the sky outside. She tossed her head on the arm of the couch. She needed it back, and faster, she needed it faster…
“I love seeing you this way too much,” he confessed. “I never thought I’d be here. I don’t want it to end, honey.”
Kelsey didn’t either, truth be known. She wanted to be here with him, like this, from now on. Never having to face the world. These moments were precious, too precious to rush, even for the promise of earth-shattering pleasure hovering just beyond her reach. It would be over too soon.
Would it
all
be over?
The thought of going home in a few days was sobering, but Evan began to move inside her, and her thoughts splintered and shattered. His lips swirled around hers once and then claimed them fully, his tongue sinking past her teeth. He tasted warm and spicy and as intoxicating as the wine he’d drunk. She went liquid, clutching him, the pleasure centers in her brain delighting in every place the two of them touched, joined. He was like a drug in her system.
His thrusts grew stronger in increments. Her legs ached from being spread so wide, but it was a small price to pay for the thick, gliding shaft working her to ecstasy between them. The heat reached a fever pitch, and she turned her face away, not wanting him to see the emotions that crossed her face. She was going to lose her mind, absolutely lose it…
“Sweetheart, don’t,” he whispered. She’d forgotten. He’d called her out on that last night, too. It was so hard to let go while he watched. Even though he seemed to take most of her control away from her, she still tried to grasp a little piece of it with her bare fingernails, to safeguard her heart. When he wrenched it away, stripped her bare like this, she was defenseless.
“Evan…”
“Don’t hide from me. You know me. I won’t hurt you.”
Oh, but he could. He held all the power in the universe to crush her heart into oblivion, and she was giving it to him willingly. She let him in anyway, turning her face up to him for a reassuring kiss as she felt the overwhelming tightening of all her muscles, of her body clenching around him, sucking at the pleasure he poured into her. It all swirled into one blazing hot pinpoint and exploded. Her foot came off the floor and she wrapped her leg around him, enfolding him fully in her arms so that he couldn’t have extricated himself had he wanted to. She wanted every drop of him.
Somehow, in the midst of it all, it occurred to her just how unconvincing all her fake orgasms had been with her ex. She hadn’t screamed then, she hadn’t gone stiff and tight all over nor had she produced these fluttering contractions deep inside her womb—she didn’t think any amount of theatrics could fabricate those. They were from him, from what he did to her body. As he came with a burning rush inside her and a groan that wrenched her heart, she held him tight and shuddered through it with him.
Kelsey didn’t know how long they lay like that, still and silent with her cradling him beside her as her muscles dissolved into bliss. It wasn’t comfortable, but it was close, and it was what she needed. He stroked her face and hair and body until he dozed, and she slipped into unconsciousness only to awaken to him carrying her to bed. They made slow, sleepy love in utter darkness and collapsed for the rest of the night, Evan holding her just as he had all those years ago, curling her body against his warmth, his breath near her ear.
Chapter Nine
The rain poured down in a thick, gray curtain. Evan watched it from his seat on their private lanai, where he was sheltered from the deluge by the floor several feet above his head. He was still getting splashed a bit, but it felt good. He propped his bare feet up on the wet railing and sipped his coffee. Kelsey thought he was insane that he liked to go outside in the rain so much, yet he thought it wouldn’t take much persuasion to get her to join him sometime. His favorite place in the world to be—besides here, right now—was on his front porch, watching a storm. He certainly wouldn’t mind being warm in bed with Kelsey, but he hadn’t talked to his mother all week, so he’d walked out here to call and check in with her.
“I went by your house to check on your brother,” his mom was saying.
“Tell me it wasn’t a pile of rubble.”
“No, no. It looks like Brian’s taking care of things. I was impressed.”
“No evidence of wild drunken headbanging riots? Did you lay eyes on my dogs? Were they skeletal? Or carved up and sacrificed to some pagan god?”
She laughed. “They were fine. Brian said to tell you he would have a bucket of ice waiting for you when you got back. He said you’d know what it meant, and I hope so, because
I
don’t want to know.”
Well, well. Brian was going to be sorely disappointed. Evan grinned, tipping his chair back on two legs. “Yeah, he’s just being typical Brian.”
“Are you outside? Is that rain?” his mom asked.
“Yeah.”
“Ah. Sorry you’re having bad weather.”
He gazed down on the beach, where the waves continued to roll in through the gray haze, and palm fronds jiggled and danced with water drops. “Today is the first time we’ve had it. It hasn’t been so bad. We’ve just been lazing around waiting for it to clear up.”
“Surely you can find something to do? Don’t let Kelsey get bored,” she chided.
“I’m not, don’t you worry about that. She’s laid back like me.”
“So you are having a good time with her?”
“I, uh…I don’t think I quite expected to have such a good time.”
There was a pause. “Why do I get the feeling by those few words that other things have happened you didn’t expect?”
Evan laughed. “I knew I wouldn’t get anything by you. Not that I wanted to try.”
“Evan Giovanni Ross!” Her words dissolved in a string of Italian that made him cringe. He wasn’t normally the son who caused Gianna to revert to her native language in anger. “I knew this would happen.”
“What? You like Kelsey, don’t you?”
“You know I
adore
her. I love her. That is what bothers me.”
“Why?”
“Because if it doesn’t work out with her, then you’ve really lost something. We all have.”
“The thought of that scares me, too. But I can’t go back and change what’s happened here.” He drew a breath. “I know I don’t have a great track record, but I’m trying. I tried with the last one, remember?”
“You didn’t want to marry Courtney.” She sighed heavily. “Sometimes I don’t know what it will take to get me grandbabies.”
Here we go again
, he thought. “Mom, I’m not deliberately trying to stand in your way of that. But hey, you never know, maybe it’ll take a woman who’s already been in my life for ten years, who I know I have a good time with, and who”—
rocks my whole world in bed
—“already knows me better than anyone else.”
“But your best friend’s ex?”
“Ex-best friend’s ex. I don’t have any notions of loyalty toward Todd Jacobs anymore.”
“I know, Evan, but you were best man at their wedding. Don’t you think that looks bizarre?”
“I really don’t give a damn. Come on, Mom. You did crazy things for love, didn’t you? You moved to a whole other country for my dad.”
“If it’s love, then you have my wholehearted blessing.”
Man, she’d pounced on that. He turned and looked through the glass doors, worried for a moment that Kelsey might be able to hear him. He didn’t want her to think he was having to defend their relationship to his mother. There was no doubt in his mind that once the potential scandal they would incite blew over, his mom would be overjoyed for him and Kelsey to be together.
If it ever had a chance to go there. Kelsey still had hang-ups. He saw them all the time. There was something she was afraid of, and it made her not want to open up to him. Hell, it was probably like his mother had insinuated. Why would Kelsey give her heart to him when, judging by his past foul-ups, there was almost a one hundred percent chance he would take it and run? He couldn’t sustain a relationship.
But he’d sustained theirs so far. She’d been the one person he couldn’t imagine living without. The months they’d spent hardly speaking, both of them humiliated and heartbroken, had torn him apart. He’d wanted them to heal over their time together, not slash open all new wounds. But at least she hadn’t seemed fazed by the news that Todd and Courtney had broken up.