Cutter Mountain Rendezvous (21 page)

They broke the kiss to grab a breath. Colton swept her off her feet. “We’re taking this indoors. Grab the handle on the screen.”

She reached down and gave it a yank. The door snapped behind them. Colton shut the main door with his foot, and she locked it. “Ya gotta love a team player,” he said.

“Your place of mine?”

“Mine. It’s closer.”

“You’ve a rollaway.”

“No problem.”

He set her feet on the floor and locked his door before pulling the mattress off the rollaway. Sheets and quilts fluttered out as it settled. The blinds were open and sent bars of moonlight across the floor. He saw her staring at the guitar against the wall. “Would you like that guitar?”

“Yes. But it’s too expensive.”

“Wrong answer.” He pulled her sundress over her head and discarded her bra in two swift movements. The sight of Kate’s small, firm breasts in the moonlight about undid him.

Colton was hotter than he could ever remember but he intended to savor every sweet taste of Kate as he planted wet kisses wherever his mouth landed. Her rose petal mouth. Her perfect breasts. Her neck, so delicate and vulnerable when she pressed into his lips with a murmur. The zipper on his jeans was about to burst and was downright uncomfortable, but he wanted to take this slow. Work Kate into a fever she would never forget.

Her cool fingers were working the buttons on his shirt. Against the urgent need of his body, he stopped her hands at the last button. “Do you want my shirt off?”

“Yes.”

“Wrong answer.” He made short order of her skimpy panties.

“
Please
,” she rushed with a giggle. “Please can I take your shirt off?”

“Have at it.” He took a step back and drank in the sight of her fully nude form. Rosy nipples erect in the cool room. Dark curls he imagined the same color as her hair in daylight. Curvy hips gave way to smooth tapered legs.

“God, Kate. You’re perfect.” She tossed aside the shirt, his stomach flexing when her fingers curled inside his waistband to unsnap his jeans. He stopped her. Two unnatural acts within seconds. He deserved a friggin’ reward. “How do we ask nice?”

Kate dropped her hands to her side. “Please.”

“I should warn you, I’m big.” She rolled her eyes at him. “Just saying.”

“Who would have thought your ego traveled clear down to your dick.”

His eyes widened. “Did you just say
dick
? I’m going to hell. I’ve corrupted you already.” He grinned while extracting a condom from his wallet. Her hands went back to his waistband. “Uh, Kate. Hold on a sec.”

“Now what?”

“Boots first or the jeans go nowhere,” he chuckled when she growled in frustration.

They sat on the mattress while he removed his boots. Jeans and briefs soon followed. He rolled to his back and stilled with barely a protest when she straddled him and lowered herself over his pulsing heat. So much for the foreplay he hoped to impress her with and had taken years to perfect. Next time. He placed his hands on her hips to help guide her one slick inch at a time until her cool buttocks sat tight against his groin. “Nice.”

“Guess you aren’t so big after all.”

“My ego.”

“I know.”

He ran his hands over her curves and knew this was important. That she’d call the shots. Unable to keep his hands and mouth from the creamy white mounds before him, she responded with a murmur. Nips and slow kissing brought erratic breathing.

He closed his eyes to think of anything but Kate impaled and squirming. The hard dick that never failed him teetered on the brink of deflation nestled there deep in the warmth of her cradle. He needed to get her into a different position or talk or something or he wasn’t going to last. “So, why don’t you like baseball?”

“What?” Kate splayed her hands over his chest and the dusting of golden hair. Muscles contracted beneath her fingertips. His nipples pebbled under the tease of her caress. Even in the poorly lit room, she could see color high on his cheeks. His eyes were dark and serious. Having adjusted to the thick feel of him, she swayed her hips in a gentle rocking motion. “I’ll give you one thing, cowboy. You’ve got...” Her mind went blank.

“Patience? It’s my specialty. I would have said stamina but didn’t want you thinking I’ve a big ego.” She laughed. “Back to baseball.” He pushed her into a sitting position.

Kate liked this. They were face-to-face. Slow, sensual kisses matched the equally erotic rocking of their bodies. “It’s too slow,” she said dreamily. Was baseball sex talk to Colton? How could he think? The sensations were too alluring to talk about anything, let alone baseball. She began to quiver. He stilled her motion with his hands.

“Look over my shoulder,” he said. His voice was hoarse and low. “What do you see?” Kate couldn’t focus on anything but the want of her body. The way he filled her. Her toes curled as she tried to squirm against him to no avail. He was too strong. He allowed her one stroke. Her head lolled. “What do you see?”

“My guitar,” she managed. Her eyes were closed but she knew what he wanted her to see. She felt drunk. His strength and masculine smell had taken over her senses.

“Wrong answer. My guitar. Yours for the asking. How do we ask?”

She opened her eyes to gaze into pools of deep desire and cupped her hands around his face. They held the gaze as she pressed her lips to his. They were full and warm. She ran the tip of her tongue across the crease of his lips, like he had done to her, and a sound rattled deep in his chest.

“You’re killing me here, Kate. Ask nice
. Please.
”

“Please, Colton. Please can I have the guitar? Can I have you? Oh...” He released his grip and let her slide against him. Pleasure ran up her legs. Her arms. He filled her everywhere. With his kiss. His tongue. His heat. Her muscles clenched around him. She was lost in the wonder of each delicious wave, willing them to last forever, and disappointed when they subsided. She clung to him in an embrace. He was still hard?

He rolled her to her back. She wrapped her legs around him and savored the deep penetrating thrusts. The low growl when he came and stilled for a second. Two more thrusts and he collapsed at her side. Puffs of erratic breath were the only sounds in the room, their bodies slick with sweat.

Kate wanted to hum a tune rolling around her brain. She suppressed it. Colton was unusually quiet so she rose up on an elbow to see if he had fallen asleep.

His sated gaze penetrated her soul. He was very awake. His hand ran along her hip. “Your body is beautiful.”

Kate felt a blush race across her cheeks and kissed the scar on his shoulder. Another kiss was placed on his lips. It was the only way she could respond to words she had never heard.
You’re body is beautiful.
She smiled. “You hungry? I’m starved.”

“You’re starved because you didn’t eat anything tonight.”

“Care to share my sandwich?”

“No. I want to shower and make love again.”

“Really?”

“Yeah. Really. Damn that was nice.”

“How about we head over to my place? You can shower, and I’ll eat my sandwich. Then I’ll shower.”

“Deal.”

They gathered their things off the floor. Kate wrapped a sheet around her bare body while Colton pulled on his jeans and retrieved something from a drawer in his bathroom. Barefoot, they padded across the empty foyer. Colton went upstairs to the shower.

Kate stood at the sink with a tight grip on her sheet, eating half a cold sandwich. Tinkerbelle curled her bare ankles. “He’s more than I expected,” she told the purring cat. “Don’t tell him, but Trey couldn’t last five minutes. I hardly ever came. I kept expecting him to explode. Nope. He just hung on. I didn’t mean to tease him. I couldn’t think.”

She hauled in a deep, contented breath. There in the comfortable surround of her kitchen she stood eating and staring into the dark yard. Her body hummed in harmony with the world. The shower stopped and her pulse fluttered.

“Our secret, Tinkerbelle. You know what an ego he has.” She reached down to place a loving stroke over the cat’s spine, his body contouring under her hand. He followed her up the stairs and disappeared into Lindsay room. She smiled, knowing Tinkerbelle would head for the box of stuffed animals he loved to squeeze into and sleep when Lindsay wasn’t around.

She met Colton in the bathroom with a towel around his waist. Desire made a quick rebound.

“A sheet becomes you,” he said with a dimpled smile. “Can you make that shower quick?”

“Most definitely.”

Colton stripped the towel from his waist and hung it over the towel rack. Kate’s gaze dropped. He didn’t seem to mind. She figured years of walking around au natural in a locker room made him immune to nudity. He used his finger to close her slack mouth. “Shower,” he said as a reminder and scooped several condoms off the bathroom counter.

She admired his perfect buttocks as he strode from the room. “I’ll only be a minute.”

He laughed and waved the condoms in the air. “No rush. We’ve got all night.”

Chapter Eighteen

Fog crept over Colton’s headlights as thick and sure as the guilt pricking his conscious. He tried to relax into the comfort of the new truck’s leather seats. Here was a perk his money could buy that was a definite plus over Bessie’s rock hard bench seats.

He fiddled around looking for a non-country radio station and turned up the volume to an oldies rock station to tap his thumbs against the steering. Squinting ahead through what his dad would call pea soup, he glanced in the rearview mirror—more pea soup.

Should he turn back? Retrieve the note he left? No. That would make matters worse. Better to stay on course and leave behind what happened between them severed.

Damn. He wished he had a pack of cigarettes. His gaze darted to the glove compartment. One hand on the wheel, he retrieved the Trace Patton CD that featured Kate’s drinking man’s song, “Kentucky Blue.”

Finally out of the mountains and fog, straight road lit by bright streetlights pointed the way to Chicago. Trace Patton’s voice filled the truck cab. An icon, Merle Haggard, came to mind as Trace crooned with a bluesy edge.

“Kentucky blue

Home sweet-eet home

And I threw it away chasing women and booze...”

“How the hell you come up with those lyrics, Kate?” He slid a glance toward the empty passenger seat and imagined Kate giving him a smart retort. Man, he wished he could ask her.

“Bartender, who is that shell of a man,

Staring straight, back at me, in that mirror,

Bartender set up a shot and a beer,

Run a tab, shoot the breeze, can’t you see,

He’s lookin’ Kentucky Blue...to me...to me”

Colton’s mind wandered as Trace’s
Sinners
CD spun out tales of woe, better days and an ode to sinners. Sowing wild oats certainly hadn’t passed him by. Sinning he considered downright fun, until last night. The unexpected euphoria and contentment went far beyond his typical conquests. Last night was special. Different. Dangerous to his plan to stay single as long as possible.

Large green interstate signs appeared. As green as the ink in the pen he used to write Kate the note. He’d done the right thing, he was sure. There had been enough hurt in Kate’s life.

He pulled off the road and let the truck idle before he made what might be a bigger mistake than taking a joyride on a dirt bike. He could go back right now, tear up the note, and make love to her until they were so sore and sated it would be a day they would never forget. One they could laugh about as they grew old together and rocked on the front porch. Drinking iced tea, shooting the breeze about the kids...
Whoa!

Colton put the truck in gear. Any further thoughts he might love Kate enough to marry and start a family were pushed away. He had a career to get back on track. The battered straw cowboy hat was taken from the dashboard and settled on his head.

“Hell.”
Kids?
There was a fastball to the gut.

Black pavement hummed beneath his Michelins and thoughts of baseball pushed away memories of Kate’s sexy, small body nestled tight against him. Would he ever forget her hair, smelling of field flowers?

He shook his head. He needed coffee. The life he was born to live waited in Chicago. Back to the life of celebrity he so enjoyed as the Bullets’ star pitcher. He would make a comeback if it killed him. Was that such a big sin? Everyone knew he wasn’t a man who could make a lasting commitment to a woman. Maybe Sasha was exactly the kind of woman that suited him best. No strings attached.

****

Showered and dressed, Kate sat at the kitchen table staring at the bold green writing in disbelief. She would cry if she weren’t so angry. It was tempting to tear it up along with the outrageous check for $5,000.

“Great night.” The words seethed between clenched teeth. “Thanks. Good luck with the inn. Hope this covers my stay as well as anything else you might need. C.”