“That you took a huge risk, and you won’t even acknowledge it was dangerous and stupid.”
“Hey, I’m not the one running around with a fireplace poker.”
“You are the most unreasonable, pigheaded, stupidly macho...”
He set the work lamp on the ground, closed the distance between us, and clamped his mouth on mine. His lips were soft and luscious, and the minute they touched mine, I forgot why I was mad and what I’d been about to say. The anger morphed into something else, something hotter and more irrational. His five-o’clock shadow rasped my skin. I dropped the fireplace poker, and wound my hands around his back. His hands sifted through my hair as he angled his face to kiss me more deeply.
My fingers moved under the back of his T-shirt. His skin was warm, his muscles hard. I felt his erection press against my belly.
The rain that had been threatening started to sprinkle down.
“This isn’t wise,” I murmured.
“Why not?”
“Because I won’t want to stop.”
“Who says we have to?” His lips slid down my neck, creating goose bumps up and down my spine.
“Do you have protection?”
“No. But there are things we can do without it. Is the shed locked?”
His lips were close to my ear. The erotic tickle of his breath made a shiver chase through me. “I know where the key’s hidden.” His lips found mine again.
I couldn’t bear to break the kiss, so I walked backward on tiptoe toward the garden shed—and then he picked me up. I wound my legs around his hips and let him carry me, still kissing me, to the shed. I reached up and pulled the key from the top of the left shutter.
He set me down, took the key, and unlocked the door, then pulled out his cell phone and used it as a flashlight.
“There’s an old picnic blanket on the middle shelf,” I said.
He grabbed the blanket and shook it out, then spread it on the floor. He opened the window, closed the door, then knelt on the blanket and reached for my hand.
I sank down beside him. And then we were kissing again, kissing and touching, touching and kissing. Outside, the sprinkles became a torrent, pounding on the roof. He pulled my shirt off over my head and took my nipple in his mouth. When he sucked, an arrow of heat ran right down my middle, right to my very core.
He moved over me with his hands and mouth until I was ablaze, melting and molten, throbbing for relief from the relentless, aching heat. His mouth traced a path down my stomach. He dipped his tongue into my belly button, his fingers working their way up my thighs.
He paused to pull my shorts down and off. “Going commando, I see.”
“Well, it was a commando operation,” I replied.
His laughed against my belly, and finding humor in such heat... well, it only made it hotter. Righter. Realer. More intimate.
“I appreciate how you managed to dress for the occasion on such short notice.” He kissed me some more. “Or did you plan this out? Did you pay those boys to give you an excuse to call me?”
“I thoughtyoupaid them.”
He laughed again, and pleasure, just as intense as the physical pleasure, but more deeply centered, located in the part of me that was more than just a body, pulsed through me. He made me feel... amazing. Treasured. Appreciated. Swept away, yes, but swept right into the moment. We were both right here, right now, fully present, traveling together on a rotating planet revolving around a burning star. The heat of his breath moving upward on my thigh sent me into a delicious spiral of pure, burgeoning desire. The pressure of his fingers, the indescribably tender, firm urging of his mouth created an irresistible vortex of need and pleasure. My legs quaked and my body stiffened and all at once, I was teetering on the ledge—a ledge where in the past I often used to think,This is it. I’m nearly there, and that thought, that brief step back from the moment to observe it, would make it impossible to fall into the abyss of abandon. But Matt disallowed that option. He simply, masterfully, lifted me off and over—and I found myself flying and crying, all at the same time.
At length, he kissed his way back up my belly, up my chest, up my neck, to my mouth. “You are so beautiful, so wonderful, so delicious,” he said. “That was such a turn-on.”
I could feel his erection pressed against my belly. “Your turn,” I murmured, unbuttoning his jeans. His manhood jutted out as I freed it from the zipper.
I pushed up his shirt. His pecs were firm mounds, topped with flat brown nipples, dusted with dark hair. His abs were flat and hard, banded with muscle. I kissed my way down a trail of dark hair below his belly button.
I touched his erection, and it jerked toward my hand. “I think he likes me.”
“Oh, Hope,” he groaned. “That feels...”
