“Okay. But you can still buy me a dress.”
“All the dresses.”
She rolls her eyes.
I look around and straighten up a few things, head into the kitchen and grab the cheese and fruit tray, along with the champagne, and shove them both into a picnic basket. “Come on.”
She slips on her shoes and I close up the shack behind us, planning to come back to clean before the next scheduled scene in the morning. Around us, the air is charged, the humidity high.
“Smells like rain’s coming,” Twyla says.
“We need it.” I pause at the top of the porch steps and suck in the heavy air, listen to the night creatures, all stirred up, and look at Twyla. “I want to do it again.”
Her eyebrows lift high. “The kidnapping?”
Lighting strikes, somewhere in the distance, startling us closer together.
After eyeing the sky for a minute, I shake my head, let my eyes slide to her mouth, let the heat take me, and the need. “I wanna do the other thing.” And then, like the good kinkster I am, I spell it out for her. “I want to kiss you.”
“Do it,” she says, stepping closer.
“I will. I need…a second.”
“Okay.” She watches me, those eyes big and dark and luminous.
My gaze roams her face until it settles on her mouth. It’s a wide mouth, plump, but not quite bee stung. I love the little divot at the top, so neat and pert. I want to lick it, taste it. Taste her tongue, smile, sip at the moans she makes when all her pleasure overflows.
“Got to get home before the rain,” I say. To extend the moment? To put it off out of fear that I’ll get it wrong or it won’t live up to expectations or maybe there’s an edge of that other thing that says I’m not fit for love. That love’s for other people, this kiss is a commitment and—
Throughout my inner diatribe, she doesn’t budge, her attention unwavering, the weight of her stare as warm as a blanket. “Let’s go, then.”
I’m on her before my brain gives me more excuses.
I grab her face, press my mouth to hers, and it’snothinglike an on-screen kiss. It’s electric, wild, and so goddamn frightening. Her lips are warm and soft and it’s not like anything else at all. On set kissing’s just a movement. This is a delving inside myself, inside her. It’s reaching in and plucking out all the tender parts and sharing them between us. It’s beautiful and it hurts and I tear myself away for fear of losing my mind just as lightning lights up the sky and sets my hair on end. Up high, the treetops dance with a sudden gust of wind that hints at more than a little summer storm.
I want another kiss, but my wildly thumping heart needs a minute to recover from the first one.
“Fuck, Twyla. That was—”
Thunder cracks around us—under us—and we’ve suddenly got no choice but to go back in or race home and I need to be inside my woman the next time I kiss her. In my bed. Our bed.
“Take this,” I say, passing the basket to her. “Hold it tight.”
“Why?”
Before she can protest, I bend over, and throw her over my shoulder again, enjoying her surprise and the slight struggle, then the soft, perfect feel of her body laid over mine.
“What are you doing, Zion?”
Thunder rolls over our heads.
“Carryin’ you home?”
“Why?” she squeals.
“Storm’s coming and you can’t run in those shoes.”
I take off into the night as fast I dare, more careful of my giggling wife on my back than I’ve been of anything in my whole life.
