Close Up (15 page)

It wasn’t a lot of contact, just one index finger sliding into her heat, but after a lengthy celibacy and several days of trying to resist the idea of sex with Sean, it was all it took for Kristine to close her eyes and bite her lip against a low groan of agonized pleasure. Bringing her hips forward, she fumbled for the button on his jeans, wanting to feel him the way he was feeling her.

Sean raised his head long enough to kiss her, a hot wet plunge. Then he unzipped her jeans and tried to pull them down with frantic jerks, with little result. “Why aren’t you wearing sweats?” he asked. “These are like a second skin.”

“My butt looks better in these,” she said, finally succeeding in her own frustrating quest to unbutton his jeans.

“Let me see.” Sean spun her around and his hands cupped her backside. “Okay, I can’t lie that your ass looks amazing. But I still want them off.”

Then he guided her over to the kitchen table, which was just a giant slab of wood. There was a lone napkin holder in the center. Kicking a chair out of the way, Sean lifted her up on to the table.

“What are you doing?” she asked, though she had a good idea.

He confirmed it when he urged her onto her back. “Making this easier.” He tugged hard on her jeans.

Kristine lifted up her legs for the assist, and in seconds, he had both her panties and her jeans off and on the floor. She blinked up at him, feeling the cool air touching her exposed skin. This was really happening. She hadn’t fallen down the rabbit hole. She was here, on a table, while Sean pulled her body forward so her knees and her butt were on the edge of the table.

Then there was no question of this being real when he bent his head and did delicious things with his tongue. So he might have learned a thing or twelve in their time apart. She wasn’t even sure what he was doing precisely, but she was sure it had to be illegal in at least twelve states. Wow. It felt fantastic. Kristine stared at the ceiling and swallowed massive quantities of saliva, her fingers fluttering uselessly in front of her, before settling into Sean’s short hair.

“Oh, yes,” she murmured, wanting him to know that she was quite fond of what he was doing. “Sean, yes, yes.” It was basically a plea to bring her to orgasm, which she was sure could happen any second now, the way his tongue made inroads into her slick heat.

But that obviously wasn’t his agenda. Instead of finishing her, he stood and dropped his pants and boxer briefs. She caught one glimpse of his substantial erection as he rolled on a condom, then it disappeared. Fortunately, she didn’t have to guess where it was going.

His hands gripped the underside of her thighs tightly, his expression fierce, determined. Then he was inside her.

Kristine gasped, the impact sending her back an inch or two on the table, his cock filling her fully. He paused for a second, deep inside her, throbbing, and she said, “Remember when we named your penis MacGyver? Because I said it could fix anything?”

The corner of his mouth twitched. “Yes. I remember.” Then he moved, pulling back and plunging into her.

“Well, it’s still true,” she said, breathless. “Because right now you’re fixing a string of sexless nights.”

“Yeah? You haven’t been getting any?”

“No.” Yesterday, she had cared. Today, she didn’t, because this felt amazing.

“Me, neither.”

Why did that please her? Because she hoped that somehow Sean was still attracted to her.

Of course, the evidence that he was very much attracted to her was currently stroking inside her, much to her delight. Damn, she was going to orgasm; she couldn’t help it. Digging her nails into his arms, she turned her head and bit her lip as she exploded in a tight frantic burst of ecstasy. “Sean,” she breathed, a rush of emotion flooding her.

When she looked back up at him, he stared down at her intently, his thrusts coming faster and faster. When she expected him to close his eyes, he kept them open, fully trained on her, and as he met his own completion, he mouthed, “Kristy,” in a way that had her shuddering through another orgasm of her own.

For a minute, she just let go and fell over the edge with him, no baggage, no regrets, no fear.

Just love.

11

S
EAN HAD LOST
the ability to speak. His throat seemed to have closed up, leaving him no choice but to mouth Kristy’s name instead of murmuring it the way he wanted to. But she knew. He saw the way her eyes widened and her mouth formed an
O
before she surprised him with a second orgasm.

It was perfect. She was perfect.

And the way she was looking at him...a decade fell away, and for a second, he was twenty-one years old again, madly in love and hopelessly optimistic that his future would hold many, many bliss-filled weekends at the cabin.

But then her eyes shuttered, as if she knew she was revealing too much, and she gave him a saucy smile and a soft laugh that changed the moment.

He was disappointed, but also relieved. To be inside her was intense enough; he didn’t need to heap the confusion of old feelings on top of that. Resolutely, he concentrated on the pleasure of their connected bodies and nothing more.

When they had both slowed to a stop, her nails still digging into his flesh, Sean sucked in some much-needed air. Touching Kristine was exactly what he’d been fixating on for the past twenty-four hours, and it completely lived up to the anticipation.

Damn. The taste of her was still on his tongue as he pulled back with a sigh, gripping the condom securely.

“It seems I was hungry, too,” he said, giving her a grin. “I hope your back is okay.”

“My back is probably the only part of my body I am unaware of at the moment,” she said, as she half sat up, propping herself with her elbows. “I can’t even feel it. Everything else is tingling. Holy crap.”

After ditching the condom in the kitchen garbage, he pulled up his jeans and let them sit loosely on his hips without zipping. Holding his hand out to her, he helped her sit up, rubbing his hand over the soft skin on her back. “Sorry that was a bit of a quickie. I’ll take it slower next time.”

He certainly hadn’t planned to take her on the table, but then she had bit that strawberry and well...it was just long overdue, that’s all.

“I think it was necessary,” she said. “We needed to get that one out of our system. Though I feel a little horrified that my bare bits have been on your family dinner table.”

But what he loved about Kristine was that she didn’t scramble off the table and cover herself. She brushed her hands over his abdomen leisurely, feeling his muscles, her jeans still dangling from one ankle.

“Your body is harder now,” she said, hair mussed as she stared up at him, a cat-that-got-the-cream expression on her face.

“I was a lean teenager and just starting to fill out when we met. My metabolism is high. I have to work hard to build bulk at the gym.” Sean gritted his teeth when her fingers dipped lower to stroke his cock. He needed a recovery period, damn. He would prefer that weren’t the reality, but it was. “Honey, give MacGyver a few minutes to work up a new plan, okay?”

She laughed. Back in the day, he’d been amused by her nicknaming his penis. He’d never particularly thought it needed a name, but she had been adamant that, much like the main character of the ’80s TV show, his penis could solve any problem, and therefore deserved a name. Until she’d mentioned it, he had actually forgotten about it, pushing that particular memory aside for self-preservation.

“As long as it doesn’t involve duct tape.”

Yikes. “Hardly. He can solve the problem of where your next orgasm is coming from, but nothing that requires bubble gum or duct tape.”

“Killjoy.” But then she demanded, “Kiss me. Then I’ll go finish the abandoned chili.”

That he could do. He cupped her cheeks and kissed her softly. “What can I do to help?”

“You can pull my pants off my foot so I don’t fall when I get down off this table.” Kristine smiled. “And you can close your eyes while I put my pants back on. If you thought it was awkward getting them off, trust me, it’s no easier jiggling into them.”

Sean stripped her pants off her right foot. “You’re nuts, you know that? I’ve seen everything you have and then some and who cares if parts move? This is a common misconception, you know. I think I speak for plenty of my gender when I tell you we don’t want a woman who is so thin and artificial that nothing moves. If you turn and your breasts stay facing forward, I am unnerved, frankly. And inside every grown man is a pubescent boy who just wants to see your breasts bounce.”

Her eyebrows shot up. “I’m sorry I brought it up.”

“What? It’s the truth.” Why was it so hard for her to accept that he found her the very ideal definition of femininity? He turned her jeans back to a state where she could slip them on and handed her the panties that had been caught on one leg.

Kristine didn’t answer, but bent over and hooked the panties over her feet and pulled them up to her thighs. She nudged him a little out of the way and hopped down off the table, fixing her underwear securely in place. Snagging her jeans out of his hand, she sat down on a kitchen chair and stuck her feet into them. Not sure what she was thinking or feeling, Sean decided his best course of action was to turn the stove burner back on and stir the ground beef.

Fine. She didn’t want him to look at her. He supposed he had no claims, rights or privileges. He was just the man she’d impulsively married at nineteen and then run out on. Maybe that wasn’t fair to say. He had been there for that argument, too. But he had wanted to work things out, talk through her insecurities.

Had anything changed? If anything, now it was worse because of their split and the ensuing years. Realizing he was feeling hurt and that he had absolutely no right to, Sean took a deep breath and stirred the meat. Kristine owed him nothing. He had manipulated her into being here, and while she had agreed in the end without blackmail, he wasn’t exactly sure why.

Probably for the same reason as him—to move on. To push the past firmly into the past and leave it there.

He wasn’t going to achieve that by being sensitive to every damn word she said. Way to ruin a postsex satisfaction.

After washing his hands, he started opening the cans of beans to drain them while the beef browned.

“It looks like there are quite a few staples here,” Kristine said, poking around the fridge and in the pantry. “It’s a well-stocked kitchen.”

“It makes it easier than hauling stuff out here all the time.”

“How about I bake you some cookies? Do you still have a sweet tooth?”

“Hell yeah. But don’t you need a recipe or something? I get internet service here on my phone if you want to use it.”

“I don’t need a recipe. I bake all the time. I love it.”

He was impressed. “Knitting and baking? Are there any other domestic talents you’ve developed?”

“I sew, too. I like to take things like stained vintage tablecloths, cut them down, and make pillows or café curtains. I think I was born in the wrong decade. I was supposed to be a Depression-era grandmother or something.”

“Grandmother is not what comes to mind, trust me.” Sean watched her gather eggs, flour and sugar. “But I think all of that sounds awesome. I’m not exactly domestic.” He was not about to admit he had hired a decorator to finish his apartment, and he had a weekly cleaning lady. It seemed so...impersonal. What Kristine was talking about was hands-on, intimate in a sense. “It sounds like you’ve really figured out who you are.”

She gave him a startled look. “Yeah. I guess I have.”

But she bit her lip, as if the thought troubled her. “What?

“I don’t know. I guess I have always thought that in order to ‘find yourself’ you had to have a career that kicked ass. But I guess it doesn’t matter that I don’t if I’m happy with
me
.”

“I totally agree. You know exactly who you are and I admire that.” Sometimes Sean wasn’t sure he knew who he was anymore. He had achieved great business success, but he was two sides of one coin—the city and the country.

“Thanks, Sean. And I wanted to tell you how proud I am of you. It looks like you’ve accomplished everything you wanted to, and you clearly have worked hard.”

“Thank you.” That meant more to him than she could ever imagine.

They settled into an easy silence, Kristine masterfully turning this and that into dough in a manner of minutes, while he put the lid on the chili finally to let it simmer. “I’m going to get some wood.”

“I think you’re doing okay on that front,” she said, glancing at him below the waist with a wicked grin.

He loved that she was so quick with a dirty joke. “Yeah, well, I don’t plan on throwing that on the fire tonight.”

Kristine laughed. “Good call.”

“So I’m going to the woodshed, you know, where there are logs split from tree branches.” He was probably pushing his luck, but he leaned over and pulled her away from the bowl and wooden spoon long enough to kiss her, enjoying the sigh she gave.

Then he swiped a ball of raw cookie dough and popped it into his mouth. “Mmm.”

“You’ll get salmonella,” she warned him. “You can’t eat raw eggs.”

“I’ve been eating raw dough my whole life. I’ll risk it.”

He reached for another bite, but she smacked his hand with the wooden spoon. “Ow. Christ, Kristy.”

“There won’t be anything to bake if you keep pinching the dough.”

“You’re mean,” he teased casually.

“Depression-era Grandma. Told you.”

Sean laughed. “You can keep selling it, but I’m not buying it. Now I’m going for wood, for real. You want s’mores tonight, right?”

“Duh.”

Sean pulled on his hat, stepped into his boots and grabbed a pair of thick suede gloves out of the communal closet by the door and went to get enough wood for several hours of burn time.

What he didn’t expect to see when he hiked down the property was his brother Liam’s boat hovering next to his. Shit. And shit.

* * *

K
RISTINE FINISHED DROPPING
the dough onto a cookie sheet and slid it into the oven. She was glad Sean had gone outside for a few minutes. Her purse was sitting on an end table a few feet away and she could hear her phone chiming in it repeatedly. Someone was blowing up her phone, and she had the sneaking suspicion it was her mother.