Down by Contact - A Seattle Lumberjacks Romance (35 page)

“I’m at your service, madam, using all the
skills you’ve taught me to prepare an appropriate meal designed to
impress the most jaded guest.”

“Are you saying I’m jaded?”

“Not at all. I’m saying I need to work on
presentation.”

“Ah, you’ve been listening?”

“I wasn’t just thinking about sex while you
were teaching me about which wine glass to use for certain types of
wine.”

She opened her mouth to say something.

He held a finger to her lips. “Hold that
thought.”

Zipping out of the room, he returned with
four bottles of wine, the necks gripped in his long fingers. Kelsie
stared at him, wondering what the heck he had planned now.

“I think it’s time to impress you with my
knowledge.”

Her eyes grew big, and she stared at the
bottles grasped in his big hands.

“Before we start, we need to make sure we’re
both properly dressed.”

She nodded mutely, as he left the room one
more time. Kelsie craned her neck in the direction he’d gone. He
returned a few minutes later with nothing on but a burgundy condom
and bow tie around his impressive erection, and a crookedly tied
one at that. He handed her a pair of stilettos and bowed deeply.
“Your ensemble, madam.”

Kelsie giggled and clapped her hands. Zach
never kidded, never played around. Intrigued and more than a little
turned on, she slipped off the counter, yanked off her shirt and
bra, and slipped on the shoes.

“Now if madam would take her place.”

“And my place would be?”

“Ah, let me help you with that, he gently
laid her on the counter, leaving her legs dangling off the edge.
Zach rolled up a towel and placed it under her head.

“Comfortable?”

“Yes, but it’s going to be difficult to
taste wines in this position.”

“Not for me.”

Now that sounded like fun. The bow tie
bobbed in agreement. Scranton sat in the doorway, ready for an
exhibition.

Kelsie lifted her head and pointed at
Scranton. “Get the kid out of here.”

Zach nodded and shooed him away. He returned
with a corkscrew and opened the first bottle of wine, a rich, red
cab she’d purchased at a little wine store down the street.
Uncorking it, she expected him to give her a sip. He didn’t.
Instead, he dribbled the red liquid on her naked body from her
breasts, down her stomach, into her navel, over her thighs. It ran
down her crotch and mingled with the wetness of her sex. Kelsie
gripped the countertop and watched him, waiting for whatever Zach
came up with next.

“First, to examine the wine by sight.” He
bent down. His hot breath on her skin as he studied her body from
different angles. “Ah, clear, sparkling, showing depth of
color.”

He
had
been listening.

“Now to swirl it.” He circled his finger
between her breasts where some of the wine had pooled. Then moved
lower, teasing her with that circular motion over her midsection.
Kelsie’s legs fell open, and she wished he’d swirl between her
legs. She groaned as his fingers teased but never quite hit the
mark.

“Now to smell.” Without touching, but close
enough she felt his hot breath on her wine-slickened skin, he
sniffed the length of her body. Straightening, he closed his eyes
for a moment, as if savoring it to the hilt.

“And what did you find?” She managed a
strangled croak.

“Fruity with just a pinch of saddle soap.”
He held his fingers about a half inch apart.

“Pinch of saddle soap?” Well, maybe he did
need a little more instruction, but she gave him an A for
effort.

“Yes, saddle soap.”

She raised one eyebrow. “And what does that
indicate?”

“The wine is full bodied and ready for
consumption.”

“Or ready to be ridden off into the
sunset.”

“We’re a long way from sunset here,
darlin’.”

“Ah, consume away then.”

The man took his job seriously. Starting at
her neck, he licked his way down her body, paying special attention
to her puckered nipples and leaving them tight with need. He sucked
the small pool of wine from her belly button, and she drew in a
sharp breath, tickled and aroused at the same time. He moved
lower.

“A little more tasting is required.” He
poured more wine on her sex, grinning with enthusiasm far beyond
most wine connoisseurs, but then most wine experts never tasted
wine the way Zach did.

He spread her legs wide and placed them over
his shoulders. Pulling her upward until his mouth met heaven. He
lapped up the wine with long, slow strokes from the front to the
back of her labia, pausing on each stroke to torture her clit.
Kelsie arched her hips and bared herself to him as much as possible
considering the position she was in.

He lifted his head, his dark eyes shining,
his face wet from her juices and the wine. It was one of the
sexiest sights she’d ever seen. “Ah, a balanced array of flavors,
not too sweet or tart, but with a kick of spice and an abundance of
class. Just the way I like it.”

Right now she’d like it any way he wanted to
give it. “Now that you’ve tasted it, perhaps you should partake of
the entire bottle.”

“Hmm. That seems rather tacky.”

“Or adventurous, and I do adore an
adventurous man.”

“I do adore a woman who loves her wines.” He
dipped his head between her legs and partook some more. And more.
And more. Until Kelsie panted and writhed on the counter, begging
for mercy or release or both. He might be the one actually
drinking
the wine, but she was definitely drunk on him.

“I adore a man who takes his lessons so
seriously.” She gasped as he sucked her clit into his mouth. She
hung on by a thread stretched to its breaking point. The next
minute it broke, and her body shattered like a wine bottle on a
tile floor, splintering her soul and her heart into a million
pieces of extreme bliss that reunited with the beauty of a stained
glass window.

Zach watched her with devotion on his face.
An odd combination of pleasure and panic slid through her, as her
heart picked its way among the leftover shards of glass and hoped
it didn’t get sliced in the process.

Lowering her, Zach pulled her to the edge of
the counter and positioned his penis, bowtie still in place, at her
opening. She smiled as he sank into her soft, slick opening with
one long, easy thrust. He groaned the groan of a man in heaven and
not ready to leave it for earth. He moved, retreating until the tip
of his erection barely grazed her opening then thrusting back
inside, deep inside, past all her defenses, past all her
misgivings, to a place she kept secret from the rest of the world.
Only Zach had snuck inside, and now that he had the key her life
had just changed forever.

He maintained the slow, sexy torture, even
though every vein stood out on his neck from the strain, while his
biceps bulged and his eyes dilated.

With one final thrust, he held himself
inside her, high and deep, his big hands spanning her butt cheeks,
his balls between her legs. She tossed her head back and forth and
begged him to take her home. Reaching underneath and between his
legs, Kelsie cupped his balls, squeezing gently, while he
reciprocated by rubbing her sensitized clit. They brought each
other to climax at the very same time with hoarse shouts, lots of
hot, slick skin, and panting.

Zach fell forward, his body heavy across
hers and her heels pressed to the small of his back. Both of them
too sated to move, their muscles turned to liquid and mellowed by
their private wine tasting.

Finally Kelsie stirred beneath his crushing
weight. He took the hint and sank to the floor, his back against
the kitchen cabinets, chest heaving, breath coming in little, short
pants, like he’d just intercepted a ball and run it back ninety
yards for the score.

“What about the other wines?”

“We’ll save them for another time. I liked
this one just fine. We’ll need to buy more bottles.” He looked up
at her. She sat on the counter gazing down at him, feeling
inexplicably tender. “Did I pass the wine tasting test?”

“You scored an A in my book.”

“I don’t know about an A, but I did
score.”

She rolled her eyes and slid off the counter
to cuddle with him on the floor. “The kitchen is a mess.” Rivulets
of wine ran across the counters and dripped down the cabinets to a
puddle on the floor.

“Who gives a shit.”

“I don’t.” She actually didn’t.

He tilted his head and studied her. “Tell me
about Mark.”

She opened her mouth, then hesitated, torn
between revealing how weak she’d been with Mark and wanting to give
a bit of herself to Zach.

“Please.” He looked so earnest, so sincere,
she couldn’t deny him.

She told him, every last sordid detail from
“I do” to “I don’t.” She told him about how he’d beaten her down
emotionally, stripped her of her confidence, belittled her into
being nothing but a cardboard recreation of Mark’s idea of the
perfect wife, seen but not heard with no opinions of her own, her
only purpose to make him happy, which was an impossibility. She
told of the scene she walked in on in the bedroom and of him
beating her almost to death when she asked for a divorce. Ending
with him rallying the troops to his side with lies about her
infidelities and how it’d been her boyfriend who beat her up.

Through it all, he held her tight. His brown
eyes reflected sympathy for her and anger toward Mark, but never
once did she see ridicule or censure or blame. Afterward, he
whispered in her hair as she sobbed silently in his arms.

“I’m so sorry, baby. I’d break every bone in
his body if it would take away your pain.”

She raised her head and ran a finger over
his chin. “You take away my pain, Zach. You, and you alone.”

One lone tear ran down his cheek, and she
kissed it away. They held each other for several more minutes
before they climbed to their feet and cleaned up their mess.

Together. As a team. Just like a committed
couple in love with each other.

If only it wasn’t an illusion.

Maybe it wasn’t.

CHAPTER 24

Another fucking loss
. Six and seven
with only three games left. When HughJack threw down the clipboard
at least twelve times during the course of a game, it wasn’t going
well.

Thank God the plane ride from Arizona
wouldn’t be a long one.

Zach stood in the visiting team’s shower and
let the warm water run down his bruised body. It’d been too damn
hot, something he wasn’t used to, and he’d sweated a gallon or two.
The subdued sounds of a losing team were muted by the running
water. Today, there’d be none of the horseplay associated with a
winner.

Next to him, Brett stood under a showerhead
and stared blankly at the wall. The poor guy got into the games to
hold the ball for the kicker and that was it. Zach guessed he was
happy to play at all.

The defense had played like crap, like
they’d been slogging through a deep, dark swamp for several hours.
The offense limped along like a wheel missing several cogs. Five
starters were out with injuries, including the majority of the
receiver corp. Derek, Harris’s favorite target, was nursing a
sprained ankle. Even though he attempted to play a few downs, he
couldn’t beat his coverage or leap to catch the ball, resulting in
an interception in the red zone. The young offensive line couldn’t
have held back a bevy of senior citizens on Bingo night. Harris
spent more time scrambling for his life or flat on his back, ground
into the turf by an ambitious rookie linebacker, than he did
throwing the ball.

Zach felt every one of his thirty-four
years. Damn, even his big toe ached. Turf toe or some stupid-assed
term like that. He’d been invincible for so long that he’d
considered himself impervious to pain or injury. Now he figured it
was only a matter of time before he succumbed to the same fate as
the majority of the team’s wide receivers.

Last year, the team’s implosion would’ve
been the center of Zach’s world, a tragedy of huge proportions.
This year, while he hated it, he had Kelsie to go home to, which
helped compensate for the team’s losses. That simple fact scared
the piss out of him more than never getting a ring. He could not
lose his last chance at a ring
and
the women of his dreams,
especially the woman of his dreams.

Then there was that stupid-assed gala, not
to mention a Thursday Night Football game at home and only a few
days to prepare, and he’d promised the kids he’d be there on
Tuesday night for
their
big game against another group of
kids.
Crap
.

Zach ran his fingers through his short hair.
He hated messing with his hair, which was why he’d let it grow
long. Kelsie saw to it that he kept it cut. Not that he gave a shit
either way. He needed to win football games, and figure out how to
keep Kelsie from walking out that door at the end of the season.
Yeah, that’s exactly what he needed to do. He needed a plan. A big
one.

She’d pinned her hopes on this gala. If it
was a success, her business would get an added boost. He’d do his
part, be the guy that she wanted him to be, and prove to everyone
how brilliant she was. He’d romance her, sweep her off her feet,
impress her with how suave he’d become. As much as he hated the
thought, he’d study Harris, pick up a few pointers on women.
Speaking of Harris, the guy was a virtual donation grubbing
machine. He charmed men and women alike, selling out the tickets to
the gala and garnering some large auction items, along with
donations. It looked like they’d surpass last year’s total after
all.

Grabbing a towel, Zach dried off and wrapped
it around his waist. Back in the locker room, guys were dressing
and talking in muted tones.