Knock Me for a Loop (19 page)

“What?” he asked.

Oh, he knew what had her gaping like a guppy, he just wasn’t sure
exactly
what was going through that labyrinthine mind of hers.

She shook her head, and the movement seemed to ripple down her entire body. “I can’t believe you know how to knit,” she said, sounding truly astounded. “When did you…? How did you…? Why did you …?”

Her eyes widened in frustration and she waved a hand at him in a rolling, fill-in-the-blanks gesture.

“Who? What? Where? When? Why? Fill in the blanks,” she ordered. “Right now. I want to know everything.”

Finishing the row he was working on, he set the needles and yarn aside before meeting her gaze. “Truth?” he asked.

She nodded, forgoing a typical smart-ass retort.

“I missed you,” he said simply. “You thought I was the Spawn of Satan, believed I’d done the unthinkable, and after you left”—his brow creased in remembrance—”wrecking my apartment, destroying my Hummer, and taking my dog with you, I needed something to take my mind off my misery.”

His gaze skittered away for a moment, and he rolled a shoulder, slightly embarrassed by what he was about to admit. “And I thought maybe, after you’d calmed down some and realized there was a chance I
hadn’t
cheated on you, that my knowing how to knit might impress you, since it’s such a big part of your life.”

The minutes ticked by while she absorbed his explanation, and he waited for her reaction, good or bad.

“You learned to knit for me,” she said, her voice tinged with stark incredulity and something else. Surprise? Confusion? Awe?

He blinked and swallowed, his heart pounding in his chest—
pa-thump-pa-thump-pa-thump
—feeling more and more awkward the longer her gaze bored into him. “It seemed like a good idea at the time,” he mumbled self-consciously.

Grace’s lashes fluttered over the cerulean blue of her eyes. Her mouth loosened into a soft, open O the color of rose petals. And before he knew what was happening, before he could even register the movement, she’d thrown herself at him, wrapped her arms around his neck, and was kissing him like a soldier newly home from war.

Row 18

This time, Grace was kissing Zack, no doubt about it.

Whether she should or shouldn’t…whether it was right or wrong …whether she would regret it in the morning or was giving him false hope…she just didn’t care.

Hearing that he’d learned to knit, that he’d taught himself in secret to impress her and as a possible means of winning her back …

Oh, my gosh, had there ever been such a sweet, wonderful, amazing, thoughtful, or romantic man on the face of the planet?

She didn’t want to think about what had driven her away from him to begin with. Didn’t want to remember the pain and anguish of thinking he’d cheated on her.

What if he hadn’t? What if his protestations of innocence were all true and her friends—and her friends’ significant others—were right about him deserving another chance?

For once, she wanted to believe it. Really and truly believe it, not simply
wish
that were the case.

Just for a few hours.

Just for tonight.

So before she could talk herself out of it, before doubts and fears and old hurts could rear up and make her run for the hills, she let her instincts take over. She closed her eyes, opened her arms, and launched herself at him hard enough to knock them both back against the headboard.

He grunted as she hit him square in the chest, hands coming up to catch her by the waist. But he didn’t resist, didn’t falter for even a moment in accepting her weight, accepting her offer, and accepting her kiss.

She opened her mouth over his, tasting his lips and coaxing him to open with her tongue. And if there was one thing Zack had never needed when it came to intimacy, it was prodding.

He tugged her closer, until her breasts flattened against his hard chest and they were belly to belly. Oh, how she wished she weren’t wearing pajamas so her skin could press flush to his. As it was, she could feel the heat of his bare skin radiating through the fabric of his undershirt and her top, slowly raising her temperature and causing a flush to wash over her from head to toe, as though she were trapped inside a tanning bed cranked to “extra crispy.”

From the waist down, he was covered in cotton boxer shorts and three layers of hotel-provided covers—the sheet, a blanket, and the thick, quilted comforter. Not for long, though; not if she had anything to say about it.

Moving her hands to his face, she deepened the kiss, letting him know she was more than willing, and not calling a halt anytime soon. At the same time, she used her legs and feet to kick the blankets down, moving them slowly inch by inch until she hit Bruiser’s immovable bulk.

The dog didn’t budge an inch, didn’t even act as though he noticed her piling the covers on top of him. If he hadn’t been there, she’d have pushed them off the end of the bed entirely, but at least this gave her better access to Zack’s remarkable body.

Almost belatedly, she remembered his knee—remembered their last kiss, and how one wrong move had stopped things cold.

Tearing her mouth away from his, she gulped in oxygen like a fish too long out of water. They were both panting, chests heaving, lips (and several other vital body parts) swollen and throbbing.

“How’s your leg?” she asked, voice thick and ragged.

“Good. Fine. Don’t worry about my leg,” he replied, his own tone none too steady as his fingers tightened on her waist and he tried to tug her back against his chest.

“I don’t want to hurt you,” she told him, leaning forward,
wanting
to go back and return to that soul-stealing kiss.

“You won’t. You can’t,” he said, sitting up to get closer, reaching for her mouth.

She kissed him because she simply couldn’t resist any longer. A brief, fleeting brush of lips before drawing away again.

“Of course I can,” she whispered. “It’s happened before.”

“Not this time. Nothing is going to stop us this time.” He raised a hand to her face, brushing his wide palm across her cheek, past her temple, and into her hair to cup her skull. “Kiss me again, Grace,” he…ordered? Begged?

“You have to let me be on top,” she said, not giving in until he’d agreed to be careful.

He gave a low, strained chuckle. “And you expect me to argue? Backward, forward, upside down…I’ll take you any way I can get you, sweetheart.”

It had been so long since he’d called her that or used any endearments toward her—for good reason, she knew—that her heart thudded and her stomach took a tiny dip.

“You can’t do anything that causes you pain or strains your knee,” she insisted, wanting to be sure—really sure—he wasn’t going to do something stupid or push himself past his endurance just to get laid. “Promise me.”

“The sun and the moon and the stars,” he murmured, nibbling along her chin and jaw and the lobe of her ear. “I’ll promise you anything.”

She moaned, fighting hard to keep her thoughts in her head until she was satisfied they wouldn’t do anything to set him back in his recovery. But, oh, his hands and his mouth and his warm, solid body were tempting her with a million other forms of satisfaction with a capital
S.

“Promise you won’t let me hurt you, or do anything to hurt yourself,” she made herself say. Or at least she
thought
those were the words that tumbled out of her open mouth; it could have just as easily been a long, heartfelt moan.

But she must have spoken, because he answered without missing a beat. “I promise. Now kiss me before I explode.”

He wasn’t the only one who felt like an over-inflated balloon. The blood was pounding through her veins like out-of-control floodwaters.

She did as he asked, meshing her lips with his and kissing him, letting him kiss her. It was like coming home, like being right where she’d always belonged, despite everything.

Her hands roamed his chest and shoulders and the flat, amazingly well-sculpted plane of his abdomen. His, in turn, pulled the scrunchie from her hair, running through the still slightly damp strands to spill them about her face, and stroked up and down her side, teasing the swell of one breast through the material of her top.

Beneath her shirt and bra, her nipples beaded. Beside her thigh, his erection pressed and strained.

But she didn’t want him
next
to her, she wanted him
inside
her. So she straddled him, lifting her left leg and planting it on the other side of his hips.

Zack helped her, settling her into place and rubbing her just over the tip of his arousal, raising the front of his boxers. Then he went a step further, running his fingers under the hem of her top, running them up, up, up. The material bunched and climbed, and she lifted her arms, broke their kiss, just long enough to allow him to skim it off over her head. Then their lips were meshed again, tongues tangling, teeth gnashing.

His hands moved to the back of her bra, unhooking the clasp as though it were no more than a slipknot, invisible, even. But then, he’d had a lot of practice.

The lacy, barely there cups fell away, the straps trailing down her arms and leaving her open and naked. Cool air wafted over her, raising goose bumps along her skin.

Not that they lasted long with Zack’s constant attentions. He seemed to touch her everywhere at once, stroking, rubbing, warming her even as he caused chills to race up and down her spine.

Cupping her breasts, he tweaked the nipples. Already pebbled and hard, the tissue swelled even more, filling his palms, making her groan.

Without warning, he sat up, circled her waist with one arm, and twisted them both around. She landed on her back, bouncing gently against the mattress.

“Careful,” she said, though he gave her barely enough time to get out even a single syllable between kisses. “Watch your knee.”

“Screw my knee,” he told her, taking tiny nips of her throat, across her collarbone, down to one breast, where he circled, licked, and occasionally sucked.

“Mmmm.” She threw her head back, arching into his mouth, scraping her nails along his shoulders and biceps. “I’d rather screw you.”

He chuckled, running the flat of his tongue around the peak of her breast. “And you will,” he murmured wickedly.

Thrusting his fingers into the waistband of her pajama bottoms, he pushed them down, snagging her panties and shoving both all the way down her legs and off. They got tossed somewhere past the bed, the same as her top and bra.

She was blessedly naked, sprawled beneath him and enjoying everything he was doing to her. But he was still wearing his boxers, and that just wasn’t fair.

Her goal was to strip him the same as he’d stripped her, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t take pleasure in the chore. She let the pads of her fingers dance down his back like she was reading Braille. She counted his vertebrae, and kneaded the softer flesh on either side.

When she reached the elastic waist of his boxers, she didn’t stop, but drove her hands straight underneath, over the curve of his buttocks. She scored him with her nails, gave him a squeeze, pulled him tighter into the cradle of her thighs…and grinned in delight when he groaned, gave her nipple a tiny love bite, and ground himself even harder against her.

She was ready to divest him of his shorts and roll him over so she could ride him already when a long, wet tongue slapped her cheek and licked her from chin to eyeball.

And it wasn’t Zack’s.

“
Aaack!”
she screamed in surprise, then started to giggle, squinting and turning her head against an overabundance of doggie slobber.

When she cracked open one eye, she found Bruiser poised over them. He was standing above them on her side of the bed, licking her, then Zack, and nudging them both with his big, cold nose and the occasional paw the size of a baseball mitt in an effort to get their attention.

Unfortunately, this wasn’t the first time they’d experienced
caninus interruptus.

Zack lifted his head, the corners of his lips twitching in amusement. “I think somebody wants to play.”

“Yeah,
me,”
she growled, pretending to be annoyed. Pressing the flat of her hand to Bruiser’s wide chest, she pushed. “Get off, you big horse. You weren’t invited.”

“Since when does he wait for an invitation to anything?” Zack asked, starting to pull away.

“Hey!” She grabbed him by the arms and held him in place. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Unless you’re willing to make this a very peculiar threesome or like being watched, we’re going to have to lock him in the bathroom.”

“Aww, the bathroom?” she asked, patting the top of Bruiser’s head. “But he’ll be so lonely in there.”

Zack snorted. “We’ll give him his blanket and all of his toys and snacks, and we’ll be really quick, but yeah—the bathroom.”

He started to move away again, rolling to the far side of the bed.

“All right,” Grace agreed, though she was already feeling guilty about it. “But I’ll do it. You stay here.”

She started to sit up and get out of bed herself, the task made more difficult by Bruiser’s constant nudging and sloppy kisses.

“Why?” he asked.

She waggled her brows at him. “Because you’re too slow, Hop-Along.”

With that, she jumped out of bed, completely naked, but not the least self-conscious, and started zipping around the room, collecting Bruiser’s things.

She was bent over, one arm filled with doggie bones and squeaky toys, the other busy gathering the Saint’s thick, soft blanket from the floor, when she noticed that Zack hadn’t moved a muscle. And while that was good—she had told him to stay put, after all—she also had a sneaking suspicion…

Turning her head forty-five degrees, she glanced over her shoulder to find him staring at her. Or rather, staring at her derriere.

She straightened, holding the blanket in front of her, effectively blocking his view. “Stop staring at my bare ass, Hoolihan, and make yourself useful,” she told him.

“Useful, how?” he asked without a hint of shame or apology for his ogling, and without bothering to shift his gaze so much as an inch. “You told me not to move.”

Starting toward the bathroom, she gave a little whistle and patted her thigh so Bruiser would follow. “Well, unless you want things to end
really
quickly once I get back, I suggest you hunt up some condoms. Otherwise, you might just be spending the night locked in the bathroom with your dog.”

Nothing got a man to hustle like the promise of sex…or the promise to withhold it if he didn’t jump through a few well-placed hoops. One corner of her mouth curved up in a grin as she sauntered off…and Zack made a mad dash for his crutches to tear the room apart until he found the item she’d requested.

Walking into the nice-sized bathroom, she spread the doggie blanket on the floor in front of the tub and called Bruiser over.

“Come here, baby,” she said, kneeling down and patting the spot where she wanted him to settle. Then she laid his toys and bones around so he would have something to occupy his time. Otherwise, there was a serious chance he’d eat the shower curtain, the toilet paper, the towels, and possibly even chew the knobs right off the sink and shower stall.

“We won’t be long, I promise. And after, I’ll take you out for a quick walkie before bed, okay?” She kissed his nose and ruffled his ear before darting out and closing the door firmly behind her.

Zack was back on the bed, leaning against the headboard, only instead of still being in his blue striped boxer shorts, he was now completely, gloriously naked.

She took a moment to stand there and admire him, not the least bit self-conscious of her own nudity. Not with him, anyway.

From the top of his sandy blond hair to his large, long-toed feet, and every magnificently muscled inch between, she admired him. And apparently, she had more in common with Bruiser than she might like to admit, because she thought she may even have drooled a little.

Cocking her head, her gaze strayed back to his lap and she arched a single brow. “I’d ask if you found some condoms, but all signs point to yes.”

Grinning, he lifted an arm and dangled a strand of five or six plastic squares of protection. “Just call me Magic 8 Inches,” he quipped.