Last Chance Knit & Stitch (27 page)

He seemed to understand this because he pushed himself against her, bringing his hand down to the flare of her hip. A deep and inarticulate sound bubbled out of him as he pulled her closer and rocked his hips against her.

And that’s when she knew Simon had lost his self-control. A little, wild part of her thrilled at the knowledge that he was capable of losing control in such an obvious and incredible way. He ground his hips against her, and all she could think in her inflamed brain was that he was magnificent when he let himself go like this.

“Molly, I really do want to get horizontal,” he whispered in her ear.

“Me too. Where? Not here. There are too many people.”

“Mother’s house.”

She pulled back a bit. “Your momma is at home. We can’t—”

“My mother is not in her right mind. She won’t know. We can sneak in like a couple of teenagers.” He gave her a soft kiss on the nose. “Which is kind of exciting. It’s been a really long time since I was a teenager, and I never had the gumption to sneak a girl into my room when I was younger.”

“Gumption? Jeez, Simon, you’re sounding more southern every day. C’mon, let’s go.” She snagged his hand and started pulling him in the direction of the parking lot and driveway. He pulled her up sharp.

“Before we do this, I need to say something.”

“Please don’t. I know Coach disapproves of you and me. But he’s totally confused. He can’t decide if you’re too gay or too old for me. And he’s wrong on both counts. Besides, I’m a big girl. I know you’re not a forever kind of guy. So let’s just have a little fun, okay?”

Holding Molly’s hand was a carnal experience. The brush of her fingertips against his flesh ignited a conflagration inside Simon that toasted his brain and blew conscious thought to smithereens.

He held his breath and set a steady pace down the hill toward the parking lot. Daddy’s Taurus was parked way down the driveway because he’d been late to the party. A tense silence had come up between them, which allowed Simon to actually hear the roar of his own blood in his ears. He was drunk on lust.

It had been so long since any woman had made him feel this way. He almost wished she would babble or do what
other women did at slightly awkward moments like this. But Molly wasn’t like that. She was direct. When he opened the car door for her and their gazes met, there wasn’t the least bit of uncertainty in her eyes. Instead, she laid another scorching kiss on him before she slid into the front seat.

And even though Molly was completely incapable of flirting, she still managed to flash her legs at him. She had some really nice-looking legs. It was kind of a pity she hid them all the time.

She looked up at him. “Simon, for God’s sake, shut the door and let’s get out of here.”

She was apparently in a hurry. He needed to slow her down. Because he figured this might be the only time they got to experience each other, and he’d be damned if he was going to rush through it.

He shut the door and slid into the driver’s seat. Ten long minutes later, he pulled the Taurus into the garage that Mother and Daddy had added on to the turn-of-the-century Victorian that had been their home for decades.

He turned toward her. “You need to take off your shoes and be really quiet.”

“I already lost my shoes somewhere at the party. They hurt like a son of a gun.”

He wanted to laugh. She was so natural and fresh and real. “C’mon, follow me.”

He opened the side door that led into the dark kitchen. The television was on in the den. Its blue light flickered in the hallway. Simon gave Molly a sign to stay where she was, and he continued down the hall to investigate.

Angel was sprawled on the couch snoring while some HBO slasher movie played. Simon made a snap decision to leave sleeping assistants where they lay.

He turned and motioned Molly forward while simultaneously giving her the universal sign for quiet.

She looked amazing in the flickering light, with a devilish smile on her face. He took her by the hand and pulled her the rest of the way down the hall to the stairs. Up they went in the near darkness. All was quiet in the direction of Mother’s room. He turned in the opposite direction and pulled her into his own bedroom.

Moonlight, filtered through the magnolia tree in the backyard garden, gave the room a soft glow. The dappled light glimmered in Molly’s hair. He turned toward her, curled his fingers around the back of her skull, and pulled her hard against his body. He kissed her then—not a romantic kiss at all, but a base statement of his needs and wants.

This was what she wanted. So she met his tongue with her own, simultaneously invading his mouth and inviting him in. Soon he had her backed up against the door, and the roar of blood rushing through his ears told him there would be no turning back.

And yet he needed to slow down and control himself. Down deep he wanted so much more than a quick coupling against a door frame. He wanted to pleasure her. He wanted to give her what she wanted, and he knew, even as she bucked against him and gave all the signals of a woman in the throes of some kind of frenzy, that it would be a mistake to confuse Molly with a really experienced woman. She might be liberated, but she wasn’t experienced.

He braced his hands on either side of her head. “We need to slow down,” he said in a husky voice.

She looked up at him out of eyes that glinted in the moonlight. “Why?”

He felt the corner of his mouth tip up. She looked like a fantasy come true. “Because we do.”

She brought her fingers up to play across his chest, and he felt the burn down to his toes. She loosened his tie and pulled it through his collar. She tossed it aside. Then she started on the buttons of his shirt. “I don’t want to slow down,” she said.

He played with her hair, twirling it around his finger. “But I do.”

She slipped another button through its hole. “You want to seduce me.”

“Yeah.”

She slipped another button loose, and her tongue peeked from the corner of her mouth. She did that sometimes when she was concentrating.

“Well,” she said, “it won’t be hard to seduce me because I surrender.”

He combed his fingers through her hair, drinking in the herbal scent of her shampoo and the musky smell of woman. It felt like someone had put a band around his chest and was pulling it hard. He could hardly breathe.

She pulled the tail of his shirt from his pants and unbuttoned all the rest of the buttons.

“I don’t think you’re all that easy,” he said.

She inched her chin up, and something flared deep in her gaze. “So I’m a challenge, then?”

“Yeah, Molly. You’re a challenge.”

He stroked her hair, and she lowered her gaze to his naked chest. He saw admiration in her stare, and it knocked him for a loop. That look made him feel all hot and bothered and ready for action.

She pushed the edges of his shirt over his shoulders, and
he shucked out of it, giving her full rein to touch him. She ran her fingers over his pecs and circled his nipples and stroked his abs, making his breath hitch in his throat. He had never been so turned on by a woman’s touch, especially considering that she hadn’t actually hit any seriously erogenous zones.

It became more than he could bear. “There’s something not quite fair about this situation,” he said as her fingers dipped down below the waistline of his pants.

She looked up at him as she started to undo his belt. “And whose fault is that? You’ve been so busy going slow that I’m leaving you in the dust.”

“Guess I’ll have to catch up.”

“Last one naked is a rotten egg,” she said. It was the same thing Luke always said when he was making a dare. And for just an instant, he lost his concentration.

“What is it?” she whispered.

“Nothing.” He leaned in and kissed her again. His mind fogged nicely.

“No, it’s something.” She pushed him gently back.

He let go of a breath. “It’s what you just said. Luke used to say that all the time. Last one in the river is a rotten egg. Last one up the tree. Last one down to dinner. Everything was a race to him.”

“I talked to Nita Wills. She’s an old friend of Zeph’s. She didn’t know you were there when the accident happened.”

He rested his forehead against hers. “No one knows I was there when Luke died, okay? Except Zeph and Gabe, I guess.” He whispered the words.

“You never told anyone?”

“No. And I’d really like to talk about something else, like maybe your underwear. Are you wearing La Perla?”

“Right. Sorry. It was just that look on your face a moment ago.”

“Well, I’ll just wipe that look off my face, okay?”

She stood up on tiptoes and started kissing his neck. “Does this help?” she whispered against his skin.

“Uh, yeah. That helps a lot.”

He reached around her, the movement bringing their thighs into contact just as she succeeded in getting his belt undone. He drew in a sharp breath as mindless lust washed over him again. With trembling fingers, he found the zipper of her dress and drew it down.

He peeled the fabric away from her shoulders and midriff. The garment slid to the floor and pooled around her feet like a dark shadow. She stood there wearing the daintiest pair of silk panties and a matching lace bra.

He groaned aloud. “Oh, my God, that underwear is amazing. You look like heaven. Please tell me they’re pink.”

“Yeah, they are.”

“You wear pink on the inside?”

She shrugged. “The pink ones were on sale.”

He cupped her breast, feeling its weight, flicking his thumb over her nipple through the lacy cup. It pebbled under his ministrations, and she moaned.

He didn’t think it was possible but his groin got tighter. He was almost in pain now, trying to keep up this snail’s pace.

He kissed down the column of her throat. “You are so hot,” he murmured against her neck, savoring her taste, fighting the urge to bite and suck and eat her up.

He pushed her harder against the wall, caught up in the glide of her skin against his. He felt the blood beat at his
temples as she started working on the button and zipper of his pants.

She finally finished and started tugging on his trousers. They caught briefly on his hips and then fell to his ankles. He shucked off his loafers just as she touched him.

He lost it. He pushed her against the door suddenly wondering why he wanted to go slow with her. And oh, thank the Lord, she took care of his underwear. And he took care of her panties. Finally they were naked as a couple of jays and caught up in the rhythm of the moment.

“C’mon,” he said after a few minutes of this. He pulled her across the room and up into the four-poster bed that Mother had put in his room once he’d left home. The bed was an antique, with a real canopy. It was kind of a sissy bed, but this wasn’t his bedroom anymore. It was the room reserved for guests.

“Wow, snazzy bed, Simon. It’s really kind of turning me on. Much better than the Peach Blossom.”

He pulled back the goose down comforter and scattered the pillows, then pulled her down into the softness of the mattress so that she landed on top of him. She tried to roll off, and he wouldn’t let her budge. He held her there, chest-to-breast, laid out thigh-to-thigh, sex-to-sex, forcing himself to go slow.

“You get to be on top,” he whispered, looking up into her darkened eyes as he cupped her butt cheeks.

She gave him an impish smile. “Okay. I can definitely handle that.”

And in the next few minutes, Molly Canaday proved that she could.

M
olly nestled her head tight against Simon’s chest and listened to his heartbeat. She felt safe, and content, and satisfied.

Dawn light edged the draperies. The soft illumination ate away at the shadows and revealed the room’s floral wallpaper, the antique furniture, the Williamsburg print on the bed’s canopy. She might have been sleeping at a very nice bed-and-breakfast, not someone’s home.

Daybreak exposed the truth. This wasn’t Simon’s bedroom. It was the guest room where he was only a temporary resident.

Simon slept on, unaware of her thoughts, his hair spread out on the pillow, his chin sporting that oh-so-sexy shadow of stubble. He had just the slightest smile on his face, and there were threads of silver in his hair. It was funny, but she didn’t think they made him look old. They were kind of a turn-on.

The two of them had behaved like a couple of crazy teenagers last night. And Molly would do it again in a
New York minute. She would have made the night last forever if she could have.

But time moves forward. She’d had her fun, and it was time to leave. She was still a little intoxicated—a little high on Simon, but highs like this don’t last forever.

She crawled from the bed and collected her clothes, slipped into the adjacent bathroom, and put herself back together.

Sort of. She had managed to lose her shoes and purse. Near as she could remember, she’d left them at her table at the reception. What an idiot. She was going to have to talk to Savannah or someone to see if she could get them back. Otherwise Rachel Lockheart was going to be furious with her.

Simon was snoring in the most adorable way when she left the room and headed down the hallway. It had taken a lot for her to go. She had stood by the bed watching him sleep while the sky got brighter and brighter. But it was going to be bad at home. Coach might even be waiting for her with his shotgun. So she needed to get going.

By the time she made it to the main staircase, the sun was well up and streaming through the front windows. Boy, she was going to have a lot of explaining to do when she got home. But she’d have time to work on her story, because she was going to have to walk home. And even though her parents’ house wasn’t all that far away, walking on bare feet would add a new element to the traditional walk of shame.

She made it to the first landing on the stairs without being discovered. Then her luck, which had been pretty crappy lately, turned all the way bad. Angel was standing in the foyer watching her descend with an interesting and unreadable expression on his face.

Adolescent guilt and embarrassment seized her. She started trying to think of something stellar, or funny, or even remotely coherent, to say.