Wedding Series Boxed Set (3 Books in 1) (The Wedding Series) (48 page)

“It’s a great neighborhood. Quiet. Safe. Wonderful neighbors, but still near everything.”

“Yeah, I was surprised to find it so suburban-looking this close to downtown.”

“That’s me, just an old suburban matron.” She twisted a little, feeling a twinge in her shoulders from the double strain of shoveling and polishing.

“Sore?”

“Mmm. A little.”

“Here, turn around.” As she complied, he sat up straighter and shifted so he was behind her, close enough that she felt the warmth of his presence, but touching only where his hands kneaded her shoulders.

She clutched the pillow that had been supporting her head and let out a hum of satisfaction, not bothering to speculate how much came from the easing of groaning muscles and how much from the delicious tightening of other muscles at his touch.

“Better?” He didn’t wait for an answer. “I wouldn’t worry about being viewed as a suburban matron if I were you. I have it on the best authority that you’re the hottest thing in the neighborhood. Especially in the summer when you wear shorts.”

“What? Who in the world said that?” She turned to look over her shoulder at him, chuckling despite the utter seriousness of his expression.

“Mikey Grabowski.”

She laughed outright. “Mikey? Mikey’s all of nine years old!”

“Uh-huh,” he agreed with no abatement of solemnity. “But Mikey has a sixteen-year-old brother whom he cites as his source, and there is no greater authority on women on the face of this earth than sixteen-year-old boys.”

“Good heavens. Chris Grabowski? He’s just a—”

“Don’t say it. And don’t ever let him know you think it. He’d be crushed.”

“Lord, I will never be able to garden in shorts again. I’ll feel like I have to wrap myself up in a sheet every time I walk out the front door!”

“Ah.” His breath of satisfaction whispered at her ear, even as his fingers traveled from her shoulders to the tops of her arms, still soothing the muscles. “Then this little talk hasn’t been wasted.”

“Why, you manipulative. . . manipulative politician!”

She twisted around to land a blow with the pillow.

“Just trying to keep this fine neighborhood safe from hot women gardeners.”

“Oh, yeah?”

She landed another pillow blow, and another. He interrupted his laughter for a pro forma “ow” after each one. Then, as he dodged a fourth strike, the “ow” sounded different, and his hands instinctively went to his neck.

“Aha! Sore?” She pounced on the sign of discomfort, but stopped her attack.

“A little.” He shot her a sheepish smile as he echoed her earlier words, and she felt her heart constrict in a most distracting way.

“Well, turnabout’s only fair, so turn around,” she said lightly.

He sent her a look hard to decipher, then turned with a trace of reluctance. She knelt behind him, contemplating the broad shoulders under the old sweatshirt, narrowing to where the snug jeans molded to him, and decided that turnabout could also be taken a step further. She scooted closer, until her knees enclosed his hips. His back straightened as if his whole body had just been called to attention, but before he could protest, she put her palms to the tight muscles at either side of his neck, rocking and pressing so effectively that she heard his small groan of reaction almost immediately.

Leaning forward, she spoke into his ear, trying to imitate his earlier conversational tone. “I have it on pretty good authority that you’re not so bad yourself.”

“Tris.” His tone was admonishing, but his head dropped forward under her questing fingers, so she figured that outweighed any warning.

“ ‘Hunk,’ I believe, was the description. Not, perhaps, as strong a term as ‘hot.’ But then there was a member of the older generation present, and their sensibilities had to be taken into account.” She brushed against him, not quite sure herself if the touch of her breasts to his back was deliberate or not, but most pleased by the sound he tried to swallow. “And this judgment came from someone considerably older than nine, or sixteen. For that matter, I believe I saw the opinion reflected in the eyes of several women last August.”

“Tris—”

Oh, she knew the dangers of not heeding his cautions, of turning the conversation from the teasing of a moment earlier. But somehow, even with all that had happened between them, she knew Michael would not let her fall if she took a misstep on this tightrope.

“And I realized they were right. I was the one who hadn’t been seeing clearly.”

Her fingers slipped into the sweatshirt neck widened by age and fanned wide across the smooth, tight skin of his upper back. She wanted more.

“I’d always thought you so calm, so rational. I didn’t recognize the heat underneath. Until . . . until you held me. You surprised me, Michael. I thought I knew you so well but you surprised me.”

She wanted to touch him more, to slide her palms across the well-remembered contours of his back, but he surprised her again, twisting around abruptly and catching her wrists in a hard grip.

He bit off a word even before he’d spoken it, but she knew it was going to be “don’t.” She couldn’t quite meet his eyes, instead watching the rapid rise and fall of his chest. His hands on her wrists hurt a little, but she didn’t want him to let go. She might fall completely if he did.

“It was an artificial situation, Tris.” He’d regained most of his calm when he spoke. That irritated her. Why should he be calm when she felt such confusion? “I understand that.”

“I don’t. What are you saying, Michael?”

“It wasn’t real. The whole week. A wedding’s a pretty emotional time anyway, and then there was all the emotion of all of us together, and remembering the past, and the way things were and . . .”

She knew Grady had edged into his thoughts from the tenor of extreme reasonableness in his voice.

“And the way things weren’t,” she finished for him.

“Yeah, that, too.”

“And you think that’s why I made love to you?”

“It’s natural, Tris. All those emotions . . . Old emotions and new emotions. Changes.”

“If you’re going to say again that I used you as some sort of substitute—”

He held up a palm in a peacekeeping gesture. “No. No, I promise. Besides, you can’t push me down this time. I’m already down.”

He recaptured her hands, one in each of his, and she found something hopeful in that.

“Okay.” She let her ire subside. If he could be reasonable, so could she. And they’d just see where reason led. ‘So you think I made love to you out of an excess of emotions that I didn’t know how to deal with.”

He grimaced at her summation. His slight shrug could have acknowledged her accuracy or the uselessness of trying to explain further.

“All right, so let’s say that’s why you think I made love to you.” She drew a deep breath and he seemed to still suddenly as if he sensed a danger. She issued her challenge. “Then why did
you
make love to
me
?”

Motionless, he stared into her eyes. But she could read nothing in his. She controlled the urge to shiver at their blankness, and met his look as steadily as she could, very aware that he still held her hands where they rested on her knees.

When he shifted his weight and grinned at her, she felt as if he’d crossed a line of some sort. But her heart sank at the unfamiliar slant of his mouth. There was no hint of a dimple, and this wasn’t his usual little-boy grin. It was an impostor.

“Well, you got to admit you came on like gangbusters. A guy would have to be crazy to pass up . . .” He started off fine, but it didn’t last, and soon his voice faded into nothing. She offered up a silent prayer of thanks that he had been made so incapable of lying.

He lifted his hand, taking hers with it, to brush a lock of hair back from her cheek with his knuckles, then let a pent-up breath escape in the sound of a small defeat. “I made love to you because you were so damn beautiful. Because you’re you, Tris. And I have never been able to resist that temptation.”

“I don’t want you to resist, Michael.” She wanted the words to be strong and assured. They were a whisper. Her laugh came out shaky and low. “I’ve done my best to show you that, Good heavens, I’ve brazenly thrown myself at you every time trying to show you that.”

“Not every time.” In that low-voiced denial she heard the gruffness of desire, and she remembered how he’d awakened her during the night in the bedroom over the garage, and how he had shown her how much he did want her, needed her. His words now and the memory of his loving then gave her the courage to say more.

“There’s no one else around this time,” she said. “No other emotions complicating our feelings. No nostalgia for the past, no sentimental journeys home. Nothing artificial about the circumstances this time. Just you and me. It’s very simple.”

She lifted her hand to his face, taking his hand along as he had hers.

When she cupped her palm to mold it to his cheek, Michael spread his hand atop hers to press it tighter to his face, then turned to touch his lips to the delicate skin at the base of her fingers.

He knew she was wrong. Lord, she was wrong. Simple? When had there ever been anything simple about the two of them? And nothing artificial? What could be more artificial than being insulated by drifts of snow and warmed by a roaring fire and good wine? No other emotions? How about longing and need and passion?

“Michael?” In her voice he felt the remembered vulnerable timbre of her questions five months before.
Will you dance with me? May I come up to your room? Will you kiss me
?

He looked into her eyes and saw the uncertainty and the desire. And more, he saw the need. Tris needed him, and that, as always, was the temptation he stood no chance of resisting.

“Yes, Tris.”

He freed his hands from hers and set them on her jawline, sweeping his thumbs across the soft sharpness of her cheekbones. He bent to touch her lips, gently, slowly. Then he slid his fingers farther into her hair and curled his hands more securely around her head to pull her tightly against his mouth, so that her lips parted and her tongue met his. He loosened his hold when they were both breathless and lifted his head enough to look into her eyes again. The desire and the need were there, stronger and darker. The uncertainty was gone.

He’d force himself to take it slow this time. Not to let the passion pull them under too quickly. To let it build gradually, so that if the uncertainty returned . . . If the uncertainty returned, he’d go crazy, but he’d stop. God help him, he’d stop.

“Slow,” he murmured against her mouth. “Slow.”

She mumbled something, but slow or not, he was too greedy for her taste to let the words escape her lips.

Still sampling the dark sweetness of her mouth and tongue, he let his hands glide slowly, so slowly, down the length of her neck, feeling the arch of it under his fingers as she bent back to receive his kiss.

His caresses spoke of infinity as he explored her through the medium of her sweater. Under his hands, the knit became an erotic abrasive. She longed to have it gone, to erase all barriers between them, but when at last—at long, lazy last—he languidly removed the sweater, she found no release. Only more need.

She wondered hazily how he could keep his loving so slow on the surface while she could sense—and share—the surging urgency underneath. The passion they had experienced five months ago had been almost alien to their relationship. Tonight, she felt something new. As if elements of their easy friendship overlaid the desire, creating a third stage. A new level, distinct and very potent.

His mouth, long journeying from her chin to her nipple, at last reached its destination, and he opened his mouth to pull on it through the lace of her bra. She arched, in pleasure and frustrated longing to draw him closer still, to draw him into the closest of embraces. Now.

But she couldn’t gather enough wits to express any of that until he broke contact to start another joltingly languorous exploration of her other breast.

“Michael, please.’’

“Slow.”

She took a quick, deep breath, trying to steady herself. She didn’t consider the resulting movement of her breasts until she heard Michael’s rumbled groan, and then she allowed herself a small smile.

“All right, slow. But only after you catch up with me.”

With some regret, but also a dose of self-preservation, she broke away.

He let her go, a horrible doubt slicing into him for the instant before he saw her eyes. Then he relaxed. Momentarily.

She slipped her hands, wide open, under the sweatshirt, managing to caress a couple hundred million nerve-endings while lifting the shirt over his head. She leaned forward to circle him with her arms and stroke her hands over his back.

“I love your back.”

He mimicked her action, sweeping his hands along the delicate indentation of her backbone. “Me, too.”

Encountering the encumbrance of her bra, he quickly unhooked it. The lacy material swung loose between them and he felt it like a teasing feather against his chest. Reflexively, he pulled her to him, relishing the way her soft breasts pressed the lace against his skin. “But I like other parts, too.”

“Me, too.”

She sounded a little breathless, although he knew for a fact that she was breathing, because he could feel the movement of her lungs under his hands and could feel the effects of her breaths against the skin where she was nibbling along the cord of his neck. Could feel it there and in every square inch of his body.

She backed away enough to let him look into her eyes.

The desire and the need shone in her, flaring as brightly as the fire before them.

“Yeah? What else do you like?”

With a motion so slow he could hardly bear it, she pulled the straps of her bra down on her arms. Deliberately, she set the bra aside, then put her hands, warm and soft, on his chest. Their progress down his chest was wickedly languid. A slow-motion torture of pleasure as she tempted his nipples with gentle touches, then too soon deserted them to slide lower and lower over ribs and muscles that battled not to tremble.

At the snap to his jeans, her fingers fumbled long enough for him to wonder if she really was nervous or just prolonging his agony of anticipation. Then the rasp of the zipper came in time to his breathing. He captured her hand and brought it to the waistband of his briefs.