Chapter Eight
Ramona couldn’t keep herself from answering the phone when Knox called, or letting him in when he showed up, so really—kissing him was a foregone conclusion.
And just like every time he kissed her, he turned her completely inside out.
It had always been like this. His mouth on hers was immediately carnal, almost unbearably intense.
It was everything.
He ate at her mouth, and one of his big, callused hands moved to cup her cheek so he could guide her mouth as he kissed her. Like this was the first time.
Like they needed a beginners’ manual to figure out this chemistry when it had been nothing but explosive from the start.
She wrapped her arms around his neck and then he was moving.
He lifted her up, still kissing her, so he could slide his hands beneath the cozy sweatshirt she wore.
It was like he needed to reacquaint himself with her shape, or her skin, or maybe he was matching the memories he’d been carrying around to the reality.
Ramona couldn’t pretend she wasn’t doing the exact same thing. She pressed into him, because the wall of his chest was a kind of glory—hard and hot—and she’d believed she would never touch him again. She had vowed she wouldn’t.
And it was true that it felt lovely and intimate to sit around fully clothed with this man, sharing a bit of quiet together.
But the minute they touched, they incinerated.
Knox made a low, growling noise that had never once failed to connect directly to the greedy place between her legs that she sometimes thought had been made just for him.
And she didn’t know if she jumped or he hauled her up, but either way, she wrapped her legs around his waist and then he was carrying her.
But they didn’t make it far.
They never did.
He crossed out of the kitchen and into the living room, but then he stopped so he could hold her up against the nearest wall, and they stayed like that for a good, long while.
Knox got that sweatshirt up and off of her, but it took too long. They had to slam their mouths together again and lick their way inside, angling their heads to make it better, to make up for it.
They had to do that until it became necessary to breathe.
He moved so he could lean back a little, but he kept her legs in place around him. Ramona pressed her shoulder blades into the wall, because she knew what he wanted.
She wanted it too.
He wore a dark, glittering, intensely possessive look on his face as he smoothed his palms over her breasts. She was now completely bared to him from the waist up, and she could see how much he liked it.
She did too, especially when he began to play.
Though his version of play made her buck her hips against him, pressing herself as best she could against the heat of him. And better still, that hard, heavy ridge in his jeans that she knew was all for her.
“Do you know how hard it was to keep my hands off you for days beneath my roof?” he asked her, in that dark voice of his that made her shiver, everywhere.
“I hope it was torture,” she managed to get out as she arched her back to give him better access. “I hope it hurt.”
“You know that it did.”
Knox slid his hands around to grip her shoulder blades and then he lifted her straight up, so he could tease her nipple and suck it into his hot mouth.
And he broke her apart that easily, with one sharp, hard tug. It felt like lightning racing through her, crashing down, making her throw her head back while her whole body convulsed.
He only laughed, his mouth still too hot and she could feel it too well, and that made it go on longer. When she started to come down a little, he devoted himself to her other breast, sending her spinning all over again.
Knox pulled her away from the wall and spun around, and then they were down on their knees on her soft, plush, off-white rug.
It was thick and cozy and was spread out before the greatest indulgence in this apartment.
Her electric fireplace that she could turn on and off with the click of a button, rather than heaving about in the cold with axes and wood.
That is an abomination, Knox had said the first time he’d seen it. And though he’d been shaking his head, there’d been laughter in his eyes.
There’s a reason most lumberjacks are men, Ramona had replied. It’s about time, labor, and upper body strength differentials, but mostly I just want to be cozy.
He had rolled his eyes then and every other time he’d come here and found it crackling away in all of its electric glory. But he had to admit that it kept the house warm.
Which he didn’t seem to mind when he was doing the kinds of things he was doing now. Like peeling off her socks and leggings, then her panties. And taking his time as he did it, as if he was marveling over her body for the very first time.
“It’s been too damned long since I’ve tasted you,” he growled at her.
He laid her out before him, without a single scrap of clothes on her body. Then he found his way between her legs so he could hook her knees over his shoulders.
Then he settled down on his forearms, slid his hands under her butt, and proceeded to make her shatter.
Over and over and over again.
This was only one of the terrible things about Knox Carey.
There were many. But the utter, easy delight he took in licking into her, tasting her, indulging himself in her, was quite possibly the very worst.
No wonder she was addicted. No wonder she’d found the need to create sobriety programs to try to keep herself on the straight and narrow where he was concerned.
The man was dangerous. He seemed to know the things her own body could do whether she knew it herself or not. He used his mouth like it was a weapon and a love song, and he coaxed her over that edge again and again.
He used his talented fingers to play with her, to tease her. He thrust deep inside of her with one finger, then two, finding that spot there on the inside and then using it against her—deliberately making her scream.
And she knew better than to tell him she couldn’t take any more, because he always seemed to see that as a challenge.
A challenge he had yet to lose.
Tonight he proceeded to show her why and how he would always win.
Until she was limp and half laughing, half sobbing there before the fire.
He kissed his way up her torso, lavishing attention everywhere.
From her inner thigh to her navel. From one hip bone to the other.
This time, when he found her breasts, he kissed them and left her shivering, slightly, as sensation wound its way through her.
But when he got to her face again, he only smiled. He took his time kissing her, and then he rolled to his feet.
Then he simply picked her up off the floor, hoisting her up in his arms as if she weighed about as much as one of the throw pillows.
Ramona wasn’t a giant of a woman, but she’d hit five foot eight in the sixth grade. She wasn’t tiny, either.
Yet Knox always made her feel as if she was a precious little object he could tuck away in his pocket and keep safe, if she liked.
Ramona had always liked.
She snuggled into him as he carried her, breathing in that scent of his. No longer the cold night he’d brought with him when he’d come to her door, but his particular scent that she knew as well as she knew her own.
Now she also knew what it was like for her own body to smell entirely like him.
When she’d taken a shower here in her own home, this morning, she’d felt a strange pang of something a lot like grief when she’d come out of the shower, dried herself off, and realized that she had washed away the spicy fragrance of his shampoo.
The bold notes of his soap, like pine sap and rich earth.
She could smell that on him now, in the warm crook of his neck, but beneath that there was the scent that was just him. And something else that always made her think of towering mountains, braced against the endless sky. There was something expansive about inhaling this man.
It made her feel as if she was both tiny in his arms and at least a hundred times her own size inside.
He carried her into the bedroom, and, once again, she was so happy that she’d converted this upstairs space. When she’d arrived it had been little more than a few jumbled attic rooms someone had tried to throw together into an apartment for her grandfather’s carer in his last days.
It had been chilly and unwelcoming and, frankly, depressing. She didn’t know who had lived up here, but she doubted very much that they’d enjoyed it.
Now the main bedroom was a festival of soft, inviting ease.
She had a king-size bed and thick rugs to keep her feet from being cold when she walked around.
She had a cozy reading nook and an office area behind a glass door—a former closet—where she could do actual work if she liked.
All this and a view of Dallas Lisle’s mountain lighthouse on the far ridge in front of her, rising up like a beacon of hope and folly at once.
The bed was piled high with softness. Layers of linens, comforters, pillows. The first time Knox had seen her bedroom, months after the first time they’d gotten together downstairs on an air mattress, he had actually stopped and stared.
I’m not sure men are allowed in a place like this, he’d said with a laugh. It feels like some kind of temple.
They shouldn’t be allowed, she’d agreed, but then she’d smiled.
She’d taken his hands and pushed him back into the particular cloudlike softness of her specially selected mattress, and her previously most dangerous addiction, that being bedding that could give Michelin-rated resorts a run for their money.
He might have been a tough cowboy, but he’d been an immediate convert.