Chapter 9 #2
I flung the door of the truck open. The rain on the earth had released a deep, sweet, spicy perfume, just like hers.
Raindrops pattered heavily down onto my head, my shoulders.
I circled the old truck, and stood outside the passenger-side door, staring into Nancy’s big, worried eyes through the rain-spotted glass.
I mimed rolling down the window. She did so, frowning in perplexity.
“What are you doing out there in the pouring rain?”
“Proving a point,” I said. “Continuing our conversation. You need control? Fine. Take control. The car door’s the limit, and I will not violate it. I swear upon my sacred honor that I will not touch any part of you that’s inside that truck door.”
She looked away with a nervous, embarrassed laugh. “Liam. Come on. You don’t have to play elaborate games like that. You’re getting soaked.”
“That’s my problem, not yours,” I told her.
“But it makes me feel guilty!”
Ah, yes. Progress. “Guilt is your problem. I can’t help with that. Sorry.”
She laughed, and something primitive inside me capered with glee. Yes. It was working. She was lightening up. Praise God.
“So?” Her eyes sparkled. “You’re just going to stand out there and get drenched, then? That’s so silly, Liam. And completely unnecessary.”
“It’s a crafty attempt to disarm you with my gallant moves,” I told her. “Is it working? Are you charmed? Disarmed?”
She wrinkled her nose and leaned out the window a little. “Nope. I think you’re out of your freaking mind.”
I felt jubilant as I sensed the change in her energy.
“You’re charmed,” I said softly. “You’re also outside the established limit.
Any part of you outside the plane of the truck’s window is fair game, remember?
Which means that the tip of your nose and your forehead are currently at risk of getting kissed. This is a courtesy warning.”
“Very gentlemanly of you,” she said demurely.
“I’m trying,” I said, with stark sincerity.
She didn’t pull back. In fact, she leaned farther out, her fingers curled over the truck’s door.
I jerked my chin toward her hands. “You’re outside the limit,” I reminded her.
Her lips formed words that didn’t quite make it out of her mouth. She swallowed and tried again. “I know,” she whispered.
My heart thudded harder. The force of the rain was increasing. The patter beginning to pound, soaking my hair, beading on my face and hers.
Over the limit. Fair game. She’d been warned.
I reached out slowly, as if she were a bird that might take flight at any sudden movement, and touched the backs of her cool, slender fingers. Wet with rain.
Unexpectedly, her hands turned beneath mine, and excitement jolted through my chest. Palm up, like flowers, blooming beneath my hands. Fingers opening like petals.
I leaned closer. The rain murmured, pattering against the earth in a soft sigh.
She glowed like a pearl, a faint blush of pink in her cheeks.
Her huge eyes were wide and luminous, a greenish amber-brown, like leaves in the water.
Her pupils dilated, deep and endless and inviting.
There was a ruddy sprinkle of freckles on her nose.
A frivolous detail that made her beauty even more earthy, more kissable.
The drops of water beading her forehead and cheeks were glittering adornments. They trembled on the grain of her dark eyebrows and clung to her thick mahogany hair, making the jut of her sharp cheekbone gleam. I was dazzled. Lost.
She extricated her hand and stroked my face from cheekbone to jaw.
The trail of her finger was a path of light, like moonlight on water.
Rain dripped into my collar, soaking my shoulders.
It defined the dimensions of this liquid otherworld: pearly gray, green, brown, silvery, glittering and cool.
Beneath that was Nancy’s secret, hidden heat.
The blush in her cheeks, the warmth of her lips, all sweet with rain.
Her scent, so elusive and maddening, vanishing like a violet’s perfume every time I tried to inhale it.
I swayed closer. Our lips touched.
The kiss pierced through me and broke something open. I clutched the edge of the door to steady myself. That shy, cautious, trembling kiss moved me. My eyes were wet.
Luckily, my face was already soaked with rain. Keep it together, Knightly.
I closed my eyes, drank in her scent, savored the delicate, silky texture of the inside skin of her lips, the uncertain flick of her shy tongue. I drank it up, slowly, tasting every drop. Like fine liquor. So much the sweeter for being given, not taken.
Nancy had shifted on the seat, rising onto her knees and leaning out toward me, into the rain. I cupped her face, and she clutched my forearms—her hands chilly and cool, but full of frantic energy as she offered herself up to be kissed.
Her slim torso was fully outside the window now, getting soaked in the shower of rain that neither of us seemed to notice.
All I could feel was her strong, trembling body.
All I could taste was her lips. Then I realized it.
Whoa, her whole torso was outside the limit I’d established.
She realized it, too. Awareness shimmered in the air between us.
I rested my forehead against hers, curling my fingers into the collar of her shirt. “A whole lot more of you is outside the window now,” I stated, just to keep things clear.
She swallowed a few times. “Um. Yes. I am aware of that.”
“So you’re good if I do…this?” I unbuttoned the top button of her shirt.
She leaned forward, and the sapphire pendant swung free, glittering and swaying. She laughed softly under her breath. “I’m good,” she whispered. “I’m more than good.”
“Great.” My heart raced so fast, I felt giddy. “Then it won’t be that much of a stretch to do this.” I plucked the second button loose. “And this.” I undid the third. “And finally, this.” I popped open the last one.
Her shirt was open now, showing a long stripe of bare, pale, shadowy skin beneath. I slid my hands inside, into that damp warmth beneath to rain-dampened cloth, and pushed the shirt open, and off her shoulders. It clung to her upper arms.
Oh God, she was beautiful. Like a naiad rising from the lake, hair slicked back, water-beaded skin, fathomless eyes.
And those breasts—small, high and firm—with deep crimson, puckered nipples, tight and stiff at the cold kiss of rain.
Flushed, gleaming red lips, moistened by her pink tongue. Yielding to my kiss.
She clutched my shoulders as I kissed my way reverently down her skin.
She was trembling, but not with tension.
Like a lake ruffled by currents, by the wind.
She wound her fingers through my hair as I worshiped those perfect breasts with my hands, my lips, my tongue.
Kissing, licking, suckling, coaxing. The tension pulled tight inside me.
I was going to shatter…but she broke first.
Her fingers dug in as she cried out. I felt her climax throb through her and echo through me. So intense, I nearly came in my jeans, right then and there.
I pressed my face against her perfect breasts, panting. Sobered by the hugeness of what had just happened. If this was how I felt just kissing and caressing her, parked outside, in the pouring rain, in a driveway, with a car door between us—well, damn.
Getting her naked in my bed might just stop my heart.
I slowly kissed my way back up, straightening up, resting my forehead against hers again. My eyes gazing into hers. Speechless with wonder.
Then I heard the angry buzz of her phone in her purse.
It could have been ringing for ten minutes, for all I knew. I didn’t want for either of us to leave our magic bubble, but the sound’s insistent buzzing was a grappling hook that Nancy couldn’t hope to resist. I felt tension grip her, and then I felt it drag her away from me.
I begged her, in my mind. Turn it off. Don’t go. Stay right here. Stay with me.
She pulled away, crawling back into the cab of the truck, groping for her purse.
“Hello?” She listened to a loud burst of talking on the other side, and her eyes flicked up to me.
“Just a sec, Eugene. Um, Liam? This is going to take a few minutes. You might as well get back into the truck, out of the rain.”
Yes, the moment was over. Fuck. I stood there, fists clenched, fighting unreasonable anger, but she didn’t notice. She was focused elsewhere. All business now.
I got into the truck, feeling dismissed. What a chump asshole. Winding myself up into a state. Convincing myself that we were on the verge of something important.
But not more important than a fucking phone call.