Chapter 40 Hope #2
He set the work lamp on the ground, closed the distance between us, and clamped his mouth on mine.
His lips were soft and luscious, and the minute they touched mine, I forgot why I was mad and what I’d been about to say.
The anger morphed into something else, something hotter and more irrational.
His five-o’clock shadow rasped my skin. I dropped the fireplace poker, and wound my hands around his back.
His hands sifted through my hair as he angled his face to kiss me more deeply.
My fingers moved under the back of his T-shirt. His skin was warm, his muscles hard. I felt his erection press against my belly.
The rain that had been threatening started to sprinkle down.
“This isn’t wise,” I murmured.
“Why not?”
“Because I won’t want to stop.”
“Who says we have to?” His lips slid down my neck, creating goose bumps up and down my spine.
“Do you have protection?”
“No. But there are things we can do without it. Is the shed locked?”
His lips were close to my ear. The erotic tickle of his breath made a shiver chase through me. “I know where the key’s hidden.” His lips found mine again.
I couldn’t bear to break the kiss, so I walked backward on tiptoe toward the garden shed—and then he picked me up. I wound my legs around his hips and let him carry me, still kissing me, to the shed. I reached up and pulled the key from the top of the left shutter.
He set me down, took the key, and unlocked the door, then pulled out his cell phone and used it as a flashlight.
“There’s an old picnic blanket on the middle shelf,” I said.
He grabbed the blanket and shook it out, then spread it on the floor. He opened the window, closed the door, then knelt on the blanket and reached for my hand.
I sank down beside him. And then we were kissing again, kissing and touching, touching and kissing.
Outside, the sprinkles became a torrent, pounding on the roof.
He pulled my shirt off over my head and took my nipple in his mouth.
When he sucked, an arrow of heat ran right down my middle, right to my very core.
He moved over me with his hands and mouth until I was ablaze, melting and molten, throbbing for relief from the relentless, aching heat. His mouth traced a path down my stomach. He dipped his tongue into my belly button, his fingers working their way up my thighs.
He paused to pull my shorts down and off. “Going commando, I see.”
“Well, it was a commando operation,” I replied.
His laughed against my belly, and finding humor in such heat . . . well, it only made it hotter. Righter. Realer. More intimate.
“I appreciate how you managed to dress for the occasion on such short notice.” He kissed me some more. “Or did you plan this out? Did you pay those boys to give you an excuse to call me?”
“I thought you paid them.”
He laughed again, and pleasure, just as intense as the physical pleasure, but more deeply centered, located in the part of me that was more than just a body, pulsed through me.
He made me feel . . . amazing. Treasured.
Appreciated. Swept away, yes, but swept right into the moment.
We were both right here, right now, fully present, traveling together on a rotating planet revolving around a burning star.
The heat of his breath moving upward on my thigh sent me into a delicious spiral of pure, burgeoning desire.
The pressure of his fingers, the indescribably tender, firm urging of his mouth created an irresistible vortex of need and pleasure.
My legs quaked and my body stiffened and all at once, I was teetering on the ledge—a ledge where in the past I often used to think, This is it.
I’m nearly there, and that thought, that brief step back from the moment to observe it, would make it impossible to fall into the abyss of abandon.
But Matt disallowed that option. He simply, masterfully, lifted me off and over—and I found myself flying and crying, all at the same time.
At length, he kissed his way back up my belly, up my chest, up my neck, to my mouth. “You are so beautiful, so wonderful, so delicious,” he said. “That was such a turn-on.”
I could feel his erection pressed against my belly. “Your turn,” I murmured, unbuttoning his jeans. His manhood jutted out as I freed it from the zipper.
I pushed up his shirt. His pecs were firm mounds, topped with flat brown nipples, dusted with dark hair. His abs were flat and hard, banded with muscle. I kissed my way down a trail of dark hair below his belly button.
I touched his erection, and it jerked toward my hand. “I think he likes me.”
“Oh, Hope,” he groaned. “That feels . . .”
Words failed him. I loved that, loved making him speechless with pleasure. When I pushed him over the edge, I felt like Arch Woman of the Universe.
He pulled me into his arms afterward so that I lay on top of him, skin to skin. “Hope,” he whispered. He put his hands in my hair and turned my face so that his lips could reach mine. “You’re . . .”
Something on the floor beside us crackled. I froze, thinking it was a mouse—and then, suddenly, over the rain thrumming on the roof, I heard a babbling sound, like a voice. Terror shot through me. “What’s that?” I whispered.
“The baby monitor. Sophie sometimes talks in her sleep.”
“Oh.” I blew out a relieved sigh, then abruptly rolled off him. “That monitor—does it just work one way?” I asked.
“You mean, can they hear us?”
I nodded.
He grinned. “I know leaving the house and having sex in a neighbor’s shed probably won’t earn me the Father of the Year award, but trust me, I stopped short of broadcasting our little interlude into my daughters’ room.”
Of course he had. Of course he’d thought of his girls. And then his actual words hit me. “Was that what it was? A ‘little interlude’?”
“Well, it wasn’t a full concert, that’s for sure. You had me so turned on that if we’d had protection, I’d be embarrassed at my lack of self-control.”
“That’s not what I meant, and you know it.” I swallowed and looked down, feeling curiously close to tears. “‘Interlude’ just sound so . . .” Small. Transient. Insignificant. I struggled to find a less needy-sounding word. “. . . seedy.”
His lip quirked in a grin. “Well, this is a potting shed.”
I elbowed him, but his humor had lightened my mood.
He cupped my face. “Hope, that’s the best thing that’s happened to me in a long, long time. I’m crazy about you.”
“Me, too.”
Emotion hummed between us, then Sophie murmured again through the monitor. I reached for my shorts and scrambled into them. “You’d better get back home before your girls wake up.”
“Yeah.” He kissed me on the nose, then pulled on his clothes and folded the blanket.
I closed the window while he put the blanket back on the shelf, then he ran out and retrieved the fireplace poker from the lawn.
He handed it to me, ushered me out, then locked the door and put the key back on top of the shutter. “I’ll wait until you’re safely inside.”
I ran through the rain, aware of him watching me, and turned to wave once I opened the kitchen door. Lightning lit the sky, and I saw him move through the hedge.
I hurried upstairs, still clutching the poker.
I didn’t trust my hand to be steady enough to return it to the hearthside tool rack without waking Gran or the aide, and I didn’t want to have to explain myself or my actions.
How could I explain something I didn’t really understand myself?
Besides, all I wanted to do was get into bed and relive every thrilling moment.