Chapter 16 #3
“It’s not up to you to do that, honey. It’s up to me. If I do my part the way I should, you won’t be thinking about anything other than how good it feels.”
She had to look away again because she simply couldn’t believe how tuned in to her he was after only spending a few days together.
“You’re thinking again,” he said, kissing her neck and nibbling her ear. “Tell me. Let me in.”
“I can’t do that.”
“Why?”
“Because you’ll have me falling for you when we said we weren’t going to do that. Because you’re already making me wonder how I spent so many years with the wrong men when the right one might’ve been so close. So very close.”
“Abby…”
“Forget I said that. You’ve got me all discombobulated and saying things I shouldn’t be saying.”
“I want to hear what you’re thinking. Do you want to know why?”
She nodded. God help her, but she wanted to know everything about him.
“Because you’ve got me thinking the same sort of things. How could we have spent so much time in each other’s orbit but never known this was possible?”
Tears filled her eyes, the emotional response infuriating her. “We said we weren’t going to do this,” she reminded him again.
He peppered her face with kisses, putting particular emphasis on her eyelids, licking the salty moisture from under her eyes.
“We both just got out of big entanglements,” she continued, even as his tenderness destroyed her defenses. “We’ve got no business doing this.”
“And yet here we are, thoroughly entangled, all but naked in each other’s arms with nowhere else either of us would rather be. Am I right about that?”
Powerfully moved by his assessment, she said, “Yes,” the single word barely a whisper.
“Sometimes,” he said, kissing her so sweetly, “the most important things happen when you least expect it.”
“Is this an important thing?”
“I don’t know about you, but it’s become very important to me over the last few days.”
His admission gave her the courage to offer her own. “Me, too.”
“How about we have a little fun now, take the edge off, and later, after we do our girls’ night and poker night, we meet back here and take all the time it takes to get you relaxed enough to make love?”
Abby trembled at the promise in his softly spoken words. Because she didn’t trust herself to speak, she nodded.
He kissed her, taking it slowly, running his tongue over the seam of her lips until she opened her mouth to let him in.
When he sucked lightly on her tongue, Abby nearly died from the pleasure that coursed through her.
He coaxed reactions from her that she’d never known possible.
He drew her out of her own thoughts and into the moment in a way that no one else had done before.
She clung to him, wanting him closer, close enough that his chest hair abraded her tender nipples and his hard penis pressed against the pulsating tension between her legs.
Desperate to touch and feel all of him, she pushed her hands into the back of his jeans, under the waistband of his boxers, cupping his muscular buttocks as he flexed against her.
He broke the kiss and shifted his attention to her nipple, tugging and biting lightly, but hard enough to make her moan from the pleasure.
The tension grew to nearly unbearable heights as he pressed against her and then backed off, and then did it again, over and over until she was lost in the throes of immeasurable bliss, her fingers digging into his backside to keep him right where she needed him until the storm had subsided.
“Abby,” he whispered against her breast. “God.” The heat of his release on her belly was among the most sensual things she’d ever experienced.
Watching him let go, feeling the tension drain from his body and knowing she’d done that to him made her feel powerful and aware of herself as a woman in ways that were all new to her.
“I can’t wait to be inside you when that happens,” he whispered, his breath against her neck making her shiver.
A twinge of anxiety settled in her belly as she hoped she wouldn’t have the problems with him she’d had with past lovers. For some reason, it seemed to matter so much more this time around. Despite her intention to be done forever with men, she was falling hard for Adam McCarthy.
After the visit with Laura and her family, Frank spent an hour with his son Shane, and then decided to walk the short distance from the Sand & Surf to his brother Mac’s house in North Harbor.
The afternoon sun was warm on his face as he walked past Grace’s pharmacy and up the hill that led to Mac and Linda’s “White House.”
As he walked, he thought of the monumental news Laura and Owen had shared with him.
Twins… It was hard to believe that his little girl would soon be the mother of three.
But he’d never seen Laura as happy as she’d been since Owen had come into her life.
If anyone deserved to be happy, it was his kids who’d lost their poor mother far too young and had known their share of struggles since then.
He’d done his best to be mother and father to them, and he hurt right along with them when things didn’t go their way.
Now that Laura seemed happily settled, Frank hoped Shane would find his way before too much longer.
His son was still far too withdrawn and quiet after the disaster with his ex-wife Courtney.
In his work as a superior court judge, he saw daily examples of the ravages of drug abuse. He’d never expected to see the same ravages in his own family. Shane had been blindsided to discover his wife had hidden a raging prescription drug addiction for most of the time they’d been together.
It had done Shane good to be here with his sister and cousins as well as his Aunt Linda and Uncle Mac, who’d played such a critical role in the lives of his kids when they were younger.
Linda and Mac had opened their doors to Laura and Shane every summer when they were young, and those weeks on Gansett with their cousins had done wonders for his kids.