Chapter Eight
For a moment, Tennessee thought his heart might explode inside his chest.
Matilda’s mouth was sliding over his, and then she licked her way between his lips, and he no longer cared at all if his heart did explode. Because if he died right now, he thought he would count himself perfectly happy.
He was a big man and tiny, delicate women had never done it for him. Matilda wasn’t breakable. He could feel the muscles in her thighs, the strength in her arms. She was built tough and so damned pretty and she tasted like heaven.
Perfect, in other words, because he wasn’t the least bit afraid that he might hurt her.
Not that he wanted to hurt her, but when he sank his hands into that cloud of strawberry-blonde hair—at last—and angled her head so he could find his way deeper into this kiss, he liked very much not second-guessing himself that he might be too rough.
Then he knew beyond any shadow of a doubt that he wasn’t when she moved against him, rocking herself on his lap in a way that was clearly designed to drive them both wild.
It worked, too.
It worked like a charm. After all, he’d called her the Pied Piper, and it fit—she seemed to know exactly how to use that magic on him.
Because the taste of her was almost too much to bear. She tasted like sugar. Her mouth was hot, and fit his perfectly. The way she kissed him seemed hotwired to something deep inside of him, like he’d been waiting his whole life for her to flip this exact switch.
He moved, tipping her over so he could stretch them both out on the couch, and that was even better.
The kiss deepened, then got wilder. Much wilder.
He found his hands moving of their own accord, finding their way beneath her clothes so he could touch her skin.
He felt her hands on him, tracing fire along his spine, her fingers digging into him as she kissed him in a way that made him think that maybe he’d never been kissed before.
She felt flushed, her lips were soft and sweet, and he wanted to put his mouth on every last part of her.
He kissed her again and again, and they rolled over once more, and then she was laughing and he was surprised to find that he was laughing too as they tumbled their way onto the floor.
But she didn’t stop kissing him. And he couldn’t stop kissing her.
He wasn’t sure he would have stopped—ever—if one of her dogs hadn’t come over then and insinuated his great, big, shaggy head between them.
Matilda laughed as she fended the big shepherd off. She sat up and rubbed the dog on his furry face. “Silly boy,” she crooned at him. “So protective.”
She rolled up to her feet in a smooth way that told Tennessee more things about her and that mouthwatering body of hers.
Then she let out a sharp whistle that had all the dogs following her as she led them into the kitchen.
He heard a lot of dog toenails scrabbling on the floor and a few barks, and when she came back out she closed the door to the kitchen behind her so they couldn’t follow.
Then she stood there by the door, her gray-blue gaze on him like she was waiting for him to object. To stand up and head for the door. To cut this off right now, before it got more complicated.
It was like she’d read his mind.
Because this was not the kind of thing Tennessee did.
Ever.
It felt almost painful, the clarity he had suddenly. It was like he could page back to every single interaction he’d had with this woman, going back years. Like they were all laid out before him, finally impossible to ignore.
In every single one of them, he’d worked hard to pretend he couldn’t see her. To pretend his body didn’t respond to her. To pretend, over and over, that she was just a neighbor. The younger sister of an old friend. Nothing more, nothing less.
In this moment, here in her house with the taste of her in his mouth, he was doing none of that work. And he could see how much effort he’d put into it over the years. How he’d been lying to himself, on some level, for at least the last decade.
Which would track. Since that was right around the time Kacey had left for the last time.
She’d finally let him go and she’d been married within two years to a guy who looked at her like he’d won the lottery.
Tennessee had expected to grieve that. To pat himself on the back for being some kind of martyr—but that had never happened.
He hadn’t grieved Kacey at all, or not as much as he’d grieved that same idea of them at sixteen that they’d both held onto for much too long.
That had been telling.
Tonight, though, he was pretty sure that it was around that time that he’d started noticing Matilda. And not in the way that anyone else noticed Matilda. They all saw the eclectic clothes, the often messy hair, the truckful of animals.
But Tennessee, if he let himself, had a perfect memory of Matilda Stark at about twenty-two.
It had been summer. All of that golden light extending so late into the evenings made everybody giddy, and a little bit drunk on it all.
He couldn’t remember what he’d been doing to find himself out by the river that stretched across their little valley, cutting across the main road, and down past the Coppermine, continuing along until it reached the church tucked in the foothills on the other side.
In the summer, folks waded and floated about in the water, tubed across the valley floor, and swam in the swimming hole.
That particular evening must have been hot for Tennessee to have wandered down to the swimming hole. He couldn’t remember. What he could recall, perfectly, was Matilda.
He hadn’t been prepared to be standing there as she came up out of the water.
She’d been slicked all over, wet and glistening in the evening light.
Her hair had been dark from the water but still curly as it flowed down past her shoulders, but what he’d really been focused on was the bolt of heat that went through him at the wholly unexpected sight of Matilda Stark in a bikini.
It hadn’t even been a particularly revealing bikini. He supposed that it would be called a two-piece to distinguish it from the more deliberately sexy versions. Hers had been very her. It had been more like a sports bra of a top and little shorts.
Tennessee shouldn’t have cared. He shouldn’t have noticed.
But he had never seen that much of Matilda’s body.
She was dusted in freckles, and clearly spent time outside in not much more than she was wearing that night, since she was tan all over.
She’d had water sandals on her feet, the way everyone did getting in and out of the river, and she’d appeared to have absolutely no awareness that Tennessee had just about swallowed his own tongue at the sight of her.
At all of that soft, golden flesh. He’d had an urge at the time that had struck him as borderline insane. He’d wanted to go over to her, kneel down in front of her, and press his face to the swell of her belly. He’d wanted to lose himself in all that slick gold.
He had the same urge now. But unlike then, he wasn’t pretending to himself that he wasn’t wildly attracted to her.
And he had no intention of leaving.
Matilda moved toward him and took his hands in hers. Then she tipped her head back to look up at him, and he got the feeling she liked how much taller he was than her as much as he did.
“I have an idea,” she said. He could see all that heat in her gaze, and all over her face. He could feel it answer in him. “What if you let me take you upstairs, lay you down, and have my way with you? You won’t have to be responsible for anything.”
“If you have your way with me, that would mean I’m also having my way with you,” he heard himself reply, as if someone else had taken over his body. “Seems to me I’d have some responsibilities there.”
Her smile was better than the best summer, he thought. It seemed to crack him wide open.
And the trouble was, Tennessee knew himself.
He knew himself too well, so when she only shrugged and tugged him after her as she headed for the stairs and then led him up them, he knew better.
Because he wasn’t a casual guy. When he felt something, it felt like forever.
And Matilda was all light and air, dancing about as a whim took her. He had never believed that she was quite as fluttery as she pretended she was sometimes, just as he’d never found her to be anything like her mother.
But Matilda didn’t settle. Matilda’s passions in life were temporary. Oh yes, she loved animals, but what she loved was rescuing them and then rehoming them and then moving on to rescue others.
Meanwhile, Tennessee had never met a task he couldn’t make a daily chore or any kind of commitment he couldn’t turn into a lifetime of obsessive dedication.
The one girlfriend he’d had he had decided he wanted to marry before he really understood what that meant.
He was all about settling down, hard. Matilda was all about setting herself free.
There was no possible way that this could work out between them, and he knew that. He knew it even as she took him upstairs and led him down the hall to the room at the end. He knew it and he did nothing to stop it.
Hell, he participated.
She pulled him into the bedroom with her and he was not at all surprised to find that it was a riot of color.
The bed was covered in brightly hued pillows and a patchwork sort of quilt in almost too many vivid shades to name.
She had painted the walls a dark turquoise and almost every piece of furniture in it was a different, clashing color—except altogether, it felt happy. Joyful. And very much like Matilda.