A Down-Home Country Christmas (8 page)

He stood and took her hand to pull her to a sitting position before handing her the condom. She couldn’t resist running a finger along a ridge of muscle in his abdomen, pulling a low groan from him before she rolled the condom onto his erection. The moment she was done, he tumbled her back onto the bed, moving her into the center as he stretched out over her and settled between her legs.

He twined his fingers with hers and braced himself on his elbows, bending to kiss her at the same time as he flexed his hips to thrust inside her. The combination of his lips against hers, his chest brushing her sensitized breasts, and his cock filling and stretching her sent her into a bursting climax. She cried out against his mouth, bowing up off the bed as the waves of release slammed over her.

He went still, allowing the aftershocks to ripple through her before he began to move again, slowly and steadily, fanning the heat inside her into a spark and then a flame. His mouth was against the side of her neck, his tongue tracing a path of delicious warmth over her skin. He nipped at her, the sharp edge of his teeth sending a frisson of excitement dancing over her skin and into her belly. She tightened her internal muscles around him, making him growl and pick up his rhythm.

She wrapped her legs around his waist, angling her hips so he could seat himself more deeply each time. He thrust fast and hard before he arched up, straightening his arms and throwing his head back as he ground out her name in a hoarse shout.

As he pumped inside her, he rotated his hips and sent her blasting into another orgasm.

And then he was rolling over with her body cradled against his, so she ended up sprawled on top of him, his chest rising and falling under her cheek while his breath whistled past her ear.

She lay there, letting her senses take in all the textures and angles of his body where it touched hers. The crush of her breasts against the heat and solidity of his chest. The weight of his arms loosely crossed over her back, his fingertips tickling her ribs just slightly. The rough hair and hard muscle of his thigh where her legs brushed on either side. Without lifting her head, she slid her fingers up to trace the strong bone of his jaw, feeling the contrast of skin and the smallest hint of stubble.

She felt him twist his head and then his lips were on her fingers, adding a moist heat to the swirl of feeling. The satisfied glow inside her flickered and then subsided again. Two orgasms in a row had wrung her out.

Robbie’s breathing settled into a normal rhythm, and he rolled again, letting her slide off him and onto the bed. She sighed in complaint at the loss of contact.

“I’ll be right back.” He yanked a couple of tissues out of the box on the bedside table and disposed of the condom.

She expected him to come back to the bed, but he stood looking down at her before he huffed out a sigh and bent to unzip one of the boots she’d forgotten she still wore. “I hate to take these off,” he said, slipping it from her foot, “but you’ll be more comfortable without them.”

She remembered wrapping her legs around his hips quite tightly and a flush climbed her cheeks. “I hope I didn’t dig the heels into you.”

He grinned as he unzipped the second boot and pulled it off. “Not that I noticed.”

“Turn around.”

“It’s fine,” he said, pulling the quilt out from under her before he slid under it beside her. He wrapped an arm around her waist and pulled her back in close against him, bringing his lips to the tender skin just below her ear lobe. “You smell so good.” He inhaled and blew out a warm breath before he kissed her. “You feel so good.” His tongue flicked out. “You taste so good.”

Holly shivered at the progression of sensation. “You
are
good,” she said.

His arm tightened around her. “With you I am.”

Her eyelids fluttered closed as she luxuriated in the knowledge that her body pleased Robbie. It might be just the novelty, but for now, she was exciting to him, and it made her feel powerful in a purely feminine way.

Now that they’d gotten past the first shock of intimacy, she wanted to spend the rest of their evening and night together exploring his body, seeing how they fit together, finding the places he enjoyed being touched. And she was sure he would find the same places on her.

She reached down and took the hand he had splayed over her hip, moving it up to cup her breast. She felt his cock jump against her backside as the breath hissed through his teeth.

“Are you sure?” he rasped.

She answered by circling her hips against him.

He didn’t ask any more questions for a long time.

Chapter 10

Robbie tried to focus on the bite of mince pie he’d just put in his mouth, but all his attention centered on Holly sitting across the candlelit table from him. The flickering light reflected in her dark eyes and ran along strands of her waving hair like liquid fire. He’d never seen a woman look so sexy in just a white blouse. Of course, it helped that she wasn’t wearing a bra under the thin silk. He’d taken full advantage of that as she stood at the sink in the kitchen, fitting his body against her back and snaking his hands around to cup her full breasts and tease her nipples to points.

The memory made his cock get hard all over again.

She was watching him with a question in her eyes, so he forced himself to chew, setting loose the flavor of fruit, nuts, and spices combined with melt-in-your-mouth buttery crust. “Grady’s going to love this, and Adam Bosch is going to want a hundred,” he said. “My mother couldn’t have made it better.”

She looked relieved. “I fiddled with the recipe so I wasn’t sure if it worked.”

“Oh, it works.” He took another forkful as she lifted her wineglass to her lips. Her every movement reminded him of touching her somewhere on that gorgeous body. He’d been fantasizing about her for months in ways that made him feel guilty. But after she’d invited him to join her in the shower this afternoon, his fantasies paled next to the reality.

The guilt had only gotten worse though.

Before he’d been able to tell himself he admired her as a beautiful, courageous mother of two children. His fantasies were not reality. Now he knew what her skin felt like under his hands, how she moaned in the back of her throat when he touched her, the way her eyes widened and then closed as she neared her climax. She had given herself to him with a generosity that took his breath away. He had taken everything she offered, knowing he had nothing permanent to give her in return.

But that wasn’t the real problem.

He ached to spend the night making love to her until they both collapsed in exhaustion, and then wake up with her naked in his arms so he could make love to her again. And he wanted to do it every night for the rest of their lives. But he was leaving and her life was firmly rooted in Sanctuary.

He needed to end this before either one of them got in any deeper.

He devoured the rest of the pie and stood up with his plate in his hand. “I’ll help you wash up and then I’d better go.”

She looked as though he’d just thrown ice water in her face. “You don’t have to leave yet. The girls are spending the night at Claire’s.”

He knew that. “I don’t want folks seeing my truck parked in your driveway and drawing conclusions that might hurt you.”

Her face cleared and a mischievous glint shone in her eyes. “We can put it in the garage. Or better yet, park it four doors down in front of that old busybody Bertha Shanks’ house. She’ll go crazy wondering who you’re staking out.”

He realized he owed Holly the truth, so he sat back down. “There’s something I need to tell you.”

It looked as though someone had closed the shutters over the face of the sparkling woman he’d been watching. She was bracing herself for the emotional hit. He imagined she’d learned this from her time with her ex-husband, and it made his guilt expand exponentially.

He tried to figure out how to sugarcoat his news but he decided the bald truth was the best way to handle it. “I’ve accepted a job with the police department in Atlanta, and I’ll be leaving Sanctuary at the end of January.”

He was baffled when both relief and guilt showed on her face. She nodded. “I know. I overheard you talking with Paul in Grady’s barn the other evening.”

That rocked him back in his chair. He struggled to rearrange his thoughts around this information.

Holly looked down at her hands, folded on the table. “Maybe it makes me a bad person, but I wanted this to happen, even though I knew you were leaving.” She lifted her gaze back to his. “I feel like a woman again. Not a failure.”

The honesty of her socked him in the gut. “Frank was the failure, not you.”

Now she turned to stare at the Christmas tree although he was sure she wasn’t seeing the reflection of the lights on the tinsel. “When someone you love tells you over and over again that you’re no good, you start to believe it. And then you feel like a weak-minded fool when you finally realize it’s not true. But the belief has taken root somewhere so deep inside you that you can’t quite dig it out.”

“Holly—” He reached across the table to lay his hand on top of hers.

She turned her palm up to wrap her fingers around his as she summoned a smile. “It’s okay. I’m okay. I just needed this one last piece to put myself back together again. Thank you.”

She was thanking him for some of the greatest sex he’d ever had? He had to fix this. “You’ve got it backwards. I don’t deserve to touch the hem of your skirt, but I’ve gotten to taste your lips and kiss your breasts and come inside you. I’m the one who’s grateful.”

Her face took on a glow. She leaned across the table toward him and whispered in a husky voice, “Robbie, I want you inside me right now.”

His cock turned to iron and he shifted in his chair as he shook his head. “It’s not right for me to do this. You’re not the kind of woman you have a one-night stand with.”

“Let me pretend for tonight. I want to be that kind of woman just once in my life.”

Robbie caught the uncertainty that still lived in her eyes. He wanted to punch Frank out, but even more, he wanted to uproot the doubt and insecurity the bastard had inflicted on this incredible woman.

For tonight, Robbie would be the kind of man who took advantage of Holly’s offer.

He shoved back his chair and came around the table to lift Holly out of hers. Carrying her to the sofa, he looked down to see her cloud of dark hair spilling over his arm, her eyes half-closed with anticipation while a wicked smile curved her lips.

He turned his gaze toward the ceiling. “Imagine there’s a whole hedge of mistletoe hanging over this couch because I’m going to kiss every inch of your body under it.”

Chapter 11

Holly flipped the pancakes over in the cast iron skillet, the fragrance of hot sweet batter wafting around her. One flapjack landed on the countertop because her mind was distracted by images of the man currently using her shower. She scraped the errant disk up and tossed it into the sink, pouring a fresh circle of batter on the griddle.

She stood watching the pancakes bubble as she remembered how it felt to run her hands over Robbie’s water-slicked skin. She’d overcome his scruples and persuaded him to stay the night, so they woke up tangled in each other’s arms this morning. Then they’d gotten even more tangled before he had to get ready to fly Santa to the hospital. Her body hummed with bone-deep satisfaction and feminine energy.

She really was turning into a bad person, because she didn’t feel guilty about any of it.

The sound of running water ceased. She loaded the pancakes onto one of her precious Christmas china plates and slid it in the warm oven. The bacon was cooked to the perfect crispiness, and a homemade coffee cake, dusted with powdered sugar, stood on the table. She poured the warm maple syrup into a small glazed pitcher made by a local potter and set it on the red-and-green plaid tablecloth.

She heard footsteps and then Robbie appeared in the kitchen doorway in the same clothes he’d worn the day before, his damp hair still showing comb marks. She felt her lips curve into a smile of welcome. “Hope you’re hungry.”

He didn’t answer her smile with one of his own, and her spirits plummeted. She turned to pull the pancakes out of the oven, adding bacon before she carried it to the table.

“Holly, I feel like crap about this.”

“Don’t,” she said. “Just eat.”

He shook his head. “What I did isn’t right.”

A spurt of anger straightened her spine and she whirled to face him. “Every single thing you did was right, so right I can’t stop thinking about it. Don’t you make it sound bad!”

He raked his fingers through his hair, destroying the neat lines the comb had left. “You were so beautiful up there in that plane, and so alive.”

Holly nodded, wanting him to know she’d felt the same way. “It was like electricity between us. Like we could have powered the plane just on that.” The blue of his eyes glowed and she knew he was remembering the energy crackling around the cockpit. “It had to go somewhere, Robbie, so it went into making love.”

“I knew I was leaving in a few weeks, and I thought you didn’t.”

The man was too honorable for his own good. She heard the exasperation in her voice as she said, “I knew exactly what I was doing. I don’t wear red lace lingerie on a daily basis.”

A pained smile twisted his lips. “Yeah, but I’ve pictured you in it every day.”

Gratification rolled through her, quelling the irritation. “That’s what I like to hear.”

He shook his head. “You’re not that kind of woman.”

“Why can’t I be? Just for one month with you.”

He thrust his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “Because you’re the kind of woman you tell your troubles to every night when you come home. The kind you have babies with and waltz around the dance floor at your fiftieth wedding anniversary party.”

She wanted to clap her hand over his mouth and tell him to stop but he kept on talking.

“You’re a once-in-a-lifetime kind of woman. I may kick myself for throwing this away, but I need to get beyond that nearest ridge of mountains.” He looked down. “I’m afraid I won’t go if I spend a month with you.”

Comprehension rocked her back on her heels. He saw her as another woman like his mother and his sisters, winding herself around him to hold him back from the life in the outside world that he craved. “I promise to push you out the door when the time comes for your new job. I have my sister and Tim, my friends, a whole community who support me. I’ll be fine.”

“It wouldn’t be you who would hold me back.” He raised his gaze to hers. “I can’t afford to get in any deeper.”

She saw regret and doubt and longing in his eyes. She could play on those emotions to get him to stay with her and her daughters. He might even be happy, and he wouldn’t leave her because he was decent down to the marrow of his bones. But he would always wonder what it would have been like to fly away from Sanctuary, always have that yearning that couldn’t be satisfied. And she would never do that to this man she loved.

The realization sucked all the air out of her lungs and she gasped. Robbie was no longer a light flirtation or a means to make herself feel like an attractive woman again. She loved him with every ounce of her being. It had begun a year or so ago over those evening slices of pie in her kitchen and now their night together had fanned the warm flicker of affection into a full-blown conflagration that threatened to consume her heart.

She swallowed the clot of tears rising in her throat. She had to make him believe his words hadn’t just about destroyed her. He had done so much for her; she owed him his freedom and a clear conscience. She nodded. “You’re right. No reason to make it hard on either one of us.” She forced a cheery tone into her voice. “I know you have to go, but there’s no reason to leave hungry. Sit down and have some hotcakes while they’re still hot.”

“I’d better take a rain check on that.” He crossed the space between them and framed her face with his hands. “I’ll never forget being with you. Every single second is burned into my memory.” He bent and pressed a gentle kiss to her lips and then released her. Before she could find her voice again, he had pivoted on his heel and walked out the kitchen door.

“Good-bye,” she whispered. Then she sank down into a chair, folding her arms on the table so she could pillow her head as sobs wracked her body.