Firefighter Daddy (16 page)

Thinking back on the few occasions when there
had
been physical contact, it had been nothing short of mind-boggling. His mother or his daughter had always been around, though, and that had prevented anything from coming of it. Tonight, he’d have plenty of opportunities to be close to Rory, and there’d be no family around to catch them. The prospect of escorting her onto the dance floor, touching the soft-looking skin on her shoulders and losing his fingers in her hair was exhilarating and terrifying. He wished he could fast-forward to that moment.

The audience stood and applauded as the minister presented the newlyweds, the organ music swelled and the bride and groom led the procession up the aisle.

All right,
he thought.
Let’s get this party started.

“D
ANCE WITH ME
?”

Finally. Rory let Mitch help her to her feet. “I thought you’d never ask.”

“I was beginning to wonder if I’d ever get a chance.”

He wasn’t the only one. After the ceremony there had been a two-hour session with the photographer, then the receiving line that had taken forever, followed by cocktails, dinner and speeches.

Throughout all of it, Rory had been paired with Jonathan’s brother, the best man, and Mitch was with Jess. Since they had arrived at the church, they’d only exchanged a few words. Now, finally, they had a few moments together.

She followed him onto the dance floor, placed one hand in his and all but melted into his arms.

“Has Jess been keeping you amused?”

Mitch grinned. “She’s very entertaining.”

Not
too
entertaining, Rory hoped. Every time she’d looked at them, they’d been talking and laughing like old friends. She’d never seen him look so relaxed and, well, happy. Meanwhile, she and the best man—no doubt a very smart guy but a computer geek to the core—had quickly discovered they had nothing in common but the bride and groom.

“She’s the only bartender with a brown belt in karate I’ve ever met, and she’s a big fan of yours.”

“Really?” Rory asked cautiously. “What did she say?”

“You’re great with kids. You’ll make a wonderful mother someday. If I didn’t know better, I might have thought she was trying to set us up.”

“She didn’t!” But Rory knew she had, and now she wasn’t so much worried that Jess and Mitch had hit it off as she was that Jess’s endorsement was exactly what Mitch thought it might be, and she had a hunch that Jess wasn’t working alone. Now that things were going well, she didn’t need their meddling. “She was just getting back at me for making her go shopping.”

Her response seemed to disappoint him. “She doesn’t like to shop?”

“She hates it. Especially for shoes and lingerie.”

“Ah, the shoes. She did a lot of complaining about those. Didn’t mention the lingerie, though…” He glanced across the banquet room to where Jess was standing, as though looking at her with renewed interest.

Rory was pretty sure he was teasing her. “She’s very attractive, don’t you think?”

“Beautiful,” he said, but his gaze had returned to her. “Especially the hair.” The hand on her back moved higher and she could tell that her own hair was now threaded through his fingers.

“I was hoping you preferred blondes.”

He held her a little closer, and she let him. “And if I did?”

“It would make you a gentleman.”

“Then blondes it is.”

Banter didn’t come naturally to Mitch, but he was more relaxed than she’d ever seen him. And it just so happened that a relaxed Mitch was an excellent dancer and…oh. He moved his hand even higher and a warm fingertip stroked her skin just above the top of her dress.

She opened her mouth to respond to
Then blondes it is,
but there were no words. Oh, well. Talking was highly overrated. Besides, who needed words when body language said it all?

She rested her cheek against his shoulder and closed her eyes. He was different from any man she’d ever met, and that was exciting and scary and unsettling all at the same time. She was her own person and she didn’t need a man to make her feel complete—she could do that for herself. But why was it different with Mitch? With him and Miranda, she felt like more of a person than she could be on her own. Not that she’d ever felt incomplete, but they made her want to be part of a greater whole—part of the traditional family she’d never had. One that lived and played…and stayed together.

The band’s female vocalist was singing a sultry, ultra-sexy rendition of “Baby, I Need Your Loving.” Mitch’s hands and those lyrics were making her think about how good it would feel to be with a man again. Especially this one. She didn’t know exactly where he stood on that, but if she took things slow, gave him time to get used to the idea…

The music stopped and the dancers applauded. Rory opened her eyes and blinked, not even close to being ready for the dance to end. A few couples left the dance floor, others waited for the next song. She and Mitch exchanged frustrated glances when the band launched into an up-tempo modern-sounding number she couldn’t put a name to.

“Want to get some fresh air?” he asked.

“Yes.”

They slipped through a side door that led to a terrace. Several clusters of people had gathered there, some seated at small, cloth-covered tables, others standing in small groups. He took her hand, she laced her fingers between his and they walked toward the dimly lit grounds.

For a few minutes they kept up the pretense of going for a stroll through the immaculately groomed gardens of the country club. Not an ideal place for making out, but Rory didn’t much care. She doubted Mitch did, either. When he led her off the path beneath the overhanging boughs of a tree and took her into his arms, she went eagerly, lifted her face up to his and waited. This time she’d let him kiss her first.

But he didn’t. “You must be cold,” he said instead.

“A little.” The air was cool on her bare arms and shoulders, but she could think of any number of ways to warm them up.

He shrugged off his jacket and held it out for her. She slipped it on, liking the feel of his body heat on her skin and the hint of musky male scent that might be cologne or aftershave, or maybe just him. Either way, it suited him and it totally worked for her.

“Now you’ll be cold.”

“No, I won’t.” He braced himself against the tree and put his arms around her, under the jacket, and then kissed her. His mouth was firm but gentle, like the rest of him, and then he drew her in for some full body contact and things got a little more intense and a lot more firm.

“I’ve wanted to do this ever since I met you,” he said.

“Me, too.” The heels of her shoes sank into the lawn, so she tried to balance on her toes.

His mouth reconnected with hers, this time with a little tongue that sent sparks all the way down to those toes, and then the tantalizing way his fingers were exploring the top edge of her dress, as though looking for a way in, sent another round. She kissed him and he kissed her back and things were heating up nicely in all the nicest places, and then her shoes started to sink into the grass again. Damn.

“What’s wrong?” he asked.

“It’s too hard to stand on the grass in these shoes.”

“Maybe we should go back inside.”

“Is that what you want?” she asked.

“No.”

That made two of them. “My van is in the parking lot. You have the keys, don’t you?”

“Yes.” His voice sounded deep and husky.

So much for taking this slowly.

M
ITCH FUMBLED WITH THE KEYS
.

“Let me do it,” Rory said. “Vanna’s locks are temperamental.”

He let her take the keys. In a flash, she swung the side doors open.

She scrunched the voluminous dress in her hands and tried to climb in. All day he had been getting glimpses of sparkly, barely-there shoes and mother-of-pearl toes, but the damn shoes were no better at climbing than they were at standing on the lawn. He grasped her slender waist and helped her inside, then climbed in behind her. Their combined weight set the van rocking.

Rory giggled as she tumbled onto the bed, and she was still giggling when she pulled him down on top of her. This was crazy. The van was still rocking, and he was pretty sure the vehicle hadn’t been constructed with this kind of thing in mind.

He’d been imagining this for days. Well, not exactly
this
. In his fantasy, the bed wasn’t on wheels and Rory wasn’t giggling, but his guilt was gone. Like it was now. And she was ready and willing, like he was. Now.

She smelled of oranges and roses and sunshine—he liked that—and when he kissed her, she tasted even sweeter. It seemed forever since he’d felt this alive and this ready to be guided by physical needs. Rory’s warm and inviting body, sprawled beneath his, was rapidly escalating those needs to must-haves.

He couldn’t gain access to the top of her dress so he explored the contour of her breasts from the outside. Imagining them naked in his palm didn’t take much. Beneath him, her hips moved in the unmistakable rhythm he had dreamed of.

“Lift up for a second,” she said.

Separating himself from her was next to impossible, but he did what she asked. She hitched her dress up around her waist. Now the only thing separating them were his clothes and whatever she had on under the dress. There was only one way to find out what that was.

He traced a hasty route up the inside of one warm, accommodating thigh till the tips of his fingers met the warm, silky smoothness of her panties.

“Take them off,” she whispered, sending a gush of warm air into one ear that zinged all the way down his spine. So soon?

“Mitch?”

Who was he to question a woman who obviously knew what she wanted? He hooked a finger under a silk strap and slid the flimsy garment over her hips and down her legs. While he fumbled one side over the heel of those delectable shoes, she went to work on his fly. Her fingers glided over his erection as the zipper rasped open.

She tried to push his pants down over his hips. “Help me out here.”

Bossy little thing. Well, she wouldn’t get an argument from him—turned out he liked a woman who knew what she wanted. While he finished what she had started, she twisted sideways and opened a small compartment above the bed.

“Here.” She shoved a box into his hands.

Condoms. Of course. Good idea. He definitely didn’t want to be involved in a backseat conception. Besides, Volkswagen would be a hell of a name for a cat.

The box was still sealed, which he found vaguely reassuring, but in the dim light that filtered through the curtains, he couldn’t see how to open it. He pried at what he thought was the flap.

Come on.

To make matters worse, his hands were shaking. Badly.

The cardboard finally gave way. The strip of plastic-wrapped condoms leaped out of the carton and unfurled itself on Rory’s chest like some kind of perverted jack-in-the-box.

She giggled again, tore one packet off the strip and handed it to him, and tossed the rest aside. Then those naughty little fingers explored his midsection while he struggled to tear open the plastic.

He should tell her to stop, or at least slow down. More than a year of celibacy was about to come to an end, but he didn’t want it to end
this
way.

“Let me have it,” she said.

“What?” She couldn’t be serious.

“The condom. Give it to me.” He could tell she was smiling at his misunderstanding.

The plastic gave her no trouble, but he was glad she handed the unwrapped condom back to him. This part he could manage on his own. What he couldn’t handle was much more of her handling.

And then waiting and wanting were over. Entering her was like crossing the threshold to a perfect paradise, and being inside her felt mind-numbingly good. The months of abstinence had done wonders for his sex drive, but they were having the opposite effect on his self-control.

He wanted this to be just as good for her. No, better.

Maybe if he slowed down a little.

He withdrew almost completely, then slowly entered her again. It seemed like a good plan, and it should have worked.

It didn’t.

His orgasm was sudden and not particularly satisfying.

Damn it. Damn it, damn it, damn it.

He rested his forehead against hers. “Sorry.”

She moved insistently beneath him. “Can you still…you know?”

He couldn’t bring himself to say it out loud so he just shook his head. His traitorous libido was already retreating. He lifted himself off her, mentally scrambling to think of some way to get them both out of this clumsy entanglement with some shred of dignity. There wasn’t one.

Rory had other ideas. She put her hands on his shoulders and pushed downward, a silent communication that left no doubt about what she wanted.

He complied.

Her climax was almost as spontaneous as his had been, but judging by her prolonged movements and the soft, throaty sounds she made, it was infinitely more satisfying. Her hands were still in his hair when she finally stopped moving, and then she withdrew them, propped herself on her elbows and smiled down at him. “
That
was amazing.”

“I’m glad.” He should say something else, but what?
This has never happened before.
Like she’d care.
It’s been a while.
He was pretty sure she’d already figured that out. Thanks to his ill-timed orgasm there was no retrieving his dignity, and now they had to go back inside with her friends and act like none of this had happened.

Maybe when they got home…

Hell, who was he kidding? More than anything he wanted to make love to her properly, in a proper bed, but there was no way he’d risk a repeat of this performance again tonight.

H
AND IN HAND
, Rory and Mitch quickly covered the distance between the parking lot and the reception hall. In the dark she couldn’t get a read on what he was thinking, which made his brooding silence that much harder to take. She wanted to say something but had no idea what that should be.

He dropped her hand as they approached the terrace. Disappointed, she grabbed his arm and stopped walking. He stopped, too, and finally looked at her. Although the outdoor lighting was still too dim to get a good look at his face, she knew he wasn’t happy about their tryst in the van.