Sugar And Spice (22 page)

“I haven’t slept much since you came into my life.”

“I did that first night, but—”

He yanked her down, into the bed and on top of him. She yelped as she fell against him. They lay there eye to eye, nose to nose.

“Mack…I—I think we should talk.”

“Honey, we’ve done enough talking.”

Not even for a moment did Katie think about resisting. In her heart of hearts, she knew she hadn’t come up to Mack’s bedroom to talk. She had come to him because she wanted him, needed him, yearned for him. Right or wrong, good or bad, she had fallen in love with this man, and the feelings were unlike anything she’d ever known. She had loved Darrell, all her young hopes and dreams wrapped up in a neat, happily-ever-after package with him. Her relationship with Darrell had grown by slow degrees, through months of dating, a yearlong engagement and had deepened after they married. But this thing with Mack was more basic. It was raw and passionate, and she’d gone from meeting him to loving him in a matter of days.

Mack grasped the back of her head and brought her mouth down to his. As she lay on top of him, their bodies separated by the flannel shirt she wore and the heavy bedcovers, he ravaged her mouth. She moaned softly, his tongue inside her, mating with her tongue. The kiss deepened, intensifying with each passing second, until Katie couldn’t breathe. She was connected to Mack as if they were one entity.

Every nerve in her body tingled, every muscle melted, and her feminine core ripened with moisture, tightening and releasing in preparation. She ached unbearably with the need to have him inside her.

When they stopped kissing, both of them breathing heavily, she rested her forehead against his and whispered his name. “Mack…”

“I’m going to make love to you,” he told her, his voice husky with desire. “All night long.”

She sighed, her body more than ready to accommodate him, longing for the feel of him on her, under her, around her, and inside her. She wanted to touch him, taste him, look at every big, hard inch of his body.

“I want that,” she told him. “I want you…more than I’ve ever wanted anything in my life.”

“God, Katie!” He shoved her to his side, tossed back the covers, and pulled her on top of him again, their bodies now touching. “I want you as much as you want me. Probably more.”

“That’s not possible.” She rubbed herself against him and discovered that he was totally naked and already aroused. His sex, large and hard, pulsed against her bare thigh.

He ran his hands up beneath the flannel shirt she wore—his shirt—and caressed her naked buttocks.

She whimpered when he slipped his fingers in the crevice.

“Your skin is like silk,” he told her, his mouth against her neck. “Let’s get you out of this shirt so there’s nothing between us.”

She straddled him, her mound against his sex. He reached up and undid her shirt, then spread it apart.

When he looked at her breasts, he groaned deep in his throat. Hurriedly, he slid the shirt down her arms and off, then tossed it onto the floor. While she sat astride him, feeling as if she would go out of her mind if he didn’t take her soon, he cupped her breasts, then covered them with his big hands.

She tossed back her head. Her hair swayed across her shoulder blades. Mack rose up enough to flick her nipples with his tongue.

Katie keened as pure pleasure and pain radiated from her breasts—up, down, and out, until her whole body vibrated with the sensation.

“You like that, don’t you? You like my mouth on your breasts.” He covered one nipple with his mouth and sucked greedily. When she whimpered and squirmed and grasped his head, he suckled at one breast while he lifted his hand to the other breast, using his forefinger and thumb to pinch repeatedly.

Katie came apart, crying, begging, on the verge of an orgasm—and he wasn’t even inside her yet.

“Now…please…”

“Not yet,” he told her. “You’re going to have to wait.”

“Mack, please.”

He tumbled her onto her back, sideways across the bed, then spread her thighs and kissed a hot, damp path from her breasts, gliding over her belly and down to the thatch of blond hair at the apex of her legs. His fingers delved first, two going deep inside her, testing her readiness. Moisture gushed against his fingers.

When his tongue went to work, laving, licking, sucking, Katie cried out as unbearably intense sensations rocketed through her. Within minutes, she came. Wild and explosive. Her body trembled with release.

Mack rose from between her spread thighs and straddled her hips, all the while skimming his hands over her. She jerked and panted, her hot, perspiration-damp body incredibly sensitive to his touch. When he moved away from her, she reached out for him.

He took one hand, kissed each fingertip and said, “I need to protect you, honey.”

Despite being in a climactic daze, she understood what he was telling her and waited patiently for him to retrieve a condom from wherever he kept them in the bathroom.

Within a minute, Mack returned. He dropped a handful of condoms onto the top of his nightstand. She looked up at him, drinking him in, appreciating all that masculine beauty, all that macho power. It was then that she noticed the thick, ugly scars marring his otherwise perfect leg.

Realizing she was staring at his flawed leg, Mack hesitated.

She understood now. The injury was a brand of honor, one he preferred to go unmentioned. Katie held open her arms and smiled. Mack heaved a deep sigh and smiled.

Katie continued her appreciative appraisal of his manly attributes. He possessed broad shoulders, muscular arms, and a wide chest sprinkled with curly black hair that pointed downward in an arrow that led to the thicket of black curls surrounding his impressive penis. Reaching up, she circled his condom-clad erection.

“I want you inside me,” she told him.

“I plan to give you what you want.”

He came down over her, kissed her, then lifted her hips upward and thrust into her. They both moaned with the sheer satisfaction of being united in the basic way a man and woman can become one.

“I knew it would be like this,” he said, his voice a rough whisper. “I knew this is what it would feel like to be inside you.”

“I love it,” she told him. “I love your being inside me.” She clutched his shoulders and lifted her hips, inviting him to move.

“I can’t make it last. I’ve wanted this so much that I’m ready to come right now.”

She kissed him. He rammed in and out of her several times. She bucked up, meeting each lunge. And when he came, she came at the same moment. Mack grunted and groaned and shook from head to toe.

“Damn, Katie! Damn!”

She clung to him while the aftershocks of their orgasms vibrated through them. Breathing hard, he eased off her and rolled onto his back, then pulled her up against him so that she lay on his outstretched arm.

After removing his used condom and tossing it into the wastebasket next to his nightstand, Mack reached down and yanked the covers up and over them. Nuzzling her cheek with his nose, he said, “Get some rest, honey. I’m going to be all over you in a couple of hours.”

Katie sighed contentedly and within minutes began drifting off to sleep, happier than she’d been in a long time.

Happier than I’ve ever been in my entire life.

Mack woke sometime during the night, and when he felt a warm body lying next to him, it took him a full minute to remember that Katie had come to him and they had made love. God, had they made love.

It had been a while for him, and he realized it had been a lot longer for her. She was about as hungry for loving as a woman could be, and he’d tried his best to satisfy her in every way. He’d never wanted to please a woman more than he wanted to please Katie.

Now that she was his…

Mack grinned. He liked the sound of that. Katie was his.

He leaned over and kissed her cheek. She sighed deeply. He kissed her forehead. She moaned. He kissed her lips. Her eyelids fluttered.

“Wake up, Katie,” he whispered against her ear.

She swatted at his head.

He laughed. “If you want some more good loving, you’d better wake up.”

Her eyelids flew open. She gazed up at him and smiled.

He ran his hand beneath the cover and caressed her breasts. Her nipples peaked instantly. She stretched like a lazy cat in the sun.

Mack slid his hand over her belly and between the thighs, then inserted his fingers inside her and rubbed his thumb pad over her nub.

Katie gasped.

“Do you want on top this time?” he asked.

“Uh-huh.” She threw back the covers and attacked him, hoisting herself on top of him and straddling his hips.

“You’re awfully eager.”

“You bet I am.” She circled him with her hand and pumped up and down. “I want more. Lots more.”

“Honey, I’m just the man to give you what you want. More. Lots more.” Mack reached over and grabbed a condom. After removing the foil covering, he handed it to Katie. “Need any help?” he asked teasingly.

She took the condom and worked it over his penis; then she lifted up and positioned her body so that she could impale herself on his sex. Bringing him deep inside her, she took him to the hilt. He clutched her hips. She moved up and down several times, riding him with a slow, steady rhythm.

“It wasn’t a dream the first time,” she said breathlessly. “It really is this good, isn’t it?”

Pressing the small of her back, he urged her to lean forward, just enough for his mouth to reach her breasts. “If it got any better, I couldn’t stand it. But I’m willing to risk my life, if you are.”

“I’m willing.”

He played with her breasts, using his hands and his mouth to excite her. He felt the tension inside her growing, expanding, reaching the limit. As she increased the speed, he continued his attention to her breasts and within seconds, she came. Shivering. Moaning. Her release triggered his. He came with a vengeance. His ears rang. He felt as if his head had exploded. Goddamn, what a climax!

She collapsed on top of him. He kissed her temple as he caressed her buttocks. Mine! Every masculine instinct within him claimed her. All his possessive, protection impulses kicked into overdrive.

How could he ever let this woman go?

When they had made love for the third time, at dawn, Mack had asked her if she was sore and she’d lied and told him she wasn’t. But now, at seven-thirty, after they’d made love for the fourth time—in the shower, no less—Katie had to admit her body felt well used and more than a little sore. Her nipples ached from all Mack’s attention, and her femininity felt raw and slightly bruised.

“You are sore, aren’t you?” he asked when she cringed as he ran a washcloth between her legs.

“Just a little.”

“I’m sorry, honey. Was I too rough?”

“I loved your being rough,” she told him. “I loved every second of our lovemaking. Everything you did to me…everything I did to you.”

He dropped the washcloth to the floor of the shower, forked his fingers through her wet hair, and held her head as he kissed her.

She clung to him, her soaked body glued to his.

“No more,” he said. “Until you’re—”

She kissed him quickly, to hush him. “Next time”—she wrapped her hand around his penis—“I’ll use my mouth.”

Mack grinned. “And I’ll go down on you again.”

Her cheeks flushed. Mack laughed.

“Lady, how can you be such a sweet, good girl and at the same time be hot as a firecracker when we make love?”

She shrugged. “You bring out the firecracker in me.”

“Oh, I like the sound of that.”

Half an hour later, with Destry outside frolicking in the melting snow, Mack and Katie prepared breakfast together, sharing kisses and intimate touches while the bacon fried and biscuits baked.

“If you’d like, after breakfast, we can walk down the road a ways and see how things are looking,” Mack said. “Even if the snowplows don’t make it up here today, I figure with the warmer temperatures, the roads will be passable by morning.”

“Let’s not waste the day checking out the road,” Katie said. “I’d rather cuddle by the fire and talk and…”

She leaned back against him. He had positioned himself directly behind her as she cooked scrambled eggs. “Mack?”

“Huh?”

“You’re still going to drive me home and spend Christmas Day with me and my family, aren’t you?”

“Sure. My plans haven’t changed.”

All my plans have changed, Katie thought. I want more than just Christmas Day with you. I want the rest of our lives. But what if it’s not what you want?

“What about after tomorrow?” she asked.

Mack wrapped his arms around her waist and kissed her neck. “You want to take things slow and easy, right?”

“Mmm…”

She had told him that she wanted to take things slowly, hadn’t she? But she’d been wrong. She wanted to dive headfirst into forever after with Mack. She was crazy in love with him. And strangely enough, loving Mack with every fiber of her being didn’t change the fact that she still loved Darrell. She loved everything she’d shared with her husband, every day they’d been together. She loved her memories of a wonderful man who would be a part of her as long as she lived. But she finally knew in the depths of her soul that Darrell was her past. And Mack was everything to her. Here. Now. The only thing she didn’t know was if Mack was her future.

“I suppose you’re going to want me to drive down to Cleveland on a fairly regular basis and take you out on dates.” Mack gave her an affectionate squeeze.

Katie removed the bacon from the pan, laid it out on a couple of paper towels to drain, and turned off the stove eye.

No, I don’t want you to take me out on dates. I want you to marry me as soon as possible. I want to be with you every day for the rest of our lives.

“Is that what you want, for us to date?” she asked.

“I want whatever you want,” he told her. “Just as long as you stay a part of my life, I’m not going to be demanding.”

Damn it, Mack, be demanding! Sweep me off my feet, rush me to the nearest minister, and make me your wife.

She shoved him aside, then dumped the finished eggs, half on his plate, half on hers. “The biscuits should be done any minute, so go call Destry and fix his breakfast while I put everything on the table.”