Welcome to Paradise (31 page)

“Too bad I know you so well, then. Because that stove was on
fire.”

“If you already know,” Gabe said irritably, “why do you ask?”

Alec laughed. “Just messing with you, that’s all.”

“And I take it you’ve been heating up the stove a bit yourself,” Gabe said. “Judging by appearances this morning. Who was it who promised me he’d keep it in his pants for the duration?”

Alec snorted. “That’s rich, coming from you. And the duration’s over. It was over the minute you shoved Jay out of that truck. Now it’s about my consolation prize, and Chelsea’s too. She’s
bored
out here. Just helping a lady out.”

“I’d tell you to be careful, not to get in too deep, but you never do, do you?”

“Yeah, right,” Alec scoffed. “I don’t think I’m the one in danger of losing my heart. And hey, I
am
being careful. Did you see the look on Melody’s face this morning, when you got in here?”

“She didn’t look too happy,” Gabe said. “Barely said hello to us. What did you do?”

“I didn’t do anything. That’s the point. That was
me
being careful. We could all have had even more fun if I’d put in just a little more effort. They’d have gone for it, bet you anything. But,” Alec sighed, “I’m being conservative, so as not to embarrass Mr. Purity.”

“And that’s me?”

“Yes,” Alec agreed. “That would be you.”

“One of these days,” Gabe warned, “you’re going to crash and burn. You do know that, don’t you?”

“Well, until that happy day . . .” Alec stretched. “I guess I’ll see if I can manage to cook a couple eggs without any industrial accidents. Since apparently not even a million-dollar sacrifice merits a little help from my loving brother.”

“Good place to stop for lunch?” Gabe asked Mira almost a week later. They’d reached the top of the ridge, the view of rolling hills spreading out before them like some kind of idyllic painting.
 
They’d gone for a hike, just like, Mira thought with amusement, they’d done almost every day. Sometimes picking huckleberries, sometimes just walking and talking. Well, you couldn’t spend the
whole
day in bed, and they were both used to being active now.

“How about over here?” He walked over to a shady spot under a big old oak.

“Yeah, right,” she said wryly. “We’ll just pull into this diner. I’ll stop for a minute, though.”

“Hey,” he protested. “You don’t think I’m capable of providing lunch?”

“Really?” she asked, ridiculously pleased. “I didn’t know you’d brought food. How did you manage that?”

“Had a little talk with Alma last night,” he said smugly, dropping to one knee to pull a rolled blanket from his pack. “But first . . .” With her help, he spread the blanket out on the grass. “Madame, your table is ready.”

“Is it really a picnic?”

“You said a walk and a picnic would be a good date,” he reminded her. “Well, not to mention that it’s the only kind of date I can actually manage right now. So that’s what I’ve got for you. With adult beverages, even.” He reached back in for a bottle of white wine, a corkscrew, and two plastic glasses. “I can’t guarantee that it’s top of the line,” he cautioned. “Hazards of not being allowed off school grounds. I don’t think John’s a big wine shopper, in the normal way of things.”

He dealt with the metal wrapping and the cork with his usual economy of motion. “Also not as cold as it was an hour ago, but such as it is . . .” He handed her a glass. “Here you go.”

She took an appreciative sip and sighed in contentment.

“Hold this a moment for me,” she decided after a few quiet minutes, handing her glass back to him. “If we’re going to be here for a while, I’m going to take my shoes off. I think that’s one of the things I missed most, being barefoot. Worrying about those splinters.”

“That’s right. The splinters,” he said thoughtfully. “Seems to me I had a plan for getting those out of you.”

“Your plan sounded a little painful,” she protested. She finished pulling off her shoes and socks, crawled across to him. “But I’ll get you barefoot too,
how’s
that?”

“You have permission to take off as many of my clothes as you like, anytime you like,” he assured her as she untied his shoelaces, pulled off first one shoe, than the other, set them next to the blanket, and went for his socks. “Keep going, if you want.”

“It’s funny about that,” she said slowly, sitting up on her knees between his legs, putting her hands on his thighs and looking down at him where he lay sprawled on his elbows beneath her. “We’ve had sex quite a few times now.”

“Yes,” he agreed solemnly. “I remember.”

“And it’s been good, right?”

“No. It’s been
great,”
he corrected
.
“For me, anyway. And if you have any suggestions, feel free. Always happy to improve.”

“Well . . .” she began,
then
stopped.

He sat up a little straighter, set both glasses of wine carefully down on the grass next to the blanket. “You really
do
have a suggestion. Go on.” His eyes were beginning to burn now, the intensity of his dark-blue gaze, as always, awakening her every nerve ending. “Let’s hear it. I can’t wait.”

“Wasn’t it kind of amazing that first time? When we were outside, by the creek,” she elaborated. “A little worried that Danny would come. And we had to keep some clothes on. Especially when you held me, that time, and you . . . told me things. Or was that just me?”

“No,” he assured her. “That wasn’t just you. You told me a few things too, if you remember. And I enjoyed hearing them. Almost as much as I’d enjoy having you do them.”

She smiled slowly. Wriggled up a little further between his legs and reached for his belt. “I’m going to do them,” she promised.

He reached for her wrists, held her fast. “On two conditions.”

“Oh, yeah?” She tossed her head a little at that. “Pretty cocky, aren’t you? Giving me conditions for this?”

“Very
cocky. As you know. First, unless your underwear today has a slit in it, you’re going to take it off right now. Keeping that pretty dress on is one thing. But I need access.”

She shivered. Reached under her dress and pulled down the purple cotton panties, wishing they were something more exotic. If he had any complaints, he didn’t share them, watching as she lifted one knee, then the other, pulled them over her feet, and tossed them next to her wine glass.

“What’s the next condition?” she asked him, already feeling the throb and pulse of arousal, just from the look in his eyes, the knowledge that she was naked under her dress.

“Take off your bra. Because I’m going to be going there too.”

She didn’t answer, just reached for the front clasp and unfastened it. Shrugged out of one cap sleeve at a time, then replaced them on her shoulders before dropping the cotton
racerback
next to her panties. “Anything else?”

“Reach in my right front pocket,” he said. “I’ve got something for you there.”

“It’s not in your pocket,” she said saucily. “And I’m planning to reach for it. You don’t have to worry about that.”

“Getting pretty sassy again, aren’t you? I warned you that smart mouth was going to get you in trouble. And that’s just about to happen. Reach on in there, now.”

She reached where he told her,
got a little distracted by the bulge she encountered during her search, but finally managed to pull out the little packet
.

“Hey,” she said, setting it aside. “I clearly wasn’t the only one with this idea.”

“I was a Boy Scout, remember?” His voice seemed to have deepened somehow. “Be Prepared.”

“Yeah, well.” She gave him a shove in the chest with both hands that put him on his back. “Prepare yourself for this, then. Because you’ve just run out of conditions.”

Oh, yeah, Gabe thought as her fingers worked the belt buckle. He’d take this. She knelt over him, the gaping neckline of her dress revealing her gorgeous breasts, and he reached for them, ran his hands over
her,
felt her still at the sensation.

“You’re distracting me,” she complained breathlessly. But she still managed to undo the buttons on his Levi’s, pull down his boxer briefs to free him.

“It’s not a race,” he promised, giving her nipples a tweak that had her gasping. “Distraction is allowed.”

She shoved his T-shirt up over his chest, leaned over him to kiss him there, ran her hands over his shoulders, down his arms, her touch, as always, igniting him. And then she was moving lower, forcing his hands to slip from her breasts, until she was poised over him, her hand gripping him, stroking him.

“Remember what I told you?” she asked softly.

“Uh . . .” He wasn’t sure he could think anymore. All his brain cells seemed to have migrated south.

“You’re supposed to tell me,” she reminded him. “What you want me to do. Everything you want.
Because that’s what I’m going to do for you.
Whatever you want.”

He’d told her once, he remembered dazedly as she obeyed every gasped command, that he was going to drive her up slowly, until she was grabbing his hair, begging him. He’d done it, too. And now she was doing it to him. His hands were wrapped in her hair, and then he’d stopped giving her instructions, because he couldn’t talk anymore. If she didn’t stop right now, he wasn’t going to be able to do anything else. And he needed to do something else.

“Mira. Stop,” he ground out. “Stop.”

She came up on her hands, looked at him. And he almost lost it right there at the sight of her soft mouth, the lust and longing in her eyes.

“The condom,” he remembered. “Put it on me.”

She reached for it, unrolled it onto him. He put his hands around her waist, dragged her towards him.

“Ride me,” he told her. “Now.” She settled herself over him, and he felt her stretching, taking more of him, until she was fully impaled, and he was already halfway there.

He’d had enough of the dress, he decided. He grabbed a handful of cotton in each hand, pulled the thing over her head, tossed it aside. And then she was naked, and she was on top of him, and her breasts were in his hands for him to use.
To hold, and fondle, and take into his mouth, exactly as he pleased.
And oh, the sensation as she slid over him, the sight of her wriggling, finding the spot that worked for her, rubbing herself against him, beginning to pant.

“You like that?” he asked. Her hands were on the ground now as she took him even more deeply, pushed herself fully onto him, rose again.

She couldn’t answer, he saw, and he felt the power of it surge through him. He reached a hand down for her, found the spot, began to rub it himself, send her higher.

“Ah . . .” She was getting louder as he went on, her movements slowing. “I can’t . . . I can’t keep . . .”

“You can’t move, can you?” He kept his hand going, saw what it was doing to her. “You need me on you? You need me to fuck you?”

“Yes,” she moaned. “Please, Gabe. Please.” Her face was twisted with passion and effort, straining towards fulfillment, her hair in wild disarray around her.

He pulled her off him, pushed her onto the blanket next to him, face down. “Get on your knees,” he told her. “Put your elbows down.”

He rolled over her, the constraint of the clothes he still wore only increasing his excitement. The sight of her naked bottom rising towards him, her legs apart, her head resting on her hands, telling him he had to have that. And that this was going to get rough.

Then one hand was on the ground, the other rubbing her hard from in front, and he was taking her with a ferocity he’d never experienced. Aware, in one part of himself, that she was climaxing, feeling the pull of it around him, hearing her cries as if from far away. But he was someplace else. Someplace that was all darkness, all need, all possession. Driving into
her
as she lay sprawled, pushed down beneath him now.
Mine,
he found himself repeating with each savage thrust.
Mine.
 

And when the wave rose, higher and higher, took him in its grip, tumbled him over, he was the one who thought, for one wild, impossible moment, that it was going to kill him.

“Some picnic,” she got out, struggling to her hands and knees, feeling wobbly and uncoordinated, once he had rolled off her to lie on his back, breathing hard.

“That wasn’t exactly in the plan,” he agreed after a moment. “Come here.” He pulled her to him, wrapped his arms around her,
lifted
his head to kiss her. “You OK?”

“
Mmm
.” She nuzzled the salt of his neck, felt the pulse galloping there as he began to put himself to rights. “But I’m hungry.” She laughed against his skin, felt the answering chuckle rising from deep within him. “And I want some more wine.”

 
“You might like doing it with clothes on,” he said once they were seated, decorously dressed again, eating Alma’s chicken sandwiches and drinking wine that went instantly, gloriously, to their heads. “But I like you naked best. Nothing’s going to change that.”

“I noticed that you preferred that,” she agreed, reaching out a bare foot to rub it against his. “And I like it when you take my clothes off.”

“Remind me to do it more often, then.”

“OK,” she said agreeably. “Do it more often.”

He laughed. “I’ll be doing it as often as possible from now on, believe me. And that’s a conversation we should have too.”

“What? How often you should take off my clothes? Every day, please. Or more. I’m easy.”

“You are,” he said, leaning over for another kiss. “Lucky for me.
But no.
I meant, how I’m going to keep you around to do it in the first place. How tied are you to staying in Seattle?”

Her heart began pounding for a different reason now. “Uh . . . What are you asking me?”

“Whether you’d consider moving,” he said promptly. “I’ll do long-distance if we have to. And I know it hasn’t been long. I’m sure right now, but I don’t want to push you if you’re not ready to make that kind of change in your life.”

She felt the familiar rush of disappointment. Well, what had she expected? That he was going to propose to her after knowing her for two months? That would be way too impulsive for both of them. They needed time together back in the real world, to make sure it was right. And knew all the same, all the way to the bottom of her heart, that she was already sure.
That for her, it was right, and it always would be.

“I’d consider moving,” she said cautiously. “I need a new job anyway, since I already quit on camera. Something new to do that doesn’t involve airplanes and hotels.”

“Maybe we could both move,” he suggested. “I’ve been thinking, while I’ve been out here.” He began to laugh. “Well, some. I’ve been a little distracted, a lot of the time.”

“What’s distracted you?” she asked with a smile.

“You,” he said with another kiss. “And you know it.”

“But in between imagining you naked,” he went on, “and a few other things I may have mentioned, I’ve been thinking about going back. About how I want it to be when I do. I know I want you to be there, but there’s more too. Something about pretending to be a homesteader, imagining these people risking everything to make a life out here, has made it easier to think about the risk I really want to take. To open up my own practice, do it my way.
And to do it someplace else.
The main reason I live where I do is to be near my family, especially Alec. But I’m wondering
,
does it have to be right in the Bay Area? Could it be someplace less crowded and busy?”

“Well, it had better be someplace with people who hurt themselves a lot doing sports, and can afford to do something about it,” she said. “That might narrow your choice a bit.”

“See,” he said, “that’s why I need you, to help me do the analysis. And we need to find someplace that’ll work for both of us. Can we take some time and do that, do you think?”