seem to stop doing it.” She whispered the words, almost as if afraid to say them out loud.
“Me too.” He followed the path her tongue had taken over her bottom lip. “This is probably a bad idea for more reasons than I can tell you.”
“You’re right,” she agreed.
“But we’re going to do it anyway.”
At her nod, Mac lifted her in his arms and strode toward the house. When he carried her in through the back door, she managed to take a quick look around. The interior was dark and cool, shielded from the heat of the sun by the ancient oaks that stood like sentinels. All the old rotting furniture had been carted away, the fireplace cleaned—she was sure that had been a damn nasty job—and the floors swept. She barely caught a glimpse of the kitchen as they passed through it, but what she did see was clean, even if the appliances had been bought one year before God. Then again, she didn’t think cooking was high on Mac’s list of priorities. The living room was completely empty except for a laptop sitting on an upended box and an open sleeping bag.
For one brief moment, she asked herself what she was doing here. She’d come here just intending to share a lunch with him. Get to know him better. Maybe get this unexpected and unwanted itch out of her system. Then she could put him in the closet with the other men she’d known, men she spent a lot of time trying to forget, and lock the door. Now here she was about to get naked with him, and she had no willpower to say no.
“I wish I had a fancier place to do this,” he told her as he lowered her to the sleeping bag. “I must be losing my mind, because this shows no class at all on my part.”
Nida reached for him, and when he knelt beside her, she ran her fingers through his sexily rumpled hair.
“I don’t need fancy.” They locked gazes again. “I don’t think it even matters.”
“Next time,” he told her in a thick voice.
She blinked. “Will there be a next time?”
After a long moment, he smiled, need blazing from his eyes. “I wasn’t even counting on this time.”
Then he came down beside her, threading his long, lean fingers in her hair. “So gorgeous,” he murmured. “So sweet. So hot. I wanted to get my hands on you the first time I saw you.”
And he proceeded to do just that. He caressed her cheeks as he took her mouth again, this kiss hotter and deeper than the first one. While he licked the inside of her mouth with slow, sensuous strokes, he slipped his hand beneath her top, resting it for a moment on her stomach just above the waistband of her shorts. The heat of his fingers branded her skin. Her breathing ratcheted up as the kiss intensified and the tips of his fingers brushed against her bra.
“I should have showered,” he murmured against her lips.
“I like sweaty men,” she told him.
“Thank God.” He slipped his tongue into her mouth again, setting all those interior nerve endings to crackling.
He moved his hand to cup a breast, stroking her nipple through the satin fabric of her bra, back and forth, back and forth, until the beaded tip was painfully hard. When he moved to the other one, she moaned into the well of his mouth and pushed against his hand.
“Naked,” he murmured. “I want naked skin.”
He lifted her tee shirt, helped her ease it over her head and then opened the front clasp on the bra. He sucked in a breath at the sight of her naked breasts and bent to close his lips around one pebbled tip.
Oh, God. The heat of his mouth as he closed it over her flesh was hotter than fire, and another moan whimpered from her. Nida shifted from side-to-side as he sucked and pulled and nipped and licked until she was sure she would come just from the attention he paid to her breasts. But as if sensing the edge she teetered on, he trailed little kisses down over her breastbone and her tummy to her navel, pausing to swirl his tongue in the indentation.
Nida smoothed her hands over his sun-warmed back,
David Farland
MR. PINK-WHISTLE INTERFERES
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