He opened his mouth to tell her she'd be doing no such thing, then thought better of it. Depending on how long it took her to get whatever it was off her chest, the snow would have already started falling, and she could come to that conclusion herself. Better for her to think it was her idea anyway.
He put the coffeepot on, then turned and held out his hand. At her arched brow, he said, “Your coat. If you're staying long enough for coffee, you can take your coat off.”
She said nothing to that, but started unbuttoning. She was wearing the same puffy coat she'd had on that day back in the McCrae kitchen, but there was no scarf strangling her this time. She struggled with the leather straps that held the front closed, and he wondered why in the hell she had a coat that was so damn hard to get on and off, but again, wisely held his tongue. Finally, she turned her back to him and he thought he heard her swear under her breath.
Shaking his head, he gave up, crossed the room, and turned her around. He didn't ask permission, but gently pushed her hands aside and undid the buttons one at a time.
“I don't know how you do that with your big boy hands when I can't manage to pull it off with my short, little girl fingers,” she said, her chin still tipped down as she watched him pop the last one free.
He knew he should step away, knew he should listen to what she had to say, and pray it was whatever needed to be said between them to keep him from wanting to do what he wanted to do right at that moment. Which was to put his big boy hands on a whole lot more than her coat buttons.
He lifted one of her hands in his and turned it over, cupping it in his palm. “I think they look pretty functional. Maybe you just need a different coat.” She lifted her gaze to his just as he lifted her palm to his mouth, and dropped a kiss there.
Her gaze had been dark already, but the emotion that blossomed in her eyes now didn't look like frustration or annoyance. No, the darkness there now held an entirely different kind of heat.
“I thought we weren't going to do that anymore,” she said, trying to sound stern, failing miserably. Her pupils continued to expand, and she hadn't exactly yanked her hand from his.
“Oh, I thought you meant just kissing you on the mouth,” he said, a smile hovering about the corners of his lips. “I didn't realize hands were forbidden, too.”
At his use of the word
forbidden,
her eyes were all but swallowed by her dilating pupils.
“I didn't come here for this,” she said, sounding about as far from strident now as was possible. In fact, he thought he heard a bit of a tremble in her voice.
“No,” he said, the smile now fully formed. “You made that rather clear on your entrance.” He curled her fingers inward and lifted her hand again to his mouth.
“Benâ”
“Shh,” he said, his lips pressing against her fingertips. “Ancient ritual to bestow finger dexterity,” he continued, then pressed a kiss to each of her four fingertips.
Her eyes narrowed in that
Seriously ?
look that made him lift his eyebrows and put an innocent spin on his smile. “You doubt the dexterity gods?”
“I think you're so full ofâ”
He pulled one of her fingertips into his mouth, and whatever she'd been about to say dissolved as she gasped. And he was torn between continuing to slide her finger into his mouth, and dropping her hand to take advantage of the way the gasp had left her lips parted in a delectable invitation. Only she hadn't invited him there. He was banned from there. For now, anyway.
“More ritual?” she asked, trying for dry, but that little catch at the end when he nipped her fingertip before letting it go ruined any chance she had to appear unaffected.
Which was a good thing, as his body would attest to being about as fully affected as it could get, and it wouldn't mind some company.
“Why did you come here, Fi?” he asked, his voice gravelly as he dropped a kiss on the inside of her wrist, then another.
“Iâyou need to stop that,” she said, though she didn't move so much as a hair. What was moving was her pulse, which he could feel as he kissed her again, directly over the little throbbing vein. “I can't think when youâ”
“Maybe if we did less thinking and more of this, it would solve whatever problem you have with me.” He went back to teasing her fingertips with his teeth, then turning her hand over and pressing kisses to each knuckle.
“Somehow I don't think more of this is going to solve anything,” she said, sounding a bit breathless now. “I think it will only create more problems.”
“Who knew you were such a Grinch,” he said, smiling as he kissed her fingertips again. He held her gaze as he let her hand go, then cupped her face in both his palms instead. “I don't think we'll know what could happen until we give it a try.”
“I already explainedâ”
“Yes, and it all made perfectly logical, rational sense. It is absolutely true that if we don't explore whatever is happening between us, then nothing bad will happen.” He tipped her face up to his. “The only problem with that is, I'm not interested in living a life spent trying to insulate myself from all possible dangers. That doesn't sound like any kind of fun at all.”
“There are some risks, though, that just aren't worth taking,” she said, her gaze searching his. “You have to weigh the potential for good against the potential for bad.”
“I don't know about you, but there was nothing bad about kissing you. In fact, it was about the best kind of good there could be.”
“Ben,” she whispered, sounding both abashed and more than a little flustered.
“You don't want me to hurt you,” he said, rubbing his thumb over her bottom lip, feeling the light shudder that ran through her, which only served to jack up his response even more. “I don't want to do that, either.”
“You say that like I'm the only one who could get hurt here.”
That made him pause. “Fionaâ”
“Because, if that's true,” she interrupted, “then that right there is reason enough not to play this game.”
“It's not a game.”
“Isn't it? What else could it be? You suddenly find me irresistible after all these years . . . right after you find out I had a ridiculous schoolgirl crush on you? Pretty damn convenient, don't you think?”
“You got my attention before that happened, you know that. If anything, what you said to Kerry at the Rusty Puffin was the one thing that made me question whether or not this was a good idea. It certainly wasn't something I put in the plus column.”
She shifted her face from his hands, but didn't step out of his personal space. Which, admittedly, might have been a challenge since he had her all but backed up against the kitchen counter.
She was calm now as she spoke, control returning, even if the color in her cheeks was still heightened and the sparkle in her eyes still bright. “Since our paths have crossed again, I've been annoyed, angry, and between the scarf strangulation and the boob prints in the snow, have pretty much put Lucy Ricardo to shame . . . and
now
you want me? You'll have to pardon me if I find that hard to swallow.”
“You forgot drop-dead sexy in knee-high boots and a sapphire sweater that should be enshrined in the hall of sexiest knits ever.”
She spluttered a laugh at that. “Hall of sexiest knits? Really?”
He nodded solemnly. “Ever,” he added. “It was that good. Jessica Rabbit would kill to have that sweater.”
Her cheeks flushed again, but her laugh was dry and self-deprecating, which he realized now was the norm for her. Did she really have no idea what kind of wallop her curves packed?
Given the heavily padded ski parka, and the fact that until that moment in Eula's, he couldn't recall her ever wearing anything that could be considered formfitting, much less curve enhancing, hell, maybe she didn't.
“It wasn't just the sweater,” he said. “I mean, yes, I'm a guy, and yes, you did grab my attention that day in a way I hadn't considered before. But once you did, I couldn't seem to stop thinking about it, about you, and wondering why the hell I hadn't noticed before.”
“Maybe because the last time you were around me, I was an annoying, bratty kid sister.”
“I thought about that, too,” he said, then mock winced when she playfully socked him in the gut.
“Well, to be fair, I wondered if I reacted to your kiss just because it was the fulfillment of some silly schoolgirl crush.”
His smile faded at that revelation, and he grew more serious. “And what did you come up with?”
She lifted her still heavily padded shoulders. “I don't know. I'm sure it was some weird amalgamation of kissing Prince Charming and the real you.”
“Weird? The kissâthat kissâfelt weird to you?”
“No, my reaction to it was . . . you know what it was.”
She let out a short sigh and seemed to shake off whatever moment they'd just been having. And they had both been having a moment. She might be reliving some childhood crush, but he'd be the first to tell her that her responses to him both in that parking lot and right now were all completely adult.
“You want to know what I came up with?” he asked.
She looked wary again, and he hated that she thought anything he might say about her was something she needed to brace herself to hear. “I decided that while the curves might have woken up the guy in me, it was all the other stuff about you that made you too tantalizing to ignore.”
“I'm tantalizing now? Which part was that? When I was so hopelessly tangled in my own scarf that you offered to use bolt cutters to get me out? And let's not forget the unfortunate fungal lip issue. Or was it that I had on so many layers, the outer one in Michelin Manâworthy puffy rings that also happened to be, well, fireplug red, because that's how my life rolls? Or was it when I did the half gainer over the fence and ended up with half a holly bush stuck in my hair and two big wet snow prints on myâ”
“Boob prints. Ah. Now I get it. I had no idea what you meant.”
“You're saying you didn't see them? And here I thought you were just being a gentleman and not mentioning them.”
He grinned. “Which answer will keep me from getting socked in the gut again?”
“Very funny.”
He cupped her face with one hand, clearly surprising her if the way her breath caught was any indication, and moved in closer until she tipped her face up to his. “Tantalizing because you're the most honest, direct, woman I know. You don't put on airs. You don't have an agenda. You say what you think, even if it's not in your own best interest. You don't give a damn about what I think, so I know I can trust what you say.” He tipped his head a fraction closer. “You're real, Fiona McCrae. As real as it gets. I hate that I hurt you once, and I can't promise I never will again. But I can promise you that I won't do so knowingly, and hopefully never thoughtlessly. If we try this, and it's not working, I can promise you I'll be as honest as you are, and tell you. My only request is you do me the same courtesy. Maybe I don't deserve it after what Iâ”
She pressed her hand over his mouth. “Oh, shut up and kiss me already, before we both change our minds.”
His grin felt fierce. He felt fierce. A fierce sense of protection, of responsibility. “I thought you'd never ask,” he said, and closed the distance between his lips and hers.
This wasn't the easy exploration of their first time, but the shock of the connection was even greater, at least for him. “Fiâ”
“Shh,” she said against his lips, then parted her own.
He groaned as he slid his tongue inside the sweet depths of her mouth. She was ready for him this time, and held on to him, suckled him, made his body twitchâhardâand want to be deep inside other wet, dark, warm places.
She gripped his biceps with her hands and pushed up on tiptoe to deepen the kiss. There was nothing awkward about how their mouths fit together, but neither was it smooth and practiced. It was like neither one of them could get enough, connect enough, wrap themselves around the other enough, so their teeth kept hitting and lips were nipped, and heads needed to be moved this way or that . . . and none of it mattered because their goal was the same. To connect as fully, as deeply, as possible, to take and give, to revel and sate.
He backed her up fully against the counter and pushed the puffy coat off her shoulders and down her arms. She helped to shake it free, kicking at it as it hit the floor, then catching her toe on it and slipping.
Chuckling against her lips, he bracketed her hips with his palms and set her up on the counter, then immediately moved between her legs. To his delight, she laughed with him, then sighed as he took her mouth again.
It was good. Really good. He knew her. She knew him. There was a rightness about it, about them, which was in itself a miracle. Given their almost lifelong knowledge of one another, it could have felt the exact opposite of right. He didn't want to screw anything up between him and the McCraes, but there wasn't a single thing about this particular moment that felt wrong. The only question he had was, why had it taken him so long to see her this way?
His fingertips traced down the side of her neck, and edged along the collar of her shirt. She hummed her approval, and slid her fingers around the back of his neck as she tilted her head to allow him deeper access to the sweet depths of her mouth.
Her high-necked, long-sleeved T allowed him no access to the warmth of her skin, but that didn't stop him from sliding his hands down her torso, allowing his thumbs to rub along, around, and over the tips of her breasts. She gasped and her thighs tightened around his hips, so he lingered there, toyed with her through the soft cotton of her shirt and the silk of her bra underneath, until she was moaning and writhing beneath his touch.