“It’s warmer here than I expected,” he said.
“We’re out of the breeze.” She grabbed a blanket out of the back of the truck and led the way around some car-sized boulders. He picked up the basket of food he no longer had much interest in and followed the mesmerizing twitch of her jeans-clad rear to a small flat that looked out over the whole valley.
Nice location. No picnic table. No firepit. None of the roughing-it accoutrements common to city parks. “There’s nothing here.”
“We’re here,” she told him, spreading the blanket on the ground and plopping down on it. “There’s food and a view. And…” The shy glance she gave him through her eyelashes made his heart stutter. “And no one else.”
His blood pressure shot skyward until she set her phone on the blanket next to the basket.
“We’d better have lunch. There’s no telling when I might get an emergency call.” A faint smile curled one side of her mouth as she handed him a sandwich.
“Martha’s home-made bread. I never had real bread before this.” But he put it down, leaned across the package of cookies she’d set between them and kissed her, a long, slow touch that set his heart hammering.
When it ended, Allie leaned back, looking at him for a long minute. “Zeph?” The single, breathless word asked a hundred questions.
His mouth had gone dry as the Los Angeles River. He nodded, unable to speak for a moment. When she kept looking at him, he made a monumental effort and said, “Up to you Allie. We’ve been dancing around this for months.”
She giggled. “I know. I’ve been here too.”
He put his hands on her shoulders. “Hey. This is me. No pressure.” And not much sense. Shut up, you idiot and let her talk herself into this. “Relax. We’re going to have a picnic. That’s all,” he said, hoping like hell he lied.
“I’m scared because it is you. I’m afraid you’re too important.” Allie didn’t look at him.
And so might she be. His confirmed-bachelor brain didn’t want Allie to be the too-important woman who would derail his life. But without anything more than a few steamy kisses, that’s what had happened, and hearing that she felt the same—major scary stuff. He wanted to blame altitude for the sudden gallop of his heart. Didn’t work.
She couldn’t be— “You—you’re not—you can’t be—”
“A virgin? No. But this isn’t something I do lightly. It means something to me.”
He choked, unable to get out the words that would change things, unable to not feel them, to avoid the fact that nothing would ever be the same in his life after this afternoon.
As if she read his mind, a smile bloomed on her lush mouth and she took his sandwich, tucking it back in the basket. Her hand drifted down his chest, popping buttons open.
“Are we actually alone?” he asked, and covered her hand with his. “Around here, you never know…” He looked around and shouted. “Hello!”
“What was that for?”
“Just checking. Is your father going to pop out from behind a rock? Or Winn just drop by to say hello? Maybe Betty has binoculars trained on us? Do we care?”
“Dad went to Sacramento. Winn is giving lessons this afternoon. Betty—well, Betty, maybe. But it would take a telescope… And no, we don’t care.” She scooted closer to him, her warmth a golden lure, and he put his hands against her face, sinking into a kiss that made the prospect of being the porn star of Stone’s Crossing the last worry on his mind.
Chapter 9
She didn’t care if the whole town watched. Zeph’s mouth smoldered like flame against hers. Heat poured through her, turning her blood to liquid fire, everything she’d wanted from the first minute she’d seen him.
His hands trailed sparks over her skin. If this were fiction, clothes would fall away in their path. Instead, he yanked at her shirt and she grabbed his wrist. “Those are buttons, not snaps,” she said. “And it’s a new shirt.”
With a muttered “Damn,” he wrestled the buttons until her shirt fell open. Her nipples peaked. From the chill air? From his gaze? She didn’t care. When he rolled away to pull off his boots and jeans, she stretched, naked and unashamed under the touch of the sun, a little chilly but more confident and more aroused than she’d ever been in her whole life. She pulled condoms out of the picnic basket just as he turned back to her, holding an identical strip.
Her gaze met his over the dozen little packets. After a breathless, silent moment, she grinned.
“How long do you have for lunch?” he asked
A giggle rose in her throat. She tried to swallow it, but it burst out, swelled into a full laugh, and she looked at him guiltily, helplessly, collapsing in his arms when he began to guffaw. “Until—until—my phone rings,” she choked out. “Do you work well under pressure?”
“I’ll do my best, honey,” he said, leaning over her and bearing her back down onto the blanket.
“I’m sure you will.” Abruptly she realized that they lay twined together, and awareness of all that nakedness, his skin hard and hair-dusted where she was soft and smooth, silenced her.
Her hand drifted over his shoulder, down that strong back, and he shuddered under her touch. She could do that, and then her thoughts shut down in the pleasure that his hands created. The chill air, the hard ground under the thin blanket, ceased to exist.
He stilled for a moment, looking at her, and his gaze grew hot and focused. It started a slow, rolling heat, a blaze of lust deep inside her. He bent his head and took her mouth in a fierce fusion that pushed the fire higher.
Her tongue tangled with his in a lust-filled dance that mimicked what he would do soon. He touched her everywhere, and everywhere he touched turned molten with wanting. When he shifted and took her nipple in his mouth, she saw stars. His hand trailed across her stomach, brushed across the hair between her legs, and parted her. She shuddered with need, shifting to give him access, rocking against his hand.
He rose over her. Her heart galloped and breath roared in her throat. The pale, winter sun blazed through her closed eyelids. Her world became Zeph, a world of waves of delight, of the slap of flesh on flesh, until everything overflowed in a surge that left her boneless under him, her mind spinning empty and dazzled.
A minute or a year or a century later, Zeph raised his head. “Better,” he mumbled.
She could feel again. His weight still pinned her to the ground, he still filled her, and she’d be happy if they never had to move. “Better,” she croaked and cleared her throat. “Better than what?”
“Better than I ever dreamed.” He rested his forehead against hers. “Better than anything in the world.”
She tilted her head so her lips met his. “Mm-hmm,” she murmured through the kiss. She’d meant it to be part of the long, slow descent, but the spark ignited between them again and she pushed up against him.
The kiss turned demanding. His demand? Hers? She didn’t know, didn’t care, just sank into the rising waves of pleasure again. This time was even better, spinning her on an endless ride that swelled and surged and left her limp and weak as a new-born foal.
Eventually Zeph rolled to one side. “We could kill ourselves doing this.”
“Complaining?”
“Not in a million years.” He looked around. “What happened to the blanket?”
Grudgingly, she raised herself on one elbow. “Over there. We seem to have traveled some.”
Zeph sat up. Her gaze caught on the wide shoulders, the strongly muscled back, and her heart hitched. “You are so damned beautiful,” she said. “It’s almost indecent that you have to wear clothes.”
“We can fix that. I’ll go naked if you will. I have a thing for that beautiful body of yours.” He leaned down to kiss her shoulder. “You…you’re something else, Allison Marie,” he said, his voice thick.
She shivered at the touch. She’d known he’d be important, that this could never be as simple as scratching an itch. But the world-class…no, whole-solar-system-class…sex they’d just had just made it worse. Left her hungry for something she’d never expected: forever. What had happened to being adults in an adult relationship? To letting nature take its course? To getting him out of her system? She blinked hard to keep tears from showing and looked up at Zeph.
He stared off into the distance and jumped when she shifted to sit up. “You know, we really could have killed ourselves.” He gestured at the drop off into the valley. “Another couple of feet…we should have gone back there in the rocks.”
Allie shook her head. “Too many snakes.”
Zeph dropped her hand. He looked from her to the pile of boulders and back. “Snakes,” he said.
Allie’s heart sank. Dummy. Why did you have to go and say that? “Don’t go all Indiana Jones on me. They’re all hibernating anyway. Mostly.”
“Snakes. The things I do for you,” he muttered.
“Come on, let’s eat.” She gingerly walked across the gravelly space, pulled on her clothes, and sat on the blanket.
After a careful inspection of the area, Zeph followed. He stepped into his jeans and shrugged on his shirt before sinking down beside her and accepting a sandwich. “You should have had soft satin sheets and a big tub with bubbles and champagne for our first time.”
Allie’s happy body cheered and her heart fluttered at the thought of more times. Until she saw his frown and quivered with insecurity. Her so-not-a-glamour-girl body, her lack of experience... She forced herself to ask, “Does that mean you were disappointed?”
He leaned close and cupped her face with one hand. “Surely you jest, woman. You opened my eyes to a whole new world. Turned me inside out. If I thought for one minute this was typical of outdoor sex, I’d… But I think it was you and me.” His voice was fat with satisfaction and sandwich.
She relaxed and stretched out, nibbling her own lunch. “I think so, too.”
She fell silent, enjoying the play of muscle across his six pack revealed by the unbuttoned shirt as he stretched to take another sandwich from the basket. He followed the sandwich with a long drink from a bottle of water and a frisson of new desire rippled over her when he tilted his head back, when a drop of water slid down his neck to trickle down his chest.
He swiped at it absently. “You can see the whole town from here.”
Was that a dig, as in wide-spot-in-the-road town? She decided to ignore the possibility. “There’s Dad’s house,” she said. “The big white house to the right of those trees. And City Hall on the near side of the square, and the clinic, this side of town with the red tile roof.”
“And those are Derek’s cabins. Damned shame,” Zeph said.
“It is. If I had the money, I’d...” She stopped. She’d never shared her dream with anyone, just held it close and private in her heart.
“If you had the money?” Zeph prompted, drawing one finger up her arm from fingers to shoulder. “What then?”
She shivered, as much from the deep voice that resonated through her like a bell as from the touch, and worked to remember the question. “I’d buy all those stupid cabins and tear them down and turn the place into a rehab center for horses.”
“Rehab? Horses?”
He sounded genuinely surprised, not judgmental, and she couldn’t keep her enthusiasm hidden. “You bet. Just like a rehab center for people, for all kinds of medical problems. Strained ligaments and bowed tendons and—we’d have lovely soft tanbark and sand rings for exercise, and underwater treadmills. And another vet and enough staff—” She caught herself. “You don’t want to hear all that.”
“Your face lights up when you talk about it,” Zeph said. “Almost takes my mind off the fact that you’re sitting there about to take your clothes off again.”
“Take—”
“Yeah.” He reached for her. “We’re not quite finished here.”
****
The sun had started its afternoon descent when Allie shivered and sat up. “We need to get back.”
“I suppose,” Zeph said without enthusiasm. “We’ve been lucky to have this long without your damned phone ringing.” He leaned across the blanket and kissed her. “And I appreciate every minute of it.”
Allie held up her phone. “I’m blessing all the healthy animals of Stone’s Crossing for staying healthy and giving us this afternoon.” She finished dressing and stood. Her legs wobbled and Zeph tried to hide his grin.
“I see that. Pretty proud of yourself, aren’t you?”
“If you’re half as happy as I am, I’m satisfied, not proud.”
At the truck, Zeph held out his hand for the keys. “You look way too relaxed to drive, babe.”
She handed them over without hesitation. No argument there, not the way her body still zinged with satisfaction.
Zeph eased the truck around the twisty road. When the road leveled at the bottom of the hill, he reached across the seat to pull her close to his side. “That’s better.” She cuddled against him and he patted her thigh. “Love the bench seat, honey. You gotta keep this truck.”
Allie murmured agreement. “I’ll drive this sucker until it can’t go another inch, and then have it bronzed as a souvenir of the best day of my life. Keep it in my living room.”
He laughed. “That high probably won’t last but it’s good to hear.”
“Don’t want to come down to earth.”
He didn’t either.
He slowed down at the highway. A battered old pickup sped up to cut them off and would have clipped the front fender if he hadn’t swerved.