the hard contours of his chest. It had been so long. So long since she’d touched a man like this. Kissed him. Wanted to glue herself to him. Since her skin felt itchy and tight and made her want to tear at his clothes and feel the press of naked skin. It had been a long time. Partly because she’d given up on this, and partly because no man had tempted her like Mick.
His hands slipped up the sides of her waist. His grasp tightened and his thumbs pressed into her stomach just below her breasts. He tilted his head to one side and lightly sucked her tongue into his mouth, where he was warm and slick. Her fingers curled in his hair and she pressed herself against his hard body. Her nipples tightened against his hard chest and he groaned deep in his throat. This was quickly spinning out of control. A whirling cyclone of need and greed and long-denied pleasure, building deep inside and working its way out. Growing and threatening to overpower her.
She pulled back. “Stop.”
He looked as dazed as she felt. “Why?”
“Because…” She took a deep breath and let it out slowly.
He opened his mouth to argue, but then his brows lowered as if he’d forgotten. “Damn.” His grasp on her tightened a fraction before he took a step back and dropped his hands to his sides. “I didn’t mean to start something I can’t finish.”
“I didn’t mean to start anything at all.” Maddie licked her lips and debated whether to come clean. Right there. Right now. Before he heard it from someone in town. “This is definitely not a good idea.”
“You’re wrong about that.” He reached for her hand and pulled her along with him toward the front door. “The only thing wrong is my timing.”
“But you don’t know me,” she protested as she moved beside him to the entry.
“What’s the rush?” He opened the door, but stopped in the threshold. He looked down into her face and let out a heavy breath. “Okay, what do I need to know?”
And she chickened out. Or rather, decided that telling him while her body still craved his wasn’t the best timing. Instead she chose another approach. “I’m kind of sexually abstinent.”
“Kind of?” He looked down into her face. “How can you be ‘kind of sexually abstinent’?”
Yeah. How? “I just haven’t had sex with a man in a very long time.”
His brows drew together. “Are you a lesbian?”
“No.”
“I didn’t think so. You don’t kiss like a lesbian.”
“How do you know?”
One second she was looking up into his blue eyes, and in the next she was up against his body. His mouth closed over hers and he fed her kisses so hot she felt it in the pit of her stomach. He pulled the oxygen from her lungs and made her dizzy. Lord, she couldn’t breathe or think. She was going to pass out from pleasure.
He let go of her and she fell back against the doorframe. “That’s how I know,” he said.
“My God, you’re like a tornado,” she gasped. She placed her fingers on her bottom lip. Her mouth felt numb. “Sucking up everything around you.”
“Not everything.” He stepped out onto the porch and into the sunlight. “And not yet.”
Chapter 6
Maddie stood with her hands sticking straight out from her shoulders as Nan, the seamstress, pinned peach satin beneath her armpits. The other two bridesmaids stood on either side of her in various degrees of undress while being pinned and poked.
“You owe me,” she said to her friend Clare, the blushing bride-to-be. She’d driven down from Truly that morning and planned to go out with her friends before driving back the next day.
“Look at it this way,” Clare said from her position on the couch inside of Nan’s Bridal. “At least the dresses aren’t all froufrou like the dresses Lucy made us wear for her wedding.”
“Hey. Those were beautiful,” Lucy protested,
defending her choice of froufrou while a second seamstress pinned her hem.
“We looked like prom escapees,” Adele argued. Adele held up her thick curly hair as a woman pinned the back of her dress. “But I’ve seen worse. My cousin Jolene made her bridesmaids wear purple and white toile de Jouy.”
Clare, the arbiter of exquisite taste, gasped.
“Toile like the pastoral prints you see on chairs and wallpaper?” Maddie asked.
“Yep. They looked like sofas. Especially Jolene’s friend who was a little roomier than the other girls.”
“That’s sad.” Lucy turned so the seamstress could work on the back of the hem.
“Criminal,” Adele added. “Some things should just be against the law. Or if not, there should be some reparation for putting a person through emotional stress.”
“What did Dwayne do now?” Clare asked, referring to Adele’s old boyfriend.
For two years Adele had dated Dwayne Larkin and had thought she just might end up as Mrs. Larkin. She’d overlooked his more undesirable habits, like smelling the armpits of his shirts before he put them on because he’d been buff and very hot. She’d put up with his beer-swilling,
“For his birthday, I gave him a limited-edition Darth Vader.” Adele dropped her hands and her thick blond hair fell down her back. “I found it on my porch with the head cut off.”
Maddie could understand Dwayne’s issue with the gift, but for different reasons. If she opened a birthday present and found a Darth Vader, limited edition or not, she’d get fairly pissed off. But still, any sort of violence should never be taken lightly. “You need to get an alarm system. Do you still have the stun gun I got you?”
Adele held still as the seamstress measured the circumference of her arm. “Somewhere.”
“You need to find it and zap him with it.” Nan moved to Maddie’s bodice and she dropped her arms to her sides. “Or better yet, let me get you a Cobra like I have, and you can Taser his ass with fifty thousand volts.”
Without moving her body, Adele turned her head and looked at Maddie like she was the crazy one. “Won’t that kill him?”
Maddie thought a moment. “Does he have a heart condition?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then no,” Maddie answered. Nan took a step back to eye her progress. “He’ll convulse like you’re killing him, though.”
