She wasn’t even sure how he’d gotten rid of her panties, much less his own clothes, but it didn’t matter because he was there, pressing inside her, filling her more perfectly than she could have ever imagined.
She wrapped her legs around him. Her arms around him. Took him into every cell of her soul, and when the ecstasy was almost more than she could withstand, his eyes met hers.
“Now.” His voice was breathless. Raw. Beautiful. “Now, we’re perfect.”
She threw back her head, and together, they flew.
Chapter Eleven
The sweat on their bodies didn’t even have a chance to cool when the sky suddenly opened.
Arabella jerked when the first big raindrop plopped squarely between her eyes. “What?”
Jay jerked and swore, too, because that first big plop was immediately followed by a couple million more.
Arabella could only sit there and giggle as he darted around, trying to gather up their bits of clothing that had decided to take flight thanks to the wind that sprang up as unexpectedly as the rain.
“Big help you are.” He was laughing too as he hitched up his jeans and swiped his face at the same time.
She giggled even harder, trying vainly to rezip her dress.
“Oh, hell.” He grabbed her hand. “Just come on.”
And so they ran, half dressed, half not, back to his barn, where they left their clothes in a wet heap on the floor inside the door before chasing up the stairs, where Arabella was all too happy to muss up his neatly made bed but good.
After, they slept for a while. Then Jay brought up the rest of his grandmother’s fried chicken and they polished it off lying right there on the bed as they watched the rain pour and pour and pour outside the horizontal windows.
He was facedown, stretched out diagonally across the wide bed. She was stretched out atop him and she idly traced the tattoo on his shoulder blade. She was no musician, but even she recognized the stylized image as intertwined music clefs. She reached out to point at the laundry-laden guitar in the corner and rather less-than-absently enjoyed the feel of his spine against her breast. So much so, that she wriggled slightly again, just to repeat the pleasure. “Do you play that?”
He didn’t even bother to look where she was pointing. “Not anymore.” He folded his arms beneath his cheek and closed his eyes.
She slid along his back, enjoying the feel of that, too, until she could hook her chin over his shoulder. His lashes were so long she was a little jealous. “Why not?”
His lips curved. He didn’t open his eyes. “I’m not very good at it.”
“What about the piano downstairs?”
“My mom was a teacher, remember?”
She kissed a bony protrusion in his shoulder. “Doesn’t mean that she taught you how to play.”
“She did.”
“Is that what the tattoo is about? Ode to your mother?”
Jay glanced at the guitar. It was an old one. Back from the days when he’d first started out. “Isn’t that what good Texan sons do? Get tats in honor of their mamas?” He reached his hand behind him and closed it unerringly over her thigh. It was warm. Sleek. And he recalled the sprinkle of freckles just above her knee. “Keep rubbing against me like you’re doing and neither one of us is going to be able to walk for a week.”
She, though, slid her hands over him as if she were luxuriating in the feel of his hairy arms as much as he luxuriated in the feel of her smooth, strong thighs. “Would that be so bad?”
His laugh was a little choked. “I’m a man, honey. What do you think?”
In answer, she slowly slid back down him again, the hard points of her nipples like points of fire every inch of the way.
Then her toes tickled the arches of his feet and he grunted, yanking them away.
“Ticklish, are you?”
He felt her lips on the small of his back. Then the nip of her teeth on his butt.
He shifted slightly, groaning a little. “Playing with fire, honey.”
He felt her silent laughter work through him, and then she was slithering again, upward this time, and he was pretty sure his eyes were rolling back in his head at the sensations. She finally stopped sliding again when her breasts reached his shoulder blades and her arms came under his in a backward sort of hug. She kissed the nape of his neck and her breath was warm and sweet against his flesh. “Will you play something for me?”
He could hardly think straight for the feel of her body plastered against his. He exhaled slowly. Carefully. “Will you let me read one of your sort-of novels?”
“Touché.” She moved her thigh a few inches along his, then back again. “If you promise not to laugh when you do.”
“I promise not to laugh.”
She slid her arms out again from beneath him and started to roll off him but he reached behind and caught her leg again. This time it was her knee.
“First you can finish having your fun back there,” he said huskily.
“I don’t know what you mean,” she said in a prim little voice.
“Liar.” He laughed softly. “You’re as turned on as I am.” He lifted his head and looked back at her. “How wet are you?”
Her cheeks were red. The bruised circles under her eyes were almost purple. But her aquamarine eyes met his with that combination of boldness and innocence that was proving to be his undoing.
“Very,” she said.
He hardened even more and turned onto his back. “Show me.”
Her pupils dilated a little. Then she slid her thigh over his and wrapped her hand around him.
He saw stars.
Then balancing on her knees, she slowly took him in. To all that heat. To all that sweet, wet heat that encompassed him so flawlessly.
The moan she
