Anything You Can Do(31)
Bailey was sure her lungs were going to burst and her legs fall off, but she didn't dare slow down. Austin was pulling ahead. He was a good ten paces in front of her when he reached the big tree at the edge of Gordon's property. As his momentum carried him on past, he touched the tree as if in a childhood game, threw his hands into the air, and finally halted on the sidewalk, just inside the opening in the hedge.
Bailey passed the tree in full stride even though she'd lost, then slowed to a stop beside him. "Damn!" she swore, bending over and trying to catch her breath, but it was a halfhearted curse. After a run like that, even the loser was a winner.
"Good race," Austin gasped, flinging an arm companionably about her shoulders.
"Yes," she agreed, her blood racing, heart pounding, and breath coming in labored pants. Her face burned from summer heat without and blood heat within. The breeze tickled her skin without abating the fire.
"You okay?" Austin asked. His hand moved to the back of her neck, his fingers sliding into her damp hair.
She must have overdone it, Bailey thought, because her pulse didn't seem to be slowing.
Raising her head, she looked up at Austin, intending to assure him that she was fine. His bright eyes were dark slits, glittering black in the moonlight. On his upper lip a film of perspiration shimmered. His long fingers drew circles in her hair, on her neck, then his other hand touched her cheek.
Fascinated, unable to look away, Bailey watched his mouth coming toward hers, felt herself reach up to meet him. His lips touched hers, generated more heat, released as they both gasped desperately for air, then moved to touch and release and touch again, until the touching seemed more important than breathing.
His lips were soft and firm, giving and demanding.
She tasted salty sweat, from him, from herself, opened herself to him as his tongue pushed into her mouth, pulled her into him.
A voice somewhere inside screamed that she shouldn't be kissing Austin, but another voice denied that this was a kiss. It was a continuation of the race, the ultimate high, a total envelopment in sensation.
His damp T-shirt wrinkled maddeningly beneath her exploring hands. She reached impatiently under it to feel the solid width of his back, to touch his skin with her own, to press him closer to her. He returned the pressure, pushed against her, and she moaned into his mouth, exulting in his hardness, in the reactions she had caused in him.
She sucked in a deep, ragged breath, inhaling his musky scent, straining closer, wanting all of him touching her, surrounding her, filling her.
He wedged one hand between them, under her athletic bra, and cupped her damp breast, teasing the nipple, sending a bolt of lightning zigzagging through her.
A car whooshed past on the street, and Bailey jumped back, briefly registering that the real world existed only a few feet away. For an instant she wondered just what they were doing, but then Austin's gaze burned into hers. He took her hand, leading her farther inside Gordon's yard, along the thick hedge to the far side of the goldfish pond, behind a large rock formation that completed their retreat from the world of cars and rock concerts.
And the question of what they were doing no longer mattered, she decided, as his hands grasped her hips to bring her back to him. What they were doing didn't matter, only that they continue to do it. Not that she seemed to have much choice; her body would doubtless have run on without her had she tried to stop.
As they sank to the grass, his corded arms wrapped around her, lifted off her shirt and bra. The night air touching her bare skin was cool, but immediately his mouth was there, leaving streaks of fire everywhere he touched—down her neck, around her breasts as he circled and returned to envelop the turgid tip.
She grasped his shoulders, holding on to him, holding him to her. Her heart rate was increasing too fast. Time to slow down, but she couldn't slow down in the middle of the race.
He tugged at the waistband of her shorts, and she leaned back, her hips seeming to rise of their own volition, assisting him to remove the fabric, the barrier that separated his flesh from hers. As he pulled his own shirt off and tossed it aside, she sat up, reached for her shoes, untied the knots, and kicked them off, then turned back to him.
Thick, black hair sprang from the taut muscles of his chest. She moved to him, tangled her fingers in the dark mat. Against her palm she felt his heart pounding surely as fast as her own. Trailing her fingers over his ridged stomach, she stopped at the elastic of his shorts and, holding her breath, daringly slid the waistband downward. He groaned. His hands caught in her hair, kneaded as he whispered her name. She gasped when she guided the fabric down his hard thighs and saw his readiness, the irrefutable evidence that his fervor ran apace with hers.