Brown-Eyed Girl (Travis Family #4)(68)

Joe moved to help me. Before he could shove his jeans all the way off, I was on him, grasping the thick shaft with both hands. It was scorching hot, the thin skin moving easily over hard flesh. I put my mouth on him, and he went still, his jeans bunched around his knees, his lungs working in powerful bursts. I painted him with my tongue, taking in the salt and satin and a rampaging pulse, his pleasure so intense that I could feel its echoes in my own body. When I heard his muffled pleading groan, I lifted my head inch by inch, sucking wetly all the way. His entire body was rigid, his face flushed.

I crawled over him and he tangled one of his hands in my hair, forcing my head down to his. As he kicked off his jeans, I straddled him and reached down to guide him in place. With a hoarse murmur, he moved to help me, his hand closing over mine.

I began to ride fast and hard, pumping in reckless abandon. Wanting to make it last, Joe reached for my hips, forcing me to ease the pace. His hands played over me gently, caressing, coaxing me to lean forward. Lifting his head, he caught my nipple and pulled it deep. I writhed with the heat of him inside me, my body filled and brimming with sensation. He pulled me down farther, and we tried to find ways to pull each other even closer, using arms, legs, hands, mouths, breathing the same air, matching kisses and caresses and heartbeats.

Much later, Joe showed me the photo after he’d loaded it onto his laptop. A bright wash of light had imparted a pearly glow to my skin and turned my hair ember red. The eyes were heavy-lidded, the lips full and slightly parted. The woman in the photo was seductive, inviting, radiant.

Me.

As I stared at the image in wonder, Joe wrapped his arms around me from behind and whispered in my ear, “Every time I look at you… this is what I see.”

Nineteen

“Everyone be quiet,” Sofia said, adjusting the TV volume. “I don’t want to miss a word.”

“You’re recording it, right?” Steven asked.

“I think so, but sometimes I don’t get the settings right.”

“Let me check,” he said, and she handed him the remote.

Everyone in the studio had gathered to watch the broadcast of a local television-magazine show. The producers had sent a camera crew and reporter to the Harlingen wedding we had done recently. The hour-long wedding special featured the latest tips, fashions, and trends, as well as profiling Texas-based businesses. The last segment of the show focused on practical advice for wedding planning. A Houston planner named Judith Lord had been asked to discuss choosing venues and vendors. I had been invited to follow up with advice about day-of preparation and logistics.

The Judith Lord segment was elegant and dignified, exactly what I hoped mine would be like. Judith, a long-established grande dame of the business, possessed a fondant-over-steel composure that I admired immensely. The reporter asked her a few easy questions, the interview cut to a shot of Judith and a client browsing through a row of wedding dresses and another showing them enjoying wedding cake samples, with Mozart playing in the background.

All semblance of dignity vanished, however, as soon as my segment started. The music changed to a manic comic-opera piece. “Why are they playing that?” I asked in surprised distaste.

At the same time, Tank exclaimed, “Hey, I like that song. It’s the one from the Bugs Bunny cartoon with the barber chairs.”

“Otherwise known as Rossini’s overture to The Barber of Seville,” Steven said dryly.

The reporter’s voice-over started. “In the elite world of Texas society weddings, Avery Crosslin has been aggressively building a client list with her take-no-prisoners style —”

“Aggressive?” I protested.

“That’s not a bad word,” Steven said.

“Not for a man. But it’s bad when they say it about a woman.”

“Come here, Avery,” Joe murmured. He was half sitting on an arm of the sofa, while Sofia and the rest of the studio team clustered in front of the television.

I went to him, and he slid an arm around my hip. “Am I aggressive?” I asked with a frown.

“’Course not,” he replied soothingly, at the same time that everyone else in the room said in unison, “Yes.”

In the month since Joe and I had started sleeping together, we had grown closer at a rate that would have alarmed me if I’d allowed myself enough time to really think about it. Instead I stayed busy planning two small weddings as well as the Warner extravaganza. Every day was filled with work. My nights, however, belonged to Joe. Time moved at different pace when I was with him, the hours blazing by at light speed. I always dreaded the shock of the alarm clock in the morning, when we had to go our separate ways.

Joe was a physical man, demanding in bed, endlessly patient and creative. I was never quite certain what to expect from him. Sometimes he was playful and spontaneous, ravishing me against the kitchen counter or on the stairs, doing exactly as he pleased despite my outraged modesty. Other times he would make me lie completely still while he caressed and teased endlessly, his hands so skilled and gentle that it drove me wild. Afterwards we had long, lazy conversations in the darkness, in which I confided things that I would probably regret later. But I couldn’t seem to hold anything back with Joe. His attention was like some damned addictive drug that was impossible to kick.

Understanding me far too well, Joe gave my hip a comforting pat as I frowned at the TV. There I was on camera, stressing the importance of maintaining a strict timeline for the wedding day events.