Lady Be Good (Wynette, Texas #2)(64)

He shook his head. “Not this time, baby. Please. I only have so much self-control. And this has to be perfect for you.” He pulled off her robe and renewed his sensual dallying.

Deep, lazy touches.

The tip of a finger. A dabble.

Nibble. Nibble. Nibble. Nibble. Nibble.

And then . . . A long sloooow lapppp . . . with his tongue.

It was too much!

He smiled as she cried out again. “The luckiest man in the world,” he repeated.

He snatched up the box on the bedside table and was soon settled over her, nipping at her kiss-swollen bottom lip and beginning to ease inside her.

Despite everything, it didn’t happen comfortably.

“Take it slow, sweetheart.”

Glorying in the press of his weight upon her, she clung to his damp shoulders and arched her hips.

He groaned. “Please . . . baby . . . don’t try to take charge now.”

“It’s—I need . . .”

“I know. I know.”

She only had part of him. She wanted more.

“Easy . . . easy . . .” He crooned to her or himself, she didn’t know which. Didn’t care. Only knew that she was flying higher and higher. . . . She sobbed as she split apart.

And then she had him all, and it wasn’t over, but just beginning.

Deep heavy thrusts. Violet eyes darkened to midnight. Hands pinioning hers to the pillow. Weight upon her. Inside her. Stretching. Pumping. The feel and scent of this man.

Another climb. Another spiral. Years . . . decades . . . aeons . . .

Thick hot rush.

And . . . much later . . . return.

Thank. You.

Emma came out of the bathroom in her robe with her skin still damp from the shower. She winced as she moved a bit too quickly toward the dresser to fetch her underwear. Kenny squinted against the morning light and grinned from her sadly rumpled bed. “I told you that last time was too much, but would you listen? No, you wouldn’t. You always think you know best.”

She tried to calculate how many of those blissfully explosive orgasms she’d experienced during the night, but she’d lost track. “I couldn’t help it. I was crazed.”

“Yeah?”

“You were, too, so you don’t have to look so pleased with yourself.”

“I sure was. I finally got all that energy of yours channeled in the right direction.”

He pushed back the sheet and stepped out, oblivious to the fact that he was naked. As she withdrew a set of frilly underwear from the drawer, she watched the morning light play across the slopes and planes of his body. His crisp, dark hair was mussed, and she spotted a red mark on his back, as well as the beginnings of a bruise on the side of his neck. She rather liked the fact that she’d put those messy marks on such extravagant male gorgeousness.

He began retrieving his clothes from the floor. “Shelby called while you were in the bathroom. She’s got a meeting, and Luisa has a doctor’s appointment, so she asked me to take Petie for a few hours later on this morning. I know I told you the day was yours, but do you mind putting off going back to Austin until this afternoon?”

“Not at all.”

“I’d like to hit the driving range first. Maybe you can read or something while I practice. Can you be ready in half an hour?”

When she nodded, he draped his clothes over his arm and, still naked, left her bedroom.

Seconds later, Patrick shrieked in the hallway. “Warn me next time, will you, Kenneth? I don’t have my smelling salts.”

Kenny laughed and then she heard the sound of his door closing.

She sighed as she walked over to the closet. It would have been nice if he’d kissed her before he’d left.

He really was an exceptional kisser. And a wonderful lover. Considerate, unselfish, thrillingly kinky, and so beautiful naked that she wanted to cry. As a matter of fact, she thought she just might. But not because he was beautiful naked.

She sank down into the overstuffed chair and bit her bottom lip. She had only a little over a week left and she needed to remember that Kenny Traveler was for thrills, for scandal, even for memories, but not forever. Regardless of what last night had meant to her, it was merely the tiniest detour on the great golf course of his life. He’d shared his body, but nothing of what he was, and, in the future, if he remembered her at all, it would only be because she was different from his other sexual conquests.

But she would never forget. She’d carry the memory of this night to her grave, and she knew it wasn’t the orgasms she’d remember, but the intimacy, the feeling of connection. Sleeping with someone, being held so tenderly in his arms, and hearing his heart beat. Letting herself pretend, if only for a few moments, that she was joined to another.

She gazed out the window and thought how easily attachments came to most of the people she knew. But not to her. For as long as she could recall, her life had been a series of broken attachments. She remembered being six years old and standing in the doorway of Orchard House watching her parents drive away to spend eight months in Africa. They’d loved her, but not as much as they’d loved their work.

She’d tried attaching herself to teachers and house mothers. Some of them had been fond of her, but they had children of their own, or they found other jobs and moved away. Only St. Gert’s never changed. Solid, comforting, always there.

The grand old lady had been with her through both her parents’ deaths, through long holidays when she had been the only child left at the school, and then later as a teacher when she’d grown to care so much about other people’s children. St. Gert’s was the single unbroken attachment in her life.