— FIFTEEN —
DINNER had been lovely, and the speeches were great. Even the DJ was awesome, but after spinning Faith around the dance floor a few times, Zander was aching to escape and take the dance to a more elemental level.
“What’s with the long face?” Dani asked as she breathlessly grabbed his hand and pulled him onto the dance floor from where he’d been standing at the side, waiting for Faith to finish talking to his father, who apparently had a secret love of Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Supernatural, and was keen to discover that Zander’s new girlfriend wrote about demons and angels and everything in between.
“No long face. Kind of stunned at the ridiculous expense you two went to for this party, but—“
She whacked him on the shoulder. “Shut up. You look like you’ll be the next one down the aisle, and I doubt you’ll do it in jeans and a Harley Davidson t-shirt.”
“Whoa, what?”
She gave him a knowing look. “I recognize the way you look at Faith. I see it on Jake’s face every day.”
Zander looked at Faith like she was a filthy goddess. “I really didn’t need that comparison.”
“Don’t make me punish you with details of how I want to get knocked up on our honeymoon.”
“Jesus. Okay, uncle. Yeah, I like Faith.”
“Like?”
He sighed. “It’s complicated. She’s not ready for more. And I’m not moving home until the spring, so we’ve got time. But yeah…she’s special. It’s just hard when we don’t have the time or space to date, be alone, all the usual stuff.” That was all his sister was getting out of him. It was more than he should have said to anyone, but a bride on her wedding day shouldn’t be refused.
“Awww!” She squealed. “But no alone time sucks.”
“I’m a big boy, I can be patient.”
“Where are you guys staying tonight?”
He blushed like a damn little girl, then gruffly admitted that Tom had agreed to stay at Matt Foster’s for the night.
“Private cabin? I’ve just one question for you, big brother.” Dani arched an eyebrow. “Why are you still here?”
— —
Faith had left Zander’s father and gone in search of her date, but he wasn’t on the dance floor. Before she could turn around and look for him in the darkness, she felt him slide up behind her. The stroke of his fingers on her neck had her primed even before he wrapped his arms around her waist and said, for her ears only, “I think we’ve celebrated long enough, don’t you?”
“Depends on what you had in mind next,” she whispered back at him, keeping her eyes on the dance floor. “I got all dressed up. It would be a shame to go home so early.”
“And what if I suggested maybe you don’t go home tonight at all?”
She’d already told her mother that she might stay in Pine Harbour. Her cheeks had been on fire the entire time they’d had that awkward conversation, but that had nothing on the heat that engulfed her now. “Then I’d say… lead the way.”
He groaned into her hair before straightening up and pulling her backwards into the night. “I already collected your purse and wrap and they’re in the car.”
She giggled and ran with him around the side of the house, only slowing as they stepped onto the road. “I’m guessing your mother will have a cow when she realizes you ditched?”
“Pretty much. But since I’m leaving early in the morning to fly across three provinces, I don’t really care. I cleared it with the bride, and that’s all that matters.”
“You asked Dani if we could duck out?”
He laughed. “Actually, it was her idea, although it wasn’t hard for her to pick up on the fact that I was projecting a very strong desire to be alone with you.”
“Strong desire?” she asked as they reached the rental car. Her breath hitched as he spun her around and bracketed his hands on the car on either side of her shoulders. At some point in the night, his jacket had come undone, and she slid her hands inside, smoothing her palms over his tight waist. The muscles flexed through the thin cotton dress shirt. “That sounds…vague. Be specific.”
“I want to take you somewhere and make you scream. Fill you up, get so far deep inside you it’s hard to know where I end and you begin.” His breath was ragged and rough as he pressed against her, hip to hip. “I want to strip you bare and make love to you. Fuck you. Have another round of the best sex of my life, because you are my addiction and my favourite treat.”
“I’m your favourite treat?” That was the silliest thing to pick up on, but she liked it so much.
“Chocolate ice cream and warm raspberry sauce has nothing on you, babe. You’re perfection.”
Oh, she was done for. “You’re sure it’s okay for us to leave?”
“We saw the speeches. Now it’s just people getting drunk and making fools of themselves.”
Fair enough. “Where are we going?”
“My brother’s place. Tom’s,” he added, since he had two brothers. “He has a cottage with a dock. It’s private. And he’s crashing at Matt Foster’s tonight…so it’s all ours.”
Her pulse picked up. “Oh.”
“Is that okay?” He gave her a concerned look that made her heart melt.
She nodded like a bobble head. It was more than okay. “Perfect,” she breathed.
Tom’s place, it turned out, was six minutes away, north of the park.
Getting there felt like it took a lifetime—exquisite torture as they drove in silence, the warm late summer wind swirling through the open windows. Zander’s hand twisted around hers, holding her fingers against the hard, straining muscles in his thigh.
He parked next to the small, wood-sided house that was indeed quite private. The lake here was more sheltered, the house sitting on a small cove. She left her purse in the car but slung her wrap over her shoulders as she followed him onto the property.
High overhead, the moon was bright, and the waves lapped gently against the shore. The house had a decent sized wraparound porch, and that’s where Zander stopped. He obliterated almost all of the scenery when he moved closer and slid his fingertips along her jaw, reaching into her hair to loosen her French twist. “Do you want to go swimming?”
She smiled and shook her head, letting her hair down. God only knew where those bobby pins went. “I didn’t bring a swimsuit. I thought we were going to a wedding, not stealing away for some alone time.” Okay, so she had a toothbrush and a spare pair of underwear in her clutch. She’d hoped they’d be alone. But swimming?
“Should we head back?” he asked with a wink.
“Not in the least.” She swallowed hard. “I missed you, Zander. Like this. Alone. I’m sorry that we can’t get more time like this.”
God, that was hard to admit, because it opened her up and revealed her to be needy for him.
Zander, bless his heart, just kissed her lightly and tugged her toward the dock. “Let’s go skinny-dipping.”
“The water will be freezing!”
“I’ll keep you warm.”
“This is crazy.”
He grinned wickedly and worked his tie loose. Faith’s ovaries clenched as she watched Zander slowly strip out of his suit. Tie first. Jacket next. Then his shirt, one button at a time, until his chest was bare to the moonlight and his clothes were in a pile on the porch steps. He toed off his shoes next, setting them more neatly beside the jacket and shirt.
She stopped him when he reached for his belt. “Let me.”
He hissed as her knuckles made contact with his abs—the muscles pulled tight as she teased him, carefully avoiding the erection eagerly straining to be touched. Her mouth went dry as she unzipped him and his cock practically leapt into her hand, tenting his boxer briefs like they could hardly be a barrier to his need to be in her hand.
There was no doubting how much he wanted her. He showed her that at every opportunity, and right now was no exception.
She was a lucky, lucky woman.
He got rid of his pants, then turned her around. His turn to do the unzipping. And the touching. As soon as her dress was open in the back, he was shoving it away and pulling her bare back against his chest. He cupped her breasts and kissed her neck, and prowled after her when she grabbed her dress and climbed the porch, looking for a better place to hang the delicate fabric.
He took it from her and carefully hung it on a finial beneath the porch light, then with a quick brush of his lips against her cheek, he shucked his briefs and grabbed two blankets from a chair in the shadows, and took off running for the lake. She pulled off her bra and panties and made chase.
He was already coming up from beneath the water, taking a big breath of air, as she hit the dock and ran past the blankets he’d dumped there. Without hesitating, she dove in.
It was fucking cold.
“You jerk!” she shrieked as she came up for air right in front of a laughing Zander. “We’re going to get hypothermia!”
“Come here,” he said mock-gruffly, his eyes dancing in the moonlight. “You just need to keep moving.”
He kissed her and wrapped her in his arms, and sure enough, as her legs slid around his and her hands found his shoulders, then his chest, she started to warm up. But that didn’t change the fact that it was still damn cold.
“Maybe this was hotter in theory than in practice,” she said, her teeth chattering.
“Not a chance,” he whispered against the wet droplets of water running down her neck. “But I did bring blankets for a reason.”
This was where Faith had an advantage. She nipped at his lower lip, then shoved him away before turning and slowly rising out of the water. Tom’s cottage had a decent walkout beach, so she didn’t have to haul herself up on to the dock.
She could feel Zander’s eyes on her swaying ass as she took her sweet time exiting the water.
By the time she was back on the dock and leaning over for the blankets, he was right behind her.
Still watching.
He was right—there was no chance this could be hotter in theory.
Breathless, she wrapped herself in one blanket and turned to hand him the other.
He was right there.
She decided to torture him. “What were you and Eric talking about this afternoon?”
He swallowed his tongue. Yeah, she’d just brought up her kid instead of climbing him like a tree. She winked and gave him her best innocent expression.
“Guy stuff. Looking at the clouds.”
“Fascinating.”
He narrowed his eyes and his lips quirked. Damn. Her upper hand hadn’t last long. “Lots to see in the sky at night, too.”
He whipped off his blanket and spread it on the dock, then pulled her down with him. He lay on his back and pulled her close, covering their wet bodies with her blanket. At some point they’d need towels, but this worked for now.
She sighed, ridiculously happy. “Another night lying on a blanket with you…you’re starting to broadcast your moves, Mr. Minelli.”
“Good.”
He kissed her, slowly and sweetly, then faster, hungrily, before pulling back to show her the Big Dipper. Then they kissed again, and he told her about satellites and commercial flight patterns. He had an answer for any question she could think of, inspired by the lights and movement in the sky, and she soaked up every last bit of Zander-wisdom.
Under the blanket, he kept touching her. Stroking her hip, kneading the skin at the base of her spine. Drifting lower to cup her bottom and pull her closer and closer, until she was shamelessly plastered against his thigh.
His body had just the right amount of hair. Generous across the chest, then just a narrow line bisecting his abs, past his belly button, and widening again, thicker and darker at the groin. His hip was surprisingly smooth under her hand, but then the hair, which was silky on his torso, grew wiry on his legs, and the rub of that against her thighs was pleasantly but persistently distracting.
She rolled her hips, rubbing against him more deliberately than before, and he stiffened between them. She loved that pulse of his flesh, the first bead of moisture against her belly or her hand. Her tongue, too, and she wanted that now. Wiggling her way under the blanket, she kissed her way down his stomach, tracing the firm ridges of his clenched muscles with her tongue.
Six glorious licks later, she was exactly where she wanted to be—on her knees, making her boyfriend rapidly come undone. His hands tightened in her hair as she licked him from root to tip, then circled his glistening crown with the flat of her tongue. He tasted like clean skin, but with each swipe she got a fresh burst of salty, musky desire. It filled her senses and scrambled her brain.
She tried to tell herself that how she reacted to him—so hungry for his taste, desperate to please him and with an ever-present ache to have him literally inside her—was because it had been so long since she’d last experienced this kind of passion.
She was kidding herself. This connection was unlike anything she’d ever had.
“Suck harder,” he instructed, sliding his hands to cup her face. That was certainly different, too—Zander wasn’t shy about taking what he wanted, or praising her. “God, your mouth. So wet, babe. So fucking wet.”
She flicked her gaze up to meet his. His face was mostly in shadow, but she could feel the cocky pride. He knew what that word did to her, how it made her wet between her legs, too.
He mouthed it again, nearly silent this time. “So. Fucking. Wet.”
A helpless whimper escaped her stretched-wide mouth and he jerked his hips, shoving himself hard against her tongue. Oh, yes. She swallowed hard, taking him into her throat. With a groan, he held her head still and pulsed his hips, rocking the head of his cock against the back of her throat until she almost gagged. Then he pulled her off and rolled her onto her back, his thumb replacing his erection in her mouth.
Spun completely out of her mind with need for him, for his skin and taste and his very being, she sucked greedily and moaned when he pulled out.
“Need my hands. Gotta worship every inch of you.” He circled her breasts, wide, lazy loops that barely grazed her skin but still raised almost painful goosebumps. He licked those away and repeated the pattern, with tighter and tighter circles, until his breath brought her nipple to a hungry peak.
“Suck harder,” she said, echoing his earlier instruction, and he did, laughing quietly against her skin.
Her back arched off the blanket, slamming their bodies together, and then all seduction efforts were lost, and it was a mad, lusty scramble to get him inside her and get their hands on each other’s bodies. One of his hands pulled her leg up high and stayed there as he slid through her folds, holding her wide open as he fit them together.
God, he felt bigger than before. Wider, thicker. She bucked, wanting to shove herself up and onto him. She wanted to feel every last inch of him, wanted him to possess her as thoroughly as he’d promised earlier. But then she gasped at the first cleaving stroke, and he shook above her.
“I’m fine,” she breathed. Claimed. Marked. Branded, maybe forever. Whatever, no biggie. She clung to him and he seared her mouth with a lip-bruising kiss before returning his attention to her breasts as they rocked, fitting themselves together as tightly as humanly possible.
“I’m not sure I am.” But he was. He was so fine. Even as he lost a bit of control, his breath getting ragged and his movements growing more desperate, he still made her pleasure his pleasure. Heat bloomed deep in her belly as he found all the right buttons and pushed them in the magic sequence that unlocked her orgasm in record time. And then he stretched it out as he drove himself harder into her body, carrying her climax until his own joined the party.
The look on his face matched the day’s theme—possession—but there was more there, too. Disbelief. Wonder, maybe, although it was hard to understand how Zander Minelli could be surprised by good sex. Great sex, even. The man had moves that had moves.
And some of his best were post-coital, as he stroked her back to Earth and kissed her in a way that promised more, much more.
“Wow,” she breathed.
He kissed her shoulder. “You getting cold?”
Hardly. “We should go inside, I guess.”
“We don’t need to.” He tugged her against his chest and stroked his fingers through her hair. “We’ve got all night.”
Right. And then back to real life. Long distance phone calls and planning for a Christmas visit. Which is what you wanted, right? Slow and steady? They’d talked about it in the restrained way that distance demanded. They were on the same page. She didn’t even hesitate before thinking about him as her boyfriend.
But doubt still lingered that they’d last. Faith closed her eyes and burrowed tighter into Zander’s chest. Maybe she’d find some answers in the solid warmth there. Somewhere between the tattoos and the scars, writ in invisible ink, was the secret to dating a bad boy and not losing one’s heart, and Faith desperately needed that insider information, because Zander was doing the world’s slickest impression of actually being a keeper.
“Your brain is whirring pretty loud there,” he said, and she caught her breath. He sounded chill. Calm. But there was an edge to his voice, and if she hadn’t been with him, up close and personal in all the most intimate ways, she might have missed it.
“Big day today,” she answered carefully. “Stirs up a lot of stuff in a writer’s imagination.” A woman’s imagination, too. “Don’t worry about it.”
“I do, you know. Worry.”
She nodded. She did know. Neither of them had seen an intense relationship coming.
“Faith—”
“Any chance we might find hot chocolate inside?” She rolled up to her feet, stealing the blanket and wrapping it around herself.
Zander stared up at her, every inch a naked god stretched out on the dock. Raw, masculine, powerful. His jaw worked silently for a moment before he jumped up to join her. “Yep. Marshmallows, too.”
“Good.” She stepped backwards, slowly, watching him advance on her.
He stopped her when they got to the porch. “Today was amazing,” he murmured, making a fist in the front of her blanket and tugging her close. “You are amazing. There’s nothing imaginary about how I feel about you, you got that?”
Did she get that? She heard him. She even felt it to be true in moments like this. It was when he left her and life was still the same as it had been before—when The Zander Effect was diminished due to lack of proximity, if not lack of effort—that was when she started to worry.
And the higher the peak, the harder the fall. She took a deep breath. “One thing at a time, mister. Let’s start with hot chocolate.”
He shook his head. “One of these days, we’re gonna have to talk about this.”
She nodded. “But not tonight, okay? Today was perfect.” She stuck her tongue out at him. “You are perfect.”
“Brat.”
She kept going. “There’s nothing imaginary about how perfect I think you are.”
“Now you’re just talking about my ass.”
“Mmm-hmm. Indeed I am.”
“Hot chocolate?”
She bit her lip and nodded.
So he made her hot chocolate and ran them a bubble bath for two, because he really was perfect.