Page 30 of Just Say Christmas
She was going to get there again just from that. She lowered herself slowly down between her knees, and felt his hand come down between her shoulder blades and shove her the rest of the way. Gently, the way he’d been gentle—well, careful, anyway—ever since she’d fallen pregnant. She didn’t need him to tell her to put her arms over her head. She knew what he wanted.
He wasn’t going to win any edging contests, because his palm was already planted next to her head, he was sliding straight inside, and despite everything they’d already done tonight, or because of it, she could feel every last centimeter of it. She was so swollen, she was closing around him, as tightly as a glove around a hand. A small glove. Abighand.
It was fast, it was hot, and it was right at the edge of hard. Not rough, though, because he was being careful. She didn’t want him to be careful. When he said,“Fuck.I need to . . . see you,” rolled over onto his back, and pulled her over him? She did that, too.
She wanted him to see her. She wanted him to look at everything, and she wanted him to take it.
* * *
Marko
He hadn’t lied. He did need to see her. Dark hair tumbled around her face, all that belly and breasts and thighs, and dark-lashed eyes the color of moss. A sea-witch’s eyes, a temptress’s face. She lowered herself over him, drew a sharp breath as she impaled herself, and he forced himself to lie still and let her do it. He couldn’t . . . push her too hard. It took . . . some reminding. When she started to move, though, still taking it slow, he got his hands around that round, hard little belly and felt a jolt of pure, dark satisfaction. After that, he got them around her bum, feeling her there, then sliding his palms down the oil-slickened skin to her thighs and holding on. That was good. That was leverage. She was grinding herself against him, and he was pulling her into him hard, taking over the motion, then getting a hand on her and helping her along.
“Blood . . . flow,” she said on a gasp. “It feels so . . . tight. It feels sogood. Marko.”He knew what she meant, because she was swollen to hell and gone. She tightened some more around him, if that were possible, and he thought,I can’t stand this. I can’t.Which was when she started to call out like she didn’t care who heard, stiffened over her entire body, arched her back, and came like a cowgirl riding the wildest horse in the paddock.
It was scorched earth. His eyes rolled back in his head, he grabbed the round curves of her arse and pulled her closer still, he drove into her like she was his, and she kept on coming.
He might be bad at talking. He might be bad at waiting, and he was an utter failure at edging. But bloody hell, he was good at fucking.
17
Do or Die
VICTORIA
She’d been just about to do it. To tell Kane how it had hurt, and to ask him why he’d thought that was all right to do to a person. Whether or not another woman would have known what the two of them were doing—shehadn’t known. She’d been ready to make a scene and tell him so, the way she never did. This was her chance. They were on a bloodyisland.
The part she wasn’t sure of, though, was what you didafterthe scene, if you were both still there along with about twelve other people, including his sister, who was your own best friend. If almost everybody else was part of a loving couple, and all your misguided, foolish emotion was out there, naked, in front of everyone. The idea made her shrink inside.
There was also the fact that she’d never shouted at anybody. She’d never told anybody to fuck off, either. She’d never come close. When your choice was “do or die,” she tended to die. In other words, she ran. Prosecutor or not, in her private life? She was a weenie.
It was probably safe to think that she’d been about to do it, her logical mind insisted on pointing out, because (A) the moment was conveniently over, (B) she was in charge of organizing this weekend, limiting her post-scene choices, and (C) Kane wouldn’t have participated in a scene, even if (A) and (B) hadn’t been true. Kane wasn’t the type to shout and throw things, much less do anything worse. He was more likely to shut the door quietly behind him and walk to the ferry. However brutal the hits he leveled on the field, however direct the lines he ran, however relentlessly he pursued his opponents even when the game was lost, she’d never seen a hint of that ferocity in the rest of his life. That was one reason she’d fallen in love with him. He’d taken such care with her, like she was precious, in a way nobody else ever had. He hadn’t said it, but she’d felt it in his touch. In his kiss. Their scenes together had been more along the lines of long looks, held breaths, and possibly-imagined reciprocity of feeling than they’d been about pyrotechnics.
Because, of course, she couldhave been imagining things all along. Thinking that he was having an emotional response, when he was actually thinking about whether the Warrant of Fitness was due on his oversized, shiny-black, sponsor-provided truck, or performing visualization exercises for his next game. It wasn’t like he walked around emoting all over the place, and italsowasn’t like she didn’t have too much imagination. When you lived your life on the inside, you tended to live pretty fully in there.
She’d played that song for him all the same, though, feeling like she was laying her heart bare, and also thinking,It’s a stupid pop song. The video may have madeyourheart hurt, but men don’t exactly learn the language of flowers. If you want to tell him something, you have totellhim. Harden up and doit. You have good hair now. That’s supposed to give you confidence. Or pretend he’s Dad, he doesn’t get the concept of “undercurrents,” and he lives by logic. You can be logical. It’s your superpower.
She’d been workingupto it. That was generally her problem, relationship-wise. By the time she worked up to it, the bloke was a hundred kilometers away. Also, just because Kane wore spectacles, just because his smile was so unexpectedly sweet and his hands so unexpectedly gentle, just because he’d opened his heart to her in the dark and had shared a few of his secrets, that didn’t make him her destiny.
In fact, that last part was the exact opposite. That was how you got the enemy’s secrets.Famouslyhow. The beautiful lady spy slept with the fella, and he spilled them. Men told stories after sex. It was practically a meme.
Just now, Kane was grasping the man standing beside the pool in a tight hug, slapping shoulders, his body language as emotional as Victoria had just assumed he never was, although neither man was saying anything. The other fella wasn’t quite as tall, only half a head taller than Victoria herself, but his shoulders were even broader than Kane’s. The two of them moved into the light, and if Victoria hadn’t known who he was already, she’d recognized him.
Nyree’s other stepbrother, Luke. Bearded and intense and so muscular and stocky, he’d practically blot out the sun. A dark horse, or a black sheep, whatever you wanted to call it. Luke had played in France for years, only occasionally making contact with the family, like a planet on an elliptical orbit. He never stayed in Dunedin for longer than a few days, even at Christmas. Nyree hadn’t thought he’d come for the wedding at all, and had mourned it, but here he was, a week early.
Coming for Nyree, maybe. Or just coming for the party.
* * *
KANE
“Bro,” Kane finally said, his hands still on Luke’s shoulders, his heart so overloaded that it wanted to shut down, “it’s good to see you. Can’t believe you’re here.”
His brother was smiling, something he did even less than Kane himself. He said, “I kept thinking about Nyree. Couldn’t really stay in France and let her get married without me, and maybe I decided it was time to front up in some other ways, too. We’ll see. Where is she? And Marko?”
“Doing a massage thing.”
“No, they’re not,” Luke said. “That was the first place I looked. There are some fellas getting massages, all right. I took one look and retreated pretty smartly, but I was there long enough to see that Marko wasn’t one of them.”
