It's Never too Late - By Tara Taylor Quinn Page 0,63
sweating. “Of course.”
“In your opinion, if you told someone something that you meant at the time, are you beholden to the promise in the future?”
She frowned, but also welcomed the reprieve from her self-castigation. “Is this a rhetorical question?”
“For now.”
It was a testimony to the state of her weakness for this man that she was so eager to accept the conversation at face value. “I think that depends on what you told and to whom. I mean, there’s no way we can be accountable to everything we’ve ever said to everyone we’ve ever known. People change. Situations change. But if, say, you told someone in the past that you’d pay them back a loan, then yes, in my opinion, in the future you are beholden to that promise.”
“I asked Ella to marry me.”
“Tonight?”
“No.”
“You mean the time you already told me about? Before you moved to Shelter Valley?”
“Yes.”
“She turned you down.”
“She wants to take that back.”
“She wants to marry you?” No! She’d given Mark up. She couldn’t just waltz back in and lay claim to him. He was Addy’s now.
Oh, God.
“Yes.” An unequivocal yes.
“Do you want to marry her?”
That was what this was about? Mark was getting back with his ex and felt badly for what he was doing to Addy? This wasn’t about something she’d done?
“No.”
Oh. Well, then... “You can’t possibly think that you’re beholden to a question asked in another place, in another time, Mark.”
Maybe, technically, she shouldn’t be the one discussing this with him. She had a definite conflict of interest.
“She turned you down. That ended the extent of the offer.” In every legal aspect. But Mark was a man of honor, which was why Addy was so drawn to him.
“I told her that I’d be back.”
“Back to Bierly. Did you promise to hold the offer of marriage open? Or say that you wouldn’t see anyone else?”
“No.”
Addy’s shoulders relaxed while her lower body warmed in an entirely good way. “And you’re sure you don’t want to marry her?”
He looked her straight in the eye.
“Absolutely.”
A smile started from deep inside of her and slowly infused its way through her being, driving Addy to act without thinking. Taking hold of his arm where it rested on the chair only a foot away from hers, she stood and leaned over him, planting her lips on his.
CHAPTER TWENTY
SWEET HEAVEN. Mark’s body hardened and his mind shut down as his arms closed around the woman, settling her on his lap. She fit as if she was made for him. And not just body to body.
Her taste, her warmth, the tiny purring sound she made...this was what Hollywood movies were made about.
Like the rest of his life in Shelter Valley, the kiss was more than anything he’d ever experienced. Ever imagined.
Addy wrapped her arms all the way around his neck, pulling his mouth more fully against hers, darting her tongue around his lips and inside. He had to have her.
The sensation was animalistic. Instinctive. He kissed her hard and fast, and soft and sweet. Escaping into her, into the world they’d somehow created out of two chairs and a slab of cement.
Time didn’t exist. Place had no meaning. There was Addy. And there was him. As she clung to him, he moved his hands up and down her back, her shape taking form in his palms, becoming a memory he would never lose. He was learning her, feeling her, because he had to know her in every way.
She wasn’t wearing a bra.
He was hard enough to explode and he tightened some more. She was unfettered. For him. The invitation beckoned him beyond rational thought. With one hand supporting her back, he slid his other hand between them, running it beneath her blouse and up her side to the bottom of the swell taunting him. And then slowly up, feeling the softness, the heaviness, of her femininity until he finally reached her nipple. It was hard. He teased it with his fingers and his mouth ached to taste it.
Addy moaned. And moved, opening herself up more fully to him. “Please, Mark...”
Please, Mark. Words he’d heard earlier that night. They’d jabbed and left a wound.
Pulling his mouth away from Addy’s, Mark stood and placed her back in her chair. “I can’t,” he said, his back to her as he stared into the darkness of the yard and willed his body under control. He wasn’t turning around until he could trust himself to resist the temptation of the moments of pure bliss that Addy was offering him.