Mother, Please! - By Brenda Novak & Jill Shalvis & Alison Kent Page 0,75
wanted to see you. To see what you were doing. I wasn’t used to having cute girls feeling up my backside,” he added with a grin.
He was so cute, so vulnerable in his admission. Her heart beat harder, faster, against the walls of her chest. “It was your shirttail. You wouldn’t have been able to get it loose on your own. You’d probably caught it when you zipped the tornado top to the bottom.”
Chuckling, he shook his head. “You never told me that.”
She shrugged. “I’m telling you now.”
“Dumping more of that baggage?” he asked, one brow lifting.
“David?”
“Avery?”
She relaxed her tight grip on the railing, knowing she was going to have to touch him and touch him soon or totally go out of her mind. “I don’t think of all of our shared history as baggage. Only what I caused to happen to you.”
His face darkened. “It was my choice to go after Johnny.”
“You should’ve run for help,” she said, because she’d wished so often that he had.
“You’re kidding me, right?” His voice echoed gruffly, painfully, as if the choice to intervene had been one he’d never consciously made but one that had been preordained. “You think I could’ve run off and left you there?”
“Johnny was almost twice your size,” she said, sensing the argument wasn’t going to get her anywhere. Not judging by the fierceness of his expression.
“Yeah, but I was crazy in love with you.”
The tone of his voice caressed her, a soft breeze stirring the exposed tips of her feelings, a gentle tug on her heartstrings playing their song. She’d known of his crush, had recognized the puppylike affection behind his flirtatious bids for attention and ignored him, discouraged him.
But love? Crazy in love?
“Oh, David,” she said, closing the distance between them, taking one last step, the final step, a literal movement that meant more than putting them face-to-face as she stood on the stair above.
And then she swallowed hard because his eyes flared with a heat she longed to feel on her body, a heat she knew would burn her from the inside out.
Her arms went around his neck, his came around her waist and he pulled her close, nuzzling the skin beneath her ear and whispering soft words she couldn’t make out. She didn’t care what he was saying. His meaning couldn’t have been more clear when his big broad hands settled one above the other in the small of her back.
He felt wonderfully right in her arms. She wanted his kiss, and he readily complied, his lips settling over hers with an intent that was nowhere as hesitant as that of Saturday morning.
This time he was sure of what he wanted and increased the pressure accordingly. Avery willingly parted her lips and took his tongue into her mouth, responding in kind and teasing him with quick flicks in and out and around until he growled and moved one determined hand to the back of her head.
He was no longer gentle but sweetly demanding with a pressure she was loath to resist. When he turned her body and backed her into the wall, her bottom contacting the staircase railing, she simply closed her eyes and accepted the weight of his body as if she’d been waiting all of her life to feel him like this.
Like this, with one of his hands threaded into her hair and the other cupping her backside and pulling her firmly to him. Like this, with his chest pressed solidly to her breasts, his breathing hard and heavy. Like this, with a knee wedged between her legs and pushing upward.
She wanted him now; she wanted him naked and moving above her and forever. She was out of her mind with the way she wanted him, with the way he knew to make her body sing. Her heart thundered madly. Her breasts grew heavy, the taut tips aching to feel the brush of his smooth, bare skin.
A whimper escaped her mouth, and David swallowed the sound, growling in answer, grinding his hips to hers. The hard ridge of his erection settled firmly against her belly. She lifted her arms from around his neck, slipping her hands behind him and tugging his white oxford shirttails free.
She skated her hands up and down his back, loving the feel of skin on skin, wanting more than was allowed by their position and by the narrow width of the staircase. David took her cue, finding the elastic waistband of her lavender capris beneath her white polo shirt