Snowflakes on the Sea. Linda Miller Lael
Читать онлайн книгу.
in the stream of light coming from the kitchen, Nathan forgot the dog and raised his eyes to Mallory. They made their way over her trim, rounded hips, her small waistline, her high, firm breasts to settle at last on her face.
Mallory fell against the doorframe, watching him in stricken silence. Snow glistened in his unruly ebony hair and on the straining shoulders of his jacket, and he put his hands onto his narrow, powerful hips and stared back.
There was a charged silence between them for a long moment, threatening to melt the snow and raise steam from the buried earth. Mallory’s traitorous heart caught in her throat. She’d known that he would come, known that Pat, ever the loyal sister, would contact him, alert him to the fact that his wife had been hospitalized. And yet she had hoped for more time, even as she had longed to be near him again.
Nathan executed a mocking bow. “Good evening—Ms. O’Connor,” he said in a sardonic drawl.
As quickly as that, the strange spell was broken. Mallory lifted her chin in answer to his challenge and replied, “Good evening, Mr. McKendrick.”
Nathan’s jawline tightened with immediate annoyance, and some unreadable emotion glittered in his dark eyes as he strode toward her. Before Mallory could move, he had lifted her out of the doorway and over the two snow-laden steps beneath it.
Her insides rioted with involuntary need as he held her, suspended, his face between her ripe, inviting breasts. Even through the heavy flannel of her shirt, she could feel the warmth of his breath.
Slowly, he lowered her, so that the throbbing fullness of her chest was crushed against the hard expanse of his own. Then, his hands cupping the roundness of her bottom, he pressed her to him, to the ready demand of his manhood and the granitelike wall of his thighs.
Good Lord, Mallory thought with remorse. I’m as bad as any groupie—if he wanted to take me right here in the snow, I’d let him!
Nathan must have known what havoc he was wreaking on her straining senses, but he said nothing. His mouth came down on hers in a kiss that was at once gentle and demanding. Deftly, his lips parted hers for the sweet invasion and searing exploration of his tongue. Mallory responded with hungry abandon, shivering violently in the force of her need.
Then suddenly, Nathan was thrusting her away, holding her at arm’s length. His eyes glowed as they touched her lips and trailed, like the touch of a warm finger, to the pulsing hollow at the base of her throat. He turned her around and propelled her toward the house.
Mallory’s face was hot as she turned to watch her husband enter behind her, Cinnamon rollicking exuberantly at his side.
Nathan closed the door quietly, his eyes working their singular magic again as they moved idly over Mallory’s body, assessing her, stirring primitive reactions as they passed. “I’ve missed you, lady,” he said in a low voice.
Crimson color stained Mallory’s cheeks, and her pride caused her to thrust her head back, so that her dark taffy hair flew over her shoulders in glossy profusion. Her round, thickly lashed eyes flashed with sea green fury born of his ability to inflame her so easily, and she did her best to scowl.
He laughed. “You are an actress, pumpkin,” he allowed, approaching her slowly. One of Nathan’s hands cupped Mallory’s breast, the thumb stroking the bare nipple beneath her old shirt to hard and undeniable response. “Your body betrays you,” he said hoarsely. “You don’t hate me nearly as much as you’d like me to believe.”
Of course I don’t hate you! Mallory wanted to scream, but her pride wouldn’t allow that, so she lifted her chin in stubborn, wordless defiance. But a small cry escaped her as Nathan’s hand released her breast to undo one of her shirt buttons, and then another. Her entire body pinkened as he bared the rounded sweetness of her to his lazy inspection.
Mallory abandoned her act when her husband lowered his lips to one waiting nipple to nip at it, ever so gently, with his teeth. She moaned aloud and arched her back slightly so that he could feast upon her.
He chuckled in gruff triumph and flicked the rosy, pulsing center of her breast with the tip of his tongue, teasing. His hand slid between Mallory’s legs to caress the taut, womanly secrets of her inner thighs.
“Bastard,” she whispered, but there was a catch in her voice and a caress in the word itself. Her hands entangled themselves, without conscious instruction from Mallory, in the thick richness of his dark hair, pressing him closer. With sudden hunger, he devoured the freely offered breast, answering Mallory’s groan of ancient pleasure with one of his own.
Presently, he turned to sample the other breast, again teasing and nibbling, again driving Mallory nearly insane with the need of him. She would not beg him—she would not—but even as she made this decision, desperate pleas were aching in her throat.
At last, Nathan pressed her against the wainscoting lining the wall, and the lean, inescapable hardness of his body joining hers revealed the force of his desire. He stood back only long enough to divest Mallory of her flannel shirt and kiss her flat, soft stomach in a tantalizing promise of further kisses that would drive her beyond passion into the paradise they had visited so many times.
He unsnapped her jeans, and she felt the zipper give way, the fabric slide down over her hips. She shivered as her panties, too, were lowered. Lips parted, she awaited loving that always bordered on the deliciously unendurable.
Nathan nuzzled the silken shelter of her womanhood; the warm promise of his breath and his searching lips made her tremble. One plea broke past her resolve, and it took the shape of his name.
Slowly, he revealed the small, yearning nubbin. In desperation, Mallory caught his head in both hands and thrust him to her. “Oh, God,” she breathed, mindless now in her wanting. “Oh, God, Nathan, please—”
At the invitation he had purposely forced from her, Nathan partook hungrily of her, and his tender greed brought her to swift and searing release. She shuddered reflexively, her fingers moving in his hair, and moaned as he nibbled at her at his leisure, demanding a fiery encore to the performance just past.
Bared to him, and so deliciously vulnerable, Mallory whispered words of gentle, desperate encouragement as he tormented the bit of quivering flesh with soft kisses. She writhed, gasped with delight, when he took his pleasure yet again, bringing his tongue into play this time, sampling her and then suckling as though to draw some sweet nectar from her. “Don’t—stop—” she pleaded, her wanting now as naked as her hips and her thighs and her stomach.
He drew back, just slightly. “Sweet,” he whispered in a ragged voice, and then he enjoyed her in long, warm, delicious strokes of his tongue. Savage pleasure convulsed Mallory, and her triumph came in a cry that was half shout, half sob.
It was then that, in the snowy silence outside, an engine roared. One car door slammed, and then another.
Nathan swore harshly and straightened, while Mallory, cheeks burning, frantically righted her clothes. Feet were stomping heavily on the porch outside, and Cinnamon began to bark in somewhat belated alarm.
“Just a minute!” Nathan growled, closing his eyes in an obvious effort to control his roiling emotions and frustrated need.
As embarrassed as though the visitors had seen the impromptu love scene staged in the McKendrick kitchen, Mallory turned to the stove to hide her flaming face and occupy her hands with the task of brewing fresh coffee. After another moment of preparation, Nathan answered the door.
“Oops!” Trish Demming blushed, sizing up the situation with her usual gentle shrewdness. “Alex, I think we interrupted something.”
Trish’s good-natured, bespectacled husband pretended to rush for the door. He was Nathan’s accountant and one of his closest friends.
“Sit down,” Nathan ordered humorlessly, and Mallory felt his hot gaze touch her rigid back. Out of the corner of one eye, she saw Trish set a covered baking dish down on the counter.
It was several minutes before Mallory