“Won’t your other employees resent interference from the boss’s wife?”
“We can always live in sin,” he said, winking lewdly. “Then you’d only be the boss’s mistress.”
“Not on your life. From now on, I’m going to be like a ball and chain around your neck. Besides Faith—Oh, Tyler, where is she?”
He laughed at her guilty expression. “Despite the tumult last night, we both woke up early. She suggested that I talk to you before she offered her own apologies for the things she said last night. I called the Harpers, gave them a purely fictitious story, and imposed upon their hospitality. They were happy to have Faith as a guest until we pick her up later this afternoon. Tomorrow, we’ll get married. I hope Faith can keep the secret that long. She’s bursting to tell someone.”
Hailey lay back huffily and crossed her arms over her chest. “Well, you certainly were confident of my answer if you told Faith we were getting married before you even asked me.”
“Faith assured me you’d accept. She said she had a woman’s intuition that you would.”
“Is she really happy about it?”
“Almost as happy as I am.”
She smiled as she ran her fingers along his lips. “And today, what do we do until it’s time to pick up Faith?”
“Didn’t I tell you? You have to go to work,” he said, getting off the bed. His eyes ran the length of her body as he began removing his clothing slowly. “Your job assignment for today is to make the boss happy.”
“What chores could I possibly do to make him happy?” she asked, batting her eyelashes.
“We’ll take them in alphabe
tical order.”
Lean and naked and hard with desire, he lay down beside her and took her in his arms. His kiss was deep, his tongue making promises of things yet to come.
“Do you get rid of this, or do I?” he asked, referring to her T-shirt.
“You do.”
His smug grin warned her that she had made an ill-advised choice. His hands found the hem of the long shirt and eased it over her waist, up her rib cage, to the bottom of her breasts. He lowered his head and used his nose to nudge the soft cotton over her ripe flesh.
The slowness with which his lips skimmed over her skin maddened her. Her hands plowed through his thick dark hair. Her thighs tightened against his broad torso as he lay between them. Slowly he caressed her smooth skin, still warm from sleep. Only occasionally letting his tongue dart out for one quick taste, he nibbled at the underside of her breasts.
Then his kisses grew more ardent, his mouth more demanding, his tongue less fleeting. His hands came up to examine what had been made damp by his kisses. He lifted her breasts, raising her nipples to aching peaks of longing with the finessing of his thumbs. He circled slowly, rubbed gently, tantalized, tormented, soothed.
Desire bloomed deep inside her, radiating outward until it weakened her limbs, tightened her chest and became an audible whimper in her throat. Answering her entreaty, he enclosed her nipple with his mouth. His tongue and teeth brought her to a greater height of arousal.
“Please, Tyler. Please.”
“Not yet, my love.” He peeled the T-shirt over her head. “I don’t want to rush today. We’ve got the rest of our lives to love each other. Let me indulge myself.”
“You’re beautiful,” she murmured, combing her fingers through the hair on his chest. She lifted her head to kiss his feverish flesh, to honor with her lips and tongue his hard, flat nipples. Her hands inched over the muscles of his hips and down the backs of his thighs.
“Perhaps I taught you too well,” he groaned. “You make me weak with loving you, Hailey.” His eyes devoured her nakedness. “Beautiful.” Kneeling, he leaned forward to kiss the valley between her ribs. His breath was a caress in itself as his lips moved downward. He treated her navel to gentle love bites.
When he met the fragile barrier of her panties, he caught the lacy garment between his teeth and dragged it down over her obliging hips and thighs. Her breath escaped in a rapturous sigh when his lips paid homage to what the veil had screened. Neglecting nothing, he loved all of her.
The pleasure was too intense for her to sustain. She was perilously poised on the brink of either death or rebirth. Just before she fell into the abyss, she called his name.
Rising above her, with one swift thrust he filled the aching void in her body that he had created. “I love you, Hailey. I love you.”
The stars fell around them and yet they survived, more alive than they had ever been. They were attuned to each sight, sound, taste, and touch of one another. Even when it was over, he didn’t leave her, but stayed nestled in her entrapping warmth to savor her.
He kissed her behind her ear. “Do you mind living in Atlanta?”
“Not if that’s where you’re going to live.” His eyebrows were studied by fondling fingers.