Faking It to Making It

Again Nate found himself gripped with a desire to track this Marty down and clock him one, even though by the lift of her mouth her memories of him were all good. Sweet kid she must have been then. All alone. The desire to protect her, from that and more, swelled from some place deep down inside him and landed like a punch to the solar plexus.

Saskia didn’t leave him any time to dissect it as she slid a hand to his neck and dragged his mouth to hers.

Desire, and thunder, and instinct pounded him from all directions. Nate tried to keep his head, but pleasure ripped through him as her tongue slid neat and clean along the edge of his bottom lip, before she found his tongue and traced it with hers. Lust pressed against the outer edges of his skin, raw and rabid, nothing neat about it.

Her hands were clawing his back, his backside. Her leg around his waist, then her hand moved between them, cradling his length. A groan spilled from his mouth as he pressed into her hand, relishing the feel of her around him, beneath him.

A fog of rich red lust swarmed over him, wiping out everything in its path. Control, order—gone. Screw it. Screw it all. All he wanted was this. Her. Now.

“Nate? Are you in there?”

He heard his mother’s voice all too late.

“Oh,” she said, before the bedroom door slammed shut.

Nate could only hope she was on the other side of it.

The fog cleared faster than it had come over him, leaving the world around him crystal-clear. The glow of the old red lamp on his bedside table, the dust on the edges of the shelf with books and old toys leaning against them, the grain of the bedspread digging into his wrists.

He glanced down at Saskia to find she’d slapped a hand over her eyes, her body tensed like a rubber band stretched to its outer limit.

His mother’s muffled voice came through the door, “Just letting you know Jasmine and the boys are heading off if you want to say goodbye.”

“We’ll be down in a minute!”

“Rightio,” said his mother, with more than a little laughter tingeing her voice before her footsteps padded away.

“Saskia,” Nate said, once he was sure they were alone.

“Mmm-hmm?” she said, trying to roll up in a ball beneath him.

“She’s gone.”

“Mmm-hmm.”

A smile creased his face. “Just because you couldn’t see her didn’t mean she couldn’t see you.” He peeled her hand from her eyes to find them wide and wild. Heat still lingered. More than lingered. It pounded behind her eyes. Drenched with desire.

He felt the same pounding rekindle deep in his belly. The drumbeat of lust was pulsing through him as she shifted beneath him, the length of him cradled between her legs.

He heard Jasmine and the boys downstairs, calling out their goodbyes, and he bit out a curse as he pushed himself away from Saskia. He heard the bed creak and turned to find her straightening up, running a hand over her bed-tousled hair. She might as well give up. She looked well-tumbled.

If only, Nate thought, then caught himself, thanking heaven they’d only gone as far as a kiss. If what they’d been doing before his mother had stumbled upon them could be called something so simple as a kiss.

“Hell,” he said, running a hand over his face.

“Think they’ll believe we’re an item?” said Saskia, her bright eyes cutting to his.

And he realised she didn’t think it as funny as he did. In fact she looked more than a little shell-shocked.

Swearing again, Nate moved to sit beside her, taking care not to touch. Touching this woman was not a smart idea unless he intended following through.

“That’s not what that was,” he said, running a hand up the back of his head. “That wasn’t for their benefit.”

She sucked in a quick breath. “I know.”

“Do you?” he asked, reaching out to tuck a kink of dark hair behind her ear. So he couldn’t help himself. That much was fast becoming clear.

Saskia looked from one eye to the other and Nate felt himself being weighed and measured. And for a man who’d long since been in a position where nobody who judged him could find him lacking it was a strange sensation indeed.

“I really wanted to kiss you,” she said simply.

“I wanted you to kiss me.”

“I got that feeling.”

“Did you, now?” he asked, a smile easing across his face. The relaxing of his shoulders showed him how tense he’d been. How concerned that he’d been that he’d stuffed things up royally. How much he wanted things to continue...until the wedding. “Though as I recall, heavy petting on my childhood bed wasn’t part of the original deal.”

“Let’s call that a renegotiation.”