Love Redone (27 page)

They spent the next hour sitting at the small
, beautifully set table, enjoying the selection of simple fruits, scrumptious cheeses, and artisanal baked goods set out for them. When Nick inquired if Shannon preferred a heartier meal, perhaps something hot, she responded rather breathlessly that she was fine but not all that interested in food right then. Quirking an eyebrow, his senses went on high alert.

Blushing furiously
, she fumbled over the implications in her words while Nick watched in amused satisfaction. Yeah, he wasn’t all that hungry for food either.  Hungry, yes.  For food,
not so much
.

What t
he hell was the matter with her? Shannon fumed inwardly.  Good lord, but she sounded like a blithering idiot awkwardly trying to explain away the double entendre meaning of her words. As lovely as the tempting dishes were that had been prepared for them and as pleasant as the inane, perfectly polite conversation between them was as they bantered about absolutely nothing, she was fantasizing about the way his long, beautifully sculpted, very manly hands had disappeared under her dress earlier. Having said she wasn’t feeling hungry for food, Shannon panicked, desperately praying she hadn’t continued that thought out loud by adding that she was indeed hungry. For his touch.

It didn’t help her composure that Nick sat
so still, staring at her as a galling pink blush crept up her neck, spreading rapidly across her face. He might not be saying anything, but the smoldering look on his face spoke of things that left Shannon trembling in her seat. She’d asked him not to rush her, and right now she wished he’d forget she had ever said anything so ridiculous.

His eyes were fixed on her mouth when she snaked out her tongue and swept some much
-needed moisture along her parched lips. He zeroed in on that movement with an intensity that rocked her world. Shannon knew they were fast approaching the moment when they would be done with polite conversations and solicitous touches. He was holding himself back, as he had promised he would, while she found her way in this odd, surreal situation.

Ah, what the hell
, she thought as any remaining tethers that were even remotely keeping her responses to him at bay unraveled under the drenching effects of the sexual fallout that had them both securely in its voracious grip.

She knew it was up to her to make the first move if she wanted any more from him than focused politeness and
iron-clad control.  She’d seen all she needed to see. Shannon loved him enough to forgive the past, loved him enough to trust his vision for their future. With each brick that had come down and with each re-woven thread, the connection they shared, that thing that calls lost souls together, had reawakened and strengthened. The time for doubts and drama had passed.                    

She was overcome for a few seconds as reality hit her when she completely embraced a decision that would have lifelong consequences. Her emotions skyrocketed, making Shannon want him to be out of control and undone, too. S
he wanted him feeling even a tiny measure of the flames engulfing her at this moment. Judging by the increasing boldness in those smoldering eyes, she had only to reach out and he would be hers all over again. Could she? Should she? Again she thought,
ah, what the hell.

Nick was struggling for control, especially after watching in slow-motion wonder when her tongue had wet her lips, instantly reminding him of other things that tongue had done. Erotic things. Things that had made his nerve endings stand at full alert.

A full
-color movie of her tongue licking him from top to bottom replayed in his mind. She had this intense way of absorbing everything through her senses, so the impressions she wrought and experienced from the strokes of her tongue had moved both of them to shuddering awareness of the other. He loved watching her taste his body, and the obvious pleasure she took in doing so had turned up the flame even higher.

“Kiss me
,” she said. That was all. Just,
kiss me
. With those two words, Nicholas Barrett knew a redemption and forgiveness so deep and profound that it shook him to his core.  With emotions clogging his throat, he simply stood up and came around the small table so he could scoop her up from the chair where she sat.

G
athering her to him so she felt the entire length of him along her body, he slowly lowered his head towards her for a kiss she knew would change everything. The second before his lips touched hers, she saw deeply into his eyes, into his very soul, and was stunned to see the presence of tears gathering there. Everything about him spoke to how deeply moved he was and how precious this moment was to him. Just like that, she was undone.

He kissed her, s
lowly and reverently at first, allowing the sensory overload of their fused mouths to gather momentum. Wallowing in the intoxicating passion that burst forth the second they melted against each other, Nick poured his heart and soul into that kiss. He wanted her to know that, for him, this was like nothing else he’d ever experienced in his lifetime. Kissing her was like being reborn. Where before he’d been isolated, alone, and barely concealing the bitterness he felt over the loss of this beautiful, extraordinary woman from his life, at this moment he was soaring free at last. He thought of the matching tattoos that had started all this and of the fabled twin souls flying free at their reunion. The tears he had felt gathering when she had quietly asked him to kiss her kicked into high gear with that connective memory.

Shannon clung to Nick’s shoulders as he held her firmly against him while he plundered her mout
h. The kiss which had started off soft and gentle changed before too long, into something too big for either of them to handle. Nick groaned his need with each swipe of his tongue along hers as she speared her fingers into his hair, holding him where she wanted him as her own mouth voraciously responded to the masculine plundering of her senses.

Standing there in the middle of the dimly lit room, she
writhed against his rock-hard body as he devoured her response with his mouth and hands. He held on so tightly that at one point he realized he was bending her over the arm caught around her waist with such ardor that she had simply surrendered to his overpowering physicality. He felt very much like the swashbuckling pirate she had jokingly said he reminded her of. Nick surrendered to the primal beat picking up tempo in his body, ravishing the heavenly creature in his arms with a surprising lack of finesse.  He wanted her, deeply, madly, and completely.

Shannon fell into his kisses with complete abandon, kneading her fingers against his scalp as she moaned in response to the greedy
oral duel they were engaged in. Rolling her tongue around his and sucking it deep into her mouth, she knew an aching emptiness at her core that only he could fill. As her body responded to his touch with a rampant sensuality that overtook her senses, Shannon pressed herself against him, marveling at the potent sexual drumbeat that his possession started inside her.

How long they stayed like that, wrapped up in each other, kissing, stroking, moaning
, she didn’t know, for the sensation of being in his arms, and not holding back at all, was so compelling that she lost all sense of time or awareness of anything outside the two of them.

Eventually the sultry kissing became
bolder and hotter as Nick left worshipful kisses across her face before licking her ear and neck, causing Shannon to sink her teeth into Nick’s shoulder in response. By the time he put his hungry lips to that spot on her neck that drove her wild, she had surrendered to him so totally that all she could do was whimper and wriggle in his arms when he suckled the sensitive skin where neck met shoulder.

“Shannon…?” Nick rasped.  She knew what he was asking
, so she answered him with a deep whisper that began in her heart and ended on her lips. “Yes, Nick. Yes,
please.
” There was nothing else to say.

Nick peeled her body off of his with a low
, feral growl. Swinging her into his capable arms, he kissed her passionately some more while carrying her through to his private suite.

* * *

Secluded in the interior of the large cabin, Nick let go of Shannon’s lips long enough for her to slide with delicious slowness down the front of him in a descent that almost knocked the strength out of her legs when they hit the floor. She stood trembling before him, feeling engulfed by his size and nearness and dwarfed by the intensity of her response.

Trying to gain some control over her careening emotions lest she embarrass herself totally, Shannon glanced around the suite.
A large bed took up one side of the cabin with two armchairs and a small built-in dresser on the other side. The big bed was dressed in muted shades of cream and beige with a soft cashmere throw arranged along the footboard. It was hard not to notice the obvious comforts that made up the well-appointed cabin, things that would be a necessity for anyone who traveled as much as Nick apparently did. The next thing that struck her was how stark and empty the space actually was. While sumptuous and comforting, the room was devoid of personal touches. The Barrett logo might be on everything she surveyed, but it was not attached to him it seemed. In that moment of awareness, she surmised that, while he had everything in a material sense, he was also a man who had been living his life in a paint-by-number way. He’d been going through the motions for all to see, but was essentially empty and lonely inside. A little like this room and a little like she herself had been for far too long.

Letting her head fall back in order to see him more clearly, Shannon searched his
face for reassurance and was warmed all over, all hesitation wiped away by the look of pure want blazing at her from his heavy-lidded eyes. She wanted to say something, but the moment was too profound for mere words, so she told him with her hands and mouth how she felt.

Leaning forward
, she set shaking hands to the buttons of his shirt to expose his chiseled abs and lightly furred chest to her sight. She immediately set her tongue moving along his collarbone to his chest until she found a tight male nipple just waiting to feel the flick of her tongue.

He shuddered when that naughty tongue of hers licked and sucked at his chest
, while she moaned softly with each sweep of her lips. He was delirious for her touch and found his knees shaking with the enormity of his desire for her. Only she had ever driven him to the exquisite point where their passion was so boundless that he lost control.  He let her have her way with that hungry mouth against his highly sensitized skin until he was sure his heart was going to thump right out of his chest. While he loved her teeth nipping at him, there was something else he wanted more.

Running hands down her uncovered arms
, he moved behind her to attend to the zipper on her dress. Having him where she couldn’t see him caused Shannon’s breath to hitch in her throat. Relying on her other senses, she felt his fingers trace a line across her neck before moving slowly to draw down the zipper on her classy, vintage dress. His warm breath on her exposed skin brought a shudder of awareness.

Stroking
large hands across her bare shoulder blades, he eased the dress off her arms. His hands followed its path as he grasped her waist and swept it down over her hips until she was standing with her back still to him in naught but bra, panties, and a dainty pair of kitten-heeled sandals. Shannon was pretty sure Nick’s hands were quaking slightly when he brushed her long, tumbling locks aside and leaned in with a ragged inhale.

“
I’ve dreamt of your scent. Yearned for it against my skin, infusing my senses like a drug,” he said while pressing his body along her back where she felt for herself the proof of his excitement for her.

With hands that could not disguise their trembling
, he turned her toward him and stepped back so he could look at her. Nick’s mind went totally blank when his gaze met a mouthwateringly skimpy lace bra and a pair of sheer panties in smoky pink, which exactly matched the telltale body blush she wore along with the sexy lingerie. He’d asked her to bring something pink, and like a gift from the heavens, that something was her.

The tightening in his groin was so sharp and insistent he was forced to drag in a series of deep breaths that left his chest heaving. He remembered how he’d compared her to Botticelli’s Venus and marveled at the delicious sight of his own pocket version standing before him
with voluptuous curves and golden waves of hair falling about her shoulders,. She was so feminine and lovely as to rob him of his senses. She stood there silently as he feasted hungrily on her fair-skinned beauty, the nipples on her perfectly luscious breasts beading before his eyes under the sheer pink lace.

Shannon posed somewhat shyly before him in
her skimpy silk and lace while he indulged in a long and torturously slow inspection of her ample curves that left her in little doubt that he was as on the edge as she was. His intense hazel eyes had turned smoky and stood out on his sculpted face, which was tense with undisguised desire. Slashes of color, not too dissimilar from the color of her panties, shown on his chiseled features as he gulped air into his lungs.

She let him look and then look some more, not feeling any great rush to consummate what was rapidly feeling like a sacred moment. There was something raw and exciting about the way he looked at her. Shannon was glad now that she had worn the dusty pink lingerie. Judging by the large bulge behind his zipper, she was pretty sure he was glad, too.

If he could look, well, she wanted some of the same. Stepping forward into his body space she swept the unbuttoned shirt still hanging from his broad shoulders to the floor. He was just so damn perfect she all but whimpered as her soft hands moved with infinite slowness across his hard, muscled chest. He felt magnificent under her fingers, and she lost herself for a while in a tactile exploration that reawakened a searing physical connection that neither time nor heartache had erased.

He let her satisfy the need to touch him for as long as he could take the sensation of her exploring hands running up and down his torso with a thrumming awareness that set his nerve endings on fire. Her breathing had become shallow and rapid as their mounting excitement created a powerful energy that swirled around and through them. When trembling fingers moved to the buckle of his belt and started struggling with what under normal circumstances would be a simple task, he batted her hands aside and efficiently unhooked both the belt and the button on his trousers. Then it was her turn to swat his hands away as she took over from there, eagerly reaching for the zipper on his pants, easing it carefully over his thickening erection.

Reaching inside, she covered him with the whole of her hand causing his manhood to twitch in response. From there it took mere seconds for Shannon to send his trousers to the floor before she pushed the soft, clinging cotton of the sexy molded boxers he favored down muscular thighs which at the moment were very much poised in that swashbuckling stance that made her mouth go bone-dry.

Running her hands reverently up hair-covered legs, Shannon was momentarily transfixed by the sight of Nick’s manhood as it stood out from his amazing body, bobbing slightly under her intense perusal. He must have taken this distraction as an opportunity to toe off his footwear and kick away his forgotten clothes because the next thing she knew he was pulling her into his powerful, naked embrace while whispering, “To new beginnings, my only love, and fresh starts.”

When his lips touched hers, tentatively and with reverence, Shannon sighed from the perfection of his warmth pressed up against her quivering softness and the devastating effects wrought by sweet, teasing kisses that thrilled while promising so much more. Opening her lips in invitation, Nick quickly accepted, launching a gentle invasion of her hungry mouth.  She sucked on his swirling, wickedly exciting tongue in a sensual feast of delight.

While she lost herself in the exquisite sensations Nick’s lips and tongue were wreaking on her senses, Shannon didn’t noticed straightaway when gentle fingers slid beneath the straps of her delicate, sheer bra, lowering them down her arms. Without support, her breasts plumped up and spilled over the flimsy pink lace, bringing a low, heavy growl from him when he moved to cup her ample bosom with shaking hands. Arching her back in response, Shannon let instinct and raw, unfettered desire guide her actions.

Nick was swamped by desire when her bountiful breasts were bared to his touch, moving swiftly to unhook the sexy pink bra so he could enjoy the rosy-tipped orbs without impediment. He was aching to taste the hardened nubs on his tongue while he suckled like a starving man. Feeling the weight of her glorious breasts in his hands brought a growl from deep in his chest as Shannon arched and quivered under his touch.