Deadly Beginnings (6 page)

“We haven’t . . .” she blurted.

“Haven’t?”

Kaitlyn swallowed. “That is, we
haven’t.
Landon didn’t want . . . That is.” She took a deep breath. “Never mind.”

She felt his eyes rake over her. “Ah.
Haven’t.
I knew the man was an idiot, I just didn’t have a clue how much of one he was. Well, no, it’s good he didn’t . . . you haven’t . . . Hell, never mind.”

She was nervous, but maybe he was just a bit as well? Was she ready for this? With him?

He was so careful with her.

But she had always been a good girl and—

“You can stay in the guest room. Or . . . wherever you want,” he told her as they rolled to a stop. “I’m a bastard for even mentioning it.”

Taking a deep breath, she said, “No. No, you’re not. I want one bright, shining weekend.”

Silence filled the car.

She dared a look at him from under her lashes. He was staring at her. Kaitlyn couldn’t help it, she grinned. The bands around her chest eased as he grinned back and tapped her chin with his finger.

“Bright, shining weekend? I’m pretty sure we won’t have a single problem with that, Kaitie. If it’s what you want, I’ll make sure you get it.”

The wind had picked up along with the clouds. As they exited the car, Jock grabbed all the bags, her supplies, her knapsack, even her purse, plus a small sack of groceries they’d picked up for him.

“Give me something,” she told him.

He looked at her, ran his gaze down her, then slowly back up. Her stomach clenched at the heated look in his eyes. He started to say something, then reconsidered and shook his head. “I’ve got it.”

As he got even with her, she said, “But my hands are empty.”

He transferred everything to his left hand and reached out, grabbing her left hand with his right. He brought it up to his mouth and kissed the back of it. “Not anymore.”

They walked to the house and she opened the door with the keys he gave her. Her bags were left on the stairs. Kaitlyn followed him to the kitchen.

Thunder rumbled in the distance. She rubbed her arms.

Chapter 4

“Don’t like storms?” he asked her.

She shook her head. “Not really. No. My parents died because they were driving home in a storm. Thunder always reminds me. Stupid, I know, but there it is.” She shrugged.

Jock put the milk and eggs away, watching as she busied herself, unpacking the apples and washing them.

“Do you have a bowl to put them in?” she asked him.

Jock just leveled a look at her.

Kaitlyn went to exploring the cupboards until she found a bright blue bowl and carefully placed the apples in it.

Jock poured them both a glass of wine. “Come on, let’s go into the den.”

She followed him with her glass, sitting on the floor as he started a fire. The heater was going fine, but he wanted a fire.

Jock wanted her, no doubt about it. Had since the first moment he’d seen her at that stupid gala. Only wanted her more since she’d invaded his dreams, his thoughts.

After today you’d think he was a boy with his first—

First.

He was her first.

Or was he? She’d only said she and Dr. Dick hadn’t done it. He couldn’t hold back the grin. It didn’t matter if she’d been with anyone else, not as far as he was concerned. The last few years had taught him many things about women. All he cared about was that the doctor was done in her life. And that the bastard had never touched Kaitie that way. It shouldn’t matter to him, but it did. Not that he wouldn’t still want her if they had, but they hadn’t and there was more satisfaction in that than there should be.

Jock shook off the thoughts and set the poker back into its slot. He sat on the floor leaning back against the couch with Kaitie.

They listened to the fire grow, the wood popping and crackling. He noticed she drank very little of her wine.

“Don’t like red?”

“What?” she asked.

He motioned to her wine with his own glass. “The wine. I’ve got other things. Water, tea probably. Some pop—Coke, I believe, is in the fridge.”

She smiled. “Wine’s fine. I was just thinking.”

He watched the firelight play on her face, all but glow in her hair.

“Kaitie, we really don’t have to . . .” He thought about what to say.

Her eyes rose to his. “Changing your mind, Kinncaid?” She blew out a sigh. “You sure know how to get a girl’s hopes up and then dash ’em down.”

He ran his tongue around his teeth. “I never said I didn’t want to. With you. Hell, truth is, it’s what I’d love to do, but I don’t want you to feel like you have to, that I’m pressuring you, or making you or—”

She set her wine aside on the coffee table and scrabbled to her knees. She took a deep breath and then climbed on him, her knees on either side of his hips.

Jock could only hold his wine and stare at her. Completely at a loss for words.

“You are you. I know what it feels like when a man is making me do something. Or pressuring me to do things I might not otherwise. Or how my stomach twists when he does those things, how it feels like I have to do things or act a certain way or say things I wouldn’t. I know what it feels like to be someone else, and not be me because I’m afraid of disappointment or worse.” She leaned in and kissed his lips, hers trailing over his cheek to his ear. “I don’t feel any of those things with you. I’m just me. I want to do this with you. You.” Her sigh warmed his ear as she pulled back. “But if you’re not up for it, or you’ve changed your mind,” she said on a grin. Her finger teased the vee of his shirt where he’d kept the top button undone. “Well, I wouldn’t want the great Jock Kinncaid to feel pressured into doing anything he didn’t want to do—”

“You are a handful, Kaitlyn,” he told her, clasping her to him and leaning up to set his own wine aside.

“You’ve no idea.”

He raised a brow and grinned at her, his hands rubbing up and down her back.

“Oh, really?” he asked her, pulling her closer.

She wiggled against him, her fingers playing with the ends of his hair against his nape, sending chills dancing over his skin.

“Really.”

“So what should I watch out for?” he asked her, leaning in to kiss her.

Her mouth smiled against his. “I can be stubborn.”

He chuckled as he kissed her, his mouth moving to kiss along her jaw, down her neck. “I think I figured that out for myself.”

“Such a smart man.”

He kissed the skin just beneath her ear and felt her tense against him, but she tilted her neck to the side, giving him more access.

His hands spanned her back.

“What else?”

She ran her fingers through his hair. “I rather like getting what I want.” She took a deep breath when he pulled her lobe between his teeth. “I’d forgotten. I like to know what I want.”

“Hmmm . . . That’s always a good thing.”

“It is.” She pulled back and cupped his face in her hands. “I know this is a . . .” A crease furrowed between her brows. “That is, you have your life. I have mine. We’re just here. This weekend.”

Is that what she thought?

“Maybe this weekend is just the beginning, Kaitie.” He turned his head and kissed the center of her palm.

Her smile was sad, didn’t reach her eyes, and the dimple didn’t wink at him. “I’m not going to think about tomorrow. Or later. Or next week.” Her eyes searched his. “I just want now. I just want this. Us. For now. Can you give me that, Jock?”

His own hands ran up her arms to cup her face, his thumbs rubbing along her jaw, his fingers lost in the hair at the nape of her neck. “Kaitie, I’ll give you whatever you want.” And more.

Her eyes still searched his and he realized for all her spunk, for all her sass, she was still wary, still cautious. But with him, clearly, she was getting over that.

“What do you want, Kaitie?” he asked. “Tell me what you want.”

She licked her lips, glanced beyond him to the foyer, then back to him, a slow smile starting across her mouth. This time, her eyes crinkled and that damned dimple appeared. “You. Here. In bed. I don’t care. I just don’t want to think, Jock. I just want to feel. You make me feel. I don’t know if that’s good or bad. Or what. But I just . . . want this. You. Me. Tonight.”

“And maybe tomorrow?” he said, wanting them back on a lighter note, the shadows gone from her eyes.

“Well,” she said, “I suppose that’ll depend.”

She started to stand, but he shook his head and clasped her waist to him. “I’ve got you.”

She wrapped her legs around him, her arms around his shoulders, and kissed him as he stood and carried her from the room.

He pulled his mouth from hers. “Maybe I want tonight
and
tomorrow. So I need to know what that might depend on.”

She laughed against his mouth. “How well you perform. I mean, the rumors . . .”

“A handful,” he muttered, leaning against the wall on the stairs and kissing her until they were both gasping.

“Hurry up,” she muttered, raining kisses along his neck. He made it to his room and the bed. Lightning flashed across the room and thunder echoed.

She tensed in his arms. Not from anything they were doing, from the sound. She’d already said she didn’t like the noise.

“Stay with me, Kaitie.”

“I know it’s stupid,” she muttered. “The storms. I just can’t—”

“I’ll make it so you don’t even notice the storms.” He pressed his knee to the mattress, laying them both on the bed, Kaitlyn under him as he pulled her arms from his neck.

“Promises, promises.”

“Well, you’re the one that issued the challenge.”

She grinned. “I did, didn’t I?”

“Oh, you did. From the moment we danced.”

She laughed and helped him undress both of them. He wanted to go slowly. She didn’t. Kaitlyn was all flash and fire.

Jock wanted slow, to enjoy. To cherish. He didn’t want to rush this.

“We’ve got all night, slow down.”

“I don’t really want slow,” she said, trying to roll him to his back.

He leaned over her, throwing his thigh over both of hers. “I can’t let you have your way all the time, you’d be completely unmanageable then.”

“Unmanageable?”

“You wanted bright and beautiful, Kaitie lass. You issued the challenge. I merely accepted.” He laced her fingers with his.

Her other hand snaked down and wrapped around him. “Well, at least you’ve risen to the challenge. Be sad if you hadn’t.”

Jock laughed and twisted his hips, her hand sliding off. He hissed, even as he grinned. “A damned handful and a half.”

“How would you know? You haven’t even felt them yet.”

He laughed again. “Kaitie.” He leaned over and kissed one beautiful breast and the side of the other. “I don’t know where to start.”

“The rumors are lies? Well, I did take several classes of anatomy and—”

Had he ever laughed in bed with a woman? He didn’t remember ever doing so.

Not knowing any other way to keep her from distracting him, he kissed her, easing into her mouth, slow and deep.

Her tongue danced out to play with his. He ran his hand up her arm to her breast.

A handful . . .

He grinned.

• • •

Kaitie felt him grin against her mouth as he kissed her. The man made her nervous, and she’d fallen back on the old habit of rambling when nervous.

Jock’s hands were so big, so strong. Yet with her, he was careful, gentle.

His mouth slanted over hers as he deepened the kiss. She tasted the wine on his kiss as his tongue tangled with hers.

Jock’s kisses made her reach for more, want more,
need
more.

His fingers trailed over her arm, from their hands to her breast. His hand weighed her breast, caressed, lightly squeezed.

She smiled against his mouth, feeling his widen again on a smile.

His thumb circled around and around the center. He pulled his mouth away and kissed her neck, down her neck, his mouth hot and wet against her skin. He trailed his tongue across her collarbone.

Kaitie put her hands on his shoulders. So wide. So strong.

The man was muscled. All carved, like some ancient god.

“A god?” he asked against her breast.

Did she say that out loud? “Ignore anything I say for the next while.”

His chuckle vibrated against her breast as he kissed the peak, his tongue circling, circling, until he finally pulled it into his mouth.

Kaitlyn arched into him, not that she really could with his weight on her as it was. His leg was heavy.

“Jock.”

“I like the sound of that,” he murmured. “That little catch in your voice when you say my name.”

She ran a hand through his hair, holding him to her.

He shifted so he was more on her than off, his other hand playing along her head, his fingers tracing her face.

He sucked her nipple deep as his hand slid over her stomach and lower.

“Oh, God.” She tried again to arch and could only bend her head back into the deep plush pillows.

Kaitlyn fisted her hand on the edge of the pillow.

“Bright and beautiful, didn’t you say?” he asked as he moved lower, kissing the plane of her stomach.

Kaitlyn parted her thighs and moaned as his fingers found her, parted her and slid against her.

She was wet. She could feel it.

Jock kissed lower and lower.

Was he . . . ?

She tensed, not sure if . . .

“Trust me, Kaitie,” he said, looking up at her.

Kaitlyn held his stare and slowly nodded. He leaned in and kissed her. She could only close her eyes and feel.

Feel so damned much.

His mouth.

His tongue.

His fingers.

She got lost in the feelings. Too many feelings, too much at once. A storm she couldn’t control.

He slid one long finger deep into her as he did something with his mouth.

Kaitlyn moaned and bowed.

He hummed against her and she squirmed. He held her hip with one hand and continued to love her with his mouth. Even as his finger slid deep, then withdrew, building, building . . .

She felt it as he added another finger and still his mouth worked her.

“Oh, God. Jock!” she yelled and shook her head. The feelings didn’t stop. Only seemed to build a wave sliding easily against the shore, knowing a larger one was coming.

His fingers slid in and out. Slow and steady. In and out.

“Please. Please. Please.”

He twisted his fingers, sucked her into his mouth and she yelled, the wave crashing over her, sucking her down, and spinning her every which way so she didn’t know what was up, down or sideways.

His fingers gentled, his mouth slowly left her, his tongue easing.