“As long as you don’t ask me to treat your burns.”
“They can’t hurt me.” He trailed a finger from her ear to her lips. “Only you can do that.”
“I don’t want help with the dishes.” Theresa’s mother flipped a towel at Wulf to chase him from the sink. “I want you two to vanish, vamoose, scoot outta here.”
“No, you and Carl should go.” Theresa dodged the towel coming for her and scraped a plate into the garbage. Knowing Wulf shared the same kitchen, feeling his eyes on her, made even this mundane task exhilarating. Each move they made around the space felt like a dance performance, a dance she’d never thought to do again, and the bubbling in her veins signaled the finale. “You know, most mothers don’t encourage their daughters to ride motorcycles down dark, icy roads.”
“It’s clear and dry, dear.” Her mother’s innocent blink had fooled the savviest Catholic-school admissions officers. “Your young man brought a spare helmet. He’s very thoughtful.”
“But—” How would she ever be alone with Wulf if her family didn’t leave?
“Besides, you’ve already lost a leg like that Heather person who divorced Paul McCartney.” She waved her arm, and its half dozen gold bangles, in the air. “Tell me, what else should I worry about? That you’re going to do something like run off and join the army?” She slammed the palm of her hand into her forehead. “Wait, you did that too, despite my objections.” A second arm joined the waving as she warmed to her favorite controversy, her daughter’s life. “If I’m really lucky you’ll get drunk and wake up in Atlantic City! Married!”
“Mom!”
Behind Theresa someone choked and then coughed. Undoubtedly Wulf, because decades of marriage had inoculated Carl.
“Will you please leave us alone? Go, already!” She winced at how much she sounded like a teenager, but Jeanne had been so involved all through dinner.
“Fine.” Drawing out the word, she made a faux hurt face. “We’ll go to the mall and find another bookshelf.” Jeanne hugged her and pressed her cheek to Theresa’s. “The boys are here, so you should go out. Stay out late. Maybe until Wednesday.” She had never learned to whisper.
“Too much advice rivals too much information.” Theresa hugged back and hoped her mother knew how much her matchmaking, annoying as it was, meant to her. Even when the odds were against her, someone—okay, weird that it was her mother—had thought she might have a date and sex again someday. “When will you become a normal mom?”
“Never, baby doll.” Jeanne waved as Carl pulled her from the kitchen.
While she counted to twenty to help her flush disappear, Theresa scraped the next plate so hard her butter knife clanked on the china.
“Your mother gave me marching orders.” Wulf’s arms stole around her and removed the utensil to place it on the counter. “I’m supposed to ensure you get fresh air.”
His lips feathered her ear, making it a fight to set the plate gently on the counter.
“The house must be stuffy. Your cheeks are pink.” His lips warmed the skin up and down the side of her neck.
As she tilted her head, exposing more skin to his heated kisses, the need to kiss him back unfurled. She had nothing to conceal because fraternization rules no longer applied. He knew about Carl’s business, but at dinner he’d demonstrated respect for her stepfather. With Wulf she could be truly honest, as he had been when he’d shared his history with her. She turned in his arms, and his face was so close to hers, their breath combined. The hands on her back were gentler than she expected based on the flare in his eyes, but then her Viking burst out of the polite facade and his lips crushed hers. As soon as she opened her mouth, his tongue took advantage of the invitation while she grabbed his shoulders, his neck, his head, anywhere she could reach. The contrast of his soft hair and his bunched muscles reminded her of all his contrasts, gentleness and strength and lethality and even vulnerability.
His hands clasped her waist and hips as he pinned her against the counter, reminding her that they were still in the kitchen. Then his kisses incinerated every other thought. Thrusting his leg between her thighs, he lifted her to her toes while she pressed the part of her body that never listened to her brain against the hard desire he wasn’t trying to conceal.
Bunching her sweater, his fingers left heat trails across the bare skin of her stomach, and she suddenly understood the blinding ecstasy of a moth’s final dash at the light. She pressed closer, as if she could show him the depth of her need with her touch and the way she whispered his name between kisses. She didn’t know if they’d make it upstairs.
But he pulled away, swallowing and adjusting his collar as if it squeezed his neck. “If we don’t leave now, we’ll shock your stepbrother when he wants a refill.”
She panted until she could speak. “When did you become modest?”
“I’m trying to make a good impression. Fit in.”
Two could play games, so she gave him a tiny smile and a chest-inflating breath with a catchy little noise. “Try harder. I think you’ll fit. In.”
Groaning, he reached for her again, but this time she sidestepped and put the garbage can between them.
“We’re going out, right? Isn’t that what you want to do?” She flipped her hair. His kiss must have given her mall-girl superpowers, because she didn’t recall ever succeeding at a flip without eating a mouthful of stray ends, but tonight it worked. “Or are those helmets meant to impress Carl and Ray?”
Grinning like a devil collecting souls, he followed her to the foyer for coats. “I don’t need to impress them, only you, Miss High Speed.”
In the driveway, she mounted behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist to become part of his perfect body. The bike’s vibrations lured her into a fantasy. With her eyes closed, she pushed on both footrests, as if she still had two feet, two ankles and ten toes to flex. February cold snapped at the exposed skin between her helmet and her collar and filled her with life. With a transformer leg, a Mafia family and now an immortal lover, she’d never be normal, but moments like this one were damn good.
“What’s next?” He’d brought another set of helmets with transmitters, and she didn’t have to yell. “You swing by my mother’s house on Fridays to take me to a movie?”
“If that’s what you want.”
She wouldn’t allow him to drop into polite crip speak. “What do you want?”
“Atlantic City has merits.”
“Whaaat?” He couldn’t be proposing. That would be insane. And it would be totally nuts to say yes, but her heart thumped like motorcycle wheels on pavement.
“Lots of hotels.” He sounded like he’d decided. “With beds.”
He meant what her stepbrother called the bimbo mambo, not marriage, thank goodness. Because she had zero interest in marrying him, none, nada. He wouldn’t be a responsible choice. He’s just funny, absurdly gorgeous, sexy, able to handle my family and crazy about me.
“Biiig beds.”
Her bed was small, pink and creaky, not to mention Ray and his cousin downstairs with the game consoles, so a room was paramount.
“And a hot tub. Remember our bath in Rome?”
The air whipping against her wasn’t enough to cool her skin when the seam of her jeans pressed at her core, a less than satisfying echo of straddling him on the underwater bench.
“You have stuff we should pick up?” The urgency in his voice tightened every muscle in her body. “Or can we go straight there and buy what we need?”