Laughing, I kicked up a foot and pointed. With one hand firmly wedged between my thighs, he headed toward them. “I hope you’re up for round two, because I plan on going slow this time.”
“And you heard me complaining . . . when?”
“I’m just saying, I hadn’t planned on fucking you on the front porch,” he replied, planting a kiss on my right cheek as he ran (oh my god, he ran!) up the stairs.
“If you weren’t planning on fucking me, then why the late-night visit?” I giggled, pointing toward my room now with my foot.
“Oh, I planned on fucking you.” He dropped me onto my bed, where I bounced back into the air. “The front porch was just the surprising part.”
“How did you know I’d let you?” I asked, coming to rest. Still naked as the day is long, mind you.
Leo, also still naked and in possession of his own long day, leaned over me. Planting a kiss in between my breasts, he groaned into my skin. “I was hoping you’d let me fuck you.” Another kiss. “And then when I heard what was going on up there—aw, hell, Sugar Snap. You were already up here fucking me, all by yourself.”
A decent person would blush now. I had blushed when I fell on him, twice. I’d blushed when I thought about his beard, and where else I’d like to feel it tickle me. Occasionally I blushed when he talked so freely about his walnuts. But now? When I legitimately could and should blush?
I simply took him by the neck, pulled him down to me, and kissed him slow and sweet and long. As his tongue dipped into my mouth, I shivered. The initial itch had been scratched, and now I longed to explore, to taste, to luxuriate in getting to know his body, and how it responded to mine. We fell back onto the bed, lazy and close, the air still thick and still, but now filled with quiet kisses and the insistent creaking of my bed as we rolled and rocked.
“I think I’ve got some WD-40 in my Jeep,” Leo murmured, and I giggled into his throat. He rolled me on top of him, and I kissed his Adam’s apple.
“You think I haven’t tried that before? It’s just a squeaker.”
“You’re kind a of a squeaker too.” He scooted me higher on his body, nibbling as he went. As his lips closed around my nipple, I did indeed squeak a bit. “See?”
“That was a squeal, not a squeak,” I protested, beginning to pant as he surrounded me with his teeth. I squeaked and the bed creaked and the farmer laughed into my breast.
“I knew the minute you screamed at that poor bumblebee that you were going to be mouthy.”
I sat up in pseudo-indignation, crossing my arms over my naked chest. “For the record, that bee and I were going to have trouble the minute I set foot in the forest. They always see me coming.”
“I’d like to see you coming,” he murmured, running his hands up and down my thighs, encouraging me to sit astride him. “I still can’t believe how tense you get when I mention bees. Are you even aware how tight your thighs are right now on my hips? You’re like a nutcracker.”
“You really want to talk about bees right now?” I replied, forcing myself to relax.
“Nope.” He rolled me over once more and slid down my body. “But I’ll take some of that honey.”
“Honey? Oh—”
I gave myself over to the feel of his lips trailing down my tummy, pausing to lick lightly just below my belly button. His mouth, planting little kisses from one hip across to the other, his hands sliding up, cupping my breasts, teasing the peaks. I gasped, my back arching again under his touch. He moved farther south, nuzzling at the very top of my thigh. I had been fantasizing for weeks what that beard might feel like between my legs.
He rested his chin about three inches above where I was dying for him to go. I bumped my hips. He pressed a kiss about two inches above where I was dying for him to go. I moaned, closing my eyes, ready to burst out of my skin at the slightest touch. I was buzzing, crackles of tension beginning to run wild across my body. And yet . . .
“Do you remember that night in your kitchen?” he asked, and my eyes flew open. Raising up on my elbows, I peered down at him. He once again rested his chin on me, looking perfectly natural and not at all concerned to find himself at the juncture of Please Oh Please and For the Love of God.
“Kitchen?” I said, trying to keep from squeaking again. I was becoming addicted to his touch, and right now, being so very close to it and being denied? It was maddening.
It was incredible.
But mostly, it was maddening.
“The night you made me dinner, and you sat on my lap and turned the same color as the beets I brought you? Something about liking my beard?” He dipped his chin, running the length of it up and down my yesrightexactlythere. “Something about wanting to try something, I think. Before I shaved it off?”
“Really? Hmm, I don’t remember.” I nonchalantly slid my ankles down a little farther, bending my knees slightly, and oops. I bumped him with my yesrightexactlytheredammit. “Oops.”
His grin widened at my oops. My knees widened at his grin. There really was only one way this was going to end.
“See now, I’m amazed you can’t remember. Whatever made you blush that night, you sure seemed to be thinking about something fairly specific.” He dipped down, running the tip of his nose across my skin, over a valley and a couple of dells. The farmer was very much in the dell. I was panting. I very deliberately slipped my heels across his shoulders, maintaining an air not so much of nonchalance but of . . . whatever was the opposite of nonchalance. My heels and I were the epitome of chalance. “Sure, you can’t remember,” he breathed, his lips mere centimeters from the center of the entire world.
“I might . . . remember . . . something . . .” I said, feeling a rush of heat spreading through me. The only part of him touching me was his breath, and I was feeling more and more sure I could get off on air alone, providing it was Air Leo.
“You say it,” he offered, brushing his lips across mine. “And I’ll do it.”
I was past playing games. As he slid his eager hands along the underside of my thighs, pushing my legs higher over his shoulders and anchoring my hips with his palms, I squeaked. “Please, your mouth. I need your mouth!” I cried. And he complied.
At the first stroke of his tongue, I fell back against the pillows. At the first nibble of his teeth, I threw the pillow from the bed. At the first moan from his lips, deep into the center of that world, I bowed so hard off the bed I pulled the fitted sheet free. And when he sucked me into his mouth, burying his face and licking furiously, I could feel that beard tickling the very softest part of my thighs. And it was so. Very. Good.
Worth every squeak.
“So who are the two old guys?”
“Old guys?” I asked, not sure where this was going.
“Over the desk,” he said, referencing the bulletin board. “One of them looks familiar, actually.”
“They’re Ripert and Bourdain. Celebrity chefs.”
“Sounds like a French cop show.”
I laughed. “Anthony Bourdain was a chef in Manhattan for many years; now he’s got a couple of shows on traveling, eating, et cetera. Eric Ripert runs Le Bernardin, also in—”
“Aha! That’s why he looks familiar.”
“Makes sense; he’s been on TV forever.”
He shook his head. “No no, the other guy. Le Bernardin is my father’s favorite restaurant. My parents have a standing reservation; they’re there at least twice a month.”
Somewhere in the world, tiny chef heads exploded. The idea that there could be a life where you could regularly go to Le Bernardin even once a month—but twice? At least? That was the most decadent morsel of that entire sentence.
I stifled my own envious head explosion and took the time to admire his posterior from where I was curled up in a comfy ball. Leo had about the cutest butt I’d ever seen. Round and firm, like two scoops of sexy. It walked, er, he walked, over toward the front window and looked out. “The wind finally picked up again.”