“We should stop. Oh God, yes, Gabe…ahhh…” She held on too tight for her words to push him away. He sucked on her neck again, and she jerked as if he’d put a brand to her skin.
He smiled before licking the sensitive spot. “I found a hot button.”
She had thrown a leg over his thigh, keeping their groins in contact. “I think my entire body is a hot button right now.”
Somehow he found the strength to stop. Well, not stop, but slow down. He leaned up on an elbow and stroked his knuckles over her cheek. “I feel like I should apologize, but I’m not sure that’s the right thing to do.”
“You didn’t do anything to be sorry for.”
“I want to.”
Her eyes widened for a second then lowered until she was looking at him from under her lashes. “Me too.”
As if they’d talked it through, they both relaxed down from high alert. Gabe lay back, head resting on his arm. Allison leaned away slightly, a narrow gap opening between them.
He kept touching her, though, trailing his fingers along her arm, over the dip of her waistline. “We’re a couple of fools. Or I should just speak for myself.”
She shook her head. “I don’t know if it’s foolish, but…Gabe?” She lifted her chin and smiled. “We’re grownups. We’re allowed to—”
When she didn’t continue but flushed bright red, he had to stop from laughing and embarrassing her worse. “We’re allowed to go from me being mad at Ben to damn near fucking each other in an open field?”
She poked him in the chest. “You telling me you were touching me just because you’re mad at your father? I call bullshit.”
She was a smart one. He’d told Ben that, and here was more proof. “I’m touching you because you’re a beautiful woman. And you’ve been living under my roof for a month, and seeing you wander around in that thin bathrobe is driving me crazy.”
Allison’s mouth fell open. “Thin?”
“See through. Completely. Damn, when you stand in the kitchen getting coffee in the mornings? The light shines right through the window, and I can see every curve and hell if I don’t want to go back and take another shower. Cold, to make me stop from thinking about peeling the fabric off you and—”
Her hand covered his mouth. “You should have told me.”
He licked her palm, and she smiled, the smile turning to a gasp as he slid his hand over her ass and cupped her butt cheek. “You would have turned even redder than you are now.”
She nodded, pulling her hand down his chest, her gaze following her fingers. “So…what’re we going to do about this?”
“Buy you a thicker robe?”
Allison stuck out her tongue, and he had to hold himself back from wanting to lean in and catch it with his mouth. Start kissing her all over again, maybe remove a few of her layers.
Lay her out in the full sunshine and examine every single part of her in minute detail, preferably with his mouth.
She exhaled slowly. “We shouldn’t strip and have sex right now, should we?”
“We shouldn’t.”
“But we want to, right? Both of us?” Her bravado slipped for a minute before the mischievous smile returned. “Well, I’ll speak for myself. Right now I’m fairly certain I’d be fine with the sex-in-the-meadow thing.”
Oh God. “Oh, we’re both on board, but we can’t. Shouldn’t.”
She shook her head. “We’re both crazy.”
Gabe gave up and rolled to his back, staring up at the sky. His body ached, but his mind was strangely clear. A lot more clear than he’d been while driving away from the picnic.
Allison leaned over him, her dark hair falling past her shoulder and brushing his chest. “Gabe?”
He kept his hands pinned where they were to stop himself from grabbing her and starting all over again. “Yeah?”
She wrinkled her nose. “We should get over to my mom’s. She’s going to wonder where we are.”
Somewhere deep inside the amusement started. It had just been that kind of fucked-up day, and there was nowhere else for this to go. From contentment to envy to anger to lust. And back to contentment—and the start and finish were because of Allison. “I’d say you were right about that.”
When she would have pulled away, he caught her, hand gentle but firm around the back of her neck. Her lashes fluttered as she stared at him questioningly.
“We’re not done this conversation,” he warned.
“We were talking?”
“With our bodies. Yeah, a loud conversation. Nearly shouting.”
Allison nodded. “I think we should…finish the discussion later. Sometime. If you’d like.”
His cock, which had begun to relax, kicked back up a notch. “Maybe later tonight?”
That tongue of hers slipped out again, just briefly, and he bit back a moan of frustration.
He kissed her. Briefly. Intensely. Then let her go and they both found their feet. Gabe had to adjust his cock, attempting to do it discreetly, but when he glanced at her, Allison was grinning and trying not to show it.
The crazy mixed-up sexual tension between them was somehow cathartic. All his frustrations with Ben, and the impossible task before him, had morphed into the single thought of taking Allison into his bed. Focusing on finding out what made her squirm even more than sucking on that sweet spot on her neck.
She scooped up the blanket and shook it out, waiting for him to join her.
Wasn’t much that he could think of to say. Thank you? That was stupid—and yet it was somehow right as well.
She’d saved his sanity, if only for a moment. He’d take sexual frustration any day for that.
Chapter Twelve
“I need those three boxes as well, please, Gabe.”
Allison stopped in her unpacking of one of the earlier totes he’d brought to watch the organized chaos taking place before her. Like some miniature commander in chief, her mother was having a great time ordering Gabe around. He’d carried everything she’d asked for from under the storage section of the garage. Then he’d been sent to the shed for all the boxes marked Christmas Ornaments. Now he was climbing up and down a ladder to pull out a stash that had been hidden in the attic space.
“Mom, what on earth was Dad doing putting stuff up there?”
Maisey lifted her shoulders briefly, one hand fluttering up to brush back the hair that had fallen across her forehead. “He loved to save junk. A bit of a packrat, you know. I’ve been slowly cleaning through things, but since you two volunteered, I thought this was a good time to do another chunk of the work. No sense in having this stuff all over the place taking up room if no one is going to use it.”
Allison focused on the box before her a little more firmly. She didn’t want to think about how her mom was probably doing this so that once she was gone, they wouldn’t have to.
Gabe placed another box on the stack against the wall before coming around the table to where she stood. He leaned into her, wrapping his arms tight for a moment and hugging her. His lips skimmed her ear. “You okay?”
She shivered involuntarily even as she nodded.
The goose bumps that rose on her arms—how could she be getting turned on at the same time she was worried sick over her mom?
“You two—” Maisey turned from the kitchen sink with an empty garbage bag in her hand and a smile on her face. “I swear. It’s good to see you so much in love.”
Allison wasn’t sure if she was red or not, but Gabe let her go after a kiss on the cheek. The deception was working better than ever, although now there was the added distraction of wondering exactly what kind of discussion they were going to have once they left her mom’s house that night.