LITMIR.BIZ

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at all.

      With Neely everything was personal, everything was intimate. She wasn’t like any other woman he’d ever known. She terrified him. She mesmerized him. She drew him into that intimate world as no one and nothing in his life had ever been able to.

      He carried her in and laid her gently on the bed, then turned and pushed the door shut so the dog and cats wouldn’t be scandalized. Neely gave him a look of complete understanding, then smiled at him and held out her arms to him.

      Seb came down into them. Nothing had ever before felt so right in his life.

      He was a good lover. Women he’d been to bed with said so. He took his time, he learned what they liked, gauged their responses, gave them what they wanted. He took his pleasure, too. It was enjoyable. It was first intense and then, in the aftermath, relaxing. It was a shared experience of physical release.

      With Neely it was something else entirely.

      With Neely it wasn’t just about getting her naked, it was about learning the texture of her skin. It was about lifting her shirt and stroking his fingers across her abdomen, thinking he’d never felt anything as soft. It was about tugging that shirt over her head and then cupping his hands around her breasts in their lacy bra and molding them, then with his thumbs bringing her nipples to a peak. It was about bending his head and pressing kisses along the edge of her bra, drawing a line there with his tongue, reveling in the sound of the sharp intake of her breath.

      He drew her up so he could release the clasp of her bra and then he stripped it off. Holding the silken mounds in his palms, he pressed kisses to the tips, nuzzled them, savoring the taste, the texture, the soft sounds she made in response.

      “My turn,” she said, and made quick work of the buttons of his dress shirt. She fumbled with the cuff links—“trust you to make it difficult,” she muttered—but she got them in the end. Then she dragged his shirt off him and slid her hands up, cool palms against hot flesh, making him shudder.

      He reached up and grasped her hands and put them back on his chest. All the while he was kissing her, nibbling her jawline, tasting her ear, then slipping his fingers beneath her waistband, unfastening her jeans, brushing his hand against her, making her tremble.

      “Seb!”

      “Mmm.” He smiled and eased her jeans down, doing his best to maintain his usual careful control, to make her happy, to see to her needs.

      But Neely wouldn’t just lie back and let him have his way with her. She had his belt undone, his zip down. Then she scrambled around to pry his shoes and socks off.

      “What’re you—?”

      “You can’t make love in your shoes and socks!”

      “Can’t I?” He laughed.

      But she shook her head quite seriously. “No. I want all of you.”

      He thought she meant she wanted to see all of him—and that was fair enough—he didn’t mind being naked with her. She had all that wonderful skin to rub against, to feast on, and to press against his.

      But it wasn’t just his body she wanted naked.

      She gave herself to him—opened her body and her arms and her heart and her soul as she drew him down into the most wonderful warmth he’d ever felt—and as she moved beneath him, he lost all control, all ability to hold back, to give and take on his own terms.

      He surged into her as she wrapped herself around him, meeting him thrust for thrust, heartbeat for heartbeat, cry for cry.

      And when he shattered, as she did, too, he knew that Neely Robson had got more of him than anyone else ever had.

      She got everything he had to give.

      That, Neely decided, was the difference between sex and love.

      The first was only about the body. The last had no limits. It involved the body, of course. But it was far more than simply taking physical pleasure with another person. It was becoming a part of that person—and of letting them become a part of you.

      Scary. Risky. Absolutely wonderful.

      And as she lay there savoring the weight of the man she loved as he rested on top of her, she felt a pricking of tears for all the people who were afraid to risk—and for those who risked and lost.

      She understood a bit better now the edgy exchanges her parents were having. They had risked. They had loved—and lost. And now they were together for the moment—and very likely terrified of it happening again.

      Would they risk? She didn’t know.

      But she knew she was glad she had. Glad she loved Sebastian. Glad she’d dared to say so and to show him.

      Now she ran her fingers lightly over his back, traced the ridge of his spine, then curved her hand against the back of his neck and brushed her fingers against his hairline, learning him physically, loving him totally.

      He made a soft sound against her ear, shifted slightly. “’M I too heavy?”

      “No.” She shook her head. “Never.”

      He turned his head and she could see the curve of his smile in the moonlight that spilled through the window. “I think I am,” he said, and effortlessly rolled them over so that now she lay atop him, though still wrapped in his arms.

      “Seb?” She lifted her head to look down at him. Their eyes were bare inches apart. “Will you…tell me…what happened?”

      His jaw tightened, and she thought that, if he had stayed on top, he would have pulled away and tried to leave her. But now she stayed right where she was. She leaned forward and lay her cheek next to his.

      “Vangie said you were going out for a drink with your father,” she prompted.

      She didn’t think he was going to reply. But then, after what seemed like an eternity, Sebastian said, “Was going.” He shifted as if he would have shrugged his shoulders. “He never came.”

      Once again she heard the tone of light indifference, the one he always used when it was safer and smarter not to acknowledge that it mattered, not to admit the pain.

      Neely lifted her gaze and met his again. “His loss,” she said.

      Sebastian snorted.

      But Neely wouldn’t dismiss it. “He’s a fool,” she said as she kissed him again, loving him for the man he’d become without a father’s love. “He doesn’t deserve you.”

      It was only the truth.

       CHAPTER NINE

      IT WAS a perfect day for a wedding.

      A storybook sort of day, warm but not sweltering, breezy but not gusting. And there wasn’t a cloud in the sky, which, for the Pacific Northwest, was nothing short of amazing.

      And one look told Neely that Vangie was going to be a beautiful bride. She was a pretty girl to begin with, but today, with her honey colored hair pulled up into a sophisticated knot, her long white dress elegant and simple and her eyes absolutely sparkling, she looked exquisite and every bit the radiantly happy bride she was.

      But she wasn’t only happy, she was generous and kind.

      Neely had been so proud of her this morning while she was getting ready and Sebastian came in. Despite her mother and stepmothers wringing their hands and trying to make her stay right where she was so they could get her train arranged just so, Vangie had dashed across the room to throw her arms around her brother.

      “Thank you,” she said. “I didn’t say it the other day, but I should have. Thank you for trying…for trying to talk to Daddy and—” she stepped back and, still clasping his hands in hers, looked up at him with a tremulous smile “—for everything. You are the best.”

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