“Don’t you EVER scare me like that again, do you hear me!?” she said, her voice cracking. She held him, shaking with violent, silent tears.
Mike brought his hands up and stroked her hair, only dimly aware that he was shaking almost as much as she. Slowly but surely he began to regret some of the harsh things he had said to her.
“Hey, it’s okay,” he said. “It was just a little slip. You don’t have to cry.”
“Don’t let me go, Mike. Please don’t let me go.” She pulled back and stared at him, her emotions running rampant over her delicate features. “I didn’t mean what I said and I’m sorry. I don’t want to live without you—I hope you know that.”
He wanted to lower his gaze, to look away from those grieving, desperate eyes. But as he remained fixed on her understanding started to worm its way up his spine. “You don’t love Peter, do you?”
“Not like you mean it, no. That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you.” She moved onto her hands and knees and inched her way backwards off the tree, hissing as the rough bark scraped the already sore skin. Mike followed, keeping a nervous eye on the chasm below, and collapsed next to her on the grassy bank.
“I am going to need a wheelchair soon if we keep going on like this,” she groaned, leaning back on her elbows.
Mike paused for a moment, then gently kissed her knee, caressing the swollen skin with his tongue. “Owhoa!” she squealed, her eyes widening into nearly perfect circles.
“You like that?” he murmured, giving her a mischievous grin that she only too willingly returned.
“What do you think?” she replied, beckoning him with a finger. “So . . . we agree that Peter is not in the picture,” she said, her voice rasping more with each successive word. “I don’t want to throw away what we have and I don’t think you do either.”
Not believing that he could trust his vocal cords, Mike only nodded.
“Do you want to make our relationship a little less . . . casual?”
His breath hitched in his throat. Not half an hour before, he had been ready to walk away—or had he?—and now she was asking him to . . .
“Do you?” he whispered.
She slowly trailed her hand down to her shirt and lifted it, showing her flat stomach—and its dark, jagged scar. He found himself staring intently at it, seeing it clearly for the first time.
“Peter has never seen this,” she whispered so quietly that Mike had to strain to hear. “This . . . is just between you and me.”
He bent down and caressed it softly, his lips and tongue moving slowly over the rough skin, exploring the area in a far more intimate way than either had previously dared.
“Oh dear God,” she moaned. “I promise to love you forever if you just keep doing that.”
He dropped several more kisses on her stomach before moving up to face her once more. “You promise, huh?”
She touched his face with a single finger, tracing the outline of his jaw, to his lips, up his nose to his forehead, as if using the tip to permanently memorize every aspect of his appearance. “Yeah, I promise,” she whispered.
“Do you . . . do you love me?” he asked.
She weaved her fingers through his hair and pulled him down so that their lips were less than an inch apart. “Yes,” she said, finally pulling him into a kiss.
He melted into her arms, feeling the warmth and power of her as she stroked his shoulders, then moved her hands down his back, massaging the tense muscles she found there. She yanked his shirt from its tucked position and ran her hands up underneath it, tickling his ribs as she went, then reversed direction, her grasping digits roaming down until they reached his pants. She slipped her fingers under his belt, inching her way around his waist to the buckle. With a sharp breath she seized it, yanking the leather free from its grasp.
“What’re you doin’?” he gasped.
Andi’s gaze was passionate, almost predatory. “What do you think?” She gave the belt a sharp yank, nearly pulling him on top of her.
“So you believe me?” she murmured.
“I do now,” he said, stroking the side of her face. She reached up and swiftly unbuttoned his shirt.
“Can’t we do this with the shirt on?” he muttered.
“Mmm hmm, nope,” she murmured. “We’re going to do this my way.”
“But you don’t know what you’re doing.”
She grinned lazily. “That never stopped me before.”
He chuckled as she stripped the shirt from his back with one swift movement.
“Now I know you’ve been working out behind my back—and spending time in the sun,” she chided him teasingly. Mike’s skin was tanned almost as dark as hers from their long walks on the beach. She massaged his bare neck with her strong fingers, sending shivers down his spine.
“Are you sure about this?” he asked.
“Of course. Aren’t you?”
“Only if you are,” he answered honestly.
She looked into his eyes and saw the depth of her passion mirrored there. “Then there is no need for any more discussion.”
He slipped his hands under the hem of her shirt and pulled it over her head. Her skin, tanned to an even darker shade since she had moved in with them, glowed in the waning sunlight. He leaned in close, breathing in the last wisps of her jasmine-scented perfume, and kissed her once again, moving down to her chin, then on to the soft skin of her long neck. Their hands fluttered about each other’s bodies, playing out an intricate dance of longing, of nights staring at each other from across the bedroom they shared with Micky, of interrupted kisses and touches which they could now engage in without fear of discovery.
Her hands slipped down to the waistband of her shorts; in seconds they were undone. She wriggled out of them as best she could; Mike reached down and pulled them free.
“Be careful,” she said. “My legs are a little scraped.”
“Don’t you worry,” he said, his voice purring deliciously. He withdrew slightly, his hands moving down and out of her field of vision. She didn’t allow her gaze to follow—she knew what he was doing from the metallic rattle of his belt buckle and the rustle of denim that followed, and had no desire to watch.
“If I do anythin’ to hurt you, you let me know,” he said, his hands slowly wending their way from her ankles to her knees—assiduously avoiding the cuts and scrapes he found there—down the ticklish skin of her thighs and up her stomach, the touch of his fingertips raising bumps all over her skin.
“Gotcha,” she said, the first signs of nervousness showing in her voice.
“Are you okay?”
“Yes. I’m just a little nervous.”
“I’ll let you in on a little secret. I am too.”
Andi laughed as Mike’s face once again appeared before her, smiling. She felt him ease his warm body onto hers, his weight pressing down gently upon her. He kissed her—a kiss so long and deep and lingering that she wasn’t even aware when it was over that they had become one.
On to Chapter Six
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