Chapter Eighteen
If he didn’t kiss her soon, the world was going to end. Julian was convinced of this beyond any shadow of a doubt. He was so starved for the taste he’d been denying himself that he hustled her out of the barn like they were escaping its imminent collapse. Nothing was collapsing, however, except his self-control where Hallie was concerned. How the fuck had he kept his distance from this woman? When he walked out of the barn and saw her teetering up the path, so familiar and so unforgivably unknown at the same time, he’d wanted to crawl to her on his hands and knees.
This was not the way he’d planned for the evening to go.
He was supposed to apologize. They were supposed to sit down and talk, sort through the obstacles between them and devise a mutual plan for moving forward together. As two adults with a common goal: a healthy, communicative relationship. Maybe if she hadn’t worn that tight black dress, his chances for success would have been more realistic. Maybe if she didn’t make him feel animalistic, he wouldn’t be dragging her out into the darkness right now, his cock halfway to erect, a bead of sweat trickling down his spine.
And maybe if he didn’t feel himself falling irreversibly in love with her, he might have already dragged her into the shadows by now and satisfied his craving for her perfect mouth. But he felt what was happening. Acutely. Thus, he couldn’t ignore the sore weight of his heart where it sat in his chest, wondering why it hadn’t been used until now. Couldn’t ignore the way his throat seemed to be jammed through with pins every time she blinked at him.
Jesus Christ. Love was pain, apparently.
Love was being stripped down to the bones. Being more than willing to beg for more.
And because he wanted more than just one night, because he wanted to try his fucking hardest for more than a sweaty encounter with this woman, he slowed his step and breathed deeply in through his nose, out through his mouth.
“Everything you’re thinking is right there on your face,” she said to his left, echoing the words he’d said to her earlier. Because she was absolutely incredible. And he’d been denying himself due to his fear of the unknown. He was in the exact right place when they were together, and he couldn’t fight that feeling anymore. More important, he needed to make sure she felt right being with him, too. As if they were standing in the exact same spot in this big fucking universe, not a single inch apart, physically or emotionally.
Was that utterly terrifying? Yeah. It was. As he’d known from the beginning, this woman threw him off-center, dashed his plans, and flaunted time like it was a suggestion. She could very well drive him completely insane. But while holding her hand and leading her into the vineyard, between the rows of fragrant nighttime vines, no other choices existed. Tomorrow no other choices would exist. Or the day or the year after that. There was only being with Hallie. He’d have to let something other than himself determine the course of his time going forward.
Chance. Possibilities he didn’t control.
That realization was so heavy, so hard for a man like him to grasp, that he slowed to a stop about a hundred yards into one of the rows. As if they’d been made specifically to lock together, she walked right into his arms, her nose flattening against the side of his neck in such an endearing way, such a trustful way, it took him a moment to speak.
“Being in the vines reminded me of the fire. Until we went picking together. Now when I look out at them, I just think of you,” he said, watching, fascinated by the way one of her curls looped around his finger. “Were you in St. Helena when it happened?”
His stomach was already plummeting like an elevator with a snapped cable in anticipation of her answer. He’d barely be able to stand it if she’d been scared, let alone in danger. Especially knowing he had been in town at the time.
“My grandmother and I drove south. We stayed in a motel and watched the news for five days straight.” She pulled back and searched his face. “You stayed behind.”
He nodded, hearing the distant crackling of burning wood. “My father and I did what we could to prepare. Evacuated everyone, moved equipment. But they said . . . fire officials told us we had six hours before the fire reached us. And it happened in one. One hour instead of six.” He could still remember the way that stolen time had choked him, the way denial unzipped him straight down the middle. Time was supposed to be absolute. A foundation for everything. For the first time, it had betrayed him. “My sister was in one of the larger sheds when it happened—she’d been loading wine stock into a truck. Just an ember carrying on the wind, they said. The whole thing was up in flames in a matter of minutes. I was acres away when it started. By the time I’d run to the building, it was engulfed. We were the only ones here, so no one heard her screaming. I almost didn’t get her out.” He didn’t want to think about that, so he moved on briskly. “I’d never had an—”
“Wait. Go back.” Was she shaking? “How did you get her out?”
“I went in,” he explained.
“You went into a burning building to rescue your sister. I’m just clarifying.”
“I . . . Yes. She needed help.”
“You saved her life and she still brought you to this terrible wine tasting,” Hallie murmured, shaking her head. Despite the joke, however, she appeared almost shaken by the story. “I interrupted what you were going to say. You’d never had a what?”
He rarely said the term out loud, but this was Hallie. “An anxiety episode. As a child, I had them, but not since then. Not as an adult. My schedules didn’t make sense in the context of the fire. We were supposed to have six hours, and, suddenly, we’re driving through smoke just hoping to escape with our lives. Time wasn’t safe anymore. My sister wasn’t safe. I didn’t do well with it.” He paused to gather his thoughts, wiping the perspiration from his palms down the sides of his pants. “I hated that feeling. That locked-up feeling. And you might think the fire would have acted as some kind of immersion therapy and I’d loosen my grip on time, realizing it can’t be controlled, but I doubled down instead. I lost time. Completely. I just sort of went numb, Hallie. For days. My family was trying to salvage the winery, and mentally, I wasn’t there. I did nothing to help them. All I could do was sit in a dark room and write lesson plans. Lectures. I remember almost nothing from the days after the fire.
“That’s why I’ve been trying so hard to stay away from you. Anything that threatens this control I have . . . I’ve been seeing it as the enemy. When it gets ahold of me, I don’t recover quickly like Garth. It’s something to avoid at all costs. But I can’t do that with you anymore, because you’re worth burning for. You’re worth turning and driving straight into the fire.”
“Whoa,” she whispered, the gray of her eyes swimming and starlit. “I don’t know which part of that to address first. The part that maybe you’re a hero for saving your sister, but you can only focus on a dark moment or—or . . .”
He stripped off his jacket and tossed it behind her onto the ground, only sparing a fleeting thought for the dry cleaning. “The part when I said I’d drive through fire for you?”
She nodded, her eyes locked on his fingers where they were unknotting his tie, then shoving the balled-up material into the right front pocket of his dress pants. “Yeah, that part.”
“What about it?” he asked.
Her eyes lifted hesitantly. “What if I said I would do the same for you?”
This is what it meant to be choked up. To have his sanity in the hands of another person to do with what they wanted. “I’d be fucking grateful.” He caught her by the hips and dragged her close, hissing a breath when her belly finally, finally met his aching length. “But I’d also lose my mind if you were ever in that kind of danger, so please don’t ever say that out loud again.”
“It was your analogy,” Hallie teased, going up on her toes, a slow raking of tits and belly and hips up the front of his primed body, and he groaned loudly, there in the middle of the vineyard. “Thank you for telling me that.”
Oh Jesus, he couldn’t take her whispered gratitude on top of his dick being so hard. Who had sent this woman to kill him? He was hungry and desperate and ready to give up years of his life to get his hands on those breasts. “I’ll tell you anything you want, just let me kiss that goddamn mouth. Let me get on top of you.”
With a small sound of shock—did she not understand he was dying?—Hallie lurched higher onto her toes and gave up her mouth, letting him come from above and wreck it, broken and starved and needy, his hands trying to clutch and smooth every part of her at once, experience every inch. They tunneled through her hair and raked down her back, yanking her by the ass into the cradle of his lap, both of them gasping into the kiss over the miraculous friction they created. The chafe they kept alive with rubs and pushes and grinds.
“Tell me we’re fucking tonight, Hallie,” he gritted out, teeth pressed to her ear.
“Was your mouth always this dirty?” she gasped.
“No.” He urged her down onto the ground, and she went, landing flat on her back on top of his spread-out jacket, her curls bouncing out in ninety directions, a sight that made his hands shake, it was so her. “And you can blame my colorful vocabulary on the fact that you’ve been bent over on your knees outside of my office window for weeks.” He let his weight settle on top of her incredible curves, slowly, his breath escaping like air from a tire puncture, his balls throbbing like a son of a bitch. “Weeks.”
“That is the standard flower-planting position.”
He reached down, gathered the hem of her dress in his hand, and worked it up to her hips, immediately rocking into the space between her thighs, deprived at never having been there before. Being like this, with her, was where he belonged. And God, the way she moaned and arched her back, covered in moonlight and a flush, was the closest he’d ever come to magic. “Flowers are the last thing on my mind when you’re on all fours,” he gritted out, rocking again, gratification thick in his stomach when she pressed her knees open, grabbed the sides of his waistband, and pulled, urged, lifted. “I’m thinking of your bare ass slapping against my stomach.”
“G-great,” she stammered in between hot rakes of their open mouths. “I’ll never be able to do my job again without blushing.”
“Speaking of this blush.” Christ, he could barely make out his own words, they were so slurred with lust, muffled into her neck as he traced a line downward with his tongue, over the smooth patch behind her ear, the curve of her collarbone, the sweet-smelling hollow of her throat. “How far down does it go?”
“I don’t know,” she breathed. “I’ve never checked.”
“We better find out.” Julian watched her face closely as he licked a path over the hills of her cleavage, needing to know they were together in this. Continuing. “Hallie. Are you wearing that goddamn polka dot bra?”
“I . . . Yes. How did you—”
Groaning, he kissed her stiff nipples through the material of her dress, the fact that she’d worn that tormenting underwear turning his dick to stone. “Let me take it off and suck them, sweetheart.”
She struggled to pull in a breath. “Oh, wow. Key moment to pull out the endearment.”
He opened his mouth over the stiff bud, raking his lips side to side, groaning when it swelled, grew sharper. “I’ve been calling you that in my head for much longer.”
“Just pull my top down already,” she said in a rushing laugh that got his chest so heavily involved in the moment, even more than it already was, he had to press his face between her breasts and steady himself with her rapid-fire heartbeat. Inhaling through his nose and out through his mouth until the squeeze turned bearable. Mostly. “Julian . . .”
“I know.” He had no idea what that exchange meant, only that Hallie’s use of his name anchored him even more, made his mouth eager for the taste of her tongue again. And he gave in to it, traveling back up to her mouth for more kissing, more wild drawing of suction and wetness, then back down to her heaving tits. At some point, they’d started working down the neckline of her dress together, or maybe the drag of his chest up and down had done it, because her breasts were almost free of her bodice and polka dot bra, so big and lush and sweet, he whispered a prayer before his first lick across her bare nipples. “First part of you I saw up close,” he muttered thickly. “Last thing I want to see before I die.”
She giggled, and Julian accepted that he’d be going to hell someday, because Hallie giggling while he sucked her nipples, the polka dot bra pushing them up for his attention, his hands molding those pretty mounds thoroughly, was the hottest moment of his life. Nothing would ever top it. Although he was proven wrong a few seconds later when she started to whimper, her fingernails digging into his scalp, hips restless on the ground.
“Julian.”
“That getting you wet?”
She nodded jaggedly, bottom lip clamped between her teeth.
“You going to let me check?” His fingertips were already trailing down her inner thigh, massaging the inside of her knee, then tracing up, up, toward the heat. “I want you more than ready, Hallie. I’ll play with them until the zipper of my pants is your worst enemy.”
“Oh my God.”
The way she kind of melted into the ground and writhed her hips every time he said something dirty made it clear she loved it. And Julian loved it, too, the freedom to say whatever came to his mind, wanting her to know what he was thinking, down to the letter. He’d never cared before. Never spoken much at all during the act. Now he couldn’t seem to keep his mouth shut, craving connection with her on every level available. Verbal, physical, emotional.
His fingers found her then, massaging through the thin nylon of her panties, dampness soaking through to meet him. Yes. Jesus Christ, yes. So much of it that he dropped his face between her tits and moaned, parting the folds of her flesh with a gently sawing knuckle and teasing her clit. When her hips reared up off the ground and she sobbed, he moved on instinct, capturing her mouth in a rough kiss, knuckling that sensitive little bud over and over again. The wild way she gave herself over to the kiss made him wonder if . . . was she already close?
Julian paused with his mouth on top of hers. They inhaled and exhaled together. Fast. Faster. Anticipation so real he could feel it pressing down on his spine. “You come easy, don’t you, Hallie?” Looking her in the eye, he pulled down her panties, just below her pussy, trapped around the tops of her thighs. “I remember in the kitchen how sweet you got off. How quick.” He parted her folds with his thumb, stroked the full length of her sex, and watched her eyes roll into the back of her head. “You’re not just beautiful and sexy and—Jesus—the fucking curves.” With a nip and tug of her earlobe, Julian pushed his middle finger inside of her. “You are a horny little thing, aren’t you?”
“Julian.”
She was saying his name, but he could only sort of hear it through the ringing in his ears. Tight. God, she was really tight. And the way her thighs jerked in around his hand, like the sensation of his finger was foreign? No . . . But when he looked down into her face and saw she was holding her breath, visibly waiting for him to catch up, he knew. “Hallie, you’re a virgin.”
A brief silence passed. “Yes.”
Why wasn’t he shocked? He should have been, right? This vital, spontaneous woman had somehow made it to age twenty-nine without exploring a sensual side of herself that was very much alive and well. The woman was practically vibrating beneath him, every single part of her engaged in what they were doing. Maybe he was just too overcome with hunger for Hallie to dwell on something so useless as surprise. His focus remained locked on the fact that she had needs right now. She’d decided to let him handle them and that was good enough.
If anything, he just needed to be extra sure. Before he took her virginity.
I’m her first.
Did the crowding of pride in his throat make him a caveman?
No. No, who wouldn’t be fucking proud that a woman like Hallie had decided he was worthy of her first time? A man who didn’t treasure this position didn’t deserve it—and that was the last time he thought of men in general and Hallie in the same context, because his teeth were snapping at her neck as a result. Mine.
Calm the hell down.
Julian tried to inhale a steadying breath, but it brought her scent along with it and only succeeded in making him salivate. Press his finger a little deeper inside of her, just to watch the pulse jump at the base of her neck. “Hallie.” Lord, he sounded like the big bad wolf. “Be one hundred percent honest with me now. Are you sure about this?”
Fingers flexing on his shoulders, she nodded vigorously. “Yes. Positive.”
Thank God. “Why do you sound relieved?”
“I thought you were going to be responsible and call a stop to everything.”
“That would be the responsible thing to do,” he agreed, even while biting a path down the center of her body, nipping at her tits, her belly, her thighs, before bringing the flat of his tongue up firmly between the folds of her sex. “Your first time should be in a soft bed. Somewhere familiar. Comfortable.” He pressed the V of his fingers over her flesh and strip of blond hair, opening her up to him, and he could only wish for sunlight to see her better. To memorize every ripple and shadow. “And here I am, getting ready to fuck you on the hard ground. Flat on your back with your dress up around your waist. Aren’t I, sweetheart?”
Before she could answer, he drew the tip of his tongue up the center of her pussy and left it poised on top of her clit for long seconds, before wiggling it roughly. And God help him, she came. The proof of it met his tongue unexpectedly, and he didn’t think, just followed instinct by lapping at her, pushing her thighs as wide as he could get them, and going for broke, licking that swollen pleasure source until she whimpered at him to stop.
“Please!”
Out of his fucking mind, horny beyond belief, he rose up over her flushed body while fumbling with his belt, his wallet, and the condom, ripping the foil packet open. She tried to help him, their hands knocking together, their mouths seeking each other for wet, illicit kisses that went straight to his head. Both of them.
“I’m putting on a condom, but I’m going to blow where it’s so deep and tight, it’ll feel like I’m wearing nothing—”
“Oh God, oh God.”
“If I don’t get inside you soon—”
“Don’t even joke like that.”
And so they were laughing in pure pain when he pressed his cock into her, the sound of amusement dying on a long, guttural groan from Julian. “Oh my fucking God,” he barked into her neck, easing his hips closer, closer, meeting the resistance of untried flesh and stopping, panting, inwardly calling himself a bastard for taking something so perfect, but her fingers fisted in the elastic sides of his briefs and pulled him deep, so motherfucking deep, her mouth moaning, hips lifting, the insides of her knees grazing his rib cage, her eyelids fluttering.
Fuck oh fuck. That was when he started to spin out.
Out of control. He was out of control.
He thought he could do this, throw himself headfirst into everything Hallie made him feel, but he’d been foolish to underestimate the magnitude of it. With her flesh stretching around him, her gaze locked on his for comfort, affection and gratitude and—God forgive him—possessiveness almost buckled his heart. There was no schedule to fall back on. No pen and paper to take notes. There was nothing to do but lean into what she made him feel, damn the outcome or consequences. He didn’t have any tools available to build a dam. With each stroke of her fingers on his face, every kiss of his jaw and shoulders, she was stripping him of every last one of them.
“Hallie,” he growled into her neck, starting to move, fisting her hair, and starting to fuck her. He couldn’t do anything else with her clutching at him like that, mewling every time he went deep. Was her virginity obvious? Yes. God yes. He could barely get in and out, she was so fucking snug. But it was equally obvious that she was enjoying herself. Enjoying him. Her eyes were glazed over, her lips chanting his name, and those silky soft thighs, they hugged him like they never wanted him to leave. Or stop. In fact, they urged him faster, and he went, burying his tongue in her sweet mouth and kicking his hips into a gallop. “You’ve been doing such bad things to my dick, sweetheart. Just bouncing around with those curls in your tight shorts, not a care in the world, huh? Well, you’ve got to deal with me now. You’ve got to let those beautiful tits out and deal with me, don’t you?”
“Yes,” she gasped, her flesh tightening up around him, her hips impatient. A cue, permission to go harder, faster, and he did, pressing their moaning mouths together and increasing his pace, a shudder racking him in the exact moment she learned her power. Learned that she could flex her pussy and turn him into an animal. “You like that,” she whispered.
“Yes, yes, I fucking like it,” he panted hoarsely. “I love it. Again.”
And really, it was a reckless request, because he forgot his own name after that. Forgot it was her first time and they weren’t all that far from a public gathering. When she constricted her already too-tight flesh around him, her eyes flashing with excitement over his desperate response, that was it. His fingers dug into the earth, and he went blind, fucking to relieve the ache between his thighs. Fucking to claim her as his own—no help for that. No rationalizing it.
“Mine, sweetheart, mine,” he grunted in her ear, scoring his teeth down the side of her neck.
Who am I? He had no idea, only that this was right where he was supposed to be. With her. Even as his head spun and panic over the unknown threatened, he couldn’t stop. There would never be any stopping. She was salvation and homecoming and lust and woman.
“Hallie. Hallie.”
“Yes.”
What was he asking? No idea. But she knew. She knew and her body understood, her back arching so her clit could rub against his thrusting cock, this incredible virgin who’d learned her own body in advance and he praised her for it, bathing her neck with his tongue and scooping his hands beneath her ass, anchoring them so he could angle down and stroke where she needed, exultant when she whimpered brokenly in response and shook into another orgasm, her pussy clamping around him, making it impossible for him to do anything but pump deep and follow, the two of them shaking in the dirt together, mouths frantic, hands squeezing, trying to get through to the other side.
Relief like Julian felt shouldn’t even exist. It was too potent. Too powerful. How would he go about his daily life ever again knowing this collision of power and weakness was available to him? To them?
He tried not to collapse on top of her and failed, his body utterly replete of tension. But she welcomed him, their tongues moving together lazily in each other’s mouths, her hands molding his ass like clay inside his loosened pants. With . . . a sort of ownership that he couldn’t bestow fast enough. “I’m yours, too,” he said, still regaining his breath. Would he ever catch it again? “In case I forgot to mention that.”
“I read between the lines,” she murmured drowsily.
There was nothing to do but kiss her, savor the catch in her throat. For him. When she needed to breathe he pulled back, studying her, still unable to break the connection of their bodies, though he needed to soon. “I love you like this. Drowsy and pinned to the ground where you can’t make trouble.”
Those tiny, feminine muscles jumped along with the corner of her mouth. “Are you sure?”
“I take it back,” he said in a gruff rush, his shaft swelling back to life. In a matter of minutes, he’d be capable of taking her again. Unbelievably, he needed to. More than he could remember needing anything. Even with his sweat still drying from the last time. This was love. This was infatuation. There was no way out, and he wasn’t looking for an exit. No, he was sealing all of them shut. But was he going to fuck her again on the hard ground in the rapidly dropping temperature instead of caring for her like she deserved? Also no. As much as this was going to kill him. With a wince, Julian pulled out, took care of the condom. “Come home with me,” he said, watching as she fixed her dress, covering love-bitten breasts and thighs chafed from the material of his pants. Mine. “Let me do this better.”
“Wait.” She blinked at him. “There’s a better?”
His hearty laugh echoed across the vineyard.
* * *
When they reached the lighted area surrounding the barn, he took stock of Hallie’s appearance, pulling pieces of straw and mulch from her hair, dusting dirt off her calves and elbows. She did the same for him, though he’d sustained far less damage. He pulled her close and whispered in the shadow of the barn about how she should wear her hair to cover the love bite on her neck, their fingers tangling together, mouths unable to stop connecting, lips brushing, kisses deepening.
Finally, they managed to muster some decent behavior, holding hands on their way back into the barn, which was now . . . empty.
They stopped short.
Well, not entirely empty.
Natalie and the SEAL—August, right?—were toe to toe, their noses inches apart. But this time, they weren’t flirting. No, he knew his sister’s “pissed off” posture when he saw it.
“Uh-oh,” Hallie murmured.
“I was only making a suggestion,” Natalie said, very succinctly, up at the hulking military man. “I grew up on a vineyard—fermentation is in my blood.”
“Only problem with that, baby, is I didn’t ask.”
“Well, you should have asked someone. Because your wine tastes like demon piss.”
“Didn’t stop you from drinking a gallon of it,” he pointed out calmly.
“Maybe I needed to be drunk to consider sleeping with you!”
The man grinned. Or bared his teeth. Hard to tell from this distance. “Offer is still open, Natalie. As long as you promise to stop talking.”
With that, Natalie threw wine in August’s face.
Julian shot forward, no idea how the SEAL was going to react. But he worried for nothing, because the man didn’t even flinch. Instead, he licked the wine off his own chin and winked at her. “Tastes fine to me.”
“I hate you.”
“The feeling is mutual.”
Angling her face toward the rafters, she shrieked through her teeth. “I can’t believe the things I was going to let you do to me.”
That gave August pause. He gave Natalie a very distinct once-over that Julian immediately wished he could erase from his brain. “Just out of curiosity,” August started, “those things were . . . ?”
“All right.” Julian cleared his throat. “I’ll stop you both there.”
“Where have you been?” Natalie cried out, throwing up her hands at her brother’s approach. “You left me here with this Neanderthal and—” She spied Hallie over his shoulder, and her lips twitched with humor. “Oh. I see. Well, at least one of us got laid.”
The back of Julian’s neck heated. “Time to go, Nat.”
She’d already started in his direction, but her steps slowed now. “You haven’t called me that since we were in high school.”
Natalie shook herself and kept walking, past Julian and out of the barn, to where Hallie waited. She didn’t turn around once, so she didn’t see August’s regretful expression, but Julian did. It significantly turned down the volume on what he’d been planning to say, though not completely. “Talk to my sister like that again and I’ll break your jaw.”
August’s eyebrows shot up, as if unexpectedly impressed, and Julian left the barn. He found Natalie and Hallie leaning up against the side of his rental where he’d parked it along the main road. Hallie was making Natalie laugh, but he still spied a fair amount of tension bracketing his sister’s mouth.
“Hey . . .” Hallie rubbed his sister’s shoulder and came toward him, tightening everything south of his chin. God, she was beautiful. “You should go take care of your sister. Anyway, I’ve never left the dogs overnight. I’m not sure if it would be a popular move.”
“Jesus,” he muttered.
“What?”
“When you spend nights at my house, you’ll have to bring them, won’t you?”
She peered up at him. “Worth it?”
“Bring a whole circus, Hallie.”
Even after everything they’d done tonight, a breathless sort of surprise danced across her features. “It wouldn’t be that far off.” Worry cut through the surprise, but she tried to hide it with a smile. “Are you sure you’re ready for that?”
“Yes.”
That’s what he said. And he damn well meant it. Because he was ready for Hallie in his life. In fact, her being there felt long past due. If there was a whisper of self-doubt lingering, drifting to the present from that night four years ago, he was more than willing to ignore it in favor of kissing his girlfriend good night.