Annette Blair (28 page)

Cloud Kiss sat on the point at Lands End where Bellevue Avenue met Ocean Drive, so they were able to view the sea from a different angle than in the greenhouse downstairs.

Here the ocean met the rocks in a thunderous blast, like in one of those nature CDs that lulled the senses. They sat on a hemp patio rug and fed each other before a sunburst window, while watching nature’s dance, feasting on crepes filled with fruit compote and marscapone cheese, medallions of ham with poached eggs, assorted fruit, and diet cola.

When they finished breakfast, Jason pulled Kira to sit between his knees with a view toward the room. “What do you see?”

“If this were my house,” she said, “I’d put a huge four-poster bed in that corner and make it up with clean sheets and a bright quilt. Vickie has a room in her grandmother’s attic like that.”

“You mean you’d get rid of all this junk?”

“Of course not! We’d—I’d keep it, and I’d use the room as an escape, a place for romantic trysts.”

“With whom would you tryst?” Jason asked.

“My husband, of course.”

“You’d take that chance? After the Penis, I mean?”

Kira leaned way back and raised her chin, so they were looking at each other upside down. “This is a rabbit hole, don’t go getting logical on me.”

“Right, sorry.” Jason started to speak and stopped.

Kira turned to face him. “What?”

He shrugged. “Okay, this is a rabbit hole, so let’s say I’m your lover and we . . . tryst.”

“Not my lover, my
husband
.”

“Sorry, that word is not in my vocabulary. Besides, some people—not me—actually think one person can fill both roles.”

“Not me, either,” Kira said, “but let’s play make-believe and say you
are
both, and we’ve come up here to escape the children. I want children.”

“Fine. This is a rabbit hole. Gram will be happy to baby-sit. But if this were not a rabbit hole, I would need a nap before our tryst. I’m sorry,” Jason said, “but I’m bushed.”

“Oh, no, you don’t,” Kira said, taking her wand from her pocket and pointing it his way. “No nap on our date!”

“Okay, okay!” Jason raised a hand in surrender. “Then let’s do some more exploring.” Watching her bend over something should wake him right up.

They found Gram’s wedding dress, and her wedding pictures, which made Jason realize that Kira could become soft and squishy romantic.

After Gram’s wedding album, they continued rummaging, and Jason found what he’d been looking for, in the first place, a trunk full of his great-grandmother’s quilts.

Kira went nuts.

She made him lay them out, one atop the other, but not before she crawled around on each—that sassy ass of hers keeping him and Harvey full awake—as she inspected the workmanship and design.

When she’d finish one, she’d ask him to spread out another.

The sun made its way around the house, slanting in from different windows. When she had examined all the quilts, Kira sighed with satisfaction and flopped onto her back in the center of a mattress made of quilts. “I’m in heaven.”

“May I join you?”

She opened her arms.

Jason couldn’t think of anything more beautiful than Kira atop those quilts, her red curls vibrant against their faded beauty, her body and arms open to his. Kira the witch, magic in every way, sandwiched between his past and his . . . future. . . .

“The auction date ends here,” Jason said, falling to his knees beside her. “This is just you and me in a rabbit hole, got it?”
Goddammit, Goddard,
he thought.
Are you in trouble or are you in trouble?

Kira nodded, her eyes as bright and multifaceted as emeralds.

As Jason sank into the quilts, he assured himself that this infatuation with Kira could be cured by going back to the NHL.

Relieved he knew the solution, and reminded that this was simply one day in the rabbit hole, a thirty-five-thousand-dollar day, he enveloped her in his embrace, rested his head on hers, and yawned hugely.

Kira yawned as well. “Cut that out!” she said, shoving his arm with little force. “It’s contagious.”

“Face it, we got up too early this morning,” he said.

She threw a leg over his, one of her knees nestling softly against his groin.

Jason sighed in contentment. Good, she felt good in his arms, but he was almost too relaxed to respond sexually. Nevertheless, Harvey made a token attempt at rising to the occasion, but Kira’s sudden soft snore against Jason’s chest pretty much killed the big guy’s enthusiasm.

Jason gave himself over to the drowsiness that had been dogging him since four that morning.

When he woke, he had himself a handful of breast and Kira had a handful of Harvey. He didn’t know when she’d slipped her hand in his jeans, though he did remember dreaming about her gloving him, but Harvey was one happy camper.

Jason looked to see if Kira was awake, but she must have dozed off again.

To give her her fair share, he slipped a hand beneath her sweater, unhooked her bra, and fingered a nipple, tracing and tweaking it until she sighed and worked Harvey a bit before drifting off again.

Jason chuckled, managed to raise her sweater enough to take one of those pouting puppies into his mouth, and gave himself over to the pleasure of suckling her. With no other woman, not even with the hottest of starlets, had he been as elated, granite-hardened, and oddly enough, soothed, in the way he was now with Kira.

In her sleep Kira whimpered and shifted to his ministrations, especially when he took to fingering the neglected nubbin while he made a meal of the first with his lips and tongue.

When Harvey began to rise and throb in her hand, Kira roused enough to realize what was happening.

She soothed the big guy in the same slow and easy way Jason feasted on her, in a leisurely attempt to milk every nuance of pleasure from the extraordinary experience, as if by mutual agreement, their play should go on forever.

Jason had never felt so free and uninhibited. Time stopped, rules slipped away, and the bubble in which they pleasured each other floated above the earth, impervious to disturbance or fracture.

The situation required no rush . . . no need to act the stud, bed the hottest babe, carve a new notch in his bedpost, or keep score for a locker-room brag-fest. No whining demands or kinky requirements, no bimbo with a list of all-star studs with which to compete, just him and Kira, and foreplay at its finest.

They had all the time in the world. Well, not quite; his body’s pulsing mandate was difficult to ignore.

The more remarkably keen the pleasure, the more Kira whimpered and arched, moaned and begged, the more Harvey wept and clamored for release.

When her hips rose in a rhythm too perfect to be denied, he undid her jeans and found a pair of pale turquoise bikinis. Geez, he could’ve come just looking at her, at Kira, visible through a shimmer of sheer turquoise perfection.

He slipped a hand beneath the gossamer fabric and found Kira slick, swollen, and budding with need.

“Yes!” she said on a breathless whisper, and he worked her with his thumb, plunged deeper into her, and her hips rose and she moaned, and Harvey wept again with need.

Jason found her perfect center, her sweet spot, and stroked it slow, switched breasts, adjusting his pull on her nipple to match the tempo of her hips and his strokes.

Kira gasped as he made her pleasure escalate, and she became more sensitive to the slightest of strokes. He brought her nearly to the brink twice, to the pinnacle of release, but not quite. She cursed when he slowed, made her rest, then he made her rise again.

Harvey was having the time of his life, getting lushly petted and lavishly woman-handled, coming often to the brink as well, but Jason remained strong.

He sank into a miasma of bliss, however, when Kira cupped his balls as she manipulated the big guy, a sensation he loved but rarely experienced. He wondered if she sensed his needs or if they enjoyed the same stimulating play, but this was not the time to ask.

When he slipped his hand from her slick center, Kira squeaked, or perhaps
shrieked
was the better word, and Jason chuckled as he rose to his knees, knelt between her legs, and slipped her jeans down her hips. He nuzzled her panties, lush with her musky scent, then he slipped those off as well and lifted her hips to his mouth for a feast of another kind, an unprecedented picnic of the sexual variety.

He stopped and waited. She opened her eyes.

“I’m just reminding you that this is not the auction date,” he said. “This is you and me.”

“Yes,” Kira said, letting her head fall back, as he adored her with his mouth and brought her pleasure.

Her gasps and whimpers, each time she came, heightened Jason’s pleasure as well. He’d never been driven to feast on a woman in the way he wanted to devour Kira. She was real, imperfect, sensuous as all hell, and as admittedly afraid of commitment as he was, which might perhaps be the biggest aphrodisiac of all.

After she came, and came again, and one more time, she begged for mercy, caught her breath, and took to returning the favor by giving Harvey her not-inconsiderable attention.

Her bra was still open beneath her black sweater, as proved by her budding nipples beneath the fine knit fabric.

As Jason about reached the end of his tether and Harvey was one
big
bundle of dynamite set to explode, she removed her talented hands and sat back on her heels, shaking her head.

Incredulous, Jason regarded her, unable to form a question.

She shrugged. “We
can’t
ruin the quilt.”

Harvey whimpered.

“The hemp rug?” Jason suggested.

“Too nice.”

“Your quilt was in my bed the other day. That didn’t stop—”

“New fabric; washable.” She stroked the quilt the way he wanted her stroking him. “Old fabric,” she said. “Fragile.”

“I’ll have it cleaned!” But Harvey was losing ground by the inch.

She stood on her knees. “How about my bra?”

“Huh?”

She raised her sweater over her head, pulled the iridescent turquoise bra off her shoulders, and got between his
legs, her plump ripe breasts just there like shiny new toys waiting for his hands.

But when she bent to kiss his balls and nuzzle his cock, getting Harvey right back into the spirit, she took his toys with her. Then she capped the big guy with a silky C-cup, and rubbed him up and down, a study in sensual overload, while kissing Harvey’s base and palming Jason’s balls.

The pleasure of his release was so intense, Jason thought maybe he passed out, because he opened his eyes to find Kira grinning down at him, and he felt like he owned the freaking world . . . except for her. Kira, he did not own. He wanted her, however, the ache so deep, he was afraid to consider it.

“That was hot,” she said. “I wanna come again.”

Before the afternoon was over, in between finding his first pair of skates, and getting her naked, and putting his prep school hockey jersey over her amazing breasts, she got her wish . . . about five more times.

“
You
wanna come again?” she asked later, lolling on the quilts like a lazy hockey-playing cat.

“I’m a goner, Fitz. You ruined me with your greed. Twice in one afternoon is my limit.”

“Oh, man, then we have to set a new record. Come on, Ice Boy, we’re going for the gold.”

Sometime later Jason regained slow consciousness.

“Tiago would be proud,” Kira said.

Jason knew his grin was cocky, but he didn’t care. “Damned if I didn’t manage a hat trick.”

“If you pull a hat trick in the rabbit hole, does that make you the mad hatter?” Kira asked.

“I’m mad, all right, with lust for you. Now I’m spoiled for any other woman—or at least for anybody else’s underwear against Harvey’s taut sensitive skin.”

She flipped his limp self from side to side with a finger. “Taut my eye, he’s a wrinkled marshmallow.”

“Shh. He’ll hear you.”

She raised her chin. “Fact is . . . I’d prefer not to think
about Harvey nosing around in anybody else’s underwear, if you don’t mind.”

“Not even his own?”

“That’s different; he only sleeps there.”

“Not when you’re around. You’ve been a rude awakening, Glinda, and I mean that in a good way. In a big, embarrassing, but good way.”

“Hah! Like he never did that before I came along. Please give me credit for some brains.”

“Hey, I never said he was a monk.”

“NO,”
Kira said, “Harvey’s not a monk, though you’ve been ‘technically’ celibate for a while. What happens when you go back to hockey?”

Jason sat up and rubbed the back of his neck. “I honestly don’t know,” he said. “I can only think of one woman at this moment that I’d like to . . .” He recognized the sudden heat and hesitation in Kira’s eyes because it mirrored his own. “I don’t know.”

“Maybe that’s because of the airheads you’ll be going back to,” she said. “What
did
you see in that leggy blonde who kept bidding on you?”

Jason was grateful to Kira for steering them from the emotional danger zone. “Leggy blonde? Oh, Tonya?” Jason grinned. “Whose panties do you think Tiago was flying like a flag?”