Waiting for Magic (43 page)

“I’ve loved you for a while, Kee.” There, he’d said it, well, almost. “I mean, I’ve loved you like a man loves a woman. I couldn’t say anything because it seemed like a betrayal of all the family has ever done for me. Of all you’ve done for me. You made me want to live again all those years ago. You talked for me when I couldn’t. You knew what I was thinking. You were my friend. You were like my sister. But we’re
not
sister and brother. I’ll never stop loving you, Kee, even if it grosses you out to think of me that way. You can send me away tomorrow and I’ll go, no matter how much it hurts. But I won’t stop loving you.”

Devin took a couple of little, halting gasps. He hadn’t said that many words in a row, probably ever. And as far as not coming on to her, he pretty much sucked.

Kee, who was always talkative, seemed paralyzed.

She must be appalled.

He’d made a huge mistake.

CHAPTER TWENTY

Kee tried to hold back the tears that threatened to close her throat. Devin loved her? That glimmer of hope Kee’s talk with her mother last week gave her flamed up and started burning her heart, her gut, the blood in her brain. Her throat closed. She couldn’t say anything. Because she was afraid. Yet, just like her fear of not being original had hurt her art, she truly understood that her fear of loving Devin would hurt them both too, if she didn’t let it go.

So she got up and pushed past him. His nearness made her shudder. A frisson of sensation that sent her lust up to unbearable levels washed through her. He was
not
helping her here. She took the last painting she’d done of him and turned it face-out, then flipped on a tiny reading light next to the daybed and focused it on the picture. If she couldn’t tell him how she felt, maybe she could let him see it.

They stood there staring at the picture together, not saying anything. Would he see the love she’d expressed in the way she saw him? He’d at least see the lust. It was in every sensual sweep of the brush that revealed his muscles, every dot of paint that showed the translucent drops of water caressing his skin. It was in the fact that she’d bothered to reproduce the thousand different colors of blond that streaked his hair and how she’d managed to achieve brown eyes that looked like bottomless pools. It was in the expression she’d captured. The painting said she knew him better than anyone and that she loved what she saw. Could he see it on a flat canvas daubed with colored oil?

She felt his hand on her shoulder, sending that familiar electric jolt down to her loins. He turned her toward him and took her by her shoulders, gently. There was fear in his expression too, and awe. He bent his head, very slowly, as she raised her face. His lips brushed hers, feathering a kiss there. She ran her hands up over his bare chest and locked them around his neck, feeling his erection press against her belly under his wet board shorts. This couldn’t be wrong. It just couldn’t.

“Oh, Kee,” he murmured, as he held her to his body so tightly it might break ribs. She didn’t care. The emotion in those two words was all she needed to sustain her. The next kiss was deeper and she met him with passion that matched his exactly. Just like they’d always matched. It seemed so natural to love Devin.

They finally had to come up for air. “Will you marry me?” Devin never minced words when he had so few of them. “I want to know you’re mine, no matter what anybody else says.”

“Even if we have to run away to do it,” she agreed. “I love the family, Dev. But I love you more.” There. She was about as bad a girl as she could be, and not because she was drunk. She was making a conscious choice. Sometime in the last two minutes she’d apparently started crying because her cheeks were wet.

The kiss he took was nearly ruthless in its intensity. He possessed her almost as much as she wanted to possess him. Kee’s body shuddered with need. Her yoga pants were wet. All she could think about was the fact that Devin loved her and, unexpectedly, she was going to get everything in the world that would make her happiest.

She felt him go still. A little thread of worry crept into her head, only exacerbated when he pulled away slightly and took her shoulders, looking serious. “Do you think we’d better go down and tell the Parents?”

Ugh. The worm in the apple. Or maybe not
. “From something Mother said last week, I don’t think she’ll mind so much.”

“It’s not her I’m worried about. She’s a forgiving person.” When Devin saw her expression he added, “Don’t worry. I’m not chickening out, no matter what.”

“I guess we can’t avoid telling them.” She gave a watery chuckle. “Father would have the National Guard out looking for us if we just eloped.”

“And he’d hang me from the coral tree when he found us.” He gave a big sigh. “Now?”

“No. Not now. I can’t stand not making love to you this minute.”

He blinked twice. Then gathered her into his arms and took up the kiss where he’d left off. She didn’t want him to think he had to be gentle with her. She wanted him. Hell, she’d wanted him nonstop from the first time they’d made love. She stepped out of his embrace and pulled her t-shirt over her head, leaving her breasts naked.

“If you don’t pull those trunks down, I will,” she threatened, slipping her yoga pants over her hips.

“I might like that, another time.” He slid them down over his hipbones, freeing his erection. He was hard as a rock. What had been a drunken, guilty pleasure the first time they made love was now a mutual commitment. It felt more important, but no less urgent. “I’m going to do everything with you, Kee. Every way there is to make love, we’ll make it.”

She grinned at him and shoved her palm against his chest, backing him up toward the daybed. “Starting now. Unless you’re just going to talk it to death.”

His thighs hit the edge of the mattress. He grabbed her and pulled her down with him. “You know me,” he breathed into her ear as he cupped her breast in one hand. He gave a little groan of pleasure/pain. “Can’t stop gabbing.”

And then there were no more words.

*****

“Well, at least he made it up the stairs,” Senior said. Kemble and the older members of the family gathered in the kitchen. Jane had gone home for the night. Lanyon and Tammy had gone to their rooms to do whatever it was they always did there. Play music and text friends, Kemble supposed.

“They’re up in her studio?” Michael asked. He was yawning on the couch behind the breakfast table. Drew cuddled on his lap, her arms around his neck.

His mother nodded. “What a relief.” She cast a look at her husband, whose eyes crinkled. He shrugged helplessly and shook his head, as much in wonder as anything else. Kemble was still shocked that Senior was just accepting this relationship when he was so rabid about incest.

“How long ‘til we know for sure?” Kemble asked. It was getting on toward midnight, and bed was sounding really good.

Tristram snorted. “I think they’re gonna be awhile.”

Maggie grinned. Michael chuckled and Drew shushed him, even as she blushed.

Kemble was embarrassed. Everyone else in the room had experienced the joy of finding true love that was going on upstairs for his little brother and sister. Hmm. Maybe he’d have to stop calling Devin his brother. Did brother-in-law trump brother? Complicated. At least she wouldn’t get a new name. He realized he’d begun to accept that this was really going to happen.

“Why don’t you all go on up to bed?” his mother said. “Michael, you and Drew can stay here tonight if you want. You can have the blue bedroom.”

“No way we’re going to bed,” Michael said, shaking his head. “I’m not going to miss the look on their faces when they find out we already know and we’re waiting for them in the kitchen.”

“What makes you think they’ll come down to the kitchen?”

“He’s a man, isn’t he?” Tristram chuckled. “Never seen a man who’s done a thorough job of making love to his woman who didn’t need a sandwich or something afterwards.”

“Got it in one,” Michael agreed. “Could be hours though. Want a game of poker while we wait? Drew, Maggie, you in?” He and Tris began to clear one end of the breakfast table. When Senior started helping, Michael held up a hand in protest. “Not you, Adapter. We’d be broke in no time.”

His mother got up. “Kemble, can you go pick up Jane? She’ll want to be here. And we’d better tell the children in a couple of hours. Wouldn’t want them to be surprised by all of this.”

“Children?” Drew chuckled. “Even Tammy’s nearly twenty, Mother.”

Poor Devin
, Kemble thought.
I hope you bring Keelan down with you. You don’t want to face the whole family alone.

*****

Devin had her down beside him on the narrow bed. Kee reached for his cock. The girth of it made her groan a little herself. As he bent his head to suckle her breast, she pulled the silky skin up over the hard shaft beneath and then slid it back down. She wasn’t sure which sensation was more erotic, him sucking her nipple or her working his cock, but the result was almost instantaneous combustion. She opened her legs, and Devin rolled on top of her, supported on his elbows, suckling first one breast and then the other. His skin was tanned and brown against her paleness in the soft glow of the little light. She felt the drop of wetness at the tip of his member and rubbed it down the vein on the underside. Devin’s hips jerked.

“God, Kee,” he mumbled into her right breast. He came up for air and kissed her throat.

She couldn’t help herself. She ran her hands around to his buttocks and kneaded the round bulges of muscle there. They were the only part of him that was pale. All that exercise to get strong enough to ride those monster waves gave Devin a great butt.

He grabbed his cock and rubbed the tip in the slickness at her entrance and then up over her sensitive spot. She sucked in air like she was dying. Sensation washed over her like water sloshing out of a bathtub.

“Dev, please.” She couldn’t muster any more.

“Want you to come first,” he muttered between gasps, continuing the rubbing motion.

She was going insane. “If you don’t do this right now, I’m going to….” She couldn’t think of any threat bad enough. Really, she just couldn’t think.

But she didn’t need to. Devin always knew what she was thinking. He positioned his cock at her entrance and eased himself in. That! That was what she wanted: to be filled with him. She arched her hips upward, taking him in. His hips thrust in return. She knew he couldn’t help himself because she couldn’t either. And then they were thrusting together in that counterpoint that came from so deep inside that she didn’t have to have experience, or even think about it at all. It just was.

She was filled and stretched and nothing had ever felt more right. He held her and kissed her as their loins banged together. They were up in the corner of the house where no one could hear them. It was so satisfying to shriek as her pleasure neared. He didn’t try to quiet her this time. His grunts were the bass notes to her treble.

When her body arched, all sense of the outside world left. She was the rain that lost itself in the waves and the waves themselves as they battered the cliffs. She was the dust that lifted in the wind and the wind too, as it screamed across the earth. The muscles in her loins gripped Devin’s shaft. She felt him spurt inside her and heard his yell. Colors exploded inside her head as if they came from Devin’s seed. Ultramarine blue, rose madder, cadmium orange, viridian green, raw sienna, yellow ochre, alizarin crimson, titanium white, all swirled together and cascaded over her.

Slowly, the outside world intruded. Rain beat against the windowpanes again. The break in the storms was over. She lay, gasping, with Devin still inside her, encircled by his strong arms. His skin was damp with sweat, his chest heaving against hers. She ran her hands quietly through his slightly too-long hair, not wanting to speak. Devin raised his head and his eyes were hooded and sleepy brown. Brown was a complicated color. More complicated that people thought. He kissed her, able to be gentle again now that the most urgent of the passion was assuaged.

“I wonder if it’s always like that,” he murmured. “I mean for everybody else.”

That had her curious. “So what was it like?”

He looked abashed. “Not great with words.”

“Not great with hugging either, but you seemed to do okay just now,” she murmured.