She waited with sharp anticipation while he slowly lowered his head and pressed his lips to hers. It wasn’t a chaste kiss, but it was gentle…a promise of passion rather than the thing itself, a sweetness to be savored on her searching lips. She craned up for more of his taste and cried out softly when he lifted his head, depriving her.
“We’d better go,” he said, his voice ragged.
“What? Oh…okay,” Mari murmured, feeling bereft in the absence of Marc’s tender kiss. Hadn’t she been the one to tell him not to try anything on the beach, and yet here she was, tempting him into kissing her with all the power she knew he had?
So much for taking things slowly, Mari thought irritably as they went to retrieve the sandwich bag and headed down the lamp-lit sidewalk to the road.
She felt dazed and unsettled about what had just happened out there on that moonlit beach. Had she really just told Marc Kavanaugh she’d see him?
“Uh, I’ll see you…. I’d better be…” She fumbled uncertainly after she’d unlocked her car door, highly aware of Marc standing just behind her on the quiet street.
“Yeah. You’ll see me.”
He sounded so restrained. Wasn’t he going to kiss her again? At least touch her?
“Okay, then,” she mumbled. “Good night.”
He said nothing, increasing her confusion. She slammed her car door and turned the key. Harbor Town seemed as if it’d been cast under a drowsy enchantment, Mari thought as she drove home on the darkened streets. If the kids were out playing on the peaceful summer night, they must be playing hide-and-seek, because she saw no one on her short ride home.
Until she pulled into the driveway and stepped out of her car, that is.
She heard the roar of the motorcycle. Marc pulled up behind her, cut the engine and dismounted the sleek bike. She sensed tension in his shadowed form as he stalked toward her.
“I said I wouldn’t accost you on the beach, but I didn’t say a word about your front yard.”
He took her into his arms and covered her mouth with his.
This kiss was everything his former one was not: hot, consuming. He spanned her upper back with his hands in a blatant gesture of ownership, her breasts pressing tightly against his ribs.
Mari moaned as he explored her mouth thoroughly, and she submitted to his bold claim. She wrapped her arms around his waist and held on while lust surged in her blood, enlivening her flesh. It never occurred to her to question the sudden inferno of her desire. Logic and the result of Marc’s kisses were mutually exclusive events.
She panted softly when he lifted his head only to lower it again and press his mouth to her neck. She couldn’t think straight with him nibbling and kissing, his teeth occasionally gently scraping her skin, causing her nipples to tighten in excitement. His hands moved over her, coaxing her to enter a sensual fog. She leaned her head back, granting him more access. Her eyelids parted into slits, and she found herself staring at the dim streetlight.
A quick, flashing picture arose in her imagination— Brigit Kavanaugh standing on her front porch, staring down Sycamore Street as her son publicly ravished Mari Itani in her driveway.
“Marc,” she whispered hoarsely. “People will see.”
For a moment, she thought he hadn’t heard her as he continued to ravenously explore her neck with his mouth, but then he abruptly stopped. He grabbed her hand and pulled her toward a lush maple tree. Mari jogged after him. The tree’s thick canopy of leaves provided a cover the streetlight couldn’t penetrate.
He positioned her with her back against the tree trunk and immediately swooped down to kiss her again. Their private, adult game of hide-and-seek on this hot, Harbor Town night only increased her ardor, She didn’t respond passively but caught his tongue and created suction, loving his raspy groan of arousal in response.
Heat flooded her lower belly and sex. She sighed in sublime satisfaction at his hard pressure against her tingling flesh. She knew firsthand just how much Marc Kavanaugh wanted her in that moment, and it was delicious, heady knowledge.
His stroking hand encircled her neck and then found a breast. He fondled the sensitive flesh with a knowing touch, making her kiss even more hungry…more desperate. A moment later, he lifted his head. The night surrounded them like enfolding velvet as Marc lifted her T-shirt up over her breasts.
Mari moaned when she felt pleasure pinch at her nipple and simultaneously between her thighs. Marc’s long fingers moved, scooping the flesh over the top of her bra, pushing down the cup. His fingertips whispered across the now-naked, puckering nipple, and Mari bit her lower lip to keep from crying out.
“Such beautiful breasts,” he whispered before he molded her flesh into his warm palm and continued to pluck the crest.
Mari whimpered as her desire swelled into full bloom. And when his warm mouth enfolded her nipple, she couldn’t prevent herself from crying out. His tongue was the gentlest tease one moment and a demanding lash the next. She shifted her hips restlessly. Marc must have instinctively understood how she ached, because he palmed the juncture between her thighs.
Mari’s eyes sprang wide as pleasure jolted through her flesh. This was crazy. They were in her front yard, for goodness’ sake. Things had moved from an impassioned kiss to heavy petting so quickly that she’d lost all good sense.
And she’d said she wanted to take things slow. How could Marc take her body from room temperature to boiling so fast?
When Marc deftly began to unfasten her shorts, she protested, but very weakly. “Marc, we really shouldn’t.”
She gasped at the sensation of his long fingers slipping beneath the silk of her panties. When she felt him find the evidence of her arousal, he groaned harshly. Mari leaned her head against the tree trunk, gasping and whimpering while Marc stoked her body into a raging fire. When she cried out anxiously, he muttered next to her lips.