The Wedding In White

“It will. It will!”

“Not nearly enough,” he continued. His mouth touched her eyelids and closed them while his thumbs worked their way lazily inside the lacy cups. “You have the prettiest little breasts, Natalie,” he whispered as he traced the soft skin tenderly. “I’d give almost anything right now to put my mouth over them and suckle you.”

She cried out, shocked at the delicious images the words produced in her mind.

“I ache,” he breathed into her lips, even as his thumbs finally, finally, found her and pressed hard against the little peaks.

She sobbed, pushing her face against him as she shivered in the throes of unbelievable sensation.

He made a rough sound and maneuvered her closer to the dark end of the porch, away from the door and windows. His hands cupped her, caressed her insistently while his hot mouth pressed hungrily against her throat just where her pulse throbbed.

“Yes,” she choked, lifting even closer into his hands. “Yes, Mack, yes, please, oh, please!”

“You crazy little fool!” he moaned.

Seconds later, he’d unzipped the dress and his mouth was where his hands had been, hot and feverish in its urgency as it sought the soft skin of her breast and finally forced its way into the lacy cup to fasten hungrily on the hard peak.

Her nails bit into the nape of his neck like tiny blades, pulling his mouth even closer as she fed on the exquisite demands it made on her innocence. She lifted against him rhythmically while he suckled her in the warm darkness, his arms contracted to bring her as close as he could get her.

The suddenness with which he pushed her away left her staggering, so weak that she could hardly stand. He’d moved away from her to lean against the wall, where one big hand pressed hard to support him. He was breathing as if he’d been running a race, and she could see the shudders that ran through his tall body. She didn’t know what to say or what to do. She was overwhelmed. She couldn’t even move to pull up her dress.

After a few seconds he took a harsh, deep breath and turned to look at her. She hadn’t moved a step since he’d dragged himself away from her. He smiled ruefully. She was, he thought, painfully innocent.

“Here,” he said in a husky tone, moving to pull up her dress and fasten it. “You can’t go inside like that.”

She looked at him like a curious little cat while he dressed her, as if it was a matter of course to do it.

“Natalie,” he laughed harshly, “you have to stop looking like an accident victim.”

“Do you do that with her?” she asked, and her pale green eyes flashed.

He mumbled a curse as he fastened the hook at the top of the dress. “Glenna is none of your business.”

“Oh, I see. You can ask me about my social life, and I can’t ask you about yours, is that how it works?”

He frowned as he held her by both shoulders and looked at her. “Glenna isn’t a fuzzy little peach ripening on a tree limb,” he muttered. “She’s a grown, sophisticated woman who doesn’t equate a good time with a wedding ring.”

“Mack!” Natalie exclaimed furiously.

“I don’t even have to look at you to know you’re blushing,” he said heavily. “Twenty-two, and you haven’t really aged a day since I held you in your bedroom the night of Carl’s wreck.”

“You looked at me,” she whispered.

His hands tightened. “Lucky you, that looking was all I did.”

Her eyes searched his face in the dim light. “You wanted me,” she said with sudden realization.

“Yes, I did,” he confessed. “But you were seventeen.”

“And now I’m twenty-two.”

He sighed and smiled. “There isn’t much difference,” he murmured. “And there still isn’t any future in it.”

“Not for a man who just wants to have a little fun occasionally,” she said sarcastically.

“You certainly don’t fall into that category,” he agreed. “I’ve got two brothers and a sister to take care of here. There isn’t room for a wife.”

“Okay. Just forget that I proposed.”

His fingers trailed gently across her soft, swollen mouth. “Besides the responsibilities, I’m not ready to settle down. Not for years yet.”

“I’m sure they’ll take back the engagement ring if I ask them nicely.”

He blinked. “Are we having the same conversation?”

“I only bought you a cheap engagement ring, anyway,” she continued outrageously. “It probably wouldn’t have fit, so don’t worry about it.”

He started laughing. He couldn’t help it. She really was a pain in the neck. “Damn it, Natalie!” He hugged her close and hard, an affectionate hug with bare overtones of unsatisfied lust.

She hugged him back with a long sigh, and her eyes closed. “I think it’s like baby ducks,” she murmured absently.

“What is?”

“Imprinting. They follow the first moving thing they see when they hatch, assuming it’s their mother. Maybe it’s like that with men and women. You were the first man I was ever barely intimate with, so I’ve imprinted on you.”

His heart jumped wildly and his arms tightened around her. “The world is full of men who want to get married and have kids.”

“And I’ll find one someday,” she finished for him. “Have it your own way. But if you really want me to find someone else to fixate on, I have to tell you that dragging me into dark corners and pulling my dress half off isn’t the way to go about it.”

He was really laughing now, so hard that he had to let her go. “I give up,” he said helplessly.

“It’s too late now,” she returned, going to fetch her purse from the floor. “You’ve said you don’t want the ring.”

“Let’s go inside while there’s still time,” he replied as he moved toward the door.

“Not yet,” she said quickly. She moved into a patch of light and looked into her compact mirror, taking time to replace her lipstick and fix her hair.

He watched her calmly, his gaze narrow and intense.

She put the compact in her evening bag and moved toward him. “You’d better do some quick repairs of your own,” she murmured after she examined his face. “That shade of lipstick definitely doesn’t suit you.”

He gave her a glare, but he pulled out his handkerchief and let her remove the stains from his cheek and neck. Fortunately, the lipstick had missed his white collar or there wouldn’t be any disguising it.

“Next time, don’t put on six layers of it before you come over here,” he advised coolly.

“Next time, keep your hands in your pockets.”

He chuckled dryly. “Fat chance, with your dress showing off your breasts like that.”

She unfastened her lacy shawl and draped it across her bodice and over her shoulder. She gave him a haughty glance and waited for him to open the front door.

“The next dress I buy will have a mandarin neckline, you can bet on that,” she told him under her breath.

“Make sure it doesn’t have buttons, then,” he whispered outrageously as he stood aside to let her pass.

“Lecher,” she whispered.

“Temptress,” he whispered back.

She walked past him and into the living room before he could think up any more smart remarks to throw at her. She looked calm, but inside, she was rippling with tiny fears and remnants of pleasure from his touch. It occurred to her that, over the years, she’d been more intimate with him than any other man she’d ever known, but he’d never kissed her.

Thinking about that didn’t help her situation, so she smiled warmly at Bob and Charles as they rose to their feet, and then at Vivian and the tall, blond man who stood up from his seat on the sofa beside her.

“Natalie, this is Whit,” Vivian introduced them. Her blue eyes looked at the blond man with total possession. Whit, in turn, looked at Natalie as if he’d just discovered oil.

Oh, boy, Natalie thought miserably as she registered the gleam in Whit’s blue eyes when they shook hands. He held hers for just a few seconds too long, and she grimaced. Here was a complication she hadn’t counted on.

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