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She was moist and needy and reaching for him. Her nipples tingled, awaiting his touch, his mouth. She pictured him naked, above her, below her, and was shocked at the images she conjured up.
“Let’s go inside.” Her fingers were reaching for the bottom of his T-shirt, sliding underneath, absorbing the heat of his skin. “I want this off,” she added, excited by the unfamiliar raspiness in her tone. Expecting to be set on her feet, to stumble inside, Addy felt a rush as Mark stood, lifting her against him in one easy move, and carried her, still kissing her, to her back door. He slid that open somehow and the next thing she knew they were heading down the hall toward her room.
“Take this off,” she groaned, pulling at the hem of his shirt. The carpet caressed the bottoms of her feet as he set her down and she wiggled her toes, feeling the threads between them. She grasped at the thick pile with her toes. Holding on. And gasped at the first sight of Mark Heber’s chest.
He was not anything like the two guys she’d been with before. His chest was huge. Firm and hard and covered with thick black hair. His nipples were hard, prominent, urging her to lick them, suck on them.
She was ready to explode and he hadn’t even unbuckled his pants.
* * *
LYING WITH A WOMAN was not a new experience for Mark. Lying with one, on top of one, underneath one—he was good with all of that. Had been having relations since before he’d quit high school.
But there was no bed like Addy’s. No body like Addy’s.
He couldn’t touch her enough...couldn’t kiss her enough. He was ready to have his big moment and she was still fully dressed. He hadn’t been this turned on his first time out.
Or any time after that.
And as he slowed himself physically, lifting her shirt with hands that trembled, he knew that no matter what secrets she held, they wouldn’t be enough to make him hate her.
He loved her.
It was that simple. And that complicated.
That life-changing.
Adele Kennedy had turned a man who didn’t believe into a believer.
* * *
AS MUCH AS HE wanted to, Mark couldn’t spend the night in Addy’s bed. Tucking her in, he kissed her one last time as he gathered his clothes and quietly left her room. He had to be home to hear Nonnie get out of bed if he was going to beat her to the bacon.
Dropping his clothes in a pile on her dining chair, he stepped into his jeans, pulling them up over a penis already getting hard as he relived some particularly memorable moments from the hours that had just changed his life yet again. He pulled his T-shirt over his head, letting it fall over the fly of his pants rather than tucking it in, and dropped the cell phone that kept him connected to Nonnie at all times in the back pocket that, in his teens, would have held a pack of cigarettes.
He’d been young and foolish once.
He’d paid a heavy price.
And he’d come out a man he could live with.
A man who was willing to pay whatever price he and Addy would have to pay to get to that future they’d talked about.
He’d been right. Making love with her had strengthened their bond. Making love had glued him to her for as long as she wanted him there.
He was halfway to the sliding glass door when he turned back. He couldn’t just go without letting her know that the night had been about far more for him than just sex. He couldn’t leave without communicating to her that she could count on him. No matter what. He’d leave her a note.
Her table was laden with folders and papers, pens and pencils. And her opened laptop computer.
He couldn’t find a blank piece of paper so he reached for the legal pad next to the computer, intending to rip a page from the back.
He’d have done so easily, without reading a word of what she’d written, if his eye hadn’t caught something he recognized as belonging to him.
Looking back, he saw that he hadn’t been mistaken. It was right there. In handwritten script—Mark Heber. His name.
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
A SOUND FROM the kitchen woke her. Sitting straight up in bed, Addy listened. And realized she was naked. She didn’t sleep naked.
