Vivian Arend - Rocky Mountain Angel

There was a flicker in his eyes—something sad and haunted—before he shook his head. “I didn’t mean to dump on you. Just didn’t want to go to your mom’s place all tensed up. I’m okay now.”

“Liar.” Allison bit her lip at his expression. “Well, you are lying about being fine. And I get that you don’t want to talk about what’s upset you. But tense I can help with. Give me a second.”

She scrambled to her feet and raced back to the truck, reaching behind the seat for the blanket she’d tucked there earlier.

He gave her a confused look. “What are you doing?”

She shook out the sturdy picnic cloth, placing the cushiony fabric on the grass beside where he sat. “You’re still tense. Take off your shirt and I can at least massage out a few of the knots.”

Gabe eyed the blanket warily, then nodded, rising on his knees to strip off his shirt and undershirt.

Allison pulled a small bottle of hand cream from her purse triumphantly. She dropped the bag to the side and turned to deal with Gabe.

Oh damn. He’d laid himself out on the blanket like she’d asked, resting his head on his hands. The position showed off his muscles beautifully—shoulders, biceps, and the firm bands that wrapped around his torso down along his waist.

A slick of sexual tension stroked her spine. A massage might help get rid of his tension, but it was going to increase hers.

“You ready?” Gack. Her voice sounded far too high-pitched and unnatural.

“Yeah, I guess.”

She knelt at his side and warmed up the cream before putting her hands on his shoulders.

For the next fifteen minutes Allison’s mind raced as she worked her hands over Gabe’s back. Her thumbs along his spine, fingertips digging into the hard bulges that slowly relaxed. She slipped lower, wondering why she was doing this to herself. What had started as an offer from a friend to another was making all kinds of more-than-friends ideas pop into her head.

No. They’d made it clear that this was about helping each other. The little bits of teasing they’d done at the start of their time together—she’d made sure that was put aside. Just ignored any of the sexual attraction she felt for the man.

But right now? Good Lord, she was getting turned on.

She’d straddled him shortly after she began, and now she sat on his legs, the edge of his jeans the barrier line for “go no farther”. Only she wanted to. Wanted to pull down the fabric and let her hands wander all over his warm skin. Wanted to press hard into his ass muscles and curl her fingers around his naked flesh.

Wanted what she shouldn’t want.

She swallowed and tried to ignore the lust. Focus instead on the sights and sounds around them.

Only the rush of the river and the nearby trees weren’t nearly as mesmerizing as his body. She smoothed her palms all the way up to his shoulders, wishing she were brave enough to lean down and set her teeth to his skin.

Suddenly she was no longer sitting on his thighs, but lying on her back as he loomed over her.

It was the little noises she made that finally broke his control.

He’d been riding hard on his frustrations as much as possible, not wanting to punish her for what Ben had stroked to a high pitch. Holding on to her and accepting her comfort had seemed like an innocent thing. Until she put her hands on him and all that adrenaline was directed away from anger at his impossible life. Now the fervour was firmly centered on his cock, and she was the reason for the change of locations.

He held her trapped, her dark hair spread out on the blanket as he examined her face for a sign he was about to get rejected. Little puffs of air escaped her lips, her chest rising and falling way too fast for someone who’d simply been giving a chaste rubdown.

She stared up, pupils dark and wide. Their bodies tight together, his groin solid to hers in a way that couldn’t possibly let her fail to recognize the state he was in.

She licked her lips, and this time he was the one who groaned in frustration. In need.

“Tell me no,” he whispered.

She caught his head in her hand, fingers threaded through his hair to hold him in place. “No.”

Then she dragged him toward her and lifted her lips.

The connection between his brain and his body shut down for the second time that day. He took the kiss she offered. Took her mouth and lips, their teeth knocking for a moment as they both went a little wild. Frustration, fire from whatever source, they both took and gave and goddammit if it wasn’t exactly what he had to have right then.

Allison squirmed, opening her thighs wider to let him settle tighter between her legs. He matched his hips and his tongue, pulsing slower now, making firm enough contact to tease them both. She dragged her hands through his hair and down his back, fingernails scraping over the territory she’d been rubbing so enthusiastically earlier.

When she clutched his ass, planted her feet on the ground and rose to meet him, he was caught wanting to take this way further than it should go.

He rolled them slightly, breaking their kiss. Keeping her against his body but pressing his lips to her face, to the hollow of her neck. “I should stop.”

“We should stop. Oh God, yes, Gabe…ahhh…” She held on too tight for her words to push him away. He sucked on her neck again, and she jerked as if he’d put a brand to her skin.

He smiled before licking the sensitive spot. “I found a hot button.”

She had thrown a leg over his thigh, keeping their groins in contact. “I think my entire body is a hot button right now.”

Somehow he found the strength to stop. Well, not stop, but slow down. He leaned up on an elbow and stroked his knuckles over her cheek. “I feel like I should apologize, but I’m not sure that’s the right thing to do.”

“You didn’t do anything to be sorry for.”

“I want to.”

Her eyes widened for a second then lowered until she was looking at him from under her lashes. “Me too.”

As if they’d talked it through, they both relaxed down from high alert. Gabe lay back, head resting on his arm. Allison leaned away slightly, a narrow gap opening between them.

He kept touching her, though, trailing his fingers along her arm, over the dip of her waistline. “We’re a couple of fools. Or I should just speak for myself.”

She shook her head. “I don’t know if it’s foolish, but…Gabe?” She lifted her chin and smiled. “We’re grownups. We’re allowed to—”

When she didn’t continue but flushed bright red, he had to stop from laughing and embarrassing her worse. “We’re allowed to go from me being mad at Ben to damn near fucking each other in an open field?”

She poked him in the chest. “You telling me you were touching me just because you’re mad at your father? I call bullshit.”

She was a smart one. He’d told Ben that, and here was more proof. “I’m touching you because you’re a beautiful woman. And you’ve been living under my roof for a month, and seeing you wander around in that thin bathrobe is driving me crazy.”

Allison’s mouth fell open. “Thin?”

“See through. Completely. Damn, when you stand in the kitchen getting coffee in the mornings? The light shines right through the window, and I can see every curve and hell if I don’t want to go back and take another shower. Cold, to make me stop from thinking about peeling the fabric off you and—”

Her hand covered his mouth. “You should have told me.”

He licked her palm, and she smiled, the smile turning to a gasp as he slid his hand over her ass and cupped her butt cheek. “You would have turned even redder than you are now.”

She nodded, pulling her hand down his chest, her gaze following her fingers. “So…what’re we going to do about this?”

“Buy you a thicker robe?”

Allison stuck out her tongue, and he had to hold himself back from wanting to lean in and catch it with his mouth. Start kissing her all over again, maybe remove a few of her layers.

Lay her out in the full sunshine and examine every single part of her in minute detail, preferably with his mouth.

She exhaled slowly. “We shouldn’t strip and have sex right now, should we?”

“We shouldn’t.”

“But we want to, right? Both of us?” Her bravado slipped for a minute before the mischievous smile returned. “Well, I’ll speak for myself. Right now I’m fairly certain I’d be fine with the sex-in-the-meadow thing.”

Oh God. “Oh, we’re both on board, but we can’t. Shouldn’t.”

She shook her head. “We’re both crazy.”

Gabe gave up and rolled to his back, staring up at the sky. His body ached, but his mind was strangely clear. A lot more clear than he’d been while driving away from the picnic.

Allison leaned over him, her dark hair falling past her shoulder and brushing his chest. “Gabe?”

He kept his hands pinned where they were to stop himself from grabbing her and starting all over again. “Yeah?”

She wrinkled her nose. “We should get over to my mom’s. She’s going to wonder where we are.”

Somewhere deep inside the amusement started. It had just been that kind of fucked-up day, and there was nowhere else for this to go. From contentment to envy to anger to lust. And back to contentment—and the start and finish were because of Allison. “I’d say you were right about that.”

When she would have pulled away, he caught her, hand gentle but firm around the back of her neck. Her lashes fluttered as she stared at him questioningly.

“We’re not done this conversation,” he warned.

“We were talking?”

“With our bodies. Yeah, a loud conversation. Nearly shouting.”

Allison nodded. “I think we should…finish the discussion later. Sometime. If you’d like.”

His cock, which had begun to relax, kicked back up a notch. “Maybe later tonight?”

That tongue of hers slipped out again, just briefly, and he bit back a moan of frustration.

He kissed her. Briefly. Intensely. Then let her go and they both found their feet. Gabe had to adjust his cock, attempting to do it discreetly, but when he glanced at her, Allison was grinning and trying not to show it.

The crazy mixed-up sexual tension between them was somehow cathartic. All his frustrations with Ben, and the impossible task before him, had morphed into the single thought of taking Allison into his bed. Focusing on finding out what made her squirm even more than sucking on that sweet spot on her neck.

She scooped up the blanket and shook it out, waiting for him to join her.

Wasn’t much that he could think of to say. Thank you? That was stupid—and yet it was somehow right as well.

She’d saved his sanity, if only for a moment. He’d take sexual frustration any day for that.

“I need those three boxes as well, please, Gabe.”

Allison stopped in her unpacking of one of the earlier totes he’d brought to watch the organized chaos taking place before her. Like some miniature commander in chief, her mother was having a great time ordering Gabe around. He’d carried everything she’d asked for from under the storage section of the garage. Then he’d been sent to the shed for all the boxes marked Christmas Ornaments. Now he was climbing up and down a ladder to pull out a stash that had been hidden in the attic space.

“Mom, what on earth was Dad doing putting stuff up there?”

Maisey lifted her shoulders briefly, one hand fluttering up to brush back the hair that had fallen across her forehead. “He loved to save junk. A bit of a packrat, you know. I’ve been slowly cleaning through things, but since you two volunteered, I thought this was a good time to do another chunk of the work. No sense in having this stuff all over the place taking up room if no one is going to use it.”

Allison focused on the box before her a little more firmly. She didn’t want to think about how her mom was probably doing this so that once she was gone, they wouldn’t have to.

Gabe placed another box on the stack against the wall before coming around the table to where she stood. He leaned into her, wrapping his arms tight for a moment and hugging her. His lips skimmed her ear. “You okay?”

She shivered involuntarily even as she nodded.

The goose bumps that rose on her arms—how could she be getting turned on at the same time she was worried sick over her mom?

“You two—” Maisey turned from the kitchen sink with an empty garbage bag in her hand and a smile on her face. “I swear. It’s good to see you so much in love.”