Promises Kept Page 5

  He was finally buried deep within her, but instead of being able to comfort her, he found himself struggling for long moments not to lose complete control, and when he was finally able to look at her again, she seemed to be unsure of where to put her hands, finally settling them on his shoulders, pushing gently at him as if she wanted him to get off her, her distress plain on her face.

  Despite the fact it went against everything his body was telling him to do, Remy slid himself slowly away from her, hearing the way she drew in a quick breath, then setting himself the task of bringing her to the heights she'd been at before he'd spoiled her pleasure.

  He knew from experience that her breasts were exquisitely sensitive as he drew an already tightly pointed nipple into his mouth, feeling an unexpected sense of relief when she sighed in pleasure. He hadn't realized just how concerned he had been about whether or not he could return her to the heights she had been at before.

  His other hand traveled up between them as he leaned slightly to his right, allowing himself access to her deepest secrets, holding her open with his body and claiming her as his own since this was familiar yet still piquantly new territory. He'd held them both back from consummating their relationship because he'd wanted to wallow in it, and wallow he had. Remy had never missed any opportunity to touch or fondle her, especially before or after a much deserved punishment. Luckily for him – for the two of them – Libby was working insane hours, and they were alone more often than not, and Remy had availed himself of every private moment he could get with her.

  Like this one.

  Despite the discomfort he'd caused her, he was over the moon to realize that his fingers were covered in her dew as he dragged them slowly up to where he knew she wanted them, and then slowly, excruciatingly slowly, began to tease that very tender bud.

  Her long, low moan was partly sensual and partly one of frustration. Remy knew that Anna thought he took too much time with her – which was, he pointed out, the exact opposite complaint most women had about their men. But she was not sufficiently contrite. She felt he was teasing her.

  And, of course, he was, in part.

  The other part of him simply reveled in her undiluted, unreserved responses to him, and enjoyed taking it slow. Very slow, according to her. Too slow, even.

  Not that her pleas changed his behavior in the slightest. He intended to take his time with her and savor every second. And if that drove her around the bend in frustration, then he might have more opportunities than he had already conjured up to sear her little bottom before he allowed her the ultimate in ecstasy.

  It was a win-win, as far as he was concerned.

  Only this time, before he allowed her to climax - a point which she reached in record time, he noticed, not that he allowed that to discourage his eager, teasing exploration of her most delicate parts – Remy entered her slowly, watching her face closely for signs of true distress.

  Her forehead did wrinkle some, but he eased himself inside her very slowly until she opened her eyes, reached up and put her hand on his butt, encouraging him to seat himself deeply within her, which he did immediately and entirely without thinking.

  "Are you okay?" he asked, very concerned that he had just taken purely by instinct when she was probably still uncomfortable from what had happened not long ago.

  Her hand cupped his cheek and she looked up at him with a depth of feeling he never expected to experience in his life. "I'm fine." She wiggled her butt a bit beneath him, causing him to reach out and grab a hold of her. "I'm way more than fine."

  "Stop right now."

  The imp's grin only widened as she exercised her newly found sensual powers. "Do you like that? Or this?" Echoing what he often said to her when he was teasing her with her own pleasure, she asked coyly as she lifted herself up and rode and arched into him, finally locking her legs behind his back and tilting her pelvis in a way that sent him even deeper inside her.

  Every movement was blissful torture. He wanted to make love to her, but at this rate, he was only going to last about three more seconds – if that. "You're going to pay for this, you know," he warned in the tone he usually reserved for when she'd done something that displeased him.

  Her smile didn't dampen one bit. "It's about time the shoe was on the other foot – so to speak. You're always torturing me." Then she got a sly look on her face and asked innocently, "I wonder what would happen if I did this?"

  She managed to cause him to completely lose control by clenching herself even more tightly around him than she already was, and as she continued to meet his every thrust with a welcoming squeeze, he found himself in Paradise long before he wanted to.

  And despite the way his breath was heaving in and out of his lungs and that he had collapsed his entire not inconsiderable weight on top of her, he made sure he was able to resurrect himself early enough in the evening to make sure that she paid for her impudence in spades.

  Chapter V

  Having relived some of the most wonderful yet torturously painful times they'd had, Remy surrendered to Anna in his dreams in much the same way as he always had in real life, although he didn't think she ever realized just how much power she really had over him. That was his own stupid fault and no one else's.

  The next day the alcohol made him as miserable as he'd predicted. He started work late and ended early, forced to seek some aspirin, water, and a quiet dark corner to wait until the pounding lessoned enough that he could function. Libby was still locked in her room — although she knew better than to actually lock the door since he had long since placed a moratorium on that in the house — crying as if her heart were breaking. He poured himself a glass of orange juice that was spiked with a hair of the dog, taking two big swallows of the vile concoction and slamming the glass down on the kitchen counter, having made up his mind that he was going to do something about the situation.

  He was in no shape to fly his own plane to New England, but he could sure as hell catch a flight there. He couldn't have flown there himself anyway since he wasn't about to leave the plane in Portland while they drove down to Texas. It was – dammit, it was two o'clock now, there wasn't a moment to waste. Having made up his mind, he wanted to get it over and done with as soon as possible. Six years was long enough to live with regret.

  He went online to book a reservation that left at 4pm. Add in the five-and-a-half hour flight, passing through two time zones, renting a car and then driving to wherever she lived, he figured it would be after midnight before he made it up there in the wilds of Mine.. At least if he landed in Portland, he'd miss the drive up from Boston with all the Masshole tourists trying desperately to get to Vacationland, for which he would be ever grateful, although there was no telling how tourist - clogged the roads would be around Portland in June.

  If he could remember correctly from what he'd been able to glean from his sister, who took every opportunity to needle him about the absence of her best friend and that he was the sole cause of her departure, Anna lived along the coast somewhere. He sighed. At this time of the year, anywhere near the water was going to be clogged with "flat landers" –the Maine term for out-of-staters, regardless of whether they were from the Rockies or the Great Plains. He'd gone to Harvard Business School and had spent a fair amount of time being a tourist in Maine himself, staying at a friend's house in Cape Liz, right around Portland proper.

  Well, there was no hope for it. It had to be done.

  He tapped loudly on Libby's door, but she wasn't answering. He didn't want to just burst into her room – any more than he wanted her to come bursting into his. "Elizabeth Harper McMahon, you had better get to this door before I count three. One."

  The door opened as if by magic, but only just the slightest crack. He had to push it open himself, because his bedraggled sister was already trying to blot out the world by pulling all of the covers over her head.

  He sat next to the pretty patchwork-covered head. Or what he assumed was her head, awkwardly patting the area where a should
er could be, although there really was no telling. "I'm sorry about this whole fiasco, brat. But I'm going to get the situation straightened out, I promise. Maybe as soon as tonight – or early tomorrow morning. I promise you that Anna will be at your wedding."

  The lump under the bed sheets heard the determination in his tone and knew that Anna was in for a rude awakening. Libby poked her head out, just barely. "Don't go storming off and kidnap her on my account."

  Remy frowned, because that was exactly what he intended to do.

  "You can't," Libby blurted, knowing she'd read him like a book. "She's still very hurt, Remy. I don't know what it was that you said to her that night, and I don't think I want to know. But I'd be surprised if she lets you in the door, much less close enough to kidnap her."

  She didn't like the smile that spread across her brother's face. "You leave that to me, brat," he said smoothly. "But I need her address."

  Libby hesitated, but she had to ask, looking him directly in the eye. "You won't hurt her again, will you? I don't think she could survive it, Remy, and I'm not exaggerating when I say that."

  Her innocent question brought a look to his face was one of the starkest pains she'd ever seen, from which he managed to recover quickly, the usual determined expression masking his true feelings. She was heartened to hear him say as he turned and walked out the door, "I'll give up the ranch before I'd ever hurt her again, believe me."

  * * * * *

  He emailed Libby his flight information – one way since Anna refused to fly, and crammed himself into a coach seat that was too small for his frame. He ended up sucking on his kneecaps, which was why he preferred to fly himself wherever it was that he needed to go. He could more than afford a first class seat, but the financial woes of the past had left scars on him that he wasn't sure would ever heal, and he carefully calculated every penny spent.

  At least he was able to rent a big, comfortable SUV with which to make the drive to the hinterlands where she lived, somewhere north of Portland in the wilds of the mid-coast.

  Although the car came with all of the usual doodads, he hated being told what to do by anyone – including the disembodied voice of the GPS - so he turned it off, then made a grave tactical error by choosing to go up scenic Route 1 rather than I95, figuring incorrectly that the majority of the tourists would use the more convenient four lane highway.

  Boy, was he wrong. He ended up wending his way at a snail's pace through the busy streets of Wiscasset and Damariscotta and following bumper to bumper traffic until the road veered inland a bit, leaving the majority of the tourists behind. He'd put the directions to her doorstep on his iPhone, which he consulted only occasionally until he hit the tiny village of Tamarack Cove.

  Hers was a tiny little house, hardly bigger than the living room at the ranch. It was a house, not an apartment, and Remy knew from Libby that she had bought it herself. Having grown up in places that were never really hers, he knew that home ownership was important to Anna. It gave her the stability she craved, and that her Mom hadn't always been able to provide for her.

  It was past midnight, and everything he'd driven by except the Dominos Pizza and the Dunkin' Donuts was closed, tourists be damned. He already liked this little town.

  The house was dark. She was obviously asleep. Anna never had been much of a night owl. He'd always ended up carrying her to bed, or finding her already nesting there long before he even considered it. But then, she was a much happier early bird than he was. He didn't need a lot of sleep, luckily, but given a choice, he would rather stay up late and sleep in come morning.

  Especially if she was sleeping in, too.

  He had to wrest his mind away from that avenue of thought, though. It wouldn't do to tap on her door in the middle of the night with a raging hard on, like the sex fiend that he was around her. In fact, he went to so far as to leave his suitcase in the car. No sense in alerting her to the fact he intended to stay here tonight, whether or not she'd let him into her bed, which he knew she wasn't about to do. He'd be lucky if she let him into her house.

  He pressed the doorbell and was amazed that she answered in within seconds, turning on the porch light and throwing open the door in the same motion, it seemed.

  And she looked considerably less than happy to see him. Her face blanched so white he thought he might have to bull his way in there just to catch her when she fainted. She'd always been on the thin side, although generously endowed, but now she was rail thin, so much so that he wanted to go back to the doughnut shop and grab her a dozen to eat. He could see that those almost violet blue eyes were swollen and red, attesting to the fact she had been sobbing her heart out recently, all because of him. His gut clenched and his heart nearly stopped as he came face to face for the first time with physical evidence of the agony he had caused her.

  And all those glorious waves of gold blonde hair were gone, as if she could exorcize him from her memory by removing one of his favorite things about her. It was far from a buzz cut, and in fact her hair was long enough to form a cap of curls around her face. But he would forever mourn the loss of such beauty.

  "What the fuck are you doing here?" she asked, the faintness of the question not lending it much oomph, despite the vulgarity.

  And he'd address that with her later. He knew that she knew that was what he was thinking, because he saw she couldn't quite prevent herself from biting her lip and remembering just how it was that he felt about cursing. "You know why I'm here."

  Dear God, it had been years and yet that tone he had when he was chiding or scolding her - the one that said she should have known much better than to think she could get away with that and now her poor backside was going to pay, and pay dearly - was still able to make her heart beat inordinately fast as her nipples hardened beneath her robe.

  Anna adjusted it, folding her arms across her chest for good measure, hoping he hadn't seen, but knowing that he always noticed everything about her whether she wanted him to or not.

  "Well then, you wasted your time and your money. Go back to Texas." Anna made as if to close the door, and he did nothing to stop her.

  Instead, he merely held up a ring of keys that she was loathe to recognize, but they were definitely hers – well, the set she'd given to Libby, anyway. Damn it, why hadn't she had a chain put in? Or a deadbolt or something, anything?

  Because it's Maine, and no one did that here. She knew people who still never locked their doors at all, and there was a grocery delivery service at the small, family owned market in town where she could call them up and they would not only bring the groceries to her house, but they would put them away in the right cupboards and the fridge or freezer, too.

  Things were still stuck somewhere in the late fifties or early sixties, and that was the way people liked it.

  She feared he would sleep on her doorstep if she refused to let him in, and she definitely did not want her neighbors — who were wonderful but just the slightest bit nosy – to talk, which they would do anyway once they saw his big behemoth of a car in the driveway. She refused to give them anything more to chatter about, like some well dressed bum sprawled on her porch. Wouldn't Mrs. Trumble — her retired neighbor just across the street who was the eyes and ears of the neighborhood – have a good time with that juicy bit?

  So Anna turned away from the door, leaving it unlocked but not open. She didn't want to give him the satisfaction of actually opening her door to him — that would be just too much for her to handle.

  It reminded him of the chilly reception Libby had given him earlier in the day.

  Anna refused to sit, but instead paced around while he took in her house. It suited her perfectly – warm, cozy, inviting and ultra feminine. He was starting to itch already, and swore he could feel the estrogen seeping into his pores as he stood there looking at all the ruffles, roses and lace she surrounded herself with.

  But it was pretty, he had to hand it to her. Just like she was.

  He leaned against what he assumed was the
coat closet door and just watched her for a moment as she paced back and forth, alternately rubbing her arms as if she was missing his arms around her and folding them angrily across her chest.

  "Didn't you make a hotel reservation?" she seized on finally, coming to stand in front of him.

  That sly, angelic smile of his spread slowly across his face. "Why would I get a hotel room when I have you to stay with?"

  He thought he heard her growl, then wondered if he had been mistaken, until a blanket and a set of sheets hit him square in the face, along with a pillow and a set of towels.

  "The loveseat pulls out into a twin bed. There's a lock on my bedroom door to which you do not have a key. Have a nice evening, Mr. McMahon."

  With that, she disappeared behind said bedroom door, leaving him not just a little surprised to be left to his own devices. He'd been loaded for bear from the moment he stepped of the plane, and she had simply retreated, which was a tact he had never expected of her. Anna met challenges head on; she didn't run away from them.

  His heart squeezed painfully in his chest to think that he had hurt her that much. But what had he expected, really? It wasn't as if he didn't know that she had been devastated. He'd known it deep in his heart as he was saying the words that he knew would bring her to her knees, but he'd gone right ahead and said them, stubborn bullheaded idiot that he was.

  Remy made up the bed, which, of course, was nearly a foot too short for him, then he heard his stomach growl and remembered that he hadn't eaten since… well, he hadn't eaten. So he walked down the hall and stood in front of her door, knocking quietly and not waiting for a response. "I'm going to forage in your fridge. I haven't eaten today."

  He waited for a long moment, then heard a small, watery, "Okay."

  Every fiber of him wanted to knock that door down and pull her into his arms, but he knew that probably wasn't the right way to go about this. If he had to, in the end, he would – to get her to come to Libby's wedding. But he wasn't going to storm into her room unless he absolutely had to, no matter what his gonads wanted.