Love Under Two Benedicts(8)
Oh, God. She’d forgotten this, the sudden free fall into desire that the simple action of mouth on mouth could create. Soft and sultry, wet and wonderful, Matthew’s tongue stroked her bottom lip, then swept into the cavern of her mouth, tasting her, learning her.
She tasted him in turn, his flavor the ambrosia she’d longed for. Their kiss became a sexy dance of tongues and lips, a slide and glide that turned her nipples into hard points of desire.
He lifted his mouth from hers, his eyes hooded, his smile more disarming that she’d ever seen it. She felt that smile sliding into her, under her skin, and felt powerless to stop it.
Before she could think of something clever to say to pull her back from the vortex, he gently brought her arms from around his neck and edged her just subtly to the left and into the arms of his brother.
Steven’s mouth devoured hers, his arms hard and secure around her, pressing her to him chest-to-chest and thigh-to-thigh. He tasted different that Matthew, with more raw power and urgent need, and she felt helpless to do anything but surrender to his possession. A sense of safety stole over her, numbing her thoughts so she could only let herself go, let herself enjoy.
Carnal and captivating, his kiss fed the flames of her passion. The ridge pressing against her belly seemed to call to her, and her hips answered with a rolling, urgent thrust.
“I knew it.” Steven’s deep rumble vibrated inside her belly, and those butterflies took to performing aerial maneuvers. “I knew you’d taste like heaven.”
Kelsey blinked, trying to regain her senses, struggling to get her mind working again.
She must have looked worried because Matthew chose that moment to step closer to her. Between them, they bracketed her, cocooned her in male heat and pheromones.
“It’s all right, baby. No one drove past. The town’s asleep.”
“Good.” She hadn’t even thought about what anyone would think seeing her kiss one and then the other of the town’s two most eligible bachelors.
“Come on, sweet thing. Let’s take this party someplace more private.” Steven placed another, this time chaste, kiss on her lips, rubbed a possessive hand down her back, and then stepped away.
Steven walked around to the driver’s side while Matthew opened the passenger door and urged her into the front seat of the Jeep.
He got in after her, lifted her onto his lap, then wrapped the seat belt around them both.
“Are you sure this is legal?” she asked.
Matthew chuckled. “If the deputy sheriff doesn’t complain, I wouldn’t worry about it.”
“You’re the deputy sheriff.” Kelsey practically melted against the hard male body under her. The press of his erection beneath her bottom made her juices flow even faster.
My God if I’m not careful I’m going to leak all over him.
Just then, Matthew pushed his hips up slightly, and Kelsey thought it a miracle she didn’t come right then and there.
She needed to distract herself, fast. Using every bit of willpower she could muster, she searched for something safe to talk about. Her thoughts jumped ahead to their destination. Kelsey had never been to the Benedict ranch itself. She understood the operation and scale of the land was massive, even by Texas standards. “The Big House in town here was the original ranch house, wasn’t it?”
“Yes, until the 1950s when Sarah Benedict and Amanda Jessop-Kendall, along with our grandparents, decided to cede more land to the town. It suited Sarah to live out the rest of her years in the house she’d moved into with her husbands, and it suited our grandparents, who were true ranchers, to build a new house away from the settled area, closer to the land they loved.”
“Your grandmother knew Sarah?” There had been quite a bit in the museum about Sarah Carmichael Benedict. She’d been so beautiful, and Caleb and Joshua had seemed so handsome, it was no wonder they’d been attracted to each other.
“She knew Sarah and Amanda,” Matthew said. “The men had already passed on when Grandma Kate met her husbands. She has some very interesting stories to tell about our great-greats.”
“I met her one of the times I had dinner with your folks,” Kelsey said. “One time, I think Susan said she was in Las Vegas.”
“Grandma Kate loves to tour with a seniors group out of Waco. You never know where she’ll take off to next,” Steven said.
Both men’s tones had softened when they’d spoken of their grandmother. Texan men loved their mothers and grandmothers, probably more, Kelsey thought, than the average American male. She couldn’t recall too many male friends in Pennsylvania who’d displayed such sentimentality toward their older female relatives.