My Man Pendleton(82)
Author: Elizabeth Bevarly

“Oh, no, you’re not,” she said.

He tugged once, hard, and pulled the garment over his head. “Oops,” he countered easily. “Guess you were wrong. Guess I am taking my shirt off.”

He jostled his arms so the sweatshirt scrunched down, revealing the T-shirt he wore beneath. Then he scooted it down over his hands, wadded it up in a ball, and turned halfway around to toss it toward a basketball hoop that hung on the back of his bedroom door. It fell through easily, scoring a two-pointer quite nicely.

“Yes,” he murmured as he turned back around to Kit.

“Don’t you dare take your other shirt off,” she commanded.

In response to her edict, Pendleton reached behind himself again, this time bunching his T-shirt in his fist.

“Pendleton…”she said, her voice laced with warning. “Don’t… you… dare.”

In one smooth move, he removed his T-shirt, too, pausing with it wrapped around his upper arms, obscuring his na**d chest. “Oops,” he said again, smiling. “Guess you were wrong about that one, too.”

Kit stood, both hands clenched into fists at her sides, clearly intending to bolt.

“Sit,” Pendleton instructed her.

She shook her head. “If you’re not going to do what I tell you to do, then I don’t have to do what you me to do.”

“You’re not going anywhere until I show you what I need to show you.”

Her cheeks stained with a blush of pink that Pendleton found very becoming. “Thanks, but I’ve already seen it,” she said.

He wiggled his eyebrows suggestively. “Not like this, you haven’t.”

“Pendleton would you just—”

He shed his T-shirt completely then, tossing it aside, and Kit’s mouth immediately quit running. It didn’t close, but it did stop running. Then she gaped at him, her gaze fixed intently on his chest. A specific part of his chest, as a matter of fact. The part where kids put their hand when they say the Pledge of Allegiance to the flag. Right where his new tattoo was.

“Oh, my God,” she whispered. “Is that real?”

He rotated his left arm slowly, working out some of the achiness he still felt in the muscles beneath the spot where the week-old decoration lay. “Yeah. It’s real.”

Kit only shook her head in silence as she approached him, her gaze never leaving the illustration of not one, butwo big ol’ nasty cherubs hovering on each side of a heart. As she drew nearer, she lifted her hand toward the tattoo, her fingers curled gingerly in preparation of touching it. At the last minute, she halted, turning her gaze up to meet his.

“Is it okay?” she asked. “If I touch it, I mean?”

“Why, Miss McClellan,” he said with a smile. “I thought you’d never ask.”

With a shaky smile of her own in return, she extended her hand and traced her fingertips gently over the words inscribed within the heart. Not Kit. Not Katherine. What Pendleton had the tattoo artist inscribe was Katherine Atherton McClellan Pendleton.

“Oh, Pendleton,” she murmured, her eyes filling up to brimming with tears. “I can’t believe you did this.”

“The pain factor was enormous,” he told her. “It hurt like a sonofabitch. Not to mention the fact that they had to shave my chest to put it there. Do you know what it’s like for a man who’s entering the hair-loss phase of his life to watch while someone shaves his chest?”

She shook her head, laughing softly. “No. I have no idea what that’s like.” A single, fat tear spilled from each of her eyes, tumbling down her face in a slow stream. “But I do know what it’s like to have someone fall in love with me. Pendleton…” Gingerly, she brushed her fingers over the tattoo again. Then, very, very quietly, she repeated, “I can’t believe you did this. I can’t believe you…”

As her words trailed off, he brushed his thumbs over each of her cheeks, wiping away her tears. Immediately, however, two more took their place. “What can I say?” he asked softly. “Love makes a guy do crazy things.”

She smiled. “You really do love me. You love me.”

The fact that she said the words as a statement, and not a question, indicated Kit had come a long way in her view of things. He cupped her jaw with his hand and dipped his head forward, brushing his lips tenderly over her cheek.

“Yeah,” he said quietly when he pulled back to gaze upon her face, “I really do love you.”

She swallowed hard, her eyes never leaving his. Then, in a soft murmur, she said, “Pendleton?”

“Yeah?”

“Take advantage of me.”

He smiled. “Well, okay. If that’s what it takes to make you happy.”

As if she couldn’t wait for him, Kit pushed herself up on tiptoe and covered his mouth with hers, scooping her fingers into his hair, urging his head down for a more complete taste of him. Where their previous joining was slow, leisurely and tentative, Pendleton wanted a union this time that was fast, intense, and decisive. Considering the demand in Kit’s kiss, not to mention the wanting inside him that came with more than a week’s separation, he felt pretty certain that was exactly what they were going to have.

Evidently, Kit was pretty certain of that, too, because she removed her hands from his hair long enough to cross her arms over her torso and grab the hem of her sweater. Unfortunately, she seemed less willing to remove her mouth from his, and once her sweater was over her arms, it only made it as far as her neck. No matter, Pendleton thought as he moved his hands behind her back to deftly unhook her brassiere. They could work around this. They could.

She pulled her arms from the straps of her bra, and that, at least, fell to the floor. Then, as she went to work on the buttons of his fly, he lowered the zipper on hers. Awkwardly, they undressed each other as well as they could, then finally, finally, Kit pulled away long enough to drag her sweater over her head and toss it to the floor. Pendleton started to move in for another mating of their mouths, when Kit lifted a hand, index finger extended upward, to stop him.

“Wait,” she said.

“Wait?” he repeated incredulously. “But I came all this way just so you and my tattoo could become intimately acquainted.”

“Hold that thought.”

She smiled as she turned her back on him, and he had to admit that observing her from this new angle had its advantages. What could he say? Kit had a great ass.

“I found something else when I was violating your boyhood domain the other night,” she told him. “Something that might come in handy now.”