Free Keepsake by Antoinette Stockenberg

cheeks. Again he took heart.
    "You're right about this place," he mused. "I feel as if we're standing in some parallel universe. Everything's the same—and yet it's not the same at all." On a whim, he touched her cheek lightly with the back of his fingers and said softly, "Especially you."
    She didn't pull away, but her lashes fluttered down in a gesture that struck him as both shy and seductive at the same time. What was it about her? She was driving him quietly crazy.
    She said, "And yet you're just the same as I remember."
    Quinn shook his head. "No. Not the same at all. Seventeen years ago, I wouldn't have dared do ... this," he said, lowering his lips to hers in a kiss. It was lightly given, the kind of kiss a very cool quarterback might give a slightly geeky classmate—but it left Quinn's heart pounding wildly in his chest.
    He pulled back, as if he'd got a mild shock, and repeated with wonder, "Not the same at all."
    Somehow Olivia didn't seem nearly as self-conscious as he was feeling. Those long, thick eyelashes fluttered back up, revealing eyes that were dark, dancing, forthright. She didn't say a word, only lifted her arms around his neck and pulled him back for another kiss—this one hot, hard, and wet.
    Sacked!
    But not for long. Still reeling, Quinn felt a rush of testosterone and saw a sudden vision of the end zone in his mind's eye as he caught her in his arms. He was determined to score. His mouth claimed hers with a roughness that was not him, and yet when he felt her gasp, then yield to it, he knew that she was as willing as he was able. He backed her against the sofa and she crumpled into it, lying on her back, legs bent at the knees, her feet on the floor. He fell on top of her as if she were a loose ball that he didn't want anyone else, ever, to possess.
    "Liv, Liv, where have you been?' ' he said in a muffled voice as he kissed her throat, nipping, tasting, then soothing with more kisses. He was wild to have her, then, there, anywhere. He gave no more thought to her parents up the hill than he once had to fans in the bleachers; he was focused solely, strictly, and very irrationally, on the soft, sweet- smelling body that was arching restlessly beneath his own. His hand ran up the outside of her leg, but outside of her legs was not where he wanted to be.
    Good God, son, what are you doing?
    Quinn's head shot up. His father's voice was too loud, too clear, to be ignored. He very nearly said "Dad?" but then he realized it was the house. Chintz or no chintz, the gardener's cottage was so bound up with Francis Leary that part of his soul was still drifting through its rooms.
    "Oh, damn," Quinn murmured. He lifted his weight from Olivia and propped himself up on one elbow.
    "What?'' she said. Her eyes, huge, took on a tragic cast.
    "Nothing," he murmured, gently raking her hair away from her face. She was so beautiful, so vulnerable just then.
    So utterly seducible. "This is not the best place," he said at last.
    "It's fine, sure it is," she argued, still breathless.
    He could see streaks of green in her eyes. How had he never noticed before? "You're so beautiful."
    She gave him a rueful smile. "I can tell."
    "If we were anywhere else ..." He traced her reddened upper lip with the tip of his finger. "I asked you before if you were married, but ... are you seeing someone?"
    "Seeing someone?" she said, a little blankly. "Do I act as if I am?"
    He couldn't believe it. For Olivia Bennett not to be claimed, not to be taken—well, he just couldn't believe his good luck. "Plan to see me, then," he whispered to her. "Often."
    She snapped back into focus. "You always were a cocky son of a bitch." The palms of her hands were flat against his chest. She used them to push him away, but not so violently that he had to consider it a rejection. It was more like a gesture of miffedness.
    She sat up alongside him and raked her fingers through the curls of her hair—which remained exactly the same as before—and then she