Heather Graham (38 page)

“I love you,” she returned softly, suddenly hesitant as she studied his body with the moonlight highlighting his bronze muscles and creating the intrigue of shadows.

His hands caressed her cheeks, then followed a trail down her throat to slip beneath the silk of her robe, sliding it from her shoulders. He cupped her breasts in his hands, smiling at her intake of breath as he moved his palms over her nipples.

“I think I’m a breast man,” he murmured, nudging her backward so that he could brace a knee upon the bed as he dipped his head to do homage to her breasts, kissing one while massaging the other, repeating the action to caress each swollen, aching mound with equal attention. Alex groaned at his ministrations, her fingers winding into his dark hair as she lost all strength in trembling abandon.

“Dan …”

He slipped his arms around her back and lowered her to the bed, removing the remaining silk from her torso and limbs. His lips hovered over hers as he whispered softly, “You do have the most beautiful breasts … so firm and yet soft, delicate and yet demanding. But then I may be a leg man. I’ll have to find out …”

“Dan!” She gasped out his name as he suddenly left her to take her foot in his hands and kiss the toes, sending tremors shaking through her as he lightly touched between them with his tongue. His hands roamed over her calves and he followed them with his lips, biting lightly along the inside until his trail had brought him between her thighs.

“Oh, Dan … please …”

She suddenly arched high against him, abandoning herself to the delicious vortex of need. She was weak with desire and yet strong with it, responding to his lightest touch, giving, pulsing, offering her complete trust and opening to his pleasure in the sweetest of homages to his loving quest of her body. “Dan … oh … Dan …”

“Move, sweetheart,” he whispered to her. “Don’t hold back. I want it all. I love to know that it feels good.”

He was beside her again, watching her again, running his fingers over her breasts, her belly, her soft femininity. “Alex, you really are so beautiful, so perfect.”

She curled against him, locking her legs with his, burying her face in his shoulder, biting lightly at his neck, then passionately seeking to ignite the uncontrollable fires within him as he had in her. Her breathing was jagged, her voice husky and weak. “I think I’m a chest woman,” she returned, seeking out male nipples and luxuriating in his catch of breath. “But I just may be a hip woman. I’ll have to see. …”

“Oh, Alex.”

“Here, Dan?”

“Ummm. Everywhere. …”

She took him at his word, touching him everywhere, sure of her love, sure of herself. And she radiated with his whispers, following his guiding commands, finding pleasure that spurred her own to greater and greater heights as she gave it.

But Dan was incapable of being still. Even as she revered his body with delicate, erotic fingers, he was seeking her again, taunting her nipples to hard rouge crests that throbbed for him, probing for the moist, welcoming intimacy he knew would be his between silken limbs that trembled and parted to his touch.

He lowered himself over her slowly, watching her eyes. They were half closed; gold in the moonlight, the lime and liquid amber dazzling with the sexuality she had learned to give so freely. He thrust into her deeply, filling her to her womb, and he loved the awe in her eyes, the way they flew open to meet his, the sweet smile that filtered onto her lips just before she gasped and encircled his back with strong, clinging arms, his hips with long, shapely legs. There was a rightness of being within her, an embrace unlike any he had ever known. It was, and would always be, silver moonlight. And it was moonlight that exploded through him, from him and into her after the swirling magic had crested in that moment of ultimate rapture, ultimate intimacy. He was part of her; he knew she knew it, and that she loved that after feeling of holding part of him within her as much as she loved the ecstasy was just another thing that he adored about her.

They lay together, limbs entwined, replete.

“How do you feel about children?” he asked her after a while.

“Fine.”

“Do you think a year would be too soon? I’m selfish, I want time together, but I’m also thirty-eight.”

“Old man. A year sounds lovely. Boy or girl?”

“Both please—one at a time, a two-year interval. Am I being too demanding?”

“Yes, but I happen to like the demand.”

“Great. Do you think I could have my grapes now?”

Alex laughed, and decided he could have his grapes. Every man deserved his fantasy. And he was capable of making a snack of grapes into the most erotic experience, of making love again, and again.

“There are a million ways to make love,” he told her solemnly, guiding her to him. “And in the next week I’d like to explore as many as possible. Am I being too demanding?”

“Yes,” Alex whispered, “but I happen to like the demand.”

She had never been more content, more exhausted, more replete, more comfortable within a man’s arms. Consequently she slept like a baby, and the soft ringing went unheeded by her for a long time. She opened her eyes with a sweet, incredulous smile for Dan.

“I really do hear bells,” she told him.

He grimaced. “No, I’m afraid not. It’s the phone.”

“Phone?” She had never noticed one in the room.

“Yeah, Ali keeps them, but he doesn’t like them, so he hides them.” He was up, delving through the Oriental nighttables. He found it in a top drawer, picked it up and then muttered, “Why am I bothering? I’m on my honeymoon.”

He dived back into the bed, catching Alex around the midriff and leaving her breathless with laughter.

The phone kept ringing.

Alex struggled from beneath him. “I have this thing about phones,” she murmured apologetically.

“Really?” he murmured, kissing her torso. “I have this thing about navels …”

He proved it by kissing hers as thoroughly as he might her mouth, making her gasp out the “hello” she finally managed to aim into the receiver.

“Alex?”

The voice was hesitant and feminine. Throaty. Incredibly sexy. It could only be one person.

“Kelly?”

“Yes! Oh, Alex! I’ve been trying to get you! What with the newspaper articles and all. Are you all right? I mean really all right?”

“Fine.
Fine!
” Alex gasped again as Dan lifted his weight over hers and began whispering lasciviously in her ear.

“Did you really marry D’Alesio.”

“Yes, I did.”

“Who is it?” Dan suddenly demanded.

Alex covered the mouthpiece as Kelly rattled on.

“Kelly.”

“Who is Kelly?”

“A very good friend of mine.”

“Alex!” Kelly complained. “Are you listening to me? That’s so wonderful. I’m still sure the sheikh would have been more romantic.”

Alex grinned, meeting Dan’s eyes with a shrug. “Kelly thinks I should have gotten the sheikh.”

“She does, does she?” Dan grasped the phone from her. “Hello, Kelly. Hi, Dan D’Alesio. Sorry, she gets me, not the sheikh. But hey, listen, I did my best. I abducted her across the desert on a black horse and the whole bit. And right now I’m busy trying to teach her Middle Eastern delights. She’ll have to call you back. We’re both kind of swept away, you know what I mean?”

“Dan!” Alex protested, laughing. His jet eyes caught hers with love and amusement and demand. He handed the phone back to her. “Say ‘good-bye, Kelly,’” he commanded sternly. Alex smiled slowly. “Good-bye, Kelly.” She replaced the receiver on its cradle and felt the sizzle of jet as he took her back into his arms. “
Definitely
too demanding,” she murmured huskily, “but I
definitely
do like the demand.”

UPI—May 10

CROSBY WRAPS UP EXPEDITION IN VALLEY OF THE QUEENS

A chapter within the annals of ancient Egypt was closed this afternoon when Dr. James Crosby logged in the last of the treasures from the tomb of the Pharaoh Anelokep, discovered by him last July in the Valley of the Queens.

Now that the expedition is completed, the tomb is open to the public. The vast array of gold and art taken from the tomb will first be on display in the Cairo Museum; from there it will go on loan to major cities within Europe and the United States.

It appears that the curse of the pharaohs connected with the tomb was put to rest at the beginning of the expedition; the death of Wayne Randall last August is the only loss that can be associated with the tomb of Anelokep. Randall was killed after attempting to bury alive in the tomb his ex-wife—Crosby’s daughter—and broadcast journalist Daniel D’Alesio.

Apparently the tomb has brought good luck to the principal participants in its discovery. Dr. James Crosby recently married his Egyptian assistant, Lani Habu, and Daniel D’Alesio and Dr. Alexandria Crosby Randall were married in a Muslim ceremony and renewed their vows at Crosby’s marriage in a Christian ceremony.

Sheikh Ali Sur Sheriff, financer of the dig, was presented with two sons by two wives during the months of the expedition. He also struck oil again on tribal land near the Persian Gulf.

With the excavation complete, Dr. James Crosby announced that he was returning to Chicago with his bride before going on the lecture circuit. The D’Alesios are planning a month’s stay with Sheikh Ali Sur Sheriff, in Abu Dhabi, after which they too will return to Chicago.

Mr. D’Alesio’s next documentary will be on travel down China’s Yangtze River. His wife, he says, will accompany him. D’Alesio also announced, “I’ve recently purchased a television station within the Greater Chicago area, and we’ll spend the majority of the year at home. We also plan to use our summers to film television specials and documentaries. But, my wife is an Egyptologist, and we have promised each other a trip back to Egypt every summer. We also plan to spend two weeks out of every year in the United Arab Emirates. We have a vested interest in Arabian nights.”

Heather Graham (b. 1953) is one of the country’s most prominent authors of romance, suspense, and historical fiction. She has been writing bestselling books for nearly three decades, publishing more than 150 novels and selling more than seventy-five million copies worldwide.

Born in Florida to an Irish mother and a Scottish father, Graham attended college at the University of South Florida, where she majored in theater arts. She spent a few years making a living onstage as a back-up vocalist and dinner theater actor, but after the birth of her third child decided to seek work that would allow her to spend more time with her family.

After early efforts writing romance and horror stories, Graham sold her first novel,
When Next We Love
(1982). She went on to write nearly two dozen contemporary romance novels.

In 1989 Graham published
Sweet Savage Eden
, which initiated the Cameron family saga, an epic six-book series that sets romantic drama amid turbulent periods of American history, such as the Civil War. She revisited the nineteenth century in
Runaway
(1994), a story of passion, deception, and murder in Florida, which spawned five sequels of its own.

In the past decade, Graham has written romantic suspense novels such as
Tall, Dark, and Deadly
(1999),
Long, Lean, and Lethal
(2000), and
Dying to Have Her
(2001), as well as supernatural fiction. In 2003’s
Haunted
she created the Harrison Investigation service, a paranormal detective organization that she spun off into four Krewe of Hunters novels in 2011.

Graham lives in Florida, where she writes, scuba dives, and spends time with her husband and five children.

Graham (left) with her sister.

Graham with her family in New Orleans. Pictured left to right: Dennis Pozzessere; Zhenia Yeretskaya Pozzessere; Derek, Shayne, and Chynna Pozzessere; Heather Graham; Jason and Bryee-Annon Pozzessere; and Jeremy Gonzalez.