Prelude to a Wedding (18 page)

"I, uh, I could put it on."

He swallowed hard. "I'd like to see it."

"Now?"

He knew damn well he wanted to delay seeing
her in that material seduction, at least delay to some moment when
he might stand half a chance of appreciating it. But what did she
want? He'd thought he knew, and he'd been prepared to give it to
her, no matter what it cost him. But from that last question and
from the heated look in her eyes, he wasn't so sure.

"What?"

She glanced down at the blue sheerness she
held then back at him. "Do you have to see it right now or could it
maybe wait until . . . uh . . . later? I mean, if you really want
to see it now of course I could put it on, but—"

He ground out something he wasn't sure made
any sense and yanked down the rumpled bedspread, far enough that it
slid slowly off the foot of the bed along with most of their
purchases.

"Later's good," he got out as he reached for
her. With a smile that managed to melt his bones and harden his
muscles, she sent the gown spinning in the same general
direction.

"Later," she agreed on a breath shivered
against his neck.

They stripped each other of their remaining
clothes with fervent, unsubtle movements.

Her hands were cold at first, with the
lingering chill of outdoors and perhaps nerves.
Don't rush
her
, he reminded himself. Then gasped at her fingers' contact
against his stomach, his abdomen, his hips. But it was a gasp of
pleasured torture. Who was rushing whom? He figured it was only
fair her hands and her feet were cold, because the rest of her was
burning up. He could feel the heat of her under his hands, like
waves off a sunstruck sidewalk in July. And he craved it, absorbed
it, matched it with his own.

With her hands and feet like small, smooth
slips of ice being dragged along his skin, he relished the contrast
to his own temperature. Told himself that maybe this way he'd slow
down enough to have some control. And when her hands and feet
passed the comfortable stage and became coals, stoking the fire
that already raged in his flesh, he knew he'd never needed anything
the way he needed that stoking.

Still, he wasn't fool enough to have her help
with the contents of the packets spilled on the nightstand. A fire
stoked too high could burn itself out.

They tumbled across the bed, a tangle of arms
and legs that drew a dual chuckle reverberating into a groan of
need. A hip grinding into a hip, an elbow catching across a
shoulder, a knee digging into a thigh. But then, somehow, amid the
sounds of frustration, amusement and passion, the parts came into
alignment. It wasn't the slow, tender introduction he'd envisioned
in aching detail for days, weeks on end. But it was right. Utterly,
undeniably right.

He thrust into her welcoming warmth, faster
than he'd intended, slower than he wanted. He went still, his eyes
squeezing tight in an exultation he'd never known. Then the
pressure inside forced him to move. He felt her body adjust,
accept, and another wave of sensation struck him. It flashed across
his mind that this sensation flowed not from his nerve endings to
his brain, but from somewhere deep inside him to where his skin met
hers. He opened his eyes and locked with hers.

They were deep, deep blue. Bottomless and
soft. The way they tugged at him took him off balance. No way to
hold back against them . . . no way. He could fall into those eyes
and keep falling. He was falling.

"Bette." He whispered the name as his hips
surged against hers, the pull of the rhythm too strong to resist,
the beat that guided than too insistent to ignore. It rocked them
when they strained together, it echoed through them as they slipped
away from each other, it amplified as they rushed together once
more, closer, ever closer. They pulsed with it. It might have been
a heartbeat of something alive, magnified to roar in their
ears.

He heard other sounds added to it. Her voice,
stripped of the crisp coolness, only the spice and fire remaining.
Cries to him, for him. His own call of her name, encouraging,
invoking. He cupped her buttocks, drawing her closer, straining to
have her take all he had, to fill her ever more completely. Her cry
turned sharp and triumphant. The thundering beat shuddered again
through his taut-strung muscles one last, frenzied time.

* * * *

It was quiet. Except for their breathing. He
heard his own harsh intake and her no steadier exhalation. She'd
have an easier time if he took all his weight off her instead of
remaining half-covering her the way he'd collapsed. He didn't move.
Not sure if he could, and certain he didn't want to. Macho, maybe,
but even after what they'd just experienced, he relished the
continued sense of possession from being connected this way.

What was this feeling, this draw to her, this
need for her? It frightened him—he admitted that—but it also
attracted him, a magnet bringing him nearer to something he'd
always avoided. Now, too weak with satisfaction and contentment to
fight the idea, the suspicion floated into his mind that as much as
he might try to dig his heels in against it, he wouldn't be able to
stop his progress toward the pole she represented. Right now, he
couldn't even find it in himself to care.

Soft and even, her breathing soothed him. She
was asleep. A powerful sense of protectiveness swept into him; she
trusted him enough to give herself up to him, then to give herself
up to sleep in his arms.

He recognized the dangerous, sharp edges of
this emotion. He even knew, at some level, how it could shred his
independent life.

So where shall we stay?
One question,
five words. That was all it had taken to blow his control to hell.
So much for waiting until he knew what he was getting into. He was
in, and he still didn't know.

He shifted slightly. Not away, but freeing
her ribs of all but the weight of his arm. He thought that under
the sigh of skin against sheets, he detected a breath from her.
Perhaps relief, but he wanted to think it was also regret at even
this minute distance. He pulled the rumpled covers over their
cooling bodies.

The emotion he'd reined in from the time
she'd said yes in his office was loose. He might soar with it now,
but could he haul it back under control later?

* * * *

Bette woke up with no confusion. She didn't
even need to open her eyes to know where she was or whose arms held
her, whose legs weighed hers down, whose breath stirred her hair
and whose shoulder pillowed her cheek.

She knew.

A powerful, potent drug this lust could be.
It lulled her from the tenets of a lifetime, so that as she rested
in the circle of Paul's arms, she found herself thinking not of the
future, but of the past. The immediate, incredible past.

She felt her cheeks warming, not in
embarrassment but in renewed desire. He wasn't a smooth lover, or
particularly gentle. But he was thorough. And powerful. The
glimpses she'd had of his sensuality hadn't prepared her for the
whole. She was honest enough with herself to admit that if they
had, she might still be running.

Although he'd given her chances to run. She
thought of the moments he'd hesitated long enough to let his eyes
ask her if she wanted to back out. Not once, but twice.

A slight frown of concentration tightened
muscles in her forehead. She had the impression a pattern was there
somewhere, a pattern she hadn't recognized yet. What was it?

Still sleeping, Paul shifted, drawing her
closer and making a low sound against her hair. Her eyes opened,
the frown disappearing as her mouth curved.

Patterns and contemplation could wait. If
she'd learned one thing tonight, it was the power of the moment.
Under Paul Monroe's touch, now was the only time that existed for
her.

The room was softly aglow from a single
shaded lamp on the nightstand. Sometime while she slept, he must
have gotten up and switched off the other lights. How long had she
slept? She really didn't care. Still night, she thought. The drapes
showed no crack of morning light and the city seemed hushed beyond
them.

The light burnished his skin and the blaze of
hair, darker than on his head and arms but still with a glint no
one would confuse with brown. It trailed the valley between his
ribs only to disappear under a tangle of covers at his waist. Their
earlier urgency had left no time to contemplate and explore his
body. Her fingers lightly dusted along the tickling cover of hair.
She lifted her head, and considered the form that had pillowed
hers.

He was beautiful.

His eyes still closed in sleep, his
personality for once stood second to his physical presence. His
shoulders were broad, his torso narrowed to taut waist and slim
hips, though she knew the power those sleek lines could produce. A
swimmer's body, rather than a weightlifter's, she thought. Strength
without bulk, hardness without display.

She bent, putting her lips to the flat brown
disk where the dusting of hair grew thinner. She let her tongue
taste it, taste him, and felt the response—in him, and in
herself.

He muttered something she chose to take as
encouragement. When her stronger ministrations brought his hands to
her hair, holding her tightly against him, she knew she'd been
right. Tension hummed along his skin, a vibration that communicated
itself to her through her tongue and lips.

His hands tugged at her, drawing her over his
body, holding her shoulders above him.

"Bette, let me kiss you. Open your mouth to
me."

The kiss started as a gentle one, then
deepened and quickened to pulse with a beat she recognized and
welcomed. Paul's hands clenched hard around her upper arms, then
purposefully loosened, and the kiss eased back to tenderness.

He parted their mouths, and hitched himself
to a sitting position against the padded headboard. Still lost in
the kiss and her sense of loss that it had ended, she allowed
herself to be twisted and adjusted until she sat back against his
chest with his arms around her, the covers up to her shoulders.

"Are you okay?" His lips followed the
question with a whispery touch to her temple.

The question and the concern of voice and
touch surprised her.

"Fine," she said first. Then amended it to,
"Wonderful." And turned to kiss his chin.

"Really? I was rather rough. And in a
hurry."

She tilted her head to see his eyes. He
wasn't searching for reassurance on his performance, but was truly
concerned.

"Yes, you were," she answered slowly,
remembering. "And it was wonderful."

The concern in his eyes lessened, but didn't
leave.

"You're sure you're okay?"

She kissed his throat, just under his jaw,
then nipped at it before kissing the spot once more. "I'm sure.
Though I might be a little sore . . ."

He grinned. "You know what they say is the
best cure for sore muscles?"

"What's that?"

"Use them."

"Ah, why'd I have a feeling you'd say
that?"

"Because great minds think alike?"

"I don't think that was it."

"Because you'd heard that wisdom before?"

"Not that, either."

"Because you've known that I've been
fantasizing about you for nearly a month now?"

It was odd the things that could catch you
off guard. "Fantasizing? About me?" She wasn't a woman to spark
fantasies. Respect, yes. Maybe even admiration. But fantasies?

He must have heard her disbelief. He placed a
hand on each side of her head and turned her so she had to see the
utter conviction in his eyes. "You better believe it, Bette
Wharton. Fantasizing hot and heavy."

Feeling part of him harden against her hip
lent credence to his statement.

"Like what?" She could feel her cheeks
burning under his hands, and this time there was embarrassment
mixed with the desire. She couldn't believe she'd asked the
question, but she sure as hell wasn't going to stop the answer.

"I have one where you come to my office." His
voice sounded husky, but his eyes didn't leave hers. He cleared his
throat. "It's late. The building's empty. And you walk in the door,
unexpectedly and . . ." His hesitation let her heated imagination
fill in details that gathered her blood, hot and heavy, in her
breasts and loins. "And we make love on the couch. Long, slow,
lingering love."

"I have one too," she murmured. "A fantasy."
She didn't know where she got the bravery. Unless it was from
him.

"Tell me."

"There's a boathouse where my parents live.
They bought the house years ago to retire to. We used to go there
for vacations, even when I was a girl." She was explaining too
much, she knew, but she couldn't help it. She wasn't accustomed to
this. "I've fantasized about making love in this tiny, private
boathouse. It would be warm and dark, and so beautiful. But I never
could see the man's face." Still, she'd known it would be the face
of the man she'd love for all her life.

"Can you see the man's face now?"

He had needs, too. If she hadn't known it
before, if he'd tried to hide it before, it was there between them
now. Could she say no, and hurt him that way? Could she say yes,
and hurt herself?

"I —" Paul's face swam before her in a
shimmer of tears. "I think maybe I can."

Their lips met. This time he wasn't rough. Or
in a hurry, though she witnessed the cost of his patience in
muscles that quivered and tendons gone tense. She would have spared
him that, in fact tried to tempt him beyond it, rolling her hips in
invitation. But he resisted, tempting her instead. His mouth and
hands and skin were a sensual abrasion, traveling lower and deeper
across her sensitized skin. And in the end, she succumbed, falling
first and fast as he found her moist warmth and brought there the
beat they'd perfected before. She fell a second time when he joined
her, but this was slower and deeper, and all the more wonderful
because she watched him, his face rapt and taut, follow her to the
ascent, and then over.