R Is for Rebel (23 page)

“She knows about me?” Abigail was mortified. She felt like a home wrecker. “You left her for me?”

“Well, I guess, I mean.” He paused to choose his words. “Yes. I left her to make sure. About you.”

“I still feel like a rotter. If it hadn't been for me, you two—”

“No. There wouldn't have been a
you two
. This was never about you personally, but I told her that I had been involved with someone before I met her and that my feelings were… unresolved.”

“Are they?”

“Are they what?”

“Are your feelings unresolved?”

“How can you even ask that?” He was instantly angry. “Stop that. Of course they're not unresolved. When you put your hand on my arm earlier tonight—no, when I saw you in the window at the Ritz—the first thought I had wasn't even a thought, it was pure conviction. Finally! At last! Complete resolution.”

It made her so happy to hear how his determination mirrored hers; it was profoundly gratifying. But the guilt about Poor Marisa made her look at her clasped hands in her lap rather than let Eliot see her gloating pleasure.

“You like the sound of that, don't you? Get back here.” He grabbed her back onto his lap.

“I do like the sound of words like
resolution
”—she reached her cool hand back on to the warm skin of his chest—“and
conviction
”—she trailed the thumb of her other hand over his bottom lip—“coming out of your mouth in reference to your feelings for me.” Her thumb dipped into the silky warmth of his mouth. “I have been living in a hellish half-life of irresolute confusion for so long.” She gave her hips a provocative twist. “Hard certainty feels really good for a change.”

Whereas a year ago, Abigail had worried and fretted about everything from her mother knowing she might not be sleeping in her own room to the night porter at the Plaza Athénée suspecting she was a hooker, at this point, she wouldn't have cared if Eliot had dragged her across the soaring marble and gilt lobby with a prehistoric club in one hand and a clump of her hair in the other. He walked quickly toward the elevator, her hand in his; she stumbled and laughed a couple of times as the four-inch heels of Sarah's boots combined with her giddy excitement to transform her into an uncoordinated, spastic schoolgirl.

“I never thought of you as a giggler.”

“I am not giggling. That was a sexy, throaty laugh.”

He tugged her along with more urgency. “It was definitely a giggle.”

Just then, the tip of her boot caught the edge of one of the thick Oriental runners that covered the marble floor on the way to the elevator banks. Eliot pulled more firmly on the hand he was holding and reached under her other arm to steady her, then took her into a perfectly orchestrated embrace. “Am I going to have to carry you across the lobby?” he whispered as he nuzzled deeper into her thick, dark hair.

“I wouldn't mind if you did.”

Baited, Eliot whipped her up into the cradle of his arms for the final ten strides to the elevator bank. Abigail shrieked, then quaked with silent laughter. She buried her face into the warm, clean scent of his neck and chest, as much to hide her face as to simply relish the careless, public intimacy that she had been hiding from the world, from herself, for so long.

Once inside the elevator, he pushed the button for his floor then lowered Abigail's tight, small frame along the full length of his front. He closed his eyes and appreciated the textures as they passed along his palms and fingertips, the fitted denim on her legs, the smooth silk of her blouse, the inviting heat of the skin of her neck. She was hugging him around his waist, her cheek resting against his heart.

He moved a piece of her hair aside to get a better look at her cheek. “I forgot you were so petite. You had become so huge in my mind. You are really just a wisp of a thing.”

“And you are just exactly as formidable and delicious as I remembered. I kept thinking,” she spoke into the fabric of his shirt, “that when I saw you in real life, it would dispel all of my crazy fantasies—”

“Ah, yes, the crazy fantasies—”

“Because, let's face it, I thought, no one could possibly live up to the crazy fantasies. And that would be the end of it. The reality of you would surely prove a disappointment.” She looked up at him with a mixture of tenderness and mischief. She trailed her hand along the placket over his zipper, savoring the feel of him, hard, in her palm. “More fool me.”

Eliot closed his eyes and groaned his appreciation. The elevator doors opened on his floor and brought them both back to some semblance of the present. They held hands and didn't speak as they walked down the plush carpet of the corridor. Abigail's heart was starting to hammer again. She had thought the initial palpitations at La Coupole might have been some sort of one-off shock effect, but apparently tachycardia was to be a regular component of her life with Eliot.

An involuntary smile of incandescent joy spread over her face.

Her
life
with
Eliot.

He was holding the door open to his room. “What are you smiling about, beauty?”

“I was just remarking to myself that we might need to have an attendant cardiologist because my heart seems to pound when I'm around you. And then I thought, oh well, that will just be part of
my
life
with
Eliot
. And then I thought, that has a very nice ring to it. My. Life. With. Eliot.”

Eliot shut the door with more force then he'd intended, causing it to startle them both when it struck the jamb. He grabbed Abigail with all the drive and power he'd been holding at bay—on the beach in Bequia, on his parents' couch in Iowa—and that he'd only just begun to hint at a year ago in this very city.

He pulled her shirt off in a whisk of motion and stopped, stunned, at the sight of her lacy bra.

“My, my. What have we here?”

She flushed from her chest, right up her neck to her burning cheeks.

“Have you been lingerie shopping without me again?” His finger slipped under the delicate lace and the edge of the cup, then along the satin ribbon that trailed over her shoulders.

She nodded and hummed, unable to speak amid the crashing waves brought on by his touch.

“Lovely. Perfectly lovely. I've never seen anything like it.”

“I had it made,” she whispered. “It was appallingly expensive.”

Eliot laughed. “Turn around. I want to see it. I want to see you in it.”

She moaned again and gave in to all the pleasure that welled up inside her when Eliot wanted to look at her like that.

“Exquisite. You are exquisite, Abigail.”

The bra came off a few seconds later. He bent his head to her breast and kissed one exposed tip, barely touching his lips against the tender, sensitive nipple. He licked a gentle circle around the hard nub, then grazed it between his teeth, in a near painful repetitive abrading.

Abigail hadn't caught her breath since they were walking down the hall. She was holding one hand in his, and her other had a desperate grip on his thick, wavy hair. She groaned his name as she rode the intense sensations. He lowered himself to his knees to better contend with removing the provocative suede boots that Sarah had insisted she wear.

“That woman is an agent of evil,” he grumbled as his fingers fought with the tiny button closures that ran up the inside of Abigail's calf.

“I think she has some distorted vision of patient lovers when she creates them,” Abigail spoke on her exhale.

Eliot took a deep breath to refocus his efforts. He got the boots off with persistence, then nearly tore off Abigail's jeans and—exquisite, lovely, matching—underwear. He was kneeling back on his heels, fully clothed, in front of her perfectly naked body.

He grabbed her hips and looked up into her eyes. “I adore you, Abigail.” He leaned into her lower stomach and kissed the tender skin just above her thatch of hair. He dipped his tongue into her navel, then kissed his way gently down. His hands held her pinned against the wall in the small entryway of his suite. The lights were dim, except for a lamp somewhere in the main living room farther inside.

His hot breath teased her mercilessly. The closer he got to her throbbing center, the slower he went. Inhaling her scent, nuzzling into the skin, licking at the tender flesh of her upper thigh. He kept zeroing in and then meandering farther away. She began to whimper with desire. She felt the moisture of her own eagerness begin to slip down the inside of her thigh. “Please, Eliot,” she whispered.

He shoved her legs wider apart and thrust his tongue into her, feeling the beginning of her climax after only a few seconds. He nipped at her, licked and delved until she was crying out for him, holding his head in a rough grip as he held her, his arms wrapped around the back of her waist for support. He kept slipping his tongue across her slick flesh, causing her orgasm to go on and on, taking her far beyond anything she could fathom.

Beyond herself.

Quaking in his arms, she finally collapsed over his broad, strong shoulders, softly crying his name in low, begging, repetitive pleas.

He finally gave her one last gentle stroke of his tongue and rested his cheek against her moist, beautiful center. He inhaled, to catch his breath and to take her in, to consume her through all of his senses. His own desire was making him so hard against his pants that he wasn't sure he could stand up easily, but Abigail's first sweet surrender was enough incentive for him to get them both into the large waiting bed in the other room.

He carried her in a fireman's hold over his right shoulder, her limp arms hanging down his back. He pulled back the covers at one side of the bed and set her down with a careful slowness. Her eyes fluttered open momentarily and she smiled at him as he looked down at her. She moved one hand up to her own face, having a momentary desire to shield herself from the strength of his love, then thought better of it and flung her arm wide across the nearby pillow. She closed her eyes and arched her back up toward him, stretching, offering, welcoming him to her body. When she reopened her eyes, he had taken all his clothes off except his close-fitting boxers. He was running his thumb around the elastic waist. Abigail felt that all of her senses were so heightened, she could actually hear the slight friction of the small hairs on his lower stomach as he scratched past them in that maddeningly leisurely gesture. She found it delightfully arousing and crawled, catlike, onto all fours and looked up at him. “Do you need help with those?”

“Why yes. I think I do,” he said as he let his hands move away and hang at his side.

She scooted up closer to the edge of the bed and rose up on her knees. He was still far taller, but it was a perfect angle to see him in all his masculine glory. His erection was straining against the soft pale blue cotton, and Abigail let her thoughts fly away and her body took over.

She was going to devour him. Finally. No more parsing. No more gender politics. No more worry. It was simply the person she loved the most in the world and she was going to show him that love in every possible manifestation of desire. Devotion.

She bent her head, rested her hands at his hips, and nipped at the fabric over his cock. He began stroking the smooth skin of her bare back, his fingers lightly tracing her spine, as she let her curiosity and her love take shape. She reached her hands around to the hard muscles of his backside, her hands going up under the fabric at the top of his thighs. The transition from the fine rasp of hair on his legs to the supple curve of his ass set Abigail's heart thudding again, and she must have released an involuntary hum of pleasure.

“Aaah, the humming…” Eliot whispered, as if he had just discovered a well in the midst of a days-long journey across the desert. He let his own hands mirror what she was doing to him, stretching his palms to conform to the roundness of her hips and bottom, letting his thumb venture tantalizingly close to the tender, pink flesh between the cheeks of her ass.

“That”—Abigail's voice was strained and hoarse—“is the limit.” She ripped off his underwear as if it were the most offensive, despicable thing on earth.

Eliot worried for a second that Abigail had been uncomfortable that he was touching her in such a provocative fashion, until she made quick work of taking him fully into her mouth and letting her own hand reach around him to grip and pull and dip into his. His head flew back in the sheer pleasure of feeling, his thoughts a mixture of half-formed phrases including words like:
Beauty. Love. Joy. Abigail.

He looked down as her head moved in time with the rhythm of her mouth and tongue. He ran his right hand through her gorgeous black hair, his left hand remaining on her lower back. Right before he was about to lose it, he wrenched her head back with a quick tug of her hair and she smiled up at him, licking her lips, savoring the feel of him there, her gray eyes nearly black with pleasure, blinking lovingly up at him.

“I am so happy, Eliot. I never knew I could be this happy.”

He stared at her in simple wonder. “I will make you so happy, Abigail.” He tossed her flat on her back in a light, careless motion, then straddled her hips and knelt over her, stretching her arms taut above her head. “I will do anything, everything, to see this expression on your face, every day, all day.” He reached across to the drawer in the bedside table and she took the opportunity to lick his nipple as he leaned in close and stretched to get the condom.

“Good god, Abigail. You are better than anything.” He stayed stretching over her as she continued to lick and scrape at his nipple until it was a small, hard nub in her mouth.

He hissed as he forced himself to exhale, leaning back between her thighs, on his heels, to tear the packet and put the condom on. When he finished, he looked up and saw her eyes on him. “Are you ready for me, Abigail?”

“Oh, Eliot.” A single tear slid out of one eye, and she turned her head as if to hide it from him.

He grabbed her jaw with gentle force, making her look directly at him. “Tell me you want me now, Abigail.”

She shut her eyes for a moment, as if she could somehow contain or manage the riptide of emotion. When she opened her eyes, more tears slid down her temple. “I have always wanted you, Eliot,” her voice cracked, “but never more than right now. In this moment, you are… everything.”

His eyes never left hers as his hand moved from her face to make a slow trail up the length of her sinuous arm. He stretched himself along the length of her, imagining that he could feel every molecular connection, every atom of their shared experience. Everywhere they touched created new, combined matter. He was no longer Eliot; she was no longer Abigail. They were something new and glorious together.

He kissed her slowly on the lips, his tongue a tentative flicker across her lower lip. “It is now, Abigail. Okay?”

She nodded.

“Tell me.” His voice was low and hot in her ear. “I want to hear your beautiful, lilting voice as I come to you. I have never felt this close to anyone.”

“Please, yes, my beautiful Eliot, yes—” She gasped as he thrust full into her in one fluid motion of powerful joining.

He watched as her pupils dilated, adjusting to the reality, the physical reality of his body melding with hers. At first, he held himself perfectly still, as much as his body raged against pausing for any reason. Soon his blood would demand satisfaction, but for a few moments—seconds or minutes, he didn't know—he would freeze this moment in time: the first moment of their life wholly together.