Secrets of a Perfect Night (37 page)

“What did the article say about women?” he asked as he tore his mouth from hers. “Do women get scared?”

It took her a moment to understand what he was asking. She didn’t want to climax that way. She wanted to come with him deep inside her. She was already so close, she squeezed her thighs around his pleasure-giving hand to stop him. “It didn’t say.” She licked her moist lips. They felt swollen and her voice sounded drugged when she said, “Make love to me.” She reached over her head for the box of condoms, then pushed Thomas to his back. While he watched, she stretched the thin latex and unrolled it down his hard thick shaft to his dark pubic hair. Then she was on her back looking up at him, his knees between her thighs, the head of his penis touching her inner thigh.

“This could get rough,” he warned as he pushed inside.

She couldn’t help her sigh of pleasure as he slipped more deeply into her.

He rested his weight on his forearms, and his hands held her face. Looking deep into her eyes, he moved within her body, touching and stroking the exact place where her pleasure was centered, in and out, driving her wild with the need of him. Withdrawing slowly and plunging deep. And with each stroke, pushing, building, toward climax.

She slid her hands down the contours of his back to the hard cheeks of his behind. “Faster,” she whispered
against his mouth. She moved with him as he pumped his hips harder, deeper, faster. Heat and desire, flushing her skin and tangling her nerves into hot twisted knots. She, too, moved her hands to his face and she looked into his eyes. “Thomas,” she moaned as he drove into her, pushing her harder, higher. “I love you.” She gasped as an orgasm gripped her insides with intense pleasure. It ripped through her, again and again, her body pulsing around him as he thrust into her over and over, driving her farther up the bed. Then his fingers on the sides of her face curled, and his climax tore a deep primal groan from his chest that seemed to last forever.

“Brina,” he said on a harsh exhalation as his hips stilled. He stared into her eyes, his breathing harsh, then he pushed deep into her one last time and stayed there. “Are you okay?” he asked.

She was more than okay, and smiled. “I’m great.”

“Yes, you are.” He kissed her eyebrows and her nose. “Any friction burns?”

She tilted her head back and noticed the close proximity of the headboard. “Not that I know of.”

“I can check it out for you in a minute,” he said as he withdrew from her. “I’ll be right back.”

He left her and walked into the bathroom. Brina rolled onto her stomach and pressed her cheek against the cool damask fabric. She’d told him she loved him. He hadn’t said anything.

“Hey,” he called from the other room. “If you’re hungry, we can raid the bar. It’s stocked with some pretty good stuff.”

And raid it, they did. They ate crackers and cheese
and opened a tin of cured ham. For dessert they had truffles and chocolate-covered macadamia nuts. They made love on the floor behind the bar and in the Jacuzzi as the hot water swirled around their naked bodies.

Thomas never mentioned the word
love
in the context of loving her, but he touched her as if he did. He carefully dried her skin with a thick towel and combed the tangles from her wet hair.

No, when he mentioned the word, he said things like, “I’ve always loved your hair. I could do this forever.” And “I’d love for you to see my condo. Aspen is beautiful.”

Somewhere around 4:00
A.M
. he walked her down the hall to her room.

“Are you sure you won’t come back to bed with me?” Thomas asked as he stuck her key card in the lock. “I want to sleep with you.” He opened the door and yawned. “Just sleep, I promise.”

And wake up with bed head and morning breath? No way. “Call me when you wake up,” she said as she slid her hands up his chest and rose onto her toes. With her heart thumping in her chest, she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him good night. She’d never felt the way she did at that exact moment. Excited, euphoric, utterly happy. Maybe because she’d never loved a man the way she loved Thomas Mack.

When Brina woke later that morning, the light on her telephone flashed. It was eleven-thirty and Thomas obviously hadn’t called. He was probably still asleep.

She picked up the receiver, dialed for her message, then laid her head on her pillow and listened.

“Brina, it’s Thomas. Something came up and I need to leave immediately. It’s six-thirty and I didn’t want to wake you up, but…Listen, I’m driving straight through to Denver and catching a plane to Palm Springs. I don’t know when…” He sighed. “I’ll talk to you when I get a chance.”

Brina listened to the message three more times before she hung up the telephone. He was gone. He’d just left. He’d left without pounding on her door to talk to her. He’d left without mentioning when she might see him again. He’d left without telling her he loved her or kissing her good-bye.

Brina pushed her hair out of her face and shoved her legs into her jeans. She called the front desk and asked if he’d left her a message.

He hadn’t.

Wearing an old sweatshirt and her jeans, she grabbed her key card and headed down the hall. The door to Thomas’s room was open and the maid cart was just inside. Brina walked into the room and glanced around. The furniture had been polished, the carpet vacuumed, and the bar restocked. She moved to the doorway of the bedroom and stopped. Two maids were in the process of fitting the bed with new sheets.

All traces of him were gone. His clothes, the sheets he’d slept on, the towels he’d used to dry her off.

One of the maids looked up. “Can I help you?”

Brina shook her head. “No, thanks,” she said, and turned away. He was truly gone, and until that
moment, she hadn’t realized she was holding her breath, hanging on to the hope that it was a mistake. That he was just down the hall waiting for her.

She walked back to her room and stuck her card in the lock. He’d said he was flying out of Denver to Palm Springs. That was where his grandparents lived. Something really bad must have happened.

I’ll talk to you when I get a chance
, he’d said.

Brina sat on the corner of her bed and stared at the blank screen of the television. She remembered when Thomas’s dog, Scooter, had died, and he’d tried to be real stoic. He hadn’t cried, even though she’d known he wanted to. He’d held it in, his cheeks red with the effort. He hadn’t wanted her around then, and he obviously didn’t want her around now. If he did, he would have at least left a number where she could reach him.

Of course, she could track him down. After all, that was what she did for a living. She could walk right downstairs and ask Mindy for a copy of his reunion registration form. Then Mindy would know he hadn’t given her his address or telephone number. That was one humiliation Brina would prefer to avoid. She was desperate to talk to him, but she did have her pride.

It took her a day to come up with Thomas’s address in Aspen. She’d remembered part of the license plate number of his Jeep, and she’d contacted the Department of Motor Vehicles in Colorado several times before getting what she wanted. Now all she needed was his telephone number. Since she lived in Oregon, she couldn’t exactly run down to her local telephone
company and scan their files. She didn’t know anyone who worked for the phone company in Aspen, and she’d have to get a court order.

She turned her attention to locating his grandparents and hit the jackpot. Not only were they listed in the telephone directory, she made several inquiries at the hospitals in and around Palm Springs and discovered that Thomas’s grandfather had been transferred to a hospital in Rancho Mirage.

By the third day after the reunion, Brina had the address and telephone number of not only his grandparents, but him as well.

I’ll talk you when I get a chance
, he’d said, and she was beginning to believe he hadn’t meant it. That he was blowing her off.

She had his number in a folder on her desk, right next to her regular cases. She sat back in her chair and looked out her office window onto the street below. It was raining. So what was new?

Droplets hit the tinted glass at an angle and ran in a squiggly pattern to the metal sill below. Now that she had the information she needed, she was reluctant to use it. It had been three days and Thomas hadn’t tried to contact her. She checked her answering machine at home about every half hour. The fact that he didn’t have her home telephone number didn’t keep her from checking. She instructed her assistant that if a man called for her, she was to put him directly through. Each time the phone rang, her heart leapt and her pulse raced and it was never Thomas.

Brina slipped off her five-inch heels and turned toward her desk. She opened a report on a workmen’s
comp claim she was investigating. She only read about two paragraphs of the report until her mind once again returned to Thomas.

She was afraid. More afraid than she’d ever been in her life. What if he didn’t want to talk to her or see her? What if he felt nothing for her? She was on an emotional roller coaster. Up and down. Her heart speeding at the memory of his kiss, slowing with the thought of never seeing him again. Her emotions were a chaotic mess, and she didn’t know what to do about it. One second she thought she should call him, but in the next, she reminded herself that he’d said he would call her when he got the chance.

“I was hoping you could help me.” The voice startled her and she glanced up.

Slowly she closed the file and looked into Thomas’s blue eyes. At the sight of him, her heart skidded to a stop. He wore a charcoal suit over a black turtleneck. In his hands he held three small bouquets of roses. Tight buds of red, white, and yellow. “Help you with what?” she asked.

He walked into the office and stopped on the other side of her desk. “I was hoping you could help me find someone.”

“Who?”

“A girl I graduated high school with. She dumped me for a jerk, but I thought I’d give her a chance to make it up.”

Brina tried not to smile. He was here, in her office, and everything suddenly felt right in her life. The backs of her eyes stung. “What did you have in mind and is it legal?”

“Probably not in some of those southern states.”

She stood and walked about the corner of her desk. “How did you find me?” she asked.

“I called Mindy Burton.”

Of course. “How’s your grandfather?”

“Not good.” His brows lowered over beautiful blue eyes. “But I don’t want to talk about that now. We can talk about that later if you want. Right now I want to talk about something that makes sense to me. I want to talk about us.” He handed her the flowers. “The florist told me that red roses symbolize passionate love, white, pure love, and yellow, friendship.”

She held them up to her nose and inhaled deeply. “They’re gorgeous, Thomas.” She blinked to hold back her tears. “Thank you.”

“First we were friends and then lovers,” he said. “I want us to continue to be friends and lovers.”

Brina laid the flowers on the desk and stepped into his waiting arms. “I want that, too.”

“Do you remember Saturday when I told you that we didn’t know each other anymore?”

She nodded and buried her face in his chest. She breathed deep. Breathing in the scent of the man she loved with her heart and soul.

“Well, that wasn’t true then and it isn’t true now. I know you, Brina. I know when you’re going to cry, and I know when you’re going to laugh. What’s going to make you happy or sad or angry. It’s been ten years, but I know you.” He kissed the top of her head. “And I’ve missed you.”

“I missed you, too.” She leaned forward and softly kissed his mouth.

His hands moved up to the sides of her head and he held her face in his palms. Holding her away. “But I want more than love and friendship,” he said. “I tried to tell myself that I didn’t go to the reunion looking for you, but I did. I lied about that, and I lied a little bit about the roses too. The white roses don’t just mean pure love. They mean pure love in marriage.” He looked deeply into her eyes and said, “I want to be with you forever. I love you.”

The tears she’d tried to hold back gathered on her bottom lashes. “I love you, too.”

He wiped the moisture away with his thumbs. “That’s want I needed to hear.”

“I told you I loved you the other night. Did you hear me?”

“Yes.” He looked into her eyes and said through a smile, “But we were making love, and I didn’t know if you meant it or if you were just, you know, carried away.”

“I did mean it.”

Slowly he lowered his head and pressed his mouth to hers. A gentle hello kiss that lasted about three seconds before it turned hot and energetic. As if to reassure herself, Brina ran her hands over him.

He pulled back and took several deep breaths. “My life is a mess right now. My grandfather is dying and there is nothing I can do but sit by his side and watch it happen. Everything I own is in Colorado, I’m living with my grandmother in Palm Springs, and I’m currently unemployed. Everything in my life right now is uncertain except how I feel about you. You are the only
thing that feels right to me. I know this may sound crazy, but I’m asking anyway. Come be with me.”

Shocked, Brina uttered, “Where?”

“For now, somewhere in Palm Springs. Later, who knows? Wherever you want.”

Brina raised her brows up her forehead. “When?”

“Right now. Today. Tomorrow. Next week. Next month.” He shook his head. “Whenever you’re able. I’m asking you to marry me. To be with me now and forever. I know it might sound like a hasty, irrational decision, but I’ve waited for you since the first grade.”

Brina smiled. It didn’t sound hasty or irrational at all. Not to her. “I’ll be your friend, your lover, and your wife. I’ll marry you today. Tomorrow. Next week. Next month.” She pressed her forehead to his. “I want to be with you now and forever.”

About the Authors

Stephanie Laurens
is the creator of the bestselling Cynster novels. Her books have appeared on the
USA Today
and
Publishers Weekly
bestseller lists, as well as the
New York Times
Extended list. Her next Cynster novel,
All About Love,
an Avon Superleader, will be published in February 2001.