The Proposition (16 page)

"No, we didn't." The wishful lie choked out.

"Yes, we did."

"Once," she recanted plaintively. "We said you could touch one leg once."

He didn't answer but bent down on one knee in front of her. She looked down on his head, his glossy hair. He'd put himself at her legs, within inches. "Turn around," he said.

"No."

He glanced up. "Winnie, my mustache is in the washbasin. If you think I put it there for some child's game, you're wrong. I guess we said once, but it's gonna be a long 'once.' I'm touchin' you all the way up your leg. If you say I can't use my mouth, I won't. But turn around. I'm touchin' your legs at the back."

"Leg,"
she said.

"All right,
leg.
But I'm sliding my hand up the whole, damn, gorgeous length, from your sweet heel there"—he pointed—"up the back of your calf, the inside of your knee, all the way up the back of your thigh"—his finger drew an imaginary upward path in the air that gave her goose bumps, then, when his hand got to hip level, his hands took real hold of her hips, turned her around by them, pointing in the process, still without touching—"to the curve right here under your bum. Thank you."

She was facing the wall.

She leaned her head against it, with the "curve under her bum" tingling. God help her, he hadn't done anything yet, and she was in a state. Goose bumps kept running up her legs in waves. Her belly felt as if she'd swallowed something animate that squirmed to get out.

While uncertainty made every single sensation acute. She waited, a woman up in the air, kept aloft on emotions she hated—dread and suspense.

Yet there was another feeling here niggling, as she stood against the wall waiting for Mick Tremore to do something he shouldn't. Why did she allow him the leeway to turn her, to even consider touching her? She couldn't answer the question. She didn't
like
what was happening, she promised herself. She wanted it to be over. The tension it brought was abominable.

Yet as she stood there, waiting, tortured, unhappy, anxious, she was somehow also … thrilled beyond words.

Nothing she had known of life till this moment had ever been this exciting.

Mick, on the other hand, was fairly clear about what was happening. He had hold of a guilty virgin he was pushing a little harder than he should. He tried to calm her. He tried to feel bad about it. Winnie here was getting fairly wrung out, and he was the culprit, challenging a hesitant, fretful woman … who, buggeration, come to think of it, couldn't be all that timid, since she'd found the courage to have his mustache.

Anger again. It kept shooting through him in
bursts, bright and startling like fireworks in the night sky on St. Agnes's birthday. He told himself it was just that Winnie didn't know exactly what she was doing here, how hard she was being on him. She didn't have a lot of experience in matters between men and women.

He murmured, "Just be still," thinking that would help her get through it—he couldn't make himself feel bad enough to let her off.

He put his hand to her ankle, and, with the contact, his shoulders jerked. "H-h-h-h—" he said, unable to hold it back: her aspirated H. Here was how to get him to make the sound. From pleasure. Pleasure honed on the sight of her bare legs so that it cut into him like the edge of a knife. Her skin was so bloody smooth
…
ten times smoother than his. Her ankle was narrow, the calf a long swell—

She jerked, pulled away, taking her leg with her as she turned around. "There," she said. "You did it. Your ten minutes are over." She let go of her skirts.

He caught them and stood up, carrying them to her waist.

He pushed the wad of dress at her, putting pressure against her stomach. "I hate a cheater, Winnie. Let's do that again. I know you're scared, but you can get through this. Here. Take your skirts."

She refused them. "You're done," she whispered, a little hiss.

"No, I'm not. You've been trying to short me on this idea from the first second you thought of it. Now, you notice, please, I came upstairs and took my mustache off in under a minute. I didn't dodge or argue or give you a moment of trouble. Now hold up your skirts and bear the last minute of the bargain
you
invented."

He held the bundle of skirts against her belly, leaning into them, letting her feel his existence on the other side of all the silky stuff of her clothes. He was scaring her, he knew. Winnie didn't like not to be in charge. Well, stuff her, he thought.

Except that was the point, of course. He couldn't. And the idea of "stuffing her" was pretty much running wild through his head. Ho-o-o-o, he wanted to have at her. He wanted to lay her so bad his eyes were hot at the backs from being so close to the burning thoughts in his head. He was trying to be rational, trying not to act as crazy as he felt—galled, goaded, teased, and naked. A feeling he'd known the instant he raised his head and stared into the mirror at his own bare lip. Stuff her, he thought again.

But since he couldn't, he descended down her body, inches away without touching, to do what she'd said he could.

Winnie watched him go, then lost sight of him. She could only stand rigid and stare at his shoulders over the bunch of silk she clutched. She felt his head brush against the wad of her skirts, then nestle into them a little. She could feel the warmth of his closeness at her legs, a sensation so extremely pleasurable it was horrible. She was breathing with small vocalized gasps at the end of each breath, embarrassing mews she'd never made before. What was wrong with her? Her mouth was parchment from her trying to find air.

Mick meanwhile turned his head, and his cheek brushed where the hem of a petticoat hung down. The linen was still warm, fragrant from her body. Clean, sweet, starchy. A womanly smell that stirred up a lust the likes of which he hadn't felt since he was a boy just discovering the female sex. In half a second, he lifted in his trousers, all the way out to a full, stiff erection. Oh, bloody hell, he thought. What was he going to do with this? From here, touching her, and not having her, should be one great, big, old Buckingham Palace of torment. Halls and gardens and monuments to it.

No sooner had he grazed her calf, though, than she jerked and twisted away again.

She let out a panicked breath. "Enough. That's it. We're done."

Rage. It stood up with him, pure and clean. He couldn't remember the last time he'd known such a potent, simple emotion. "You cheat," he said. He
stepped against her dress before it could fall all the
way. He bent his face toward hers, almost touching her nose with his, eye to eye. He dropped his hands with force on the wall at either side of her shoulders—he watched her jump as his palms hit, the daylights all but leaping out of her.

She pulled back, hit her head on the wall. Old Winnie was going to brain herself before she accepted that right here was where her game had got her to and she wasn't going backward: She was going forward.

Forward into what? Mick stood there, blinking, panting, furious, flummoxed. He winced over how hard her head had clunked on the plaster—then the crack to her fool head knocked some sense into
him.

He wasn't getting to touch her leg. She couldn't do it.

Mick wanted to howl at the injustice. He'd grazed her leg, thought about touching her. Hell, where he'd got to was worse than not touching her at all. He rolled his lips together into his teeth, feeling his upper lip stretch, cold, numb, and bare as a baby's.

They argued with their strength for a minute. Winnie was a sizeable girl. When she shoved him, he knew it. A big girl. The way her hands grabbed his shoulders, though, and pushed—hard, businesslike, not joking—it took more wind from his sails.

He started looking for options.

While Winnie was all but choking from how narrow hers were. Mick was all around her. She shoved, but his weight didn't budge. It didn't even lift.

In fact, she felt him shift. He stepped his feet apart, making himself as heavy and immovable as a boulder, then whispered into her ear, "So what is the penalty for breakin' faith?"

Her heart leaped into her windpipe. "I didn't—"

"Oh, yes, loovey. Let's see. I think the knickers. They have to go."

"Ac-k-k!"
That was all that would come out Winnie's mouth at first. Then, "N-no, absolutely not, you—"

"Now, now. You cheated. Or you've tried and tried to. You have to pay."

"No," she said. Her voice sounded pathetic, even to herself. What he was doing genuinely frightened her. It was too much. He asked too much.

He took pity. "All right, Win. You can buy your knickers back."

She let her anxious eyes find his. His face was so close, and oh, God, she'd somehow gotten her hands flat against his chest. It was wide, the muscles curved, warm, as hard as the wall behind her. And hair! God help her, at the edge of her thumb she could feel the light cushioning of hair that ran between contours of muscle. His body made her dizzy, near-delirious: as if one of the statues she'd admired had grown warm under her hands, then started to breathe.

"H-how?" she asked.

"Cooperate for a minute." He put his nose near her cheek, brushed it against her. She could hear the sound of air, his smelling her. He brushed his mouth along the same place, his clean, freshly shaved mouth. It set off a series of shivers, little quakes through her.

She took her cheek away, bending her neck, and he put his lips onto the arch of it, lightly brushing his dry mouth up to where her jaw met neck at the back of her ear. They both grew still.

Winnie because she was afraid to move. He, she realized, to take the time to consider how and what to ask of her: The toad, the miserable, mean toad was making it all up as he went along.

He slowly told her, "I'll kiss you
…
I mean, really kiss you this time, Win
…
and you let me. You open your mouth—"

"Open my mouth!"

"Sh-h-h. I knew that was gonna get you goin'. Stop. Just listen. Don't fight me. You let me show you. You open your mouth and let me in. Let me kiss you like I want to." His face drew back, shadowed, but it smiled faintly. She watched the slightly crooked bend of lips that seemed almost familiar. His slanting lips without their mustache were full and neatly made, plump, perfectly chiseled like those of a wicked cherub, lips as no man should own. "That's it. Then I let you go, and we're done."

Oh, she wanted to be done. Finished, over with. Her chest hurt from a kind of thudding exhaustion, as if she'd been running for hours. She let his words console her,
then we're done.
Nor did she miss that he was letting her out of the most onerous part of her bargain, the leg-touching part that simply felt too wrong. She surveyed herself. Her blood pulsed at the insides of her elbows; her arms felt weak. Her whole body was like that, beating, beating, hot, squirming with energy while wanting to lie down, wanting to rest, to languish from an insane ennui.

God, oh, God, just to get it over with, she nodded her head, a quick jerk.

"Close your eyes and relax."

Oh,
that
would be easy. In the end though, she only nodded again as if she were going to be able to do it. She closed her eyes and tried to contain her wriggling restlessness.

His palm spread at the back of her shoulders, then his fingers combed up her nape into the back of her hair. Ooh, so pleasant
…
she wouldn't have thought
…
His hands spreading on her felt much nicer than she could have imagined.

He was gentle. As one hand cupped her skull, his other flattened against the small of her back and brought her against him. It was a gentleness, however, that didn't stop an insane pitch of panic when he brushed his lips across hers, then whispered, "Open."

She did slightly, and he pressed his mouth over hers—she could feel the strength in him, his holding it back, a constraint that was palpable. It brought a sharp, ambiguous zing: fright for the size of his strength, a brawn she sensed that could break her in half; paired with a mind-numbing, knee-bending urge to be wrapped in it, surrounded by it, invaded with it. His mouth coaxed hers open further. Then, turning his head, he pushed his tongue deeply inside, between her teeth, against her palate, the insides of her cheeks, pushing against her own tongue—a full, openmouthed takeover of what Winnie had never questioned was her space alone.

For a moment, her back stiffened, and she jerked in his arms. His tongue in her mouth was revolting
…
well, not revolting exactly. She eased a little. Shocking. It was simply shocking then, after a moment
…
interesting. It was warm, very warm to feel his tongue move in her mouth
…
and, well, it was an extraordinarily intimate thing to feel his strength
there,
his tongue against hers. She could taste him—with sudden vividness she remembered the orange he'd eaten at breakfast an hour ago.

The man with the tangy kiss drew her from the wall, sliding his hand down over her buttocks, and pulled her, full length, up against him. The kiss was instantly more potent. She didn't know a kiss could be like this: teeth, lips, tongue
…
oh, heaven, his tongue was bold. It went deep. It stirred up an awareness, warm, liquid. It made her tense, yet it felt
…
surprisingly right.