Except, he knew himself too well.
And he didn’t care.
“What’s taking you so long?”
“Using all my senses, starting with my eyes.” He knelt on the bed and let his gaze do what his hands and mouth were about to. “You are a damn work of art, Libby.”
She gave him a soft half smile that didn’t reach her eyes.
“Oh, sorry,” he added. “You hate that, don’t you?”
Then she reached for his hand to pull him onto the bed with her. “What I hate is talking and looking and thinking when I want to be kissing and touching and coming.”
“So demanding.”
“Now.” She yanked him on top of her.
He started with a kiss to her mouth, but worked his way south, hungry to taste the budded nipples of her succulent, abundant breasts. He inhaled the smell of one of his favorite places in the world, the depth of a silky cleavage, but he’d never caught a scent quite as glorious as Libby’s. Spicy and sweet at the same time, like the perfect combination of a savory dessert.
She moaned and responded instantly, her hips rising and falling as if they called for his attention, too. Reluctantly, he left his treasure and went searching for more, kissing slick, tender skin, exploring every curve with hungry hands, and shifting to his side to let her do the same.
He kissed her, suckled her tongue, and slipped a finger between her legs, making her moan and shudder.
“You are ready to come,” he observed with a laugh.
“You promised five. And the closet didn’t count for tonight.”
“Take one now, sweetheart.” He thrust his finger in and out and stroked her with his thumb, rising up to watch her pretty features lost in the pleasure of his touch.
“Law, that’s…amazing.” She worked to steady her breath, but gave up and groaned, turning her head from side to side as she came in his hand. He held her tight as she whimpered and strained, then kissed her mouth some more. “That was pretty easy, Lib.”
“I’ve been practicing in the shower,” she said, making him chuckle.
“As long as it was me, I’m okay with that.”
“It was,” she admitted, sounding a little defeated. “Ever since the reunion, you’ve been my fantasy of choice.”
He lifted his head from her throat and chest, smiling. “That’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me.”
“You turn me on,” she said simply. “I guess that’s stating the obvious.”
And it just made him want to turn her on more. He gave her another orgasm with his mouth, enjoying the taste of her, drunk on that, too, then found his wallet and the condoms he’d been carrying for a few days now.
As she recovered, she stroked him with two hands, her gaze intent on his erection as scorching as her touch.
They rolled a few times, letting their legs wrap around each other, caressing all the skin, tasting, touching, and tenderly whispering all the things they’d been thinking for days.
Sexy, secret, hoarse confessions of what they’d been wanting to do…and then doing exactly that. Every whisper she made was as delicious as the mouth that uttered it. Every dirty, shameless plea more intense than the last. And every touch of her skin was like gulping a gallon of full-bodied Cabernet.
By the time she slid a condom on him, spread her legs, and welcomed him deep inside her, he couldn’t remember his name and the whole room spun mercilessly.
Drunk.
She met every stroke, grew hotter and more impatient, dug her nails into him, and let him carry her to another sweet orgasm, and another, growing frantic with each rush up to the peak and shaking as she caught her breath for the next. His blood like hot lava, his hard-on ready to explode, he finally shut his eyes and scooped her whole body into his arms as he thrust furiously into her.
As he shuddered and lost control, she did, too, with perfect timing, strangled breaths, and precious pleas for more and more.
His exquisite release came from somewhere deep inside and didn’t end until there was nothing left to give.
While they lay gasping for breath, covered with sweat and each other, Law remembered something else about being drunk. That sickening, broken, miserable feeling of a hangover.
It wasn’t supposed to happen. He wasn’t supposed to care. He was in this for the pleasure and fun, with his eyes on the prize of the restaurant. What the hell was he doing wanting more of Libby? Why was he opening his eyes, looking at this pretty room, and aching to wake up here often…always…with this woman in his arms?
Oh man, he was past drunk on Libby. He was out of his freaking mind.
“Oh, Law.”
He turned when Libby sighed the words, watching her eyes blink open slowly and the smile pull at her lips. “Yeah,” he agreed. “That was amazing.”
She sneaked a look at him. “Five times, too. Truth in advertising.”
He wanted to laugh, but it would take too much energy. “Five more where that came from. Hell, fifty. Five hundred.” Lost for a moment, he reached for her face, stroking her flushed cheek. “Baby, I want to do that to you for…for…”
Forever. What the ever-lovin’ hell was he saying?
“For the rest of the night. At least,” he added.
“Oh…really.” She sat up, the loss of her body warmth making him suck in a surprised breath. “I think we’re…good.”
Good? “Lib, we haven’t even started. That was the first round.”
She lifted a brow. “At your age?”
“I’m good with some rest, a shower, a bite to eat.” With her, it might take less time than ever. “I get a whole night, Libby.” He hated that he wanted it so much, hated that he was begging…but he absolutely loathed the idea of leaving her.
She stared at him for a beat or two, a storm brewing in her eyes, turning them more gray than blue, more scared than satisfied. “My daughter will be home early in the morning,” she said.
“It’ll be nice to see her.”
Her eyes flashed. “And we have to work late tomorrow.”
“I can stay tomorrow, too.” Did he just say that? Oh, what the hell. What was one more night? Two more? Ten more? He wanted to be with her.
“But…you can’t.”
“I can,” he replied, then stroked a strand of silky blond hair. “I want to.”
He saw her visibly swallow. “But wasn’t that the whole idea of this?” she asked. “A chance to see if I could simply let go, have sex, get all out of balance, then resume life without any desperate need for more?”
Damn it. She was right. “Yeah,” he said. “Like yoga, I think you called it.”
“Which lasts an hour or two at the most.” She inched out of his touch. “So our practice is over.”
He didn’t move, letting this sink in. “Libby, I want to spend the night with you. I want…more.” Way more than he’d ever admit, but he knew when to shut up.
“We’ll see each other tomorrow at the restaurant. And if the spirit moves us, we’ll do this again. But probably not. We agreed.”
“To cutting it short after an hour?” Frustration zinged up his spine.
“If you spend the night, then I’ll want you to do the same thing tomorrow. And the next night. And the next. And then…” She shook her head.
Then they’d be connected, and he didn’t do that. Except… “Then what?”
“Then there’s going to be this thing in court and the DNA tests, and one of us is going to win the Great Pelican Race, and then…”
“Then what happens next?” he demanded again.
Since when did what happens next with a woman even matter to him? Since about an hour ago. Maybe more.
“Then I’ll—” Her eyes widened. “That’s a car pulling into the driveway.”
He frowned, listening to the engine and nodding in agreement. “Yeah, someone’s here.”
“Oh, Jasmine’s home early.” She shot out of bed and started scooping up clothes on the floor. “You have to leave.”
“Libby, you’r
e a grown woman. You can have a lover if you—”
She whipped around, fire in her eyes. “You have to leave, Law.”
“Okay, okay.” He pushed out of bed and caught the boxers she threw to him, watching her frantically look for his pants and finding them near the doorway. “You seriously think your daughter is going to judge you for sleeping with someone? She’s pretty cool, and I doubt that she’d be anything but pleased for you.”
She shoved the pants at him, her hands shaking. “This just can’t happen. What was I thinking? No, this can’t happen.”
Now she was rambling. He stepped into his pants as the sound of a car door made her startle.
“Libby, listen, I’ll dress, and we can sit in the living room like we had an old-fashioned date.”
“No, no, I’m naked.” She glanced down at herself, a little shocked, like she just realized that.
“Then get dressed.”
She stepped into the hall and looked down the stairs. “My underwear is next to the front door. But it’s okay. She’ll come in through the kitchen. She never uses the front door.” She scrambled down a few stairs and scooped his shirt up. “Here. Shoes are…where are your shoes?”
“Bottom step,” he said, joining her on the steps and taking his shirt from her. “Yoga bear, you need to chill out.”
She shook her head. “This is what happens,” she said.
“Yes, it is. People—single, adult, consenting people—get caught in bed together, and they laugh about it, and then they go back to bed and laugh and talk and start it all over again.”
Her eyes clouded as if the very words tore her in half. “Yes. No. Yes. Oh, Law.” She put her hands on her head in pure despair. “I don’t like when I lose my balance, and I’m falling flat on my face now.”
He slipped his hands around her bare torso. “Then let me hold you.”
She considered it. For a full five seconds, he saw the flash in her eyes go from no to maybe to that would be nice…and back to never. “You need to leave,” she said, suddenly calm. “Right out the front door. Right now.”
He nodded once, ignoring the burn of disappointment the rejection gave him, kissing her on the cheek before he trotted down the steps, bent over, and got his shoes, and while he was there, he picked up the T-shirt and bra he’d taken off of her not that long ago.
He set them on the bottom step and looked up at her. “You’re scared of me, aren’t you?”
“Petrified.”
“That makes two of us,” he said, so softly he wasn’t sure she heard him.
He reached for the door, but just as he did, it popped open right in his face.
“Oh!” The simultaneous exclamations came from him and Libby and the woman standing in front of him with pure white spiky hair, bright purple glasses, and lipstick the color of cotton candy.
“Who are you?” she demanded, inching back to look up and down his bare chest. “And please tell me you have an agent.”
He blinked, if only to clear all the color from his vision. “An agent?”
“My friend owns an agency in South Beach, and they are starving for your type. You know, to do Cialis ads and such.”
“Cialis?”
“Except with that body!” She flicked her hand over his torso, not quite touching but damn close. “Forget Cialis! They’d put you in a Centrum Silver commercial, and the old guys would be popping those vitamins like they were gummy bears.”
Speechless, he just stared at her, but at the top of the stairs, he heard Libby groan.
“Mom? What are you doing here?”
Oh, so this was Donna Chesterfield.
She pushed in, passed him, and looked up the stairs where her daughter stood buck naked, except for an expression of pure exasperation. “Libby, I’m so glad you gave up that stupid vow of celibacy. It’s for priests, not gorgeous fortysomethings.” She turned to Law. “Don’t leave on my account, sweetheart.”
“If you insist, I can—”
“He was just leaving.” Libby was the one doing the insisting. “Weren’t you?”
Not if he finally had a chance to talk to the ever-elusive Donna Chesterfield. But he looked up at Libby and read the abject plea in her eyes, visible even fifteen stairs away. She wanted him to leave. She was begging him to leave.
And, damn it, he actually cared about her too much to stay and make things worse for her. He didn’t know when that happened, but it had.
“Yeah,” he said. “I was on my way out. See you tomorrow, Libby.” He paused in the doorway and searched Donna’s face, which was smooth for her age and as pretty as her daughter’s. “I’d like to talk to you sometime, though.”
“We’ll find you that agent,” she said with a wink. “I may take a commission, too.”
He stepped outside, and she closed the door behind him.
On the front porch, he took a deep inhale of soggy summer air, but that still didn’t clear his head. Well, it wasn’t the first time he’d wandered drunk into the night, shirtless, shoeless, and wanting…just one more.
He’d long ago conquered that problem. Now he’d have to do the same thing with Libby. One midnight at a time, just like always.
Chapter Nineteen
“I don’t know if it’s morning or night.” Libby’s mother closed the door behind Law slowly, watching him leave as long as she could, then turning to give Libby her brightest smile. “Jet lag is killing me. Do you have any of that chocolate raspberry truffle coffee I had last time I was here?”
Libby stayed frozen, trying to come to grips with her failed experiment. No grips were forthcoming. Not a single one even on the horizon.
“Libby?”
It was actually funny how spectacularly she’d failed at casual sex. Five orgasms and she was looking at her next marital mistake.
“Libby! The coffee?”
And there stood the reason at the bottom of her stairs.
“What are you doing here?” she asked her mother, still sounding as dazed as she felt. “I thought you were in Europe doing…A Streetcar Named Desire.”
“They switched to The Importance of Being Earnest. I don’t like Oscar Wilde, so I left early. When I realized Sam wasn’t in Miami, I drove over here.”
Libby still didn’t move, but rubbed her arms as the chill set in.
Mom looked up, dragging her purple specs down to get a better look. “That doctor did an amazing job on your lift, honey. Those are the tits of a twenty-year-old. Or is that yoga? All the actors rave about it. Would it get me a hunk and a half like you just had?”
Oh Lord, she’d been gone so long, Libby had forgotten just how weird Donna Chesterfield could be. “I don’t know,” she mumbled, turning back toward her room.
“How about that coffee?” Donna called up.
“In the top drawer under the coffeemaker. I’ll be down in a second.”
“No hurry. I’ll be up all night.”
Great.
In her room, Libby stared at the bed and took the deepest breath her lungs could handle and let it out slowly and with a lot of noise so she could be completely empty.
Like that bed.
Oh God. That was the most amazing sex she’d ever had, bar none. That was the most generous, delicious lover she’d ever imagined. And that freak-out at the end? The most over-the-top and ridiculous post-coital she’d ever pulled off.
And her mother’s arrival was just icing on the stupid cake.
But she’d have to deal with Mom now and face her pathetic personal imbalances later. She walked to the closet and flipped it open, grabbing her raggy old bathrobe, desperate for the comfort of the fluffy turquoise wrap.
She tied it tight, glancing at the bed again, feeling the siren call to just lie down and remember the things her body had just done and felt. Her body, at least, had been on its best behavior, cooperating, responding, melting, and exploding. Five freaking times, and there could have been more.
He wanted more.
And she wanted…a different
kind of more. Yeah, her body had been all in for the meaningless smashup. It was her brain and soul and mind and spirit that had fallen apart when she looked into Law Monroe’s eyes and longed for…him. Him in a way that he didn’t do.
Once again, Libby Chesterfield had blown casual sex to bits.
Still, she perched on the edge of her bed, so not ready to deal with the human whirlwind that was her mother, aching to lie down and think about Law. She stroked her hand over the pillow where his head had been, barely dented from their coupling. They’d moved around, mussed the covers, but hadn’t pressed any heads into pillows or cuddled until dawn or exchanged more secrets and dreams and fantasies about forever.
Because Law had been clear he wasn’t a forever guy. And Libby had attempted…but the intimacy they’d shared made her want to wrap him up in her bed and…keep him there. Which was why when he suggested that very thing, she realized that if she didn’t shove him out the door, she’d be clinging to him like a barnacle on a boat by morning.
He’d openly scoffed at the idea of a relationship that lasted longer than a standing-tree pose, and she’d sworn she could have a hookup and walk away unscathed, and now she was all…scathed. Touched and kissed and satisfied. Held and trusted and…loved.
Oh, Libby, when are you going to stop seeking the myth of love?
She’d looked into those green eyes and tilted sideways, all the way, dizzy and wobbly and needy, like she always was with a man who mattered.
What had she been thinking?
That she could be a normal woman of the new millennium who could fall into bed with a hot, willing guy and not immediately start thinking about some happily ever after that didn’t exist anywhere but romantic comedies and fiction?
She stood quickly, waiting for the rush of imbalance to threaten, but she was as steady as ever. Because it wasn’t balance she lacked in her life, she realized with a start, it was permanence. Something—someone—who would last forever.
“I can’t find the raspberry kind!” Donna’s voice floated up from the kitchen.
Because of her. Donna Chesterfield and her constant movement and changing stories and desire to float through life with no anchor except her two kids. She was the reason Libby longed for stability and balance and something that lasted a lifetime.
Barefoot at Midnight (Barefoot Bay Timeless Book 3) Page 19
