by EC Sheedy
He reached across the distance separating them and hooked his hand around the back of her neck. "Let's leave," he said, not letting her escape his hold or his gaze.
Her mouth opened."Leave?" she parroted."You mean here and now? You and me?" She wasn't making much sense, but she also wasn't saying no, he noticed.
"That's exactly what I mean." He tightened his grip on her neck and pulled her close. "As our mutual friend Nolan would say, let's depart the current farce." He watched her.
She smiled at the oft-heard expression before turning serious again. "I can't do that," she said, her voice unsteady.
He leaned close to her ear, stopped barely short of kissing it before saying. "Can't or won't?" He moved his head, looking down to see the truth in her gray eyes.
"Shouldn't, to be perfectly accurate," she said, pulling her lower lip under her teeth and glancing thoughtfully toward the drawing room. She was tempted, he could tell. So what could be wrong with tipping the odds in his favor? He pulled her close, brushed his mouth lightly over hers.
"Shouldn't doesn't come close to being a reason," he stated firmly, his attention caught suddenly on the closed line of her lip. He traced it with his tongue.
"Where would we go? It's almost midnight." Her voice was huskier now, and her words came with short puffy breaths from a temptingly open mouth. He took her face in his hands, stroked his thumbs over the smooth warmth of her cheeks. Lifted to his, her face glowed pale, the moon's rays lighting her uncertainty.
"Paris, Rome, Madrid... heaven," he whispered against her lips before kissing her with every ounce of persuasion at his command. The kiss, meant to win her over, backfired, bringing him to full aching arousal in a time that would qualify for the Guinness Book of Records. He pulled back, breathing raggedly. "Let's go back to London," he said abruptly, the words as much a surprise to him as they obviously were to Simone.
* * *
Simone stared at him, assimilating his suggestion while trying to force a sense of order back into a world skewed by his kiss. "And?" she finally asked in an effort to reconnect with the conversation.
He gave her a long look, dark with passion and sensuality. "And do whatever you want to do and nothing you don't want to do." He touched her cheek. "You are the boss."
The man was crazy. Mad. Irresistible.
Simone lifted her head and looked deep into his eyes. Dazzled by the sensual promise in them, she found herself nodding cautiously. "All right," she said, then nodded again, more forcefully this time.
"All right," she repeated more to herself than him. "Yes! Let's go, Blue. Let's go as far and as fast as we can."
He took her hand and led her to a door away from the brightly lit drawing room and tried the latch. When it clicked, he opened it a sliver and gave her a conspiratorial smile. "Second thoughts?" he asked, one brow raised in question.
Dazed and exhilarated, she shook a negative.
Blue kissed her quickly on the forehead. "Thank God," he said. "Follow me."
They hurried through the dark room, Simone's hand held firmly in Blue's sea-hardened grip.
Her pulse beat staccato in her throat. Was she really doing this? Playing hooky from her responsibilities with the abandon of a teenager? Responding so recklessly to the startling, unsettling promise in Blue's eyes? She was. Because she knew if she didn't, she'd regret it the rest of her life. She thought about Josephine and stumbled. They were at the first stair leading to their second-floor bedrooms. She rubbed at her ankle, hard, using deferred pain to erase guilt.
Blue stopped immediately. "You okay?" he asked, his tone solicitous.
"Fine. Let's hurry." Oh, God, let's hurry while I still have the courage. She giggled softly. She never giggled! Nerves, that's all. A simple case of nerves—and wild anticipation. This time she took the lead and pulled Blue behind her.
"Miss Doucet?"
It was William. He stood at the top of the stairs, giving them a curious look. "Sir," he added, dipping his head to acknowledge Blue when he stepped up beside her. "Is there something I can do for you?"
"William," Blue said. "You have impeccable timing. There are several things you can do for us. First, you can tell us if there's a back door to this architectural masterpiece. Second, you can tell our driver to get the car ready, we'll be down in fifteen minutes, and last, you can inform Mr. Hallam—after our car clears the grounds—we've been called back to London on business." He clapped the boy on the shoulder. "Can you do that?"
"Yes, sir. I'll see to the car immediately and return at once to assist you with your luggage."
"Oh, and William, be sure to tell Mr. Hallam the business has to do with pension funds."
"Yes, sir," William repeated dutifully.
When the boy rushed off, Blue looked down at her. "So the game begins," he said, his expression a mixture of amusement and resolve.
"Pension funds?" she asked curiously. It was the second time tonight he'd mentioned them.
"Business." He gave her a quick kiss. "I'll explain tomorrow. Okay?"
"Okay," she agreed, not the least reluctantly. Business meant reality; tomorrow would be soon enough for that.
His smile widened at her reply, and she returned it happily, now a full and willing conspirator.
The smile slid from Blue's face slowly, replaced by a sober look of contemplation.
She tilted her head, curious at the sudden change.
"That's the first time you've ever really smiled at me. I could get used to it." He squeezed her hand. "Now, let's go. Driving at this time of night, we should be in London before two—a clean getaway."
* * *
Once in the back seat of the Rolls, Blue drew her close and pulled the pins from her hair. She leaned her head first on his shoulder then his chest, as he sprawled more comfortably across the wide leather seat. His heart beat steady in her ear, and she let out a satisfied sigh.
The familiar was now strange, she thought, imbued with a rare eroticism. Her hand, tucked under Blue's now unbuttoned jacket and resting over his flat male nipple, itched to explore; her hair, in wild disarray from Blue's rough restyling, streamed black against his snowy shirt; her breasts, pressed against the taut muscles of his side, were achingly sensitive. Her mind was strangest of all. Empty of Josephine's censure and Anjana's endless demands, it filled with the moment—and Blue. She burrowed closer and he squeezed her shoulder.
"Why don't you rest?" he murmured somewhere over her head. "We've got a long drive ahead of us."
She raked a nail across his nipple. He shuddered, quickly enveloping her hand in his. "Not now. Not yet," he whispered, kissing her hair. "I don't think Nance needs a biology lesson."
She looked up at him and smiled. He smiled back before pressing her head to his chest with a grumbled instruction to, "Be good."
She was tired, but she didn't want to sleep. She wanted to touch, to feel, to savor the desire building within her, a desire smoldering inexorably to flash point. Tinder under a rising sun.
Days. In a matter of days, she'd come to want Blue more than she'd ever wanted a man in her life. She refused to think where it would lead, refused to measure Blue's magnetism against her promise to herself or Josephine's constancy.
She closed her eyes.
Days. In just a few of them, he'd be gone, his contract fulfilled. Until then this time would be shared. She swallowed hard. He'd made no promises and she wanted none. Her world was tilted, yes, but there would be time enough to put it back on its axis after Blue left. All the time in the world.
Her thoughts blurred and merged, and she edged closer to sleep. A hazy dream curled around her last waking thought. Blue and all the time in the world. She smiled, settling nearer to his heart.
Chapter 9
"Wake up, Tiger. We're here." The slurred words were accompanied by a gentle shake. "And if we don't hit a bed soon—together—somebody's going to have to get me a painkiller," Blue growled softly, stroking her hair.
"Hm-m?" Simone became consc
ious of the ground shifting under her. She grasped at the floating fragments of her dream, but couldn't hold it. A silent explosion had dispersed it. Frame by slow-moving frame, Blue drifted up and away in one direction, she in another, spinning, spinning...
Clenching a fist to steady herself, she found herself clutching a handful of shirt. She jerked awake, dazed, hot, her body pulsing oddly, unevenly. When a segment of the dream came back, she became even hotter.
"Simone, you have to sit up. Please."
Rationality returned with the unmistakable reality of the hard male body she'd used as a mattress, the body in her dream—a body hard in all the right places.
She bolted to a sitting position while bracing a hand on his thigh. Blue exhaled heavily and shifted his lower body. Simone stared as he closed his eyes, his lids lowering in a slow-motion, sleepy-eyed drop. She was dimly aware Nance was unloading the trunk and intensely aware of the fully aroused man she'd been bedded down on since leaving Hallwynd. His thigh muscle under her hand felt like stretched steel.
He touched her hair, taming its wilder strands behind the bell of her ear. "So tell me, is having you, uh, dream on me since we passed Oxford penance or foreplay?" he asked, his wicked grin the perfect companion for an equally perfect arched brow as he continued to stroke her hair.
She should be embarrassed. She wasn't. Shaking her head, at him, at herself, she could only grin back. "I knew I should have given you that parachute."
"Too late," he said smugly.
She sobered. "Yes. Yes it is."
Their gazes locked. Blue leaned closer and Simone cradled his face in her hands to study his face, a face shadowed and mysteriously male under the lamplight coming in through the car window. His skin was warm, firm, rough with growing beard.
"Foreplay, Blue. Definitely foreplay," she whispered, her voice capable of no greater volume.
He leaned back against the seat and stared at the car's roof. "Dad always said good boys go to heaven." He took her hand in his and raised it to his mouth, kissing her palm. "There's one more executive decision to make."
She cocked her head.
"Your bed or mine?"
"Easy." She reached across him and opened the door. "Whichever one we get to first."
Leaving a befuddled Nance standing in the hall, and ignoring their luggage, they ran up the stairs. In seconds they were in Blue's room. When the door closed behind them, Blue pinned Simone between it and his hard-muscled body. He held her hands down at her sides and curled their fingers together. He didn't speak; he looked, staring at her long and hard, his gaze ardent and strangely sober.
"You should know, Simone. What we're about to do, it's important to me. I want you to—"
Her hands still firmly held in his, she stopped him with her mouth, standing on her toes to give him a quick, urgent kiss. Uncertain of her own feelings, she didn't want to know his. "Don't say anymore. Not now. Let's just..." She didn't know where to go from there.
Blue waited and watched, giving her a narrow speculative look. Then he leaned close to her ear and finished her sentence with a one-word question of his own, a frank, boldly spoken expletive. "Is that it, Simone? Is that all you want from me?"
"No! Yes. I don't know," she answered, aroused and confused by his brazen suggestion, the heat in his gaze.
He uncoupled their fingers and rested his big hands on her waist. "I think the man who is about to become your lover deserves an answer. It's a simple question, either you want to make love or you want to—"
She lifted a hand and dropped her eyes, staring fixedly at his rumpled shirt, his dangling black tie. "You're being deliberately crude. Why?" she asked.
"I'm being deliberately honest." He lifted her face to his, giving her a look of such longing her breath caught in her throat. "Because I care. For the first time in my life, I care."
She buried her face in his chest, only grim determination stemming outward trembling. "Oh, Blue. This is frightening. More frightening than you can possibly imagine."
"Josephine?"
"I don't know," she mumbled, unable to explain the fear and anxiety of a woman enmeshed in old losses and confused loyalties. Josephine was only part of it. The other part was herself. Caring for someone, loving them, always led to pain. She didn't want that—ever again. Her emotional immune system couldn't take it.
He shook his head. "Someday, we're going to have to talk about that," he said thinly, before lifting her chin. "But not now, not tonight. Tonight is for making love." That insolent brow of his lifted again. "We'll save the other until we know each other better."
His hands swept up her sides, his palms resting against the sides of her breasts as his blue gaze deepened. "Right now, all I want to do is kiss you—" he kissed the tip of her nose "—and kiss you—" his lips moved to the side of hers "—and kiss you." His mouth took hers in a scalding demanding kiss.
Simone opened to it, giving him heated welcome when his tongue plunged deep. Her quivery moan chorused with his murmured groan as his mouth's caress fired a liquid heat to thaw bone and soften sinew. With a hard exhalation, Blue lifted his head, pulled her away from the door, and steered her toward his bed.
"We've been standing up far too long," he said roughly, tearing off his jacket, then resting his hands on her bare shoulders. He walked her toward the four-poster dominating his room, punctuating each step with a new intimacy; a kiss on her nape, an undone button, another kiss, a loosened zipper.
She reached the edge of the bed half out of her dress, one shoulder bare, and one white sleeve hanging to her knee. He turned her back to him so he could finish the job with her zipper. She could feel his breath in her hair when he bent to kiss her bared shoulder. When she faced him again, she held the slippery satin to her breasts.
"You're good at this, aren't you?" she said, more impressed than embarrassed.
"I hope so," he murmured, nuzzling her throat. "I certainly hope so."
With Blue's help, she stepped out of her dress.
When he tossed it negligently behind him, she wasn't the least inclined to protest the treatment of a dress worth thousands of dollars. Her French silk panties followed. Heat from core-deep warmed her skin the instant Blue exposed it. She trembled under the blaze in his eyes.
Blue sat her down on the edge of the bed and, kneeling in front of her, ran his finger along the lace edge of her bra. When he reached behind her to unclasp it, she flushed with concern, insecurity. She was a small woman. Would he be disappointed?
She tensed when he undid the hooks, letting the straps fall loose below her shoulders. He let them dangle a moment then slowly pulled them down her arms, sending her wisp of bra to join the discarded designer gown. He rested his hands on her thighs and rocked back on his heels to look at her.
"You are so beautiful." He enunciated each word clearly, openly awed by her nakedness. His gaze, dark with desire, skimmed over her body, touching her as surely as his hands might if they weren't clasping her hips. He focused on her nipples, watching, waiting. Simone stilled, entranced by the erotic lights in his blue eyes as they raked and caressed her breasts, heating them, making them throb and pulse. Her nipples peaked and hardened under his rapt gaze. He closed his eyes slowly and inhaled fully before opening them again.
"Beautiful," he murmured huskily. Then pulling her to him he touched the tip of her breast with the tip of his tongue. A firebrand.
Her breathing stopped and her hands fisted into the satin bedspread. If he hadn't been holding her by the hips, she would have shot off the bed. His touch, point to point, electrified her. When he repeated it on her other nipple, she gathered him close. Her breasts full and aching for more, she pulled his head between them and curled her fingers in his hair.
"I'm feeling very exposed right now," she whispered into its thickness, trying to smile, her mouth trembling instead. "And I'm not at all sure that's playing fair. Besides, you're doing all the work."
He pulled back, smiled, and cupped her breasts, resting the pa
ds of his thumbs gently on her nipples. "I have no intention of being fair." With that, he leaned forward, circled her nipple with his tongue, and drew it deeply into his warm, moist mouth.
Simone gasped with pleasure. Gripping his shoulders, her nails dug into his shirt, looking for hard male muscle to hold and anchor her. He glanced up at her, his slight smile at odds with his eyes, eyes glazed, sexually intent. "And I love my job," he murmured huskily, moving his head to her other breast to suckle hard and long. Head thrown back, arched to his provocative mouth, Simone's every muscle, every nerve, lurched and careened under his assault. A ready, warming heat gathered between her thighs.
She knew then. She'd never made love before, never overloaded her senses with a man as she was now with Blue. She'd had sex, unwittingly using it as trade, a currency to buy love, and keep love. With Harper she'd been desperate to please, wanting to ensure he wouldn't leave her. It was another game to win or lose, but with Blue...
She grabbed for a breath.
Blue ran his hands from her knees to the heat at her inner thighs, his pressure for her to open to him subtle and tempting. She tensed, wanting but afraid. Kneeling between her legs now, he pressed harder. "Lean back, love," he coaxed, his warm fingers splayed against her knees. "I want to look at you, touch you."
And he did.
At the first touch of his hand, enclosing her, rubbing in a lazy, slow circle, her brain misted, thoughts flew and swooped, dark birds in a high dusky universe. Her senses imploded, focusing only on the burn of his caress. She heard herself groan, knew what was coming and couldn't stop it.
He came up and over her, whispering near her shoulder, urging her on. His low demanding tones inflamed her. She heard her breath sing across her teeth and fought to bring air to her lungs. Throbbing, she lifted to Blue, moaning when his fingers replaced his hand to stroke, probe, to go deep, then deeper yet, until black and gold lightning wiped away thought and her body undulated wildly, rising and falling, finally arching to him in a fierce draining convulsion. At its peak he crushed her to him.
