by Brenna Lyons
Keith reminded himself not to respond to the invitation, but her proximity was undoing his resolve. “No. I was just hoping to educate you,” he growled close to her ear.
“Oh, but you are,” she crooned. “Don’t worry. I won’t make what you’re doing too hard on you. I’m enjoying it immensely.” Katie pressed a light kiss to his lips and pulled away.
Keith took a calming breath and followed her to their table. Once they were seated and lunch had been ordered, he ran a finger down her chin playfully. “Now, oh wise and mighty one, what am I doing?”
“Seducing me slowly,” she replied. “I had my suspicions at your place. When I showered alone, I was fairly sure. The Kaufmann’s trip was the cincher.”
“It won’t be the last,” he promised.
“I hope not,” she purred.
After lunch, he drove down Carson Street into the shop district. At the Culture Shop, he bought candles and incense. At the Bead Mine, he bought a necklace. And at Chocolate Celebrations, he introduced her to a truly decadent ice cream sundae. By the time they returned to the car, Katie was suitably impressed with his shopping expertise.
“Where to, now?” she asked.
Keith glanced at his watch. “Three o’clock,” he mused. “Time to get changed.”
“Back to my place?” she asked.
He smiled and swung back up Eighteenth Street.
As he pulled across the Mission Street Bridge, Katie raised an eyebrow. “Something I don’t know?” she prodded.
“You’ll like it,” he assured her.
At the house, Keith pulled out her bags and handed them over before grabbing his own purchases and following her to the door. Katie glanced at the Wal-Mart bag in the top of his shopping bag curiously. He shifted the box that held her dress to block her view.
“No peeking,” he ordered. Keith steered her to the couch. “DVD? CD? Book? What do you want to waste some time with?”
“And what will you be doing?”
His smile widened, but he didn’t answer her.
“All right, put Noises Off in for me,” she decided in annoyance.
Keith nodded as he complied with her wish. Their love of the movie was one of the first things they discovered they had in common once they started spending most of their time together. He smiled at the memory of watching it curled together in her father’s chair. Keith had barely avoided the idea of christening the chair a second time in favor of some other sexual adventure with her.
His task completed, he turned to her again. “Hand me the underwear you bought,” he requested.
“I thought you wanted to imagine,” she protested.
“Oh, no. I’ll see them. I’ll know every stitch of clothing on your body,” he assured her.
She nodded, shivering in a sudden rush of awareness that was as clear to Keith as if it had been painted before his eyes. Katie reached deep in her shopping bag and handed over a smaller bag with the lingerie inside. Keith left her behind, grinning at her arousal. He was getting to her, just as he planned.
Keith arranged the candles in the bedroom and showered quickly. When he called Katie into the room, she eyed the unlit candles and the towel wrapped around his waist with a speculative smile.
“It’s not that simple,” he said with a laugh. “Get your shower, then come out here to me.”
“Is that what the doctor orders?” she asked in mock innocence.
“That’s what the man, who wants you so bad it hurts, orders,” he countered in a growl.
Katie flicked a glance at the obvious bulge behind the thick towel and smiled wickedly. “Good,” she replied as she made her way to the bathroom door.
* * *
Katheryn stood under the hot spray, considering turning the cold water on full blast. Keith may have been having trouble reminding himself to wait, but she was having trouble thinking at all.
She was surprised to see that Keith brought a bar of the Greenmint soap with him from her house. Katheryn had formed an addiction to the soap when she lived on the Massachusetts/New Hampshire border and still ordered it by mail two years after moving away from the Citiwicks store. Keith also brought bottles of her shampoo and conditioner. Katheryn wondered what other surprises he had liberated from her house while she showered that morning.
The candles were lit in the bedroom when she came out. Keith was dressed in suit pants with a mandarin shirt and dress shoes. His suit jacket hung over the edge of the mirror across the room. Her hands moved to unhook the towel, but he removed them gently.
“Not yet,” he whispered.
Instead, he led Katheryn to the edge of the bed and sat her facing the mirror. Keith brushed her hair until it fell in silky waves around her face before tossing the brush back onto the pile of bags and boxes at the head of the bed.
When he knelt between her knees, Katheryn expected a blatantly sexual move, but what Keith did was much more torturous. He pulled out thigh-high stockings and put them on her slowly. Keith ran his hands over the silky material and his fingers under the black lace cuffs at the top, sending her into excited hitching.
The panties came next, eased over her legs to the edge of the bed. Katheryn tried to shift her hips forward to help him, but his hand held her in place firmly.
“Be still,” he whispered hoarsely.
Katheryn took some small measure of satisfaction out of the fact that he was affected by what he was doing.
He pulled a pair of her black heels from the Wal-Mart bag next to the box from Kaufmann’s and slid them on her. The anklet he bought appeared from his pants pocket, and he fastened it on her and ran his hand up her calf.
Keith stood abruptly and pulled her up to face him. He removed the towel and dropped it behind her feet. “Don’t move,” he ordered quietly.
He ran his hands over her buttocks, pulling her closer to him so that she could smell his musk overpowering the touch of cologne he wore and feel the hard ridge of him beneath his pants. Keith grasped the top edge of the panties and worked them up slowly into place. His breath was hot on her cheek as they touched the sensitive core of her, and she gasped in the spike of arousal it brought her.
“Oh, God,” she groaned. “I can’t—”
“You can,” he assured her. “Let me.”
“Yes,” she whispered.
Keith stepped back and got the bra out. He walked around her and wrapped the garment around her ribs, laying feathery kisses on her shoulder as he hooked the back. Then, he met her eyes in the mirror and pulled it up beneath her breasts. As he maneuvered them inside, Katheryn laid her head back on his shoulder and moaned.
He froze. “No, Katie. Watch the mirror, please,” he breathed close to her ear.
She looked back at the mirror and watched as he finished the job. Keith ran his hands over the fabric lightly and down her stomach to the top of the panties.
Katheryn cried out harshly. “Do it or don’t do it, but no more teasing,” she pleaded.
He took his hands away with a satisfied smile while she shook lightly in excitement.
Next, he removed a bottle of one of her perfumes from the bag—Obsession. Keith dabbed a drop on his fingertip and started it behind her ear, moving down her neck to the pulse point on her throat. The second drop made a maddening path over the tops of her breasts and dipped deep into her cleavage while she watched, transfixed.
“I can feel your heart,” he murmured. Keith leaned close to her neck and inhaled her scent. “I can smell how hot you are,” he continued.
Her voice shook as she formed her answer. “If you keep this up, I’ll feel something and end this,” she warned.
“Do I have to tie you up?” he asked close to her ear.
Katheryn groaned in response, remembering when they used the soft restraints Carol had bought her as a joke. What Keith did to her while she was tied down was no joke. She was putty in his hands.
Keith backed away to survey his work with a wide smile. “We’re almost done,” he assured her.
“What happens when we are?” she asked quietly.
“We go out, and we both spend the evening imagining my doing this whole thing in reverse, just as slowly but much more intimately when we get home.”
“I won’t survive it. I can’t stay still for it,” she countered.
“You will,” he promised. Keith scanned the length of her slowly. “Beautiful,” he mused. He met her eyes again. “Close your eyes,” he ordered.
Katheryn complied, and he drew her arms high above her head. From the sound of tissue paper, she guessed that he had opened the box. The silk floated down around her, and Keith tightened it with the zipper and hook ’n eye. He lowered her arms and smoothed the fabric over her. Katheryn could tell that the dress was a little above the knee, and that it had a slit on the right thigh that would show the lace cuff on that side.
A soft shawl fell across her shoulders and brushed over her breasts. Keith moved to even it out and smooth it. “You won’t have to close your eyes when I take it off of you,” he whispered close to her ear. “I want you to watch everything I do to you.” His lips brushed over her ear. “Open your eyes and see how beautiful you are,” he commanded.
Keith was behind her when she opened her eyes, watching her reaction, as she looked the mirror up and down. Katheryn sucked in her breath. The strapless black sheath of a dress lay across her chest and skimmed over her stomach and waist before falling gracefully over her hips. The shawl was a matching black embroidered with gold thread that showed off her black hair and dark eyes. While she took in the effect, the necklace with the emerald green stone was dropped around her neck and fastened to lie at the top of her cleavage. She glanced down at the anklet suddenly.
Keith’s rich laughter rumbled against her hair. “It matches,” he assured her. “Green is a good color for you. I might have considered this dress in green if they had it, but black is wonderful on you. It shows off your light skin beautifully. Now,” he began while moving around her slowly, “one last thing.” He pulled out a dark red perma-gloss and painted her lips torturously. “No kissing for at least fifteen minutes until that dries,” he teased. “Are you ready?”
Her entire body cried out for him. “More than ready. I won’t last the night.”
“You will, but I wouldn’t mind if you came in anticipation.”
“Then, take me,” she invited. Katheryn knew she sounded desperate, but the ache was all consuming.
“No, my love. I won’t give you release until we’re home again. Whether or not you succumb before that will be a matter of willpower on your part. You will come for me this evening regardless. If your body can’t wait for me the first time, I’ll take it as a compliment. It means I’ve done a superb job of seducing you, but you will scream for me either way.”
“You’re sure of yourself, aren’t you?” she breathed.
“Yes, I am. With you as my partner, I can’t go wrong. I’ll only ask one thing.”
“What’s that?”
“If you don’t make it, tell me.”
He smiled a wicked smile, and Katheryn trembled in response.
“Come on,” Keith invited. “The drive will cool you down a little.”
Chapter Fourteen
“Dreams come true; without that possibility, nature would not incite us to have them.” John Updike
The drive didn’t cool her off. The dull ache for him remained with Katheryn even as her mind cleared. He parked at Station Square again, and Katheryn smirked at him.
“No Grand Concourse, right?” she prodded.
“I promised you I wouldn’t,” Keith reminded her. “What is the deal with the Grand Concourse? You’ve been to dinner at the Top of the Triangle. I don’t get it.”
She blushed deeply. “Bad experience,” she admitted.
“Then, you have been there?”
She nodded sheepishly.
“What happened? I can’t believe you had bad food—”
“No, the food was wonderful, but the company was lacking.”
Keith looked at her in surprise.
“No, Jordan didn’t take me there.” She took a wild shot in the dark at what was bothering him, and was rewarded by his grateful nod. “I told you about the Concourse before I ever dated him, remember?”
“Then what?”
“My father took us there to celebrate my graduation from St. Stephen’s.”
“Top of your class,” he reminded himself.
“Yes, until I came up against you and Regina. Anyway, you remember that I never excelled at prim and proper.”
He nodded.
“Mother and Grandmother spent the entire meal instructing me in proper etiquette. It was annoying.”
“And it took all the fun out of it for you,” he guessed.
She nodded in agreement.
“If I thought it would make you feel better, I’d take you there just so we could eat with our fingers.”
Katheryn laughed. “I’ve learned to act like a little lady when I need to, now. I use it when the occasion calls, believe it or not, but I still prefer eating gravy fries with my fingers.”
“And feeding them to me?” he asked.
“Oh, yes. I love feeding them to you,” she assured him. “I don’t know if I’ve ever told you what a wicked, talented mouth you have.”
“You’ve let me know,” he teased. “Besides, tonight it’s your turn,” he added cryptically.
“My turn for what?” she asked.
Keith smiled and got out of the car. He came to her door and helped her out.
“So, where next? It’s too early for dinner.”
“Very observant,” he mused. He steered her behind Station Square to the Sheraton. At the door, he spoke to the doorman quietly. “We have a few minutes,” he told her.
“For what?”
“That will become apparent in a few minutes,” he teased.
Apparent was an understatement. Katheryn was stunned. A horse and carriage pulled to the door, and Keith guided her toward it. The temperature was just beginning to drop, and the driver furnished them with a quilt to keep warm.
“All set?” the driver inquired.
“We’re ready,” Keith assured him.
“Good. It’s a nice, clear night for watching the sunset.”
Katheryn sank into Keith’s arms and watched the scenery pass by as much as she watched him. The sunset reflecting off of the water of the Mon was glorious, and it was nearly dark before they arrived back at the hotel.
“That was wonderful,” she said in awe as they headed back to the car. “Thank you. It surpassed decadent.”
“Someday, I’ll take you on the sunset dinner cruise on the Majestic,” he crooned. “Have you ever been on her?”
Katheryn shook her head in embarrassment of how many things in the city she hadn’t done while she was off prowling the East Coast. “I’ve only been on the Good Ship Lollipop and the Party Liner,” she admitted, “at least as far as the Gateway Clipper Fleet is concerned, anyway. The Majestic is the ornamental sidewheel, right?”
“Yes, it is. What other boats have you been on?”
“The Maid of the Mists at Niagara Falls. I want to do that one again. A late-night tour cruise in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The Spirit of Norfolk in Virginia—and a day cruise for friends and family on the USS Minneapolis/St. Paul.”
“A Navy ship?” he asked in surprise.
“A Navy boat,” she corrected. “Los Angeles class, fast attack, nuclear submarine.” Katheryn grinned at his look of boyish awe.
“Really?”
She nodded.
“Friend or family?” he asked suddenly.
Her cheeks flared in embarrassment. “Some guy I dated for a few months while I was working on my second book,” she admitted.
“Lucky guy,” he replied lightly.
“Well, not lucky enough,” she admitted.
Keith looked at her in surprise.
“We were always good at being friends. We never quit
e hit it off for anything else.”
He smiled sheepishly. “I’m glad.”
“Why? You know I wasn’t a virgin last week,” she reasoned.
Keith took her by the shoulders and dazzled her with a fierce kiss. “I’m jealous,” he admitted. “And, I know you’re not incredibly experienced. I could tell. Women who sleep around a lot react differently. I’m educating you, because you haven’t had much education, have you?”
She shook her head and her blush deepened.
“It’s not a bad thing, Katie,” he assured her. “Educating you is incredibly arousing. Seeing you respond to my touch thrills me. You have just enough experience that you touch me like a true wanton woman, but you haven’t lost that fresh perspective.”
“And when I do lose it?” she asked nervously.
“I intend to be educating you for the rest of our lives, if you let me.”
Katheryn smiled at the thought.
“Can I?”
“Absolutely.”
His smile spread as he wrapped his arm around her hip and started back for the car. “Come on. We have to get moving or we’ll be late.”
“Where to?” she asked when they were comfortably settled in the car.
Keith looked uncertain for a moment. “You don’t mind bridges too badly in a car,” he mused. “How are you with inclines?”
“I love them. They’re great.”
He looked at her in surprise.
“Enclosed space,” she reminded him. “It can have all the glass in the world—well, above the waist anyway, as long as it’s not outside.”
“So, a glass elevator bothers you more than an incline?”
“Silly, huh?”
“Nope. It makes perfect sense. I’m just making sure I understand the limits. Put your seatbelt on. We’re taking the Duquesne.”
“Okay. Just one thing. We’re not going near the overlooks, are we?”
Keith shook his head. “I’ll keep you on the inside of Grandview, and we’ll steer clear of them. Deal?”
Katheryn sighed in relief. “Deal,” she agreed.
“How did you ever grow up in this city? It should have driven you absolutely crazy.”
