“It’s the sum of all your parts.”
He laughed, creating a veritable earthquake in his chest. “Cleverly done, Ms. Nichols. I must remember that line.”
She smiled, gratified that a world-famous author would want to use something she said. “When you hang around a writer, you get inspired.”
The muscles of his chest moved against her breasts as he pulled the edge of the quilt up to wrap it around them. “The inspiration goes both ways.”
“Really? Have you started writing again?” Hope glowed in her chest as she tried to pull her head back to see his face. But he held her tucked into him.
“Not quite there yet, but ideas are beginning to flicker in the formerly blank void of my brain.”
“That must be a relief.”
His arms tightened around her. “Beyond measure.” She felt his lips on her hair again. “And I credit you.”
She liked that and she didn’t. Had he made love to her because he was grateful? “Maybe you were just ready.”
“You don’t want to be my new muse?” He shifted as though her words bothered him.
“I’ve heard it doesn’t pay well.”
He didn’t laugh as she’d hoped. “We’ll talk about that later.” He ran his hand down her back in a slow, sensual stroke that lit up her nerve endings. “Right now, a better idea has appeared in my brain.”
Chapter 12
Gavin came awake with the feeling of being watched. He checked Allie’s breathing as she nestled against his side, hearing the slow, even cadence of sleep. Then he saw the cat sitting on Allie’s pillow, staring at him in the half-light of the Manhattan night. Allie had let Pie into the bedroom after they’d made love for the second time, when the creature had begun to yowl.
The cat blinked. Gavin’s father had never allowed pets in the house, and Gavin had learned not to ask. However, when he was about nine, Gavin had made friends with the cats that lived in the parking lot of his father’s store. They were permitted to stay solely to keep down the rodent population and had short, hard lives. When his father caught him feeding them the meat from his sandwich, he was punished. The cats needed to be hungry to encourage their hunting. Gavin had fed them anyway.
Then one of the female cats gave birth to kittens that looked like little furry jelly beans. His father gathered them up in a burlap bag to drown them.
The remembered pain smashed through him again. He had begged for the kittens’ lives. His father had shaken Gavin’s hold off his arm, telling him the kittens would just starve, and then hurled the bag into the frigid water of the river.
Gavin had avoided the cats after that.
Pie blinked again and then curled herself into a ball on the pillow with some of Allie’s hair underneath her.
Gavin let his gaze travel around the room. Despite the drawn curtains, it was impossible to entirely shut out the city lights or the noise of sirens, growling delivery trucks, and taxi horns. The noise level was much different at his mansion, where his bedroom was in the back of the house, its thick walls stuffed with insulation.
Allie’s place reminded him of his younger self, when he’d paid the bills by proofreading for a law firm and then stayed up far into the night, writing. Words had poured from his fingers onto the computer screen in a spate of white-hot creativity. He would write a scene three different ways, just for the fun of it. Of course, he’d had no deadlines, and no editor’s voice whispering in his ear that the reader needed it from a certain character’s point of view.
He’d papered the inside of the kitchen cabinet doors with printouts of all his rejection e-mails, the defiant gesture a way to stave off his fears that his father might be right.
Then the phone call had come from Jane. She’d read his Julian Best novel and saw potential. Was he willing to do significant revisions?
He’d hung up the phone and danced a mad jig in front of his desk before he sat down and started rewriting. Jane had been astounded when he e-mailed her the edited manuscript two days later. She’d expected it to take two weeks.
The afternoon Jane called to tell him they had an offer from a publisher, he’d opened a new credit card—the others were all maxed out—so he could treat his roommates to a celebratory dinner.
And then he’d moved, his apartments getting steadily larger and less cockroach infested with each book sale. When the movie franchise hit big, he’d bought the house in Southampton and then the mansion in Manhattan.
He looked around Allie’s room again, noting the framed posters from the West Virginia tourism department, the plaid curtain hung across the closet in place of a door, and the chunky oak dresser that looked as though it might have belonged to someone’s grandmother. The high-tech treadmill stuck out in the cozy room, and he began to wonder about it. As he scanned with more focus, he noticed a pull-up bar screwed into the doorjamb.
Allie wasn’t really built for pull-ups, no matter how strong her massaging muscles were. A queasy feeling hit him in the gut. A man had lived here long enough to install his exercise equipment.
He wanted to leap out of the bed and rip aside the closet curtain to check for men’s clothing.
His muscles must have tensed, because Allie stirred. “You awake?” she murmured, her voice sleep slurred.
“I don’t think Pie approves of me.”
Allie chuckled and slipped her hair from underneath the cat. “You’re on her pillow.”
“Hence the glare that woke me.” He felt desire stirring in his groin as Allie’s soft breasts moved against his chest. He traced down the line of her back and relished her shudder in response. But he didn’t want to push her too hard. “Do you use that treadmill a lot?”
Now he sensed tension in her muscles. “Only when the weather’s bad.”
“How about the pull-up bar? Is that a physical therapist thing?”
“That’s left over from a previous roommate,” she said, her voice tight.
So she wasn’t going to talk about the man. Gavin knew so little about this woman in his arms. It shocked him that he felt so comfortable with her.
“Would you like something to drink?” she asked, throwing the covers aside.
“Do you have any beer?” That might tell him how recently the roommate had left.
“I have some really lousy white wine.” She padded to the closet and pulled out a large T-shirt, which she dropped over her head, ruining his view of her body. “Oh, wait. Do you like scotch? I have an excellent single malt.”
He preferred bourbon, but the delight in her voice was too good to rain on. “That would hit the spot.” He swung his legs off the bed and pulled on his trousers to follow her through the living room.
The cat dodged between his ankles as he walked through the kitchen door.
“No, Pie, I’m not feeding you,” Allie said, opening a cabinet and rising on her tiptoes to reach for a bottle on the top shelf.
For a moment, Gavin let his gaze roam over her body at full stretch, the rose-colored cotton fabric outlining her graceful curves, both front and back. Then he remembered to pretend to be a gentleman.
“Let me get it,” he said, coming up behind her and plucking the bottle of scotch from its high perch. The fact that her nicely rounded bottom pressed against his semihard cock was a bonus. He held the contact as long as he could before she slipped away to get two tumblers.
She turned to him with a glass in each hand, her red hair rioting wildly over her shoulders.
“You look like a maenad, ready to tempt a man to madness with drink,” he said.
“Didn’t they rip men apart?”
“Only when provoked.” He filled both glasses.
“I can think of a few times when I was pretty close to being that provoked.” She lifted her glass with a wry twist of her lips. “To self-control.”
“To divine madness.” He touched his glass to hers.
He watched her take a sip and swallow hard, her eyes watering. She wasn’t a scotch drinker. Jealousy nipped at him again.
&n
bsp; “A patient gave me this, but it’s not really my favorite.” Her voice had a husky edge from the alcohol.
All right, but the bottle was a quarter empty, so whom had she drunk the scotch with before? He tasted the amber liquor. “Your patient knew his single malts.”
She smiled, her eyes glinting in the overhead light.
“Let’s take our scotch back to the bedroom,” he said. “I have an urge to lap it out of your navel.”
Allie woke up naked and alone, disappointment deflating her as she realized that Gavin was gone. What had she expected? He was a billionaire author, and she was his physical therapist. Former physical therapist. In the cold light of morning, he had undoubtedly bolted before things got awkward.
The smell of bread toasting and the sizzle of something on the stove top revised her imagined scenario in a way that had her scrambling out of bed. She rummaged through her lingerie drawer until she found the sea foam silk nightgown Troy had given her on their anniversary. It slithered down over her bare skin like a caress. As she walked toward the kitchen, the slit on the side flared open to show her bare leg. Problem was it had spaghetti straps, and the apartment was chilly in the morning, so she had goose bumps as well as visible nipples. Not that Gavin would mind the latter.
“Good morning.” She smiled as she walked into the tiny kitchen, which seemed entirely filled by Gavin, wearing nothing but trousers so his sculpted torso was a visual feast.
He glanced up from whatever he was stirring in the skillet, and his eyes went hot as his gaze skimmed down to her ankles. “I was planning breakfast in bed.”
She walked up behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist, letting her cheek rest against his bare back, his abs contracting under her touch. She loved the way the silk felt between her breasts and his skin.
She heard the click of a burner being turned off.
“Maybe we’ll have brunch instead,” he said, turning within her arms to run his hands down her back. He cupped her bottom, rubbing the slick silk against her with his palms, before lowering his head for a long kiss.
She could feel him harden, and she twined her fingers into his hair, wanting him even closer. His mouth tasted like coffee—heady, dark, and rich. Their bodies slipped against each other thanks to the slick silk of her gown. She felt moisture begin to pool low in her body.
He gathered the back skirt of her gown up in his hands until he found her bare skin. “Wrap your legs around my waist,” he said, taking a step away from the stove and lifting her as he spoke. “There’s not enough room in here.”
She gave a little jump and landed on his hips. The front of her gown bunched between her legs, the fabric rubbing against her as he walked to the couch, his hands on her bare buttocks. He swiveled and sat on the edge of the cushion, letting her weight settle on his thighs.
His erection pressed right on her clit, and she moaned as the friction sent a surge of arousal through her.
He reached behind his back to unhook her ankles before he locked his hands around her waist and lifted her into a kneeling position. She seized his shoulders as he brought his mouth to her breast, sucking on it through the silk. She dug her fingers into the hard muscles and pressed into the heat and motion of his touch. Every draw of his lips hurled a shock of energy from her breast to the V between her thighs. “Gavin, yes!” She felt her hips rock in time to the suction.
Then his hand was between her legs, his fingers sliding into her. He pulled his head away to blow on the damp silk. “You are wet everywhere,” he rumbled before he moved to her other breast.
His fingers worked inside her, matching the rhythm of his mouth. She became a mass of pure sensation, hanging on to his shoulders as her only anchor. The tension inside her wound tighter and tighter until she shook with the desire to climax.
And then his mouth and his hand were gone. She opened her eyes to find him digging in his back pocket. He came up with a condom, ripped open his fly, and rolled it on before she could move.
“I want to feel you come around me,” he said, guiding the tip of his cock just barely inside her. He put his hands back on her waist and held her gaze. “Now.” He pulled her down as he pushed up, so he entered her in one swift thrust.
Her orgasm ripped through her, making her grab his wrists and bow back, shouting his name to the ceiling. He rocked his hips slightly to push against her clit to ignite another wave of release. Her internal muscles clenched and throbbed around the hard length of him, squeezing so tight that she thought it must hurt him. He groaned but said, “I want to stay inside you forever.”
As the convulsion of her muscles eased, he began to move, his grip firm on her waist to position her the way he wanted. She shifted her hands back to his shoulders so she could ride with him, the ripples of her orgasm still echoing through her as he drove in and out, his rhythm building. He wrenched his hips up off the couch as he seated himself deep before he came with a roar. She felt the pulse of his climax and basked in the satisfaction of knowing she had done that.
“Oh dear God, Allie!” He brought both of them down to the cushion again. She tilted forward to rest her forehead on his shoulder. His breath whistled past her ear in gasps as they eased down from the intensity of their climaxes. The grip of his fingers on her waist loosened, and he stroked her hip bones with his thumbs.
“I want you to stay inside me forever,” she echoed. Her body felt saturated with pleasure.
He groaned out a half laugh. “Even Julian couldn’t manage that.”
“Julian can do anything.”
“I need to move you off my lap.” He started to shift her to the side.
“No-o-o,” she complained. “You’re all that’s keeping me from collapsing in a heap. Everything inside me has melted.”
“Including me.” He chuckled and set her on the cushion beside him, where she sprawled on her back, one leg dangling off the sofa.
He disposed of the condom while she closed her eyes to savor the satisfied hum of her body.
“I wish I could paint,” he said.
She opened her eyes to find him staring down at her. Brushing at her hair, she said, “I’m pretty sure my hair looks like Bozo the Clown.”
He perched on the edge of the cushion, his hip beside hers. “Your hair looks as though it’s been mussed by passionate lovemaking.” He picked up a curl and dragged the end over her bare shoulder. The tickle sent delight tingling over her skin.
He dropped the curl and leaned over to kiss her softly. “Now that I’ve satisfied one appetite, it’s time to satisfy the other.”
“What were you cooking when I interrupted you?” she asked.
“An omelet. I fear it will have to go in the trash.” He kissed her again. “Feel free to interrupt me at any time.”
“I think you’re safe for at least fifteen minutes,” she said, stretching luxuriously. She heard Gavin’s breath hitch and arched a little extra for his benefit.
“Enough, siren,” he said, standing.
She recalled the story of Odysseus being lashed to the mast of his ship so he could listen to the Sirens sing their songs of temptation without him being lured to his death. “Shall I tie you to the stove?”
“I’d rather be tied to your bedpost,” he said, tossing a wicked grin over his shoulder as he walked to the kitchen.
She pushed herself upright. Her nightgown was a mass of wrinkles and showed a few damp spots from their activities.
Allie went into her bedroom, rummaged through her lingerie drawer, and sighed. She could manage sexy vamp for only one outfit. She pulled out a pair of peach lace panties with a matching bra. At least she would look good under her jeans and top. She squirmed into her snuggest jeans and donned a dark purple top with a deeply scooped neckline. Brushing her rats’ nest of hair into shining waves, she frowned at herself in the mirror. Not exactly competition for the likes of Irene Bartram.
The sound and scent of sizzling butter made her jog across the living room. “Mmm, that smells heavenly,�
�� she said, pulling plates, glasses, and silverware out of the cupboards. “Coffee, tea, or orange juice?”
He gave her a sly look. “You.”
“That wasn’t on the menu.”
“It was a few minutes ago.” He slid a perfectly folded omelet onto the platter he’d set on the counter. “Orange juice.”
She set the small round table, which was tucked into a corner of the living room, thanking the impulse that had made her splurge on a bunch of yellow flowers from the Korean grocery down the street. She poured the orange juice as Gavin walked out of the kitchen carrying the omelet platter. He set it down with a flourish so she could see the grapes and buttered toast points garnishing the sides.
He served her half the omelet with deft movements before seating himself on one of the ladder-back chairs. It looked small in comparison with his shoulders, which were now covered by his rumpled shirt.
She inhaled again. “There’s a whole lot of butter going on here.” Picking up her fork, she took a mouthful, discovering the cheese he’d added as filling. “Perfect. It’s absolutely perfect.”
“And now you have sampled one of the three dishes I make with authority.”
“I could happily eat this every morning for the rest of my life.” She choked a little as she realized how that might sound.
“Speaking of life, I have a proposition to make to you.”
“You already did that last night. And I accepted.” She gave him her best come-hither look.
“I hope you will accept this proposition with equal enthusiasm.” His attention fixed on the fork he was twirling back and forth between his fingers. “You know the Julian Best books inside and out. I need someone to bring my series bible up to date.” He brought his gaze back to her. “A bible is a reference document that contains all the characters, places, and other pertinent information that need to remain consistent across all the books. I had an excellent assistant who set up the bible and kept it going for the first nine books. However, he moved to Australia, possibly to escape from Julian Best. Then a less-thorough assistant took over.” His tone turned sardonic.
The VIP Doubles Down (Wager of Hearts Book 3) Page 13
