A CLASS ACT

by Pamela Burford

  Gabe teased her for another minute or so, slowly stroking the downy mound of her femininity but going no further. She writhed in his embrace, mindlessly seeking relief. Her pupils were dilated, her face and chest flushed pink with her arousal. Her nails gouged his shoulders and he smiled, delighting in her loss of control, in his ability to make her forget everything but the relentless, sharp-edged craving that only he could satisfy.

  "Are you ready?" he murmured, prolonging the sensual torment.

  "Gabe," she panted, "please…" She grasped his wrist and tried to make him deepen the caress. He chuckled and resisted, and she cheerfully cursed him. Her hand sneaked below his waist, but he caught it before she could secure her target, knowing if he let her touch him there, she'd have the upper hand. So to speak.

  "Tell me," he insisted. "Are you ready?"

  "Am I ready? I've been ready since you pulled down the first window shade! Now, what are you going to do about it?"

  Gabe slid one finger lower, pushing through the damp curls to lightly touch her clitoris. She cried out as if in pain. Her hips recoiled, and he tightened his hold on her. Parting the swollen petals, he nudged the delicate opening with a fingertip.

  Popular wisdom held that every woman had a special place in her heart for her first lover. Though Gabe was perilously close to the limit of his control, he was determined to make Dena forget whoever it was who'd claimed her innocence—the man who'd taken Gabe's rightful place in her bed and her body and her heart.

  Dena pushed against his questing finger. He obliged her, with short, shallow strokes that only served to madden them both. Finally he burrowed his finger deep, deeper, and felt the answering ripple of her intimate muscles. His thumb brushed the tiny center of her sensation, and she sobbed her pleasure, breathless.

  "I—I've never been this—" she gasped. "It's never been like this for me."

  "Good," he whispered, and softly kissed her mouth, her half-closed eyes.

  Gabe withdrew his hand and pulled the panties over her hips to puddle at her feet. She wobbled a little, lust-drunk, and grabbed his shoulders to keep from toppling. He backed her against the plywood worktable and lifted her onto the edge of it. In the brilliant sunlight from above, with the leather-and-bead necklace draped over her chest, she did indeed look like some kind of golden pagan princess. He was certain he'd never seen anything so beautiful.

  She wriggled on the unfinished wood. "Is this what they call rough sex?"

  "You know the old song—love is a many-splintered thing. Is it really uncomfortable?"

  Dena leaned back on her palms. "Something tells me you're about to take my mind off it."

  Gabe answered her with a slow, silky smile. He knelt on the plank floor and draped her legs over his shoulders, taking a moment first to remove her shoes. "In the interest of safety," he said. His back and shoulders were already a landscape of claw marks. God only knew what damage stiletto heels could do.

  He brushed his fingertips over the slippery folds. Dena's chest rose and fell faster. Gently he spread her. She trembled, watching him. Waiting. At the first touch of his mouth she jerked back with a strangled gasp.

  He held her still, indulging himself, varying the pressure of his lips, the stroke of his tongue, now light and fluttery, now firm and probing. Her hoarse cries and her frenzied movements fueled his hunger. The seductive womanly scent of her inflamed him.

  When Gabe sensed her climax was nearly upon her he pulled back, deliberately thwarting her, knowing that the longer he held her on that razor edge of sensation, the more intense it would be when she came. Ignoring her whimpers of protest, he kissed her thighs and her belly, lightly blew on her drenched flesh, caressed her everywhere but there.

  When she had calmed somewhat he resumed the intimate kiss, only to stop short once more. Laughing, she tried to force his head down. "Trust me," he said. Her response was a frustrated growl. The third time he didn't stop. It took her scant seconds to reach the precipice, and she tumbled over it with a vengeance, bucking up off the table. Those in the house had to hear her rhythmic screams, he thought, but damned if he cared.

  Her climax went on and on, and he employed every skill in his repertoire to prolong it. At last she collapsed onto the table, limp and winded, mewling like a kitten. Fusing, Gabe struggled with the nearly overpowering impulse to take her right there. But he didn't.

  This time was for Dena. He wanted to make it memorable. He wanted to ensure that when she returned to her home in New Jersey, to her solitary bed, her thoughts and dreams would be filled with the phantom imprint of his hands and his mouth, the inexpressible rapture of his body driving into hers. The irrefutable certainty of his devotion.

  Gabe lifted Dena into his arms and carried her across the room to the little cot he'd slept on the last seven nights. Groggily she clung to his neck and eyed the narrow folding bed. "I don't know about this, Gabe. That thing's kinda puny, and we're not."

  "Can it be any worse than that pool chaise last night?" he asked as he lowered her onto the rumpled bedcovers. Then he could only stare. "Do you have the slightest inkling how damn sexy you look lying there?"

  "Yeah." The glass beads of her necklace clinked as she stretched luxuriously. "I do. Come here," she said, with outstretched arms.

  Gabe had had a few more side dishes in mind before they got to the main course, but he now found himself helpless to resist Dena's summons, or the frank carnality of her gaze as she watched him obey.

  There wasn't room on the cot for him to lie by her side, but that wasn't where he wanted to be anyway. He mounted her, and she opened to him. Her breathing quickened as the rampant tip of his penis prodded her. Steadily he pressed into her slick heat, listening to her soft little gasps, drinking in her wonder-struck smile.

  They made slow, sweet love while the sun climbed into the skylight directly overhead. Dena's eyes were impossibly green in the dazzling sunlight. Damp tendrils of hair clung to her brow. In time, slow and sweet gave way to fast and fervid, and Gabe grappled for purchase on the flimsy cot, riding Dena hard as she wrapped herself around him and rose to meet each hammering thrust.

  Her eyes flew open and her mouth parted as if in delighted surprise. A quick study, Gabe had learned to interpret that particular look several hours earlier, somewhere between the pool chaise and the fancy shower. I'm there, that look said. I'm there right now!

  "I'm with you, love," he whispered hoarsely, shuddering with his climax, pouring himself into her. I'm with you as long as you'll have me.

  * * *

  14

  « ^ »

  "You know what you need to make this apartment a home?" Dena asked. She sat cross-legged in the corner of the sage-green leather sofa in Gabe's den, watching him mix two black Russians at the polished-teak wet bar. He'd changed into jeans after work, but still wore his white dress shirt, untucked and wrinkled at the bottom, with the sleeves rolled up and the collar open. He was barefoot.

  "No, but I'm sure you'll tell me."

  "Hey, take it easy with that vodka! You trying to get me drunk?"

  "Now, why would I need to get you drunk?" He crossed to the sofa and handed her a glass. "I've already taken advantage of you more ways than I knew existed."

  "Funny, I thought it was the other way around." She took a sip of the sweet and fiery coffee-flavored concoction and set it on the thick, triangular slab of glass that topped the cocktail table, an authentic Noguchi piece from the 1940s.

  Dena had visited Gabe at his Connecticut apartment regularly during the eight weeks since the class reunion, and the place never ceased to amaze her. The original art by people like Calder and Miro. The exquisite, one-of-a-kind furnishings. The state-of-the-art kitchen and entertainment center.

  The king-size bed with Irish linen sheets that almost never got a chance to cool down.

  Gabe often visited Dena at her home in West Orange, New Jersey, of course. But her home was just that, a comfortable middle-class home, whereas Gabe's apartment was a pristine
masterpiece of professional decorating expertise.

  Perhaps that was why he never seemed to really let down his hair here, on his own turf, the way he did at her place, with its mismatched hand-crocheted afghans and overflowing magazine racks, not to mention the basket of yapping puppies tucked into a corner of the sunflower-yellow kitchen.

  He sat next to her and turned her bodily so her legs draped over his knees. "Okay, I'll bite. What do I need?"

  "A pet. Something to give this place some warmth."

  "It's plenty warm when you're here."

  Scorching was more like it. "A pug maybe. Those slimy things just don't cut it," she said, nodding toward his fifty-gallon saltwater aquarium teeming with brightly hued fish.

  "Trying to sell me the pick of the litter?"

  "It'd be a gift. But you have to take care of it, be around for it. You have to be willing to commit."

  He sipped his drink in silence, and Dena knew he was pondering her reference to commitment. They saw each other two or three times a week, either here in Greenwich or, more often, at her place, where she could keep an eye on her "babies," the latest litter of black pugs, now five weeks old.

  "Commitment's not a problem for me," he said, in that careful way she'd come to think of as his lawyer mien.

  The subtext came through loud and clear. Gabe wanted her to trust that he'd be there for the long haul, that he was committed to their relationship. She wanted to believe him. Certainly he'd done nothing during the last two months to shake her faith in him. But the simple fact was that she'd spent fifteen years living with the pain of his betrayal, and it wasn't easy to throw off her longstanding resentment and mistrust and open herself to him unreservedly.

  She toyed with her glass. "Gabe, I have to ask you something. It's … kind of embarrassing."

  He was about to make light of her words, she could tell, but something in her expression must have alerted him, because he sobered. "You don't have to be embarrassed with me. What is it?"

  "Well … it's about something that happened back when we were at Ham's—something I overheard actually." She glanced fleetingly at him, and took a deep breath. "I didn't mean to eavesdrop. I guess I was just in the right place at the right time. Or the wrong place, depending on your perspective."

  "Does this have anything to do with Andrea?"

  "No," she said quickly. Andrea was firmly "out of the equation," to use her own phrase. "It's about your parents."

  He frowned. "My parents?"

  "Your mother actually. I was leaving the house and heard you on the phone with her, and I guess I kind of just stood there and listened."

  "Oh." He shrugged. "Hope you weren't too bored."

  "Apparently she asked who was staying out at Ham's, and you said some of the people you went to school with. No one special, you said."

  She left that hanging there and watched comprehension dawn. For a long moment the glib man of law was at a loss for words.

  "I know what you'll say," she continued. "That it doesn't really mean anything. That it's just … one of those things people say." She sighed, wishing she hadn't brought it up.

  "It does mean something to you, though," Gabe said gently, wiggling her big toe, encased in a slouchy pumpkin-colored sock. "Don't pretend it doesn't. This has bothered you for weeks."

  "It hasn't bothered me."

  "That's a crock." He tilted his head, studying her. "I thought I'd seen the last of the old Dena who hid her true feelings and didn't stand up for herself."

  She huffed indignantly. "Okay. It's a crock. It bothered the hell out of me. It still does." She sat up straight. "No one special? Gabe, I dated you for nearly a year back in high school! I knew your family, for crying out loud. I was pretty darn 'special' to them at the time, as I recall—the janitor's daughter who had designs on their precious little boy. I thought your mother was going to put her head in the oven over me."

  She leaned forward and poked him in the chest. "Do you know I once overheard her telling one of her garden-club cronies that my father was in academic systems maintenance? I was special enough to lie about back then, but I'm not special enough for you to even mention now!"

  "Are you finished?"

  She stared at him, breathing hard. "Yes." She flopped back against the corner of the couch. "That felt good."

  "I'm so pleased. Dena, I don't expect you to necessarily believe this, but the reason I didn't tell them about you is because you are so special to me."

  She folded her arms and waited, as if to say, I'm listening.

  He stroked her leg, encased in snug gray leggings printed all over with leaves in autumn colors. "If I'd mentioned you to Mother, I'd have had to listen to all sorts of nonsense from her, the same kind of crap we had to put up with fifteen years ago when we had no choice. Frankly, I opted for the path of least resistance. I do that a lot with her and Dad. It helps keep the peace. Believe me." He closed his hands around Dena's toes and wiggled them all. "It was no reflection on you. You know how I feel about you."

  His expression was affable, unconcerned, as if it were impossible to find fault with his logic. He leaned toward her for a kiss. She gently pushed him away.

  "You've been seeing me for two months," she said. "Exclusively, I assume."

  "You know there's no one else!"

  "Can I also assume you still haven't told your folks about us?"

  He didn't answer—which, of course, was an answer in itself.

  "Oh, Gabe." Dena swung her legs to the floor. "I don't believe this."

  "Dena—"

  "I do not believe this!" She came to her feet.

  So did he. "I told you why—"

  "When were you planning on mentioning me?" The answer bopped her on the head like a cartoon anvil. "Unless you weren't. I'm sure you don't tell your folks about every woman who drifts in and out of your life."

  "You're not going to drift anywhere if I can help it. You know that."

  "I don't know that, Gabe. I know what you say, but…" She turned away.

  "Actions speak louder than words, is that it?" he asked.

  "No. Yes. Oh, hell."

  He came up behind her. She welcomed the pressure of his arms around her waist, the heat of his big, hard body against her back, the familiar scents of shaving soap and laundry starch that had become practically an aphrodisiac for her.

  Gabe's huge fish tank dominated her field of vision. It glowed blue-green, reminding her of that night in Ham's hot tub. Their relationship had continued to blossom since then, but it seemed to Dena that the closer they became, the more she was plagued by doubts and uncertainty. He'd told her he loved her on many occasions, but she had yet to reciprocate.

  "Dena, don't you remember how strained it was between you and my parents? They scared you to death."

  She sent him a quelling look over her shoulder. "I'm not the same scaredy-cat. You know that."

  "That's not the point." His arms tightened around her. "Why give them a chance to sink their fangs in again?"

  She said softly, "Trying to protect me from the big bad snobs, Gabe? I seem to recall that already led to disaster once." It was part of the reason he'd asked Andrea to that country-club reception fifteen years ago.

  "Dena, you have to trust me on this. I know my parents better than you do. Even if you're willing to put up with that aggravation again, I'm not." He hesitated. "This isn't just about them, is it?"

  She turned to face him. "You wonder why I can't just throw myself into this relationship, with no reservations. It's clear to me I have temporary status in your life. This business with your folks is an indicator of where I stand with you."

  Sighing, he scrubbed the back of his neck. "So that's what I have to do to demonstrate my commitment? Open us both up to the kind of meddlesome crap that used to make you practically ill? Or is your memory that selective? I recall more than one occasion when my father reduced you to tears, just from his sheer overwhelming presence."

  He was right. Dena would be so tense
during her visits to Gabe's home, so wound up from her icily polite interactions with his parents, that on a couple of occasions she'd barely made it out of their opulent house before bursting into tears. And the worst part was, she'd known Lucien and Cynthia Moreau were well aware of how cowed she was, how out of her depth.

  "Gabe, your parents are a very big part of your life," Dena said. "You work with your father—you're his partner, for heaven's sake! You've abdicated responsibility for your home to your mother." She gestured at their sumptuously appointed surroundings. "Her decorator designed it, her hand-picked three-man cleaning staff comes in twice a week—the easiest money anyone ever made, by the way. I mean, I've never seen a cookie crumb here, or so much as a tilted picture frame. You live in a damn mausoleum!"

  "What's your point?" he groused.

  "Only that you're still very much influenced by your folks, very much attached to the way of life you grew up with."

  "Wait. Is this the same woman who told me how much we've both changed? That we're not the same people we used to be?" He spread his arms. "So I enjoy my career, and the trappings of success. So what? Are you trying to claim we're still worlds apart? Is that it? Because I hate to break the news to you, love, but you kind of closed the distance between us around the time you made your first million."

  "It's not about money. It's a class thing. I could be as rich as Trump and your family would never consider me one of them."

  "And if they wouldn't, then I wouldn't, right?" He threw up his hands in frustration. "I'm offering you all of me—my love, my future, our future. Everything that's within my power to give. And I get the feeling you're not even meeting me halfway."

  Dena hugged herself, grappling with her deep-rooted insecurities. She couldn't refute what Gabe was saying. Of the two of them, she was the one who'd held back a part of herself.

  His expression softened. He held her lightly. "I understand," he whispered. "I do. If you're having trouble meeting me halfway, it's my own damn fault."

  She started to shake her head.

  "It is," he said. "I never denied that. I'll try to be patient, love."