Serious Risks

by Rachel Lee

  “It feels so good to hold you,” he murmured, rubbing her back from shoulder to hip with his hands. He knew instinctively that she needed every bit of praise he could shower on her. He thought himself uncertain, but she was even more so, lacking any experience to counter her mistaken self-image. He had seen enough to know that she felt plain and unattractive. None of it was true, in his opinion, but he was honest enough to admit others might have given her reason to feel that way. She was not conventionally pretty, but in his eyes she was something much more. She had the soft warmth that made puppies and kittens so appealing. In her plain little face he saw loveliness that wouldn’t wear away, and in her eyes he saw the shining of her soul. But perhaps the most amazing thing he needed her to understand tonight was that both his mind and his body found her to be absolutely the sexiest woman he’d ever seen.

  “You’re so soft,” he murmured against her temple. As one hand swept downward, he pulled her hips closer, pressing her abdomen to his arousal. He heard her soft gasp, and with a smile he rocked himself against her. Just once, just enough to remind her. “You make me hot,” he said frankly, and soaked up the warmth of her unexpected smile.

  “You make me hot, too,” she confided, her brown eyes sparkling up at him.

  He brought his hand up to cup her cheek, to slide into her yards of silky hair. “When I came up here the other night with those boxes—remember?”

  She nodded, watching him with heavy-lidded eyes.

  “I took one look at this bed, and I got hit right between the eyes with an image of you lying here covered by nothing but your hair. I’ve been wild ever since.”

  Color stained her cheeks, visible to him even in the dim light. “I don’t know if I’m quite ready for that,” she admitted.

  “Of course you’re not.” He kissed her forehead, ran his fingers from her ear to her chin. “I’m saving that up for later, anyway.”

  “Later?” The word caught on her breath as his hand, quite deliberately and quite boldly, slipped into the front of her dressing gown, found its way past the thin strap of the teddy she wore and grasped her breast in a warm, firm hold.

  “Ahh.” Arlen sighed, closing his own eyes as he felt her satin skin, the hard button of her straining nipple. “Your breasts are so beautiful, Jessie. They feel so good….”

  Jessica nearly groaned when he pulled his hand from her breast, but a new excitement clenched her deep inside as he tugged at the tie of her robe.

  “I want to see you, Jess,” he said huskily, pulling the tie loose and parting the robe. “I want to touch you everywhere.” He smoothed the robe from her shoulders, and in growing eagerness she helped him free her from it.

  Pink skin and white satin. She was wearing a white satin teddy that draped her curves loosely, tentatively, temptingly.

  “Damn it, Jess,” Arlen said. “You know just how to drive me out of my mind!”

  The smile she gave him was shyly pleased. “You like it?”

  “I like it,” he replied. “I like the way you look in it even better.”

  She turned toward him, holding out her arms, but he stopped her gently, pressing her back onto the mattress. “Uh-uh,” he said, brushing a kiss on the tip of her nose. “I’m not through going crazy over how you look.” He also needed a moment to slip a leash on his escaping control. After a while he lifted smiling gray eyes to hers. “Now,” he said quietly, “I’m going to touch.”

  And touch he did. Jessica caught her breath and then stopped breathing altogether. His hands wove a web of magic on her skin, through the thin satin that slipped erotically against her most sensitive parts. When her sighs turned to soft moans, he took her mouth in a deep, searing kiss that echoed the primal rhythms he was evoking in her.

  “Arlen…Arlen…” Her own hands couldn’t remain still as powerful needs took her, shook her, turned her inside out so that she felt like a mass of hungry, throbbing nerves. She found his broad shoulders and clung, trying to draw him closer, but he resisted. Instead he opened the snaps of her teddy and skimmed it off her.

  Her eyelids fluttered as she felt it go, and she arched toward him. She’d never felt anything like this before, but she knew what she wanted.

  “Arlen…I need…I want to feel you….”

  “Touch me, Jessie.” His voice was a husky growl. “Touch me, baby. Go on.”

  Her eyes opened sleepily. “Show me,” she whispered. “Show me how.”

  That request fanned his inner firestorm. There were ways he’d needed to be touched all his life long, ways he’d never been touched. As Jessie spoke, something inside Arlen exploded in a conflagration long denied. Only as she spoke did he realize what he’d missed.

  “Show me,” she murmured again, turning toward him, heedless of her nakedness, unaware of how beautiful she looked to him. She wanted, needed, to make him feel some of the pleasure he gave to her. She wanted, needed, to feel his skin and his shudders, to hear his moans and sighs, to weave the same magic web around him.

  He was shaking as he took her hand. His needs took a momentary backseat to the wonder of this woman’s request, but not for long. He pressed her palm to his chest and rolled onto his back.

  “Like this,” he whispered, drawing her hand downward. As he guided her, he hung suspended in a kind of hell, wondering if she would pull away in shock. “Like this,” he whispered again, closing her fingers around him through the cotton of his briefs. He was grateful for the briefs, suddenly, grateful that the shock to her could be minimized by that thin, soft barrier.

  But Jessie’s shock was both instant and fleeting. She drew a deep, shuddery breath and stroked him with instinctive need, encouraged and inflamed by his evident pleasure. She had imagined, but imagination didn’t hold a candle to reality. He was harder, bigger… She stroked him again, marveling, melting.

  Arlen jerked and moaned. “Again, Jess,” he ground out. “Again. So…damn…good!”

  Her insides clenched almost painfully in response to his sounds of pleasure, and she wrapped herself around him, a leg over his legs, her hand on his hips, and her mouth—ah, with her mouth she learned a dozen ways to make him groan, to make his arm tighten around her shoulders. It was she who tugged his briefs from him finally. She knelt over him in awe and touched him in wonder.

  And destroyed his patience and self-control.

  “That’s it, Jessie,” he growled. Catching her by the shoulders, he flipped her gently onto her back and leaned over her. He kissed her swollen lips with an aching gentleness and brushed her silky hair back from her face. A fierce tenderness, a purely protective instinct, gripped him. “Are you sure, Jessie?” he asked hoarsely. “Are you really sure?”

  She lifted trembling arms and looped them around his neck. “I’m sure,” she said on an uneven breath. “Absolutely.” Why was he hesitating? Every nerve in her body throbbed in a plea for completion. She was almost completely past the ability to think.

  He swept his hand downward to the apex of her thighs and combed his fingers through soft hair. “It’ll hurt, sweetheart. I don’t think there’s anything I can do to prevent that.” He slipped a finger into her, causing her to gasp and arch. She was warm, tight and wet. So wet and ready. So damn virginal. He wished he could skip this part somehow. He remembered another time, and he might have frozen right there, except that Jessie’s hips undulated against his hand as if she enjoyed the sensation of penetration, and she turned her head toward him, finding his nipple with her tongue.

  “Mmm,” she panted. “I know. I don’t care.” She tugged on his shoulders.

  But he hesitated a little longer, trying to prepare the way, to ready her as much as possible. There was the awful minute when he had to turn to the bedside table, but he returned swiftly, again stroking her deeply with his fingers until she was writhing, one hand clutching desperately at him, the other clutching at the sheet. She was as ready as she could ever be, he thought, and he was damned if he could wait any longer.

  As soon as he moved between
her legs, she stilled.

  “Jess?” Doubt assailed him again, one last flicker of clear thought in a mind gone red and hazy with driving, pulsing need. Damn, she was soft. So soft, so warm, so wild. “Jess?”

  “Do it,” she whispered. “Oh, please, Arlen. Now!”

  He wanted to move slowly, but as soon as he started to enter her, something inside both of them snapped and their hips lunged together. The barrier was gone almost before he was aware of it, and he was fully sheathed in her tight, hot depths. Smothering a groan of incredible satisfaction, he raised his head and looked down into Jessie’s suddenly pale face. He cupped her head, stroked her hair back, restrained his hunger as he waited for her reaction.

  “Jessie?” He spoke in a husky whisper.

  “I…just need a second,” she whispered back. “Just give me a minute. I’ll be okay.”

  He filled the time by kissing her softly everywhere he could reach. When he lifted his head again, she smiled and her eyes opened, looking straight into his.

  “Are you okay?” he asked.

  “Mmm.” She sighed, then reached up to stroke his shoulders with her hands. “It wasn’t that bad. And you feel so good inside me.”

  Her truthfulness delighted him. “Tell me,” he coaxed, and moved a little, just a little, within her. “Tell me how it feels.”

  She whispered in his ear, broken phrases, trying to tell him how he completed her, how he filled an aching emptiness, how right, how good, this seemed. And as she whispered he deepened his movements little by little until her whispers turned to moans and her stroking hands began to clutch.

  He had tested his self-control beyond what he’d imagined possible, but now it was failing him completely. He slipped a hand beneath her hips, guiding her untutored movements, straining to bring her the same pleasure she was giving him, knowing that he couldn’t hold on much longer.

  And then she convulsed with a groan that seemed to rise from her toes.

  “Jessie!” With a guttural cry he followed her over the peak.

  Chapter 8

  Clad only in unbuttoned, unzipped jeans, Arlen stood at the window near the head of Jessie’s bed and stared out through white lace at wet gloom. Rain dripped steadily from the eaves, and the day beyond the window was gray and faintly misty. As yesterday had been the best of Texas springtime, today appeared to be the worst.

  It was early yet, only a little past seven, meaning he had enjoyed maybe three hours of sleep. He was used to short sleep, though, and as he got older, late nights followed by early mornings troubled him less and less.

  Jessie’s neighborhood was one of the older ones in town, and it was both quiet and graced with tall old live oaks that must be near a century in age. It reminded him very much of the small upstate New York town where he’d grown up—although he hadn’t lived in a neighborhood as nice as this one. No, this type of neighborhood in his hometown was where the doctors, lawyers and merchants lived.

  Ever since he had moved to central Texas, however, he frequently had been taken by surprise at the way some view of the hilly countryside or a city street would suddenly remind him forcibly of the Northeast. The sensation was particularly apparent here on Jessie’s street.

  He glanced over at her to make sure she was still asleep. This was one morning of her life when she shouldn’t awake alone. It would be easy, he feared, for her to feel used. Hell, in the cool light of morning he was wondering what the devil was wrong with him. He’d let his judgment become seriously clouded by needs that shouldn’t be running a man’s life much past the age of twenty. Still, whatever penance he deserved for his selfishness and foolhardiness in climbing into her bed, he wasn’t going to make her pay it. She had given him a priceless gift, and he was decent enough to value it. He would stick around until she got sick of him, which probably wouldn’t take too long. Until then, he owed her whatever she wanted from him simply because he’d taken advantage of her.

  He scanned the street again. It was quiet, as it should be so early on a Sunday morning. The only other soul stirring was that man down there leaning against a light post and smoking a cigarette while he waited for a dog to finish sniffing out all the bushes. Probably somebody else with a guilty conscience for the way he had spent his Saturday night, Arlen thought wryly.

  A sigh from behind made him turn and look at Jessica. She stirred slightly, like the whisper of a dawn breeze. The top sheet was tangled around her legs and had slipped off one breast, a full, rounded breast with a large pink areola. A beautiful breast, he thought, on a beautiful, generously endowed woman. Her hips were meant to cradle a man, had cradled him perfectly. The memory of how she felt beneath him was enough to bring him surging to full arousal like a young buck of eighteen. He forced his attention back to the window and grimaced down at the solitary smoker below.

  Part of what was troubling him this morning was the oddly uncomfortable perspective that last night had given him on his marriage. He didn’t really want to think about it. His marriage had been a good one by just about any measure—except sex. He had loved Lucy and would still love her today if she were alive. There had been good times and there had been bad times, but never, ever, had he once even thought of ending their marriage, or wished it had never happened. They had been companions and friends and allies. Not once had he been able to envision anyone replacing Lucy.

  But suddenly, on a stark, gray March morning, he couldn’t escape the knowledge that he and Lucy had never been lovers. Not truly. He’d ignored that simple fact for twenty-five years now. Nothing he had tried, not all the love and caring between them, had been able to heal whatever was broken in her, or whatever she was missing. And he had tried. Forcing himself to face a truth he’d been turning a blind eye to for so long, he made himself look at his efforts, and made himself accept that it wasn’t his fault. Lucy had been the way she had been. That was the sum of it. And he had loved her enough to ignore the problem as if it didn’t matter to him, either.

  His hands clenched into fists now as a deep fissure in him started, finally, to heal. Jess had started that healing, he realized. A woman scarcely older than his daughter, a woman utterly without experience, had given him the inestimable gift of knowing at long last that there was nothing wrong with him, that he was not a failure as a man.

  “Arlen?”

  The sleepy murmur brought him to the bedside. “I’m here, Jessie.” He felt himself smile as he looked down into her sleepy, hardly awake face. She didn’t know, he was sure, that her last movement had bared her to the waist. Not wanting her to discover it awkwardly—hell, wanting even more to feel her satin skin on his, he knelt over her on the bed and sought her mouth with his.

  “Mmm…” She welcomed his kiss languorously, opening her mouth readily, waking to voluptuous sensation even before she awoke to the day.

  When her hands rose to his shoulders and began to knead lazily, Arlen lowered himself to his elbows and slowly began to rub his chest against her breasts. The relaxed openness of her movements told him exactly how good she was feeling as she woke from the pleasure of sleep to the pleasure of lovemaking.

  “Good morning,” he said softly as he lifted his head.

  A slow smile spread across her face, but she didn’t open her eyes. Instead she stretched beneath him like a contented cat. Arlen felt again that joyous urge to laugh.

  “Beautiful lady,” he said huskily, “you keep moving like that and I’ll forget you must be sore.”

  Now her eyes did open, to sleepy slits. “I’m not sore,” she murmured. “In fact, I’m wondering if I imagined everything.”

  Now Arlen did laugh, deeply and happily. “Are you being provocative?”

  “I hope so.” Her eyes opened a little wider, and with her increasing wakefulness came shyness. He was sorry to see it. He almost felt he was reading her mind. She didn’t think she was sexy enough to entice him.

  “You’re provocative with every breath you take,” he told her. Rolling away from her a little, he grabbed the s
heet and pulled it from her, baring her from head to toe.

  Jessica gasped and froze, while a blush burned her face and throat. Last night, carried away by passion in the dim light, her nudity hadn’t seemed to matter. This morning was different somehow, as if the gray light put a sharper edge on reality. Deep inside, her body pulsed with longing for his caresses and lovemaking, but her mind was apparently hung up in a slightly different place.

  “There,” Arlen said with satisfaction, and smiled into her eyes. “I wondered where that blush started. Now I know it doesn’t start anywhere. It just happens everywhere.”

  “Arlen…”

  “Shh.” He brushed a light kiss on her lips and then held her eyes with his as he trailed his hand to her breast and from there to the silky curls farther down. “I don’t want you to be shy with me, Jessie. You stopped being shy last night, and we had a wonderful time, didn’t we?”

  She nodded, her eyes clinging to his, her teeth worrying her lower lip. As he boldly slipped a finger into her, her eyelids drooped and her breath caught, but then her legs relaxed, separating more for him.

  “Tender?” he asked huskily, leaning nearer.

  “N-no.”

  “Sure?”

  Even if she had wanted to, she couldn’t have prevented her hips from lifting toward his hand, and she didn’t want to. His touch was swiftly sweeping her from modesty to a very basic human state. He pressed the heel of his hand against her, drawing a groan from her as he stroked that most sensitive part of her.

  “Don’t close your eyes, Jessie,” he said. “Look at me. Let me see your eyes.”

  And somehow, looking into his gray eyes as his hands did wickedly wonderful, terribly intimate things to her, she felt her shyness dying. How could she fail to believe he found her beautiful when he looked at her like that while pleasuring her? And when his eyes left hers and traveled elsewhere, she heard the catching of his breath and felt the tensing of his muscles, and she felt proud of her body for the first time in her life. For the moment, at any rate, that was enough. She completely forgot everything in her rising passion for this man. When he was at last sheathed in her, she had one last moment to think how lucky, how very lucky, she was that Arlen had come into her life.