And so, with one last deep kiss, he began to gentle the intensity of the contact, stroking her arm and shoulder rather than her breast, shifting her from the helplessly abandoned pose across his lap. “We must be crazy, torturing ourselves like this.”
“Possibly. Probably.” She was still in his lap, the smooth coil of her hair mussed and her lips red and slick from his kisses.
“I never thought that at the ripe old age of thirty-two, I’d be trying to make time with my girlfriend in the living room, listening with one ear for her mother to walk in.”
Catherine laughed. “Number one, she’s not my mother. Number two, you’re not trying to make time. You’re succeeding.” Then she cocked her head. “Is that what I am? Your girlfriend? Somehow, I have a difficult time envisioning myself as both a mother and a girlfriend. Mothers don’t date.”
“Deal with it,” he said, dropping a kiss on the top of her straight little nose. “And speaking of dates, would you like to go out to dinner and/or a movie Friday night?”
To his surprise, she hesitated. “You could come over here for dinner,” she offered instead.
He studied her face, instinct raising alarms inside him. Something was wrong. She’d withdrawn slightly, although he couldn’t imagine what he’d said that might have caused such a reaction.
Carefully, he said, “I’ve joined you for dinner a number of times. I thought it might be nice to dress up a little and go out.”
“I’d much prefer a quiet evening in,” she said. “I’m feeling a little stressed between the job, the volunteer work and the family commitments. I need time to get used to the change. Would you mind?”
He did mind, but this didn’t seem like quite the time for a frank answer. He could tell from the way her body had tensed and she’d closed up that she would refuse him altogether if he tried to push her. “No,” he said, “I don’t mind, but why don’t you let me cook for you for a change? I’ve been meaning to have a meal on that pretty little terrace behind the guest house, anyway.”
She smiled and her body relaxed immediately. “That would be lovely,” she said. “May I bring something?”
He shook his head, bemused by the way the tension within her had dissipated. He mentally reviewed the conversation again, still trying to figure out what had happened. “Just yourself.” At least they would be alone. And as he realized just how alone they would be, his body forgot that it was supposed to be cooling off. Dammit. He’d really hoped to walk out of here before Patsy came back down. Now it looked like he’d better sit right where he was for a while longer.
Seven
Patsy still hadn’t come back down half an hour later. When Catherine went to check, fearing that Michael was being difficult about getting to sleep, she returned to report that her mother-in-law had developed a headache and had gone on to bed.
“All right.” Gray stood, crossing the room to where Catherine stood in the doorway. “I’m going to head home. Walk me out.”
He put an arm around her waist as they walked through the house to the back door, but when he turned to face her, she said, “I’ll walk part way with you.”
The night air was warm, redolent with the scents of summer: fresh-cut grass, honeysuckle, and the pretty yellow climber roses. It was nearly nine, and dusk was finally falling, the bright colors of Catherine’s gardens dimming. Overhead, a sliver of moon was rising and a few ambitious stars were battling the last scant rays of light.
He took her hand and they went down the steps. “It’s a beautiful night.”
“Um-hmm.” She sounded relaxed, happy. Clearly she’d forgotten the tense moments after he’d asked her to go out on Friday evening.
Her small fingers were threaded through his, and he wondered if she ever thought about how distant and cautious she’d been when they first met. He did, and was still amazed that he could be here, strolling with the woman who had haunted his dreams, touching her and talking with her nearly every day.
They strolled in silence for a moment. Then, “Look,” he said. “Fireflies. I used to catch dozens of the poor little guys in one night. I’d have so many that my jar would be permanently lit up when I brought them to show my mother.”
“I always wanted to keep one as a pet,” she said. “And my father would help me make a cozy little house in a jar, with grass and a bottle cap full of water…but when I’d come down in the morning and check, the firefly had always escaped. My father would shake his head and say, ‘Doggone it. I must have made those holes too big,’ even if they were tiny little pinpricks in the lid. I fell for it for years before I realized he was letting them go, but by then I didn’t care.”
He realized he was smiling as he swung their joined hands slightly. “Maybe later in the summer when it gets dark earlier, Michael can stay up long enough to see them. We could help him catch a few and put them in a jar. Wouldn’t he love that?”
She hesitated so long that he thought she wasn’t going to answer him, and he felt an immediate sense of dread surround him. “Catherine? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” But her voice sounded uncertain.
He stopped, drawing her to a halt in the middle of the path. “What’s going on?”
She sighed. Was silent. Sighed again. “Is there going to be a ‘later in the summer’?”
The question took him aback. It was the first indication he’d had that she was thinking long-term. As aphrodisiacs went, it was one of the most powerful he’d ever known. His heart gave a leap that literally left him breathless.
He took her by the shoulders and smiled down at her, not caring if she saw the love for her that he could no longer deny in his eyes. “If you want one, there will be,” he assured her.
Unable to wait, he cupped her shoulders in his hands and lowered his mouth to hers in a sweet pledge. After a scant moment, her mouth softened beneath his, and her hands fluttered up to clasp his wrists. Her mouth opened and her tongue danced out to meet his, and when he slid his hands down her back and cupped her bottom, she made a sweet little needy sound and her leg twined around his thigh as it had the very first time he’d ever kissed her. Here, in this same garden, although they were a good deal farther away from the house than they had been then.
Annoyance faded, replaced by a rising awareness of how alone they were, standing here in the quiet of the garden. And as that thought registered in his hazed brain, he suddenly acknowledged what his subconscious had been thinking since she’d walked out the door with him: he wanted her. Tonight. Now.
Anticipation instantly raced through him in an almost painful rush, arousing him far more quickly than the steady rising of his sex he’d been enjoying. He yanked her hips hard up against him and ground himself against her, drinking in the little whimpers she made as his urgency registered. They writhed and twisted for a moment, then frustration with the clothing between them guided him.
He let her slide down from his body, bringing his hands up to flick open the five buttons that held her blouse together. He dragged it off in one smooth motion, then reached behind her and twisted the clasp on her bra until it gave as well.
“Gray!” Her voice sounded panicked. “We’re outside.”
He stifled an urge to chuckle, then drew her a few steps into the deep shade beneath a dogwood tree along the path. She looked up at him for a moment, and he nearly panicked when he thought she was going to object, but then she shrugged her shoulders free of the straps and the bra fell away. He felt his heartbeat double. Her breasts weren’t large but they were perfectly shaped, round and full with generous nipples crowning the tips. In the darkness, he couldn’t discern whether they were copper or rose but in his mind’s eye he already knew. They were a sweet soft pink, and the nipples now were larger than they’d been before her pregnancy. When he realized what he’d just been thinking, he shunted it aside, unwilling to deal with the complications of his damned memory for the moment.
“God,” he said hoarsely, reverently. “You are so beautiful.” He cupped the weig
ht of each breast in his palms, slowly circling the nipples with his thumbs in the way he knew she liked—No! Don’t think about how you know that—until the crests were rigid points stabbing into his palms and she was arching her back, begging wordlessly for more. Only then did he bend his head and suckle one sweet peak, making deep sounds of pleasure at the taste and texture of her satiny flesh in his mouth. He swirled his tongue around the nipple over and over again, drawing lightly on her until she tore herself away from him with a muffled groan.
“You,” she said, “too.”
Her hands moved to the buttons of his shirt, fumbling open the garment until it hung loose around his upper body. Her palms were warm, smooth and he reveled in the sensation of her fingers combing through the hair on his chest—his chest! Alarm bells clamored. If she touched his chest she wouldn’t be able to miss feeling his scar. And he had no intention of letting this moment get tangled up in questions.
Hastily, he reached up and circled her wrists, tugging her hands up until they slid around his neck and into his hair, holding her there so that she hung on her tiptoes, flush against every inch of his aching flesh. Her bare breasts were hot and almost hard as they pressed against his chest; he growled low in his throat as he rocked her against him, kissing her deeply, wild with the feel of her flesh against his.
He knew he should tell her who he was, how he’d found her, knew it wasn’t fair of him to deceive her like this, but the words wouldn’t come. She was his world, the reason he drew breath, the reason he woke in the morning. He’d wanted her since he’d woken up with her face in his head, and he had to have her, just this once.
Only once, he promised himself. Or maybe twice, he amended hastily, thinking of their Friday evening date. He wanted to make his own memories, dammit! Instead of the vague snippets of whatever memory he carried from Mike Thorne, he wanted to know for himself how she felt beneath him, wanted to hear for himself the tiny sounds of fulfillment he could make her utter. He wanted to look into her eyes as he entered her, to know that she was seeing him.
Because he loved her. Because in a normal world she’d be a normal widow and he’d be a regular guy and they could spend the rest of their forever together. Because he could never have forever, but he was damned if he was going to forfeit his one chance at happiness without some memories to sustain him.
He unbuckled the belt she wore and opened her shorts, skimming his hand inside, deliberately teasing himself, inserting a single finger beneath the edge of the satiny panties he discovered. He dragged it back and forth across her belly, inching a little lower each time. But finally, he couldn’t stand to wait anymore and he tugged the shorts and panties down in one quick motion, then lifted her free of them.
Her white flesh glowed in the darkness that had fallen, and he reverently ran his hands all over her: shoulders, down to her fingertips, back to her breasts, and down over her torso to the softness of her belly. He continued his path around her rib cage to her silken shoulder blades and down to where the sweet cleft of her bottom beckoned him to gently skim a finger beneath her, until she gave a startled cry and moved restlessly. Then he knelt and ran his hands down the backs of her thighs to her ankles and back up, settling them on her hips. Exerting a slight pressure, he urged her to close the small space between them.
“Gray,” she said in a shaking voice.
“Hush,” he said. “Just for a moment.” He rested his face against her soft thicket of downy curls, then blew a warm stream of air against her and she gave a small cry as her hips rolled once. When he pressed against her inner thighs, she widened her stance for him.
God, he wasn’t sure he was going to be able to take this as slowly as he wanted. Down on his knees, with his own thighs spread wide, he was rigid and pulsing, and the soft night air brushing over and under him was an excitingly different sensation. He shuddered, feeling a ripple of ecstasy dance down his spine, and he clamped down hard on the shreds of his self-control.
Slowly, he teased her curls apart with his tongue, finding the moist nubbin beneath and flicking his tongue over it. He refused to let himself think of anything but her, anything but the way her hips moved against him, pushing his face against her as her little sounds of pleasure increased in pitch and tempo. It was a delightful task, and finally he knew she was as ready for the next step as he was.
Sliding back from her, he rose and pulled her to him again.
“Don’t stop,” she gasped.
“I’m not going to.” He ran his hands all over her, unable to get enough of her baby-soft skin. “Pregnancy didn’t change your shape,” he muttered.
“No,” she said in a husky voice. “I was slender before and I only gained sixteen pounds. It was gone within two months.”
Then he realized what he’d said. And as quickly, he realized that she’d assumed it was a question. Thank God.
He smoothed a hand over her belly and down to the fleecy triangle of hair that covered her mound, combing his fingers through the silky curls. “It’s time to lie down,” he told her.
Together, they sank to their knees. He stretched her out on the soft grass beneath the sheltering dogwood and lowered himself directly on to her, pressing her hips down and apart with his until his aching shaft was in position for the inevitable conclusion.
Catherine was quiet, and he felt a return of a fragment of the earlier tension invade her limbs.
With a sudden flash of intuition, he knew what she was thinking: in this respect, he was very different from her husband. “Relax,” he said hoarsely. “Just relax, sweet thing.” He kept talking, soothing her with his voice as he felt the tense muscles in her inner thighs relax. He forced himself to go slowly as he fit himself to her, to move just a little further each time into the slick, heated channel, to withdraw and begin again. She was wet and extremely tight around him, and he felt himself trembling with the effort to hold himself in check, to make it good for her.
Finally, he was home, lodged deep inside her, so close to the edge that he was afraid her next motion might be the end of him.
“You okay, sweet thing?” he asked her.
“I will be,” she said in a quivering voice. And before he realized what she was doing, she dug her heels into the ground, thrusting her pelvis hard against him with a rolling motion that ground him directly against her sensitive mound—and she exploded. Her body grabbed like a fist around him, released and grabbed again, and then his own control was gone, and he began to plunge wildly into her, pumping his hips relentlessly as she screamed and sobbed his name, her back arching and body shuddering beneath his. Release swept through him, pushing him deep, deep within her, the jetting of his seed a moment of inexpressible ecstasy in an encounter that defined lovemaking in a whole new way for him.
When the spasms finally subsided, he realized he was gripping her buttocks, probably hard enough to leave marks. Then again, he was probably going to have marks of his own from the feel of her heels on his backside.
Her arms fell away from his shoulders and her thighs dropped wide. Her hair was a shining white sheet across the ground and he wondered fleetingly if he’d torn out her careful coil or if it had simply come undone. He raised himself on his forearms and looked down at her. “You are the most beautiful woman in the world,” he pronounced, brushing a kiss across her lips.
She chuckled, a mere breath of sound. “Spoken like a man in the throes of gratitude.”
He was amused by her teasing. “You bet. Eternal gratitude.” He hesitated, then couldn’t resist. “And did I earn yours?”
She smiled slowly, her teeth a flash in the night as she stretched languidly beneath him, and his breath caught as her body shifted around him. “You were wonderful.”
The words could have been trite but her tone was so sincere he couldn’t doubt her. Kissing her one more time, he said, “Much as I’d like to stay right here, I’m guessing you’d like to get off the ground.”
“You guess correctly.”
He raised himself awa
y from her and extended a hand to pull her to her feet. As he did so, she staggered slightly, wincing. “Oh, hell. Did I hurt you?” He didn’t care if she heard panic in his voice.
“No.” Her own tone was full of humor. “Relax. I’m just not used to—I never had—” She stopped, and he couldn’t help laughing at her chagrin.
“Okay. Thank you.” He walked around, gathering clothing, and tossed his own garments on before helping her to dress. “I guess I’ll walk you home now,” he said.
“You might have to drag me. I’m not sure I can walk.”
He knew she was teasing but he didn’t care. He swept her into his arms despite her protests and carried her the whole way back to her door. Then, after he’d kissed her one more time and she vanished inside, he walked back to his own quarters.
At least, he was pretty sure he walked. He could have floated or flown, for all he knew.
The instant she opened her eyes in the morning, she knew what had occurred last night. A dreamy sigh escaped her even as she winced when muscles she’d forgotten she had protested her vigorous activity. She relived every moment that she could remember, her body tingling as she recalled his masterful touch. Good heavens. If every time with Gray was like that time, she wasn’t sure she’d survive it.
Then she realized what she was thinking. Every time? True, he’d indicated that he intended to continue to be in her life, but how practical was that going to be after he’d moved into his own home?
So far, she’d managed to avoid going out with him anywhere, managed to avoid the gossip and inevitable nasty comments that would accompany any sighting of her in the presence of a man as wealthy as Gray. But once he’d moved, it would be impossible.
Okay. So she would have to be honest. She’d have to explain that she had to think of her reputation for her son’s sake, if not for her own.
Over cereal and coffee after a quick shower, she practiced her speech. The sex was great but I can’t get involved with you.
Billionaire Bachelors: Gray Page 10
