by BETH KERY
“Open,” he said.
“What?” she murmured dazedly.
He took very ungentlemanlike advantage when her lips parted to form the question. His tongue entered her mouth, a sleek, sensual intruder. The kiss became hot, insistent.
“God, you…taste so…good,” he mumbled, sounding a little incredulous as he plucked at her lower lip. He took her mouth again with his tongue. His hands swept gently down her body, lingering against the sides of her breasts before he skimmed the circumference of her waist, finally settling on her hips. He gave a low groan when he brought her closer against him, and Megan instinctively understood why. Their fit—the way her body cradled his obvious arousal—was…delicious, somehow.
She shyly touched her tongue to his, then played and dueled more boldly. She liked the way his breath caught at her action, the way he pressed her almost desperately against the hard angles of his body. Of their own accord, her hands came up to tangle in the soft hair at his nape, to lightly detail the muscles of his neck and shoulders. He felt so wonderful to her seeking fingers, so different from her, so hard and male.
She felt his arousal when he pressed tight against her belly, but she wasn’t offended or afraid. A hazy fog of sensuality encapsulated her. For a brief, magical moment she knew only the taste of Christian, the feel of him…and the mandate to experience more.
She gave a tiny cry of protest when his mouth left hers. Her eyelids fluttered open. Christian watched her with an unwavering focus. His facial muscles were rigid as his eyes detailed her face.
“Emily is calling you.”
Reality returned sluggishly at first, then with a resounding crash.
When Megan started against him and began to abruptly pull away, Christian wouldn’t allow it. He held her while he dipped his head once more and dropped a controlled but hungry kiss on her mouth before freeing her. Megan noticed the slow grin that crept across his handsome face before she hurried to the kitchen.
She felt flustered and all too aware of his looming presence in the kitchen entrance when she straightened after helping Emily insert her straw. She busied herself by picking up the plastic wrapping from the juice box that Emily had dropped to the floor while she responded with forced enthusiasm to Emily’s chatter, all the while avoiding Christian’s gaze. The adults watched the little girl scurry into the living room with different expressions—Christian with benign fondness and Megan with vague alarm that her niece’s exit left her alone with him once again.
When he spoke his voice was gentle…amused. Just the sound of it partially captured Megan once again in his web of effortless intimacy.
“You don’t have to look so guilty, Megan. It was only a kiss.”
Her eyes flew to his. Only a kiss? Is that what it had been to him? Her quick examination of him left her in little doubt of it. He seemed relaxed, content…maybe even a little cocky as he leaned there in the entryway of her kitchen. His assured attitude hardly seemed fair, considering the fact that she herself felt like she’d just woken up into a different world than the one she had occupied for her entire life until the moment she had experienced the power of his kiss… and his touch.
“Can I see you tomorrow?”
“Yes,” Megan answered immediately before rational thought interrupted. “I mean, I’d like to, but I’m watching Emily.”
“And what do you two ladies have planned?” Christian asked Megan, but his attention shifted to Emily as she ran once again into the kitchen and poked at his thigh to get his attention. She had returned with a lopsided clay sculpture of a dog that she proudly held up for Christian’s inspection.
“We’re going to ’Merican Girl!” Emily answered as Christian admired her sculpture of Casey, the family dog.
“’Merican Girl?” Christian asked, clearly bewildered.
“The American Girl store.” Megan smiled when she noticed his continued puzzlement at her explanation. “It’s a doll store. It’s got…” She paused, her smile unconsciously widening as she thought of trying to describe such a haven of girlhood to this epitome of masculinity. “It’s kind of hard to describe. I doubt you’d like it.”
Christian looked offended. “Why wouldn’t I like it? I love dolls.”
Laughter bubbled past Megan’s lips. She tried to restrain it, but Christian’s injured expression only fueled it. Emily giggled too, even though Megan knew she had no idea what was so funny. “You love dolls, do you?” Megan managed between bursts of laughter.
“Me too, me too. Christian can come with us to ’Merican Girl,” Emily shouted gleefully as she hopped up and down. “You can meet Sasha, Christian.”
The little girl ran out of the room, obviously intent on getting her precious doll.
“Wait, Emily. Christian doesn’t really want to—”
“What time are we going?” he asked.
After he left Megan had replayed every second spent with Christian. She kept thinking of the way he looked when he laughed, when he was watchful and observant, the heat in his eyes when he’d raised his head from their kiss.
But it was the sensations that he’d awakened in her that made it almost impossible to find rest that night. When she closed her eyes, she could almost feel the pressure of his kiss. She recalled all too perfectly how his mood had altered from being coaxing and gentle to demanding and a little wild.
Megan didn’t know which mood she liked most. She only knew that the memory of all of the facets of Christian’s character fueled a newly ignited fire within her. She chastised herself for it, she tried to ignore it, she even muttered a rare curse a time or two, but none of those punishments could stop her mind from fantasizing about more than just kissing Christian.
After a restless night she had herself convinced that her memory had misled her. There wasn’t a man alive who could be as handsome, as exciting as her brain and her body kept insisting that Christian was. And surely if there were such a man in existence, he wouldn’t be interested in her.
True to his word, Christian presented himself at her door at eleven thirty that morning, appearing entirely comfortable with the idea of spending a better part of the day shopping for clothes for Sasha and attending a doll tea party. When she opened the door to see him standing in the hallway, Megan knew immediately she hadn’t been overestimating his appeal.
He’d dressed up for a doll tea party.
The realization of that fact caused an unexpected surge of tears to sting her eyes. He looked entirely too handsome for his own good, wearing a pair of dark blue dress pants that fit his lean waist, hips, and the long length of his legs with too much precision to be anything but tailor made. His white cotton button-down shirt created a stark contrast with the dark pants, casual but perfectly fitted sport coat, and his sun darkened skin. Despite his tousled hair and well-trimmed goatee, he seemed as comfortable and natural in a sport coat and dress pants as he had yesterday in an untucked shirt, boots, and faded jeans.
“Christian.”
It was all she could get out by way of greeting. Before she could guess what he planned, his hand had snaked out and his fingers sunk into her unbound hair. The other hand went to her shoulder and levered her up against the length of him. His fingers cradled her head while his mouth came down possessively. It was a closed mouth kiss, very brief, nowhere near as sexual as yesterday’s had been. Yet Megan felt the impact of it in places in her body that she hadn’t known were connected so intimately to her lips.
He stepped away but his hand remained in her hair. His fingers flexed greedily into the waves. “I like your hair down,” was all he said.
“Christian kissed Aunt Meg!” Emily said in a singsong voice. Megan stared down dazedly at her niece. Christian handled the situation with his usual casual aplomb, picking up Emily and pecking her on her cheek.
“That’s right. All the pretty ladies get kisses this morning.”
“Sasha, too?” Emily asked hopefully as she held up her blonde doll, an attempted facsimile of Emily herself. She giggled i
rrepressibly when Christian bestowed a kiss to Sasha’s plastic cheek with an exaggerated smacking sound.
Megan’s anxiety still lingered an hour later despite Christian’s bountiful charm and ease.
“The dolls have a hair salon?” Christian muttered incredulously through the side of his mouth so that a starry-eyed Emily wouldn’t hear.
Megan gave him an amused glance but uncertainty mingled with her suppressed humor.
They stood in the doll hairdresser line at American Girl with dozens of little girls holding their dolls and their doting mothers and female relatives milling around them. Megan couldn’t help but feel the oddness of the entire situation.
Why had he wanted to come?
She wasn’t the only one who seemed aware of the novelty and intrigue of Christian’s presence. She had empathized with a few women when they looked at him with incredulity or humor in their eyes. She’d bristled at quite a few stares of downright lust. Megan tried to convince herself that she’d been wrong, but she would have sworn that two teenage girls who were accompanying little sisters had shrieked and grabbed each other in disbelief at the sight of Christian.
Not that she could fault them. Christian easily topped six foot three inches and his masculine features and muscular, taut body stood in stark contrast to the frilly, feminine atmosphere of the American Girl Store.
Yet he’d been nothing but solicitous and fun since they’d arrived. He seemed to share Emily’s enthusiasm, if not in the same way that another female might have, at least in the way of an adult who fully recalled the joy of childhood.
“I told you that you wouldn’t like it, Christian,” Megan whispered so that Emily couldn’t hear. For the hundredth time in the past hour, she asked herself why in the world he was doing this.
They were standing necessarily close, her shoulder pressing into his upper arm as they waited in line. Megan felt a little dizzy as she inhaled the increasingly familiar, spicy, yet elusive aroma of his cologne. His scent was just like the man who wore it: complex, intoxicating, wild and paradoxically subtle at the same time.
“Who said I didn’t like it?” Christian asked, his mouth lowering toward hers.
Because he couldn’t stop himself, and because he had always been much more of a sinner than a saint, Christian reached out and touched his fingertip to the gold cross that hung so daintily just above the upper swell of Megan’s right breast.
He’d known from the moment he’d kissed Megan yesterday afternoon that he would eventually make love to her. Hell, he’d probably been planning for that outcome unconsciously since the first time he’d seen her effervescent smile when she was playing in the park with Emily.
Still, he wanted it to be right for her. He didn’t like the doubt he saw in her eyes right now, the uncertainty. He preferred it when her eyes glazed with desire, when her mouth went soft and sexy.
She looked far from uncertain then.
The way she was dressed was driving him crazy. She wore a conservative ivory linen skirt, but Christian thought that garment was just as sexy as erotic lingerie. Every time she walked, or when she had crossed and uncrossed her legs in the cab, he heard the soft rustle her stockings made against the inner lining of the skirt. The light green color of her sweater set perfectly matched the color of her eyes. But that wasn’t the only thing that that the clinging knit complimented. It detailed and clarified what he’d had to fantasize about until today. Her breasts were beautiful…not overly large, but very tempting in the way that they thrust forward so enticingly from the delicate planes of her ribs and chest.
He let his eyes wander over the curves of her breast while his finger pressed against the tiny metal cross gently.
“I do like it, Megan. I like it very much,” he murmured softly.
Megan felt like every cell of her body had suddenly turned its complete focus onto the fraction of a square inch of her body where Christian touched. Places in her tickled and burned that had no obvious connection with that tiny piece of skin beneath the pressure of his finger.
When he lifted his gaze to meet hers, Megan wondered dazedly if he could have set the building on fire with the heat she saw there.
“You like…what?” she muttered, forgetting what the topic of conversation had been.
Christian leaned over and nuzzled his mouth next to her ear. His gruff whisper caused shivers to course down her neck and spine. “I like the way your eyes are the color of a new spring leaf. I like the way you forget yourself when I touch you. I more than like the shape of your breasts. And I like being in this girly store with you and Emily.”
Megan’s mouth fell open. But when she looked up into Christian’s face for confirmation of those elusively whispered words, she saw that he’d turned to respond to Emily, who was excitedly showing him some doll equestrian accessories.
But confirmation or no, Megan wasn’t likely to forget the effect of his soft breath in her ear or those outrageously sexy, sweet comments. Although Christian didn’t appear to be self-conscious about having said them, he didn’t exactly allude to them again by either word or deed while they sat in the American Girl tea parlor. He looked downright amused by the whole affair of tea and gave a roar of masculine laughter when he saw that every table in the room included special seating for the dolls.
Megan sipped her tea and covertly studied him as he equally divided a crust-less peanut butter sandwich between Emily and her doll. Emily was crazy about him. He was a complete natural with children. It wasn’t least of all the reasons for which Megan found him so attractive. But what did she really know about him? He was a stranger to her.
Strangers could be dangerous. Why hadn’t she been more suspicious of his intentions?
“How long have you lived at 748?”
Christian popped a brownie into his mouth. “I bought my place six years ago. How about you?”
“Just a few months ago. I guess that’s why I’ve never seen you before.”
Megan felt thwarted in her information-gathering attempt when Christian just nodded and ate another brownie. How could he eat so much and remain so whipcord lean?
“What floor do you live on?”
“The ninth.”
Megan started in surprise. She recalled from the sales information from the purchase of her own unit that the top floor residence of their loft building consisted of an exclusive penthouse with no neighbors and a private elevator entrance. “And you live in that big place alone? Don’t you?”
She blushed when she saw his eyes gleam with amusement.
“All alone, Megan.”
“What do you do?”
Christian paused in his chewing. “Do? As in, butcher, baker, candlestick maker type of do?”
“Yes. Is it that hard of a question?” she teased.
“Course not,” Christian muttered as he tore off a piece of scone, scowled at it, and tossed it back on the china plate.
“I’m a writer.”
“A writer?” Megan sat up straighter in her chair. Her eyes lit up with interest. “What kind of a writer?”
His gaze shifted to the window. “You know…stuff.”
She laughed. “Stuff? What sort of stuff?”
Surely Christian, who had epitomized the definition of confidence since she’d first met him couldn’t be shifting around self-consciously in his chair.
“Up until now, a lot of crap, no doubt,” he finally muttered under his breath quietly enough so that Emily didn’t hear as she fed her doll.
She reached out and touched him. The sudden lost expression on his face had made it an imperative.
“It’s not. Whatever you’ve written, it’s good. I know it.”
“How would you know? I’m no Walt Whitman, I can tell you that,” he said bitterly.
Megan’s eyes widened. She’d been right. Christian didn’t miss much. The tone of his voice had been cutting and sarcastic. She pulled her fingers away from where they had been touching the back of his hand.
“How did you
know?” she asked after a moment, referring to the fact that he knew something as personal as the identity of her favorite poet.
“It doesn’t take a genius, Megan. You have two copies of Leaves of Grass alone, the one opened on your coffee table had a broken spine from being read so much,” Christian stated in an emotionless voice, but his hand flicked irritably at the lacy flounce on the tablecloth.
Megan didn’t know how to respond to his acute observation and changeable mood, so she didn’t say anything at all. They’d both focused on Emily until it was time to leave, speaking politely but irrelevantly to each other.
Megan was an artist herself, and had spent enough time around other artists to know that they could be some of the most sulky, temperamental individuals in existence. She wouldn’t have guessed that Christian would fall into that category, but what did she really know about him, after all?
* * * * *
Later that afternoon after she’d put Emily down for her nap, Megan entered her living room to find Christian sitting on her couch with her well-read copy of Leaves of Grass resting in his lap. His long legs were bent at the knee, thighs casually spread.
He’d removed his jacket and unbuttoned the top few buttons of his white shirt. Megan could see some springy, dark brown hairs on his chest at the lowest portion of the opening. A short gold chain was also in evidence, but Megan couldn’t make out the amulet. His unruly, burnished hair had heedlessly fallen across his forehead while he read with complete concentration.
For a minute Megan stood and watched him silently. Despite his size and solidity, his presence in her home seemed a little unreal to her. Surely he was temporary, ephemeral…like glimpsing a shooting star or having an especially good dream from which you were destined to awaken.
