Janet's eyes closed. Her breath caught in her throat. She sighed. Her fingers entwined in his hair as she moved to accept his kisses. She felt silk material caress her thighs, to be replaced briefly by the silken touch of Eric's lips. Then she felt herself being lifted and placed on the bed.
When he lay down beside her, Eric's hands again paid homage to the gentle swells and curves of her body as he sought to imprint the feel, the texture, the rhythm of her response to him on his mind. The journey grew progressively more intimate… and then he sought yet new understanding of her with the sensitive touch of his mouth.
He pressed his lips to the base of her throat and felt the demanding beat of her pulse. With the tip of his tongue he traced a thin, moist line to her breast. Gently he touched the nipple with his lips, feeling a sweet satisfaction when it hardened in response to his caress. He took the peak into his mouth and pressed his face against the yielding, erotic flesh. She softly moaned and caught the back of his head to draw him closer.
His hand left her waist, paused to cup her hip, then moved on to the flatness of her stomach. She caught her breath as he moved lower, his fingers fanning out to encompass the triangle of curling hair before dipping lower still to unerringly find the place where she ached to be touched.
Gently, lovingly, expertly he stroked her, and with all that had gone before, she felt herself nearing climax. She caught his hand and stilled him. "Not yet," she sighed, wanting him to take that final journey with her.
He stared at her, looking deeply into her eyes. Slowly his mouth curved into a compelling sensual smile. "This time I'm in charge," he told her, his voice low and husky as he brushed her hand away. Purposely he separated her thighs and moved lower, trailing moist kisses down her abdomen. When he intimately touched her again, it was his tongue that did the stroking… coaxing, leading, taunting, until she was brought to a shattering peak of excitement unlike any she had known before. Wave after wave of intense release swept over her until she thought it would never stop.
Eric held himself suspended over her, watching, relishing the sight of the pleasure he had given her. Slowly she reached up and held the sides of his face with her hands. Her expression told him the intimacy they had shared had been special, not given or taken lightly. He was profoundly pleased by the message, but not surprised. She had been wonderfully expressive.
Janet's hands left his face and began a lingering journey through the light matting of hair on his chest, following the narrowing trail until the texture changed, as well as her objective. Eric caught his breath as she intimately touched and then encircled him, alternately pressing and releasing him. He moved against her hand, the tension in him growing, the need for release becoming a sweet agony.
Finally, with insistent urging, she brought him to her, wrapping her legs around his waist. With a swift, sure thrust he entered her, stealing her breath with the intensity of his need. But still he held off, waiting for her, whispering words of encouragement, touching, kissing, erotically moving against her until he heard the soft moan, the hesitant sigh, and felt her grow tense beneath him, telling him she was ready to accompany him on the final journey. As was all that had gone before, the climax to their lovemaking was explosive, leaving them physically and emotionally exhausted.
Afterward Eric held her, cradling her against his side, whispering words of love as he gently touched her. Slowly their worlds righted themselves again. And as they did, thoughts and feelings swirled around Janet in an emotional storm. Doubts about what they had just done crashed down around her. She turned from Eric, rolling over onto her side.
"What is it?" he asked, touching her arm and turning her back to face him.
"I can't tell you—" She sighed. "I don't know myself." But she did. She was afraid of what was happening to her. The way Eric had made love to her had made her realize that what they had started today was more than she could handle. Slowly, like petals being stripped from a rose, with each kiss, with each sigh, she felt herself relinquishing by minute increments complete control of her own destiny.
"Janet, don't close me out." Frantically he sought to reach her, to pull her back from the place she had gone. When she hesitated, he sought his answer in the depths of her eyes. He was stunned when what he found was fear. "What have I done to deserve you being afraid of me?" he demanded.
"Nothing," she softly cried. "It isn't you—it's me. I can't give you what you want, Eric."
"You can't love me? Why not?"
"How can I make you understand? It isn't that I don't want to love you, it's that I don't have the time."
Eric rolled onto his back and stared up at the ceiling. "I'm not sure you could ever make me understand something like that, Janet." As he lay there anger welled up inside him. "Tell me—how much time does it take to love someone? How many hours a day could you be compelled to spend away from your regular routine?"
His questions were met by silence.
8
Without their passion to warm them, the room soon grew cold. Eric sat up to gather the comforter over them. Janet reached for her sweater as if to start getting dressed.
"Not yet," he said, grasping her elbow and pulling her back down beside him. "We still have some talking to do."
"Don't you think it would be better if we did our talking somewhere else… and with our clothes on?"
"I can't think of another place I'd rather be than right here, with you dressed precisely the way you are now." He tucked a puff of down under her chin. "Now give— what in hell is this nonsense about not loving me because you don't have the time?"
"Remember when we were in your office and you asked me to go out with you?"
He smiled. "And you said you would, a week from Friday."
In spite of herself, a return smile twitched at the corner of Janet's mouth. It gave her a peculiar pleasure to realize he remembered that day so well. "Just in case you haven't been able to figure it out by now, that was one of my good weeks. I've gone as long as a month without enough time off for a quick date. How am I ever supposed to work having an affair with you into my schedule?" Saying the words aloud made her heart sink.
He was at a loss for a reply. There were several possible solutions that came to mind, but he knew without suggesting them what her answer would be. She was far too independent to accept financial help from him at this point in their relationship. On that possibility, he would have to bide his time. "Then I guess there'll just have to be some months when we'll only get to see each other once."
Janet eyed him, looking for signs of prevarication. "You can't be serious."
"I didn't say I would like the arrangement. But it seems I have no choice."
She wiggled farther down under the comforter. "You're giving in far too easily."
"Meaning you don't trust me?"
"Now you're acting just like a lawyer—trying to win your point by putting me on the defensive."
In spite of the skepticism in her words, he felt her physically relaxing and knew that she was slowly coming around to believing him. He felt a twinge of guilt for being less than honest with her, but since it was a matter of whether he would see her again, he would have done far worse. "I told you once that I'd been waiting a long time for you, Janet," he said, unmistakable determination in his voice. "Did you think I'd give up so easily?"
She was tired of fighting a battle she really wanted to lose. Besides, what had he left her to argue about? But in spite of her attempt to adopt a Pollyanna attitude, somewhere in the back of her mind a warning voice sounded, telling her they were fooling themselves to think the arrangement she proposed could ever work out for them. It was beyond reason to stretch anyone's patience as thin as Eric's would be by the time he'd waited the almost three years it would take her to finish school. But the day was too beautiful and being with him too glorious for her to dwell on the negative.
She pulled the comforter over her head and moved to his side. Nuzzling her face against the light matting of hair on his chest, s
he found his nipple and made a circle around it with her tongue. She smiled in satisfaction when she heard his sharp intake of breath. Before Eric could respond further, she grabbed his arm and covered it with nibbling bites.
He joined her under the covers. "By any chance would these teeth marks on my arm mean you're hungry?"
"Only if there's something besides what's in the car to eat around here."
"And I suppose you would have me brave the cold waiting for me down in the kitchen to find out."
She blinked. "Why… how sweet of you to offer."
He caught her to him and buried his face between her breasts. God, she felt so good. It wasn't just her nakedness that made him feel so good or the beautiful symmetry of her body or the way she smelled as nice as all the summer days he had ever known rolled into one, it wasn't even the way she looked at him when they were making love; it was the special joy of finally having her, at last, really with him. He felt like returning to San Francisco and standing atop the Transamerica Building and shouting that he had been right to wait for her and not settle for less. He had been vindicated. She was everything he had known she would be.
He gave her a lusty kiss and jumped out of bed. "Keep my side warm for me. I'll be right back."
Janet peeked at him from behind the covers. "Right. I'll just lie here spread-eagled until you get back."
He gave her a wicked grin. "If you keep talking like that, I'll never leave." He slipped into his jeans and pulled on his shirt before blowing her a goodbye kiss.
When he was gone, her confidence began to abandon her. To pass the time while she waited for him to return, she tried to calculate the minimum number of hours she would have to work in November to pay the bills and still set some money aside for Christmas. Usually her only variable each month was the amount of time she spent on homework. And to let that slide now was unthinkable. It wouldn't make much sense for her to work as hard as she did to pay her tuition if she wasn't going to keep her grades up. The more she thought about the impossibility of her and Eric being together, the more depressed she became. By the time he returned, she had trouble dredging up a smile.
He stood by the door, tray in hand, staring at her. "I see you've been thinking while I was gone," he said with a heavy sigh. He put the tray on the nightstand, sat on the edge of the bed and took her hand in his. "The only way this is ever going to work is if we agree we have to take things one day at a time." He absently caressed her palm with his thumb. "Instead of thinking how bad next week or next month is going to be, why don't we concentrate on how much we can be together during the upcoming holidays or at the semester break when you'll have more free time."
She sat up, pulled her knees to her chest and propped her chin on her knees. "If you're trying to cheer me up, you just picked a bum way to do it. Holidays and semester breaks are the periods I have the least amount of time off. Without classes or homework to slow me down, I can work both jobs every day. It's the only way I can earn enough to pay the next semester's tuition."
For the first time, Eric felt a stab of doubt. "What about a loan?" he said softly.
"I've already gone that route." She laughed humorlessly. "As it stands now, I'll probably be in my forties before I've finished paying for my education."
"I wasn't talking about a government loan." He was testing her to see how far she would let him go in his offer to help.
Her eyes flew open, filled with anger. "Are you suggesting what I think you're suggesting?"
"Why not?" he asked evenly, reasonably.
Now her eyes narrowed. "I knew you wouldn't understand." She threw back the covers and started to get out of bed.
Eric lunged for her, pinning her beneath him. "Would you please get it through your head that I'm not going to let you make a grand exit until we have things cleared up between us?"
"Let go of me."
"Absolutely not."
His answer momentarily stunned her. "What do you mean, absolutely not?" She couldn't remember the last time she had told someone to do something and had been so summarily refused. Wheedled and cajoled into changing her mind, maybe, but never categorically refused.
"What I mean is that if it takes until next week, you and I will stay exactly as we are until you tell me you sincerely believe things will work out between us."
For long seconds she stared at him. "I think things will work out for us," she finally said, her jaw tight in frustration at being so completely physically overpowered.
"Now why do you suppose it is that I don't think you really mean what you just said?"
"I can't imagine." She tried wiggling out from beneath him. "I can't breathe," she complained.
He raised himself slightly. "Why is the idea of accepting a loan from me so reprehensible?"
They were so different. The worlds they inhabited were so far apart. How could she ever make him understand someone like herself? "I know it will be hard for someone like you, but try for a couple of minutes to put yourself in my place. Let's say you were in a hand-to-mouth situation and through a weird set of circumstances you wound up with a girlfriend who was so rich that she had trouble talking around the silver spoon stuck in her mouth." An impish twinkle flashed from her eyes. "Now we're not talking your average well-to-do rich lady, mind you; we're talking so rich that the poor kid doesn't know a cabin from a mansion."
"I think I've got the picture; you can get on with it now."
"Since this girl has obviously been raised with the attitude that if you want something, you buy it, it only seems reasonable to her to assume the philosophy would work when it came to buying her boyfriend's time. There's one major problem—the boyfriend doesn't happen to like the feeling that he's being bought."
"Is that how Robert felt when you were putting him through school?"
"It's not the same thing at all."
"Why not?"
"Because Robert and I were married."
Gut instinct told him to lead with his chin. "Then marry me."
His words hurt her more than she had ever suspected words could hurt. Not only hadn't he been listening to her, but he thought everything she had been trying to tell him was a joke. Tears of anger and frustration and pain welled up in her eyes. "How can you be so—" A sob caught in her throat, and she couldn't finish.
"I take it that means no?" He was completely confused by her reaction to his sincere proposal.
"Damn you!"
The confusion multiplied tenfold. "For asking you to marry me?"
"For not taking me seriously."
He rolled onto his side, taking her with him. She struggled a moment and then lay still in his arms. "What do you say we go back to square one and try this all over again? I won't offer to loan you any money, and you won't swear at me for asking you to marry me."
Something fragile had been broken between them, and fearing it might be a permanent break, Janet was just as anxious to try to mend it as he was. "Eric…we're so completely different that our life-styles don't even have a nodding acquaintance." She sought a better way to explain. "I feel like we're characters out of that song, The Cowboy and the Lady. Only it's me who's the cowboy."
He gave her a crooked grin. "And I suppose that means I'm the lady?"
She tilted her chin up so that she could look him directly in the eyes. "Do you have any idea what it is I'm trying to say?"
He became serious again. "I can't help being born rich, Janet, anymore than you can help being who you are. And I'm afraid someone would have me locked up if I tried to give my money away." He brushed a curl from her temple. "Somehow I never figured you for the prejudiced type."
"I'm not," she said indignantly.
"Well, then, recognize the fact that rich people need love, too, even if it happens to come from struggling students."
It wasn't just the money that bothered her, it was the miles between them on the social scale. The one time she had gone to the opera, she had hated it; and the food she liked all leaned toward the steak and potat
o variety. "My father always told me I'd wind up stumbling over my pride someday. I guess he knew what he was talking about."
He kissed the end of her nose. "I wouldn't change a thing about you—I love you just the way you are."
She grinned. "I feel like a contestant on Name that Tune."
"Well, let's play later. Right now I want to eat." He sat up and reached for the tray. On it were two bowls of fruit cocktail, a plate of dark brown chocolate chip cookies and two glasses of tomato juice.
Janet laughed aloud at the conglomeration. "I can't believe it; I'm so hungry that this actually looks good."
"It was either this or green beans and candied yams. That was all I could find in the cupboard."
"You did a wonderful job."
They leaned against the headboard. The tray rested on Eric's lap. He handed her a bowl and a spoon. "Wait," she commanded when she saw him start to take a bite. "Did you use the whole can?"
"Yes."
"Let me see your bowl."
Puzzled, he obliged, handing it over for her inspection. She moved some chunks of peaches with her spoon and looked under a pear before returning to her own bowl of fruit. He waited until it became obvious she had no intention of offering an explanation. "Did I pass?"
She purposely looked at him, letting her gaze linger on his thighs and the wedge of bare skin where his shirt hung open. When she had finished, she winked. "And so did the fruit cocktail."
How easily she could excite him. "I assume you're going to tell me what this is all about?"
She nodded but continued to eat. Finally she stopped long enough to explain. "When I was a kid, someone once told me there were supposed to be exactly four half cherries in every can of fruit cocktail. Ever since then, I have been unable to eat the stuff without checking it out first."
"And?"
"It's running about ninety-five percent so far." Finishing the last bite of her fruit, she reached for a cookie.
Eric was enchanted. He had been raised in a family that had the same whimsical way of looking at life. When he'd been growing up, August wasn't just another summer month, it was a magical time of staying up all night to watch shooting stars. And long after he and Susan had stopped believing in Santa Claus, on every Christmas eve his mother had still left carrots by the fireplace for the reindeer. It had only been a few years ago that he had learned it was his father who had crept down the stairs every Christmas morning to nibble on the carrots.
A Week from Friday Page 12
