by Lisa Hendrix
“There we go,” she said.
“Thank you. You’ve been very kind.” Raine held the front of her dress so it didn’t gape. “Good night.”
Modest, thought Tish. That’s nice. “Good night.”
She padded off to her room feeling very smug about everything except Miranda, who was apparently out with that appalling Todd Dennison again after all these months. She’d have to have a talk with her youngest. Or maybe once they straightened out this mess with Mason, they should cast a spell on Miranda’s behalf. She needed a good man in her life.
*
Miranda sat in the car, staring at the front of the house while Paul waited patiently by the open door.
“Take me on around to the side,” she said. As much as she loved her family, she didn’t want to go in. She just didn’t feel like dealing with them tonight, having to explain, having to talk at all.
“Is there something wrong, Miss Alexander?”
“No.” She couldn’t look him in the eye. “I just need some air before I go in.”
“Yes, miss.” He closed up the car, shutting the doors with barely a click, as though he understood she didn’t want the people inside to know she was out here. He got back in, and a moment later the car rolled down the drive with a low rumble.
She got out just outside the carriage house, slipping from the car when Paul stopped to let the garage door finishing rising. Security lights came up in series as she walked around the end of the house, until she reached the box and could punch in the code that let her turn them off. The dim safety lights that glowed on the underside of the balustrade provided plenty of light for her to see her way across the creamy stone of the terrace.
She pulled off her shoes and padded barefoot across the stone to a shadowed place near the wall, under the sophora tree. The garden beyond the terrace was a dark mass of bushes and trees, lit here and there by paler blossoms. She sniffed the air, trying to catch a whiff of jasmine or rose, but instead smelled spice and leather and something vaguely male, and it was only then that she realized she still wore Paul’s coat, and that it smelled like what she’d always thought of as the car but now realized was partly him. She squeezed her eyes tight and pulled the jacket closer, reveling in the warmth, physical and mental. It was probably as close as she’d get, after tonight.
Voices carried from inside: her mother, Mason, Raine, all smooth and untroubled. Miranda sat for a long, long time, half listening, until she saw Mason move past the open French doors, saw him kiss Raine, heard the good-nights all around. A few minutes later, the lights in the guest room came on, shining around the edge of the curtains, and Mason locked the French doors and turned off the lights in the living room. Moments later, a deep green glow from the end of the first floor told her that he’d put the lights on in his suite. The soft sounds of the stereo washed through the night, easy jazz tunes that were his favorite night music.
So, Tish had managed to herd them off to separate bedrooms. Not that they’d necessarily stay there. With nothing better to do, Miranda decided to keep watch from her spot under the tree until all the children had settled down. Tish’s lights came up and eventually went out, and, much later, Mason’s windows darkened. Only Raine’s lights stayed on.
A shadowy movement on the wall at the far end of the terrace caught her eye. She turned toward it, unafraid. After all, they were behind two fences; anyone walking the grounds at night had to belong here.
“Mason?”
“Paul, miss.” He stood up and crossed to her, his shirt glowing an odd, greenish white from the safety lights. “I’m sorry if I disturbed you.”
“Have you been sitting there all this time?” she asked.
“I wanted to make certain you were all right.”
“I am. Really.”
“Did he hurt you?”
“No. He was just getting fresh.”
“That was way beyond fresh, approaching date rape.”
“It wouldn’t have gone that far. Todd’s a little slow on the uptake, but he would have gotten the message about the time I popped him in the balls.”
Paul’s eyes narrowed. “You didn’t seem so cocky right afterward.” He grimaced. “Excuse me, that was a bad choice of words.”
“It certainly was.” The chuckle they shared was good. Miranda felt the weight lift a little. She took a deep breath, filling her lungs with night-scented air. “It’s been a bad week. Todd was just the low point. Thank you for rescuing me, whether I needed it or not.”
“My pleasure.” His eyes twinkled in the moonlight.
“You enjoyed hitting him, didn’t you?” she asked, incredulous.
“Most men would, under the circumstances.”
“Did you hurt him?”
“I’m pretty sure I broke his nose.”
“Lovely. He’ll have to ask Philip for the name of his plastic surgeon.” She stood up, wincing as the blood rushed to her nether extremities. “God, these chairs are hard without the cushions. I think my butt’s embossed with little cast-iron leaf prints.”
Paul cleared his throat and wiped a smile off his face with his hand. “May I see you to the door?”
This time she hadn’t forgotten her key, and she opened the French doors to the living room. She shrugged out of his coat and held it out. “I guess you want this back.”
His fingers brushed hers as he took the jacket, barely a touch, but enough to make Miranda catch her breath. The slight sound was harsh compared to the jazz still playing in the distance.
“Good night, Paul,” she said quickly, to cover her reaction. Paul’s eyes grew strangely intense, even in the darkness, and she had the sudden, sweet impression he wasn’t thinking competent and dependable anymore.
“Good night, Miranda.”
She slipped inside and hurried to the security panel to type in the code before her sixty seconds was up. When she returned to look out the doors, Paul was gone. She was halfway upstairs before she realized that for the first time in six years, he’d called her Miranda.
*
If only Mason hadn’t kissed her good night, Raine thought. She’d been doing fine until then, maintaining the distance she needed, until he’d leaned over to give her that kiss. It was the least blatantly sexy kiss they’d ever shared, and yet it had stirred something so deep inside her, created such a maelstrom, that her soul might never settle down.
The routine of getting ready for bed hadn’t even touched the storm. Neither had a shower, or fifty pages from the wordy literary novel she’d found on the night table, or a half hour of pacing. And never mind meditating: she couldn’t even begin to calm her thoughts enough for that, a failure that would disappoint Takana-sensei no end.
Maybe if she couldn’t hear the music, Mason’s music, drifting up from somewhere below, she could sleep. But she could hear it, and that meant he was awake, somewhere in that house, and knowing that made it impossible to disconnect from that one sweet kiss. She cranked her window wide open and pulled a chair over to where she could listen to the same music that soothed him, hoping it would do the same for her.
The CD ended and the silence stretched until she thought that maybe he’d finally gone to sleep and she’d be able to coax herself into some rest as well. But there the music came again, and this time it was the familiar strains of “Moonlight Serenade.” Her heart skidded to a halt, then started again on the same rhythm as the string bass that kept the beat.
He was calling her, and she wanted to go.
It was crazy. It was absolutely insane, but even as she was telling herself that, she was stripping out of her pajamas and pulling on the gown, wrestling the zipper up as best she could.
The cotton panties she’d put on after her shower made an awkward lump under the silk. She stripped them off and glanced around for the tiny silk thong that went under the gown, but she couldn’t remember where she’d dropped it and had no inclination to begin a search. He’ll never know, she told herself, and smoothed the gown down over her bare hips
.
She slipped out into the hall barefoot, not knowing where she was going, but following the sound like a moth following flame, utterly unable to resist. The music was softer, but still clear in the silence of the hallway. An open door beckoned and she went through it into another suite, this one all pink. The music seemed to come from one corner, where a thin glow came up from the floor. She followed the glow into a circular stone staircase that went downstairs. From there she followed it into a hall and out a door onto the terrace.
Mason stood there, still in his dinner jacket with his loose tie, framed by a pair of French doors that led into what must be his bedroom.
He smiled when he saw her.
“It occurred to me,” he said, “that Bond would have found some way to finish that dance.”
*
Twelve
« ^ »
Raine started toward him.
“Just a minute.” The hand he held up to stop her gripped the slim rectangle of a remote control. “We’re going to do this right.”
He pointed the remote toward a tiny red electronic eye deep inside his room and moved his thumb over the buttons. The stereo dropped silent in the middle of a phrase, and, without looking, he tossed the remote toward a wing chair sitting just inside the door. It hit the cushion with a soft thump.
“James would be proud,” she said. His mouth toyed with the idea of a smile.
They stood there, waiting, until the song started over and the saxes glided into their sweet refrain. Mason held his arms out.
“Raine, may I please have this dance?”
His soft stress on the word please spoke of need, the kind never mentioned out loud in polite society nor in middle-class homes in Minnesota, but which she recognized because she felt it, too, raw and demanding and sweet and warm as summer, all at once. He needed her, and that fact melded with her own yearning to squeeze all the air out of her lungs.
She moved into his arms as though she belonged there, as though it were perfectly natural and proper to dance outside a man’s bedroom in the middle of the night, wearing a dress that wasn’t zipped all the way. But it didn’t matter if it was proper or not, or even whether it was wise or not, because, right now, there wasn’t anything else she could do that would let her breathe.
They swayed to the simple melody and rich chords, Mason’s shoes scratching a beat on the stonework next to Raine’s bare feet. As the harmonies built and he swirled her across the terrace to their rhythm, she closed her eyes, lost in the movement and the feel of his body guiding her. She didn’t need anything else, no reference points except his touch and the song. They could have been whirling through the night sky, for all the connection she had to the earth or to anything but the music and Mason.
She thought she was going to die when they slowed and stopped, the last note hanging on the air. Her breath escaped in a moan of disappointment. “No.”
Mason understood. He didn’t want it to end either, and when Raine sagged against him, her forehead resting against his chest, he couldn’t help but gather her closer. It was then that he found the open zipper.
Desire kicked him in the chest, knocking the breath out of him. The earlier fantasy, so carefully avoided, flooded back, as real as the woman in his arms. His fingers meandered down the gap, tracing skin cooled by the night air until he found the dangling tab. It wasn’t open far.
He could zip it up like he should and be a gentleman, or he could do what he wanted to and zip it down. Down meant danger, a yard of bare back curving under his fingers. Down meant the night and the dance would go on.
“Raine?” The hollow agony in his voice spoke of how much he wanted the night to go on.
She looked up, and for just an instant he saw her eyes, glittering with surprise and moonlight and desire.
And then he was kissing her, and there were no more questions, just answers in the questing pressure of her lips and the arc of her body against his. With a groan of surrender, she lifted her hands to tangle them in his hair, and the sound only confirmed what he’d been trying to deny all evening. All week. He wanted her. Naked and in his bed. Now.
But he wanted it to last, too, so not the zipper. Not yet.
He forced himself to slow down, to let his hands drift away from that particular temptation.
It was better touching her through the silk anyway, enjoying the way the two layers slid over each other and over her skin, making every rise and dip of her body more seductive, as though he needed more seduction. He took his time tracing every curve, knowing he could go back to that zipper any time.
He particularly appreciated the way the silk made his hands slip over her bottom. Smooth. Round. With that incredible combination of softness and firmness that only a woman’s ass could have. It took him a moment to notice that nothing, not even the slimmest bit of elastic, disturbed the flow of cloth beneath his hands.
Oh, God.
He traced a path back up her sides to cup her breasts. No, no trace of a bra either; her nipples swelled and hardened as he brushed his thumbs over the tips, only those two thin layers of silk covering them. He couldn’t resist. He bent his head to sample one peak through the gown, molding a damp circle of cloth to its shape and drawing a gasp from her before he broke away to ask, even though he knew the answer might drive him over the edge, “Do you have anything on under this?”
Her breath escaped her in a ragged shudder. She shook her head. “I was in too much of a hurry.”
Hurry. She had been in too much hurry to get to him, and the confession was like a release for both of them. Their hands were everywhere at once, his skating over the silk of her gown so quickly that sparks crackled between her skin and the cloth, and hers snatching at the gold studs that kept her from reaching bare skin.
He helped with that, shrugging out of his jacket and stripping his braces away to hang at his sides, but she ripped his shirttail out of his pants herself. The last studs dropped to the ground, ringing like tiny golden bells, as she yanked the shirt open and peeled it off his shoulders.
“Cuffs,” he said against her mouth, and held up his hands, and she fumbled at his wrists with trembling fingers until he was able to shake the shirt free.
Finally. Raine splayed her hands over his chest, her palms burning from the heat that poured off him. The urgency that drove her melted into a need to see if she could do to him anything remotely like what he was doing to her. She found out quickly, running her hands over his chest and shoulders until she located all the places that sent tremors through him.
And then she went back, more slowly, to find them again with her mouth.
She did her worst: a soft kiss where his ribs rose over his heart, a gentle nip where his neck curved into his shoulder, a breath of warm air over the diamond of hair that covered his chest. Guided by his reactions, she kissed her way from point to point until she settled on the best, the flat coins of his nipples. With exquisite deliberation, she traced a circle around one, spiraling in until the center hardened and he groaned, and then she moved to the other one to do the same thing and force the same sound out of his throat.
All the while Mason kept his hands moving over her, tracing her curves, trying to distract her, but she was resolute, and he finally had to crush her against him to stop her from doing any more damage to his senses. He held her close, so she couldn’t move, couldn’t steal what last little bit of control he had. The tab on the zipper dangled against the back of his hand. One good pull.
Not quite yet.
He kissed her, and focused on the sensation of her nipples against him, pebbled and hard beneath the liquid fire of the silk. A streak of masochism made him lift her a few inches, just so he could let her slide down and feel the delicious agony of her nipples raking his chest.
Too much, it was too goddamn much. With a convulsion, he set her down and stepped back before he embarrassed himself.
“Ohhh.” A tiny wail of disappointment issued from Raine. She stepped toward him.
“No, it’s all right, sweetheart. I’m not stopping. I’ve just put something off too long. Stand still.”
She obeyed, not understanding until Mason stepped behind her and she felt his hands at her zipper. He skimmed kisses over her shoulders in a line. His breath stirred the hairs on the back of her neck, sending a shudder down her back that he followed with more kisses, and she swayed with the effort of not turning to him. Her fingers curled until her nails bit into her palms.
He took the zipper down by millimeters, savoring every second that it took to reveal her back to the moonlight and his eyes. She had a beautiful back, muscled from her years of swimming and her work, but still with a feminine curve. In fact it was that curve that got him, those last eight inches that made the blood pound into his groin as the gown peeled away to expose the small of her back and the rise of her hips below.
Holding his breath, he dipped into the opening, let his fingertips dance over the shadowed skin to find the base of her spine. There was just enough play in the gown to slip one hand inside and fit it to the shape of her bottom. Heat rose off her, damp, scented with something indescribably female, and he took a deep breath. And lost it totally.
The groan that ripped from him was animal, crazy with need, and it loosed an answering craziness in Raine. She whirled to rise into his arms, pulling his head down, covering him with kisses. Her nails raked across his shoulders and down his arms, and in self-defense, he grabbed her wrists and held them as his lips ground down on hers. She wrestled free and reached for the waist of his trousers.
Somehow they made it into his bedroom before they lost all their clothes, and then Mason was over her, his weight carrying her down onto the bed, his lips and hands convincing her that his bed was where she belonged, whether it made sense or not. She loved him and she wanted him, and that was the only thought she could hold in her mind, and so she abandoned herself to the scent of him and the feel of his body, heavy against hers, and the sound of his voice murmuring his desire.
