“Fair enough.”
Valentine memorized the address and phone number, retrieved a box from his personal safe, and went out into the night. It wasn’t too soon to begin. If any memory of the past slept deep within her mind or heart, he meant to wake it.
Chapter Three
Lisa hummed under her breath while she rapped out a staccato beat with the handle of her hairbrush, temporarily distracted from the task of brushing by the complex rhythm she’d been practicing earlier that evening when Meghan called.
Lorelei’s latest composition had a catchy beat and an even catchier melody with a rhythmic structure that challenged her abilities. Lisa wanted to run through it with Meghan on bass, just the two of them, but Meghan had moved in with her boyfriend. That would have to wait for the next scheduled practice session now.
She swiped the brush through her hair in an indifferent stroke, thinking of Meghan’s surprise love life and the man who’d flirted so outrageously. Dressed in theatrical black with his long hair streaked gold and amber and silver and those arresting blue eyes, he’d looked like a man who’d be more at home with rock musicians than programmers. Especially with that name.
“Valentine.” Lisa said the name out loud and ran the bristles through her hair again. Then she let the brush clatter to the bathroom counter, impatient with herself. Some guy who dresses like he’s on his way to a Bauhaus tribute offers to braid your hair and you suddenly start fussing with it, imagining it longer. Imagining those hands of his winding through it, making intricate knots. Tugging at your scalp, making tingles run down your spine, and then fisting into the length of it to drag your mouth up to meet his…
Time to shake off this mood and do something constructive. Her hair was fine. Her life was fine. Okay, so her friends kept getting hooked up and settling down into the kind of domestic bliss that was probably illegal in certain southern states while she remained unattached, but that was her choice.
She was busy, that was all. She had a demanding career that required travel and crazy hours. Her schedule didn’t leave her a lot of time to date. No big deal. She was young. There was plenty of time to meet the right man and maybe explore this hair-brushing fantasy a little. If she really wanted her scalp massaged or some erotic teasing with soft bristles in sensitive places, she could meet a guy who was into that.
Lisa found herself eyeing the brush speculatively and that’s when she knew it was time to get out of the house again. Go somewhere, anywhere. Fast. Before she found herself on the internet searching for hairbrush fetish sites.
It was a good plan, but when she opened the door to find Valentine on the steps, it almost seemed inevitable.
“We have to stop meeting like this,” she said.
“We could try naked,” Valentine offered.
“Naked would be an improvement over that outfit, but I don’t think so.” Lisa stood in the doorway, hand on the knob, hesitating between going forward or stepping back.
“Are you going to invite me in?”
“I haven’t decided.” Lisa tamped down the unreasonable urge to ask him to come inside and brush her hair. She wasn’t herself tonight. She studied his face for a minute, wondering what it was about him that got to her. Not his taste in clothes, although she had to admit they suited him.
She found herself staring too long and too intently at the masculine form underneath those clothes. His body distracted her so much that she didn’t notice he was holding something at first. The impact he had on her made her impatient with both of them.
Stop staring at him. You’ll give him ideas and he already has plenty. She fixed her attention on the box in his hands. The shape, size and velvet exterior told her it contained jewelry. “What’s that?”
“A present for you.” He smiled at her and Lisa felt her breath catch at the way it transformed his face from forbidding to so sexy it should come with a warning label. “I’m pursuing you. A man pursuing a woman brings gifts. It’s traditional.”
“Pursuing me.” Lisa felt her fingers drumming on the door and forced herself to stop. “Why?”
“Because I want you.” The sexual intent of his words made heat curl in her belly. He held up the box and gave it a gentle shake, enticing her. As if just standing in front of her wasn’t enough. “Do you want this?”
“Yes.” Her mouth curved up of its own accord in a smile to match his. If she wasn’t careful, their mouths were going to get them into trouble. But she didn’t want to be careful. He made her feel reckless. She held her hand out. “I’m mercenary.”
“No, you’re not. But you like beautiful things.” Valentine placed the box in her hand and closed her fingers around it. His hand felt warm and the touch of his bare fingers against hers somehow felt more intimate than such innocent contact merited. “Will you invite me in now?”
“Not yet.” Lisa drew her hand away from his with an effort. She brought it up to hold the box against her chest in a protective movement, as if the small box could keep the attraction swirling between them in check. “How did you get to the front door? There’s a gate.”
“Meghan.”
“Oh.” She found herself looking into his eyes, and then she couldn’t look away. Didn’t want to look away. She liked looking at him, liked the warmth spreading through her body, liked the way everything around them faded into the distance. Her heartbeat seemed to reverberate, the rush of her own blood filling her ears.
“Open it.” His voice slid over her skin like a caress and Lisa found herself obeying. Her fingers were clumsy as she opened the box. The light caught the glow of pearls.
“Oh,” she said again. It was beautiful. And she wanted it so much an aching wrench of longing stole her breath. Was this what avarice felt like? Lisa touched the strand once, then lifted it out of the box to admire the length.
Valentine took it from her and let the tips of his fingers play along the hollows of her collarbone. “Let me.”
She didn’t object or resist. Instead, she bent her head forward while he wound the pearl necklace once around her throat and let the rest fall to her waist.
“It’s very old, isn’t it?” Lisa heard herself ask.
“Yes. The clasp has been repaired and it’s been restrung. You won’t need to worry about it breaking.”
The necklace felt old. And something else. It felt as if it carried its history in the luster of the pearls, the memory of somebody who had worn them often against nothing but skin.
Would she wear it that way after he left? Would he think of her, picture her in his mind with the strand of pearls rolling down her naked breasts and caressing the dip of her bared belly?
“Why did you give this to me?”
“Because it’s yours.” Valentine bent his head and brushed his lips across her forehead. “Don’t you think you should have it?”
Lisa closed her eyes and saw herself lying in a pool of ivory satin, wearing nothing but the necklace. A nice image, but her hair was too long. It reached her hips, and she’d always cut it when it started to brush the tops of her shoulders.
She opened her eyes and shook her head, trying to clear it. “Do I think I should accept jewelry from a strange man? No. Am I going to let you have it back? Again, no.”
She should give it back, she knew that. The gift was too personal, too expensive. Too seductive. But she wanted to keep it. Wanted to wear it.
“Will you ask me in now, Lisa?” Valentine murmured the question against the curve of her cheek as he brushed another kiss there.
Unbelievably, she found she wanted to do just that. Invite him in. Model the necklace for him in privacy. The voice of caution she’d been ignoring reasserted itself in her mind. She didn’t know this man. Maybe Meghan did, maybe she trusted him, but Lisa had no reason to.
“Not yet.”
“Invite me into your dreams, then.” Valentine kissed the corner of her mouth, the tiniest contact, but it made her tremble.
“All right.” That was safe enough to agree to. Dreams
weren’t real. “Consider yourself invited.”
“I do.” He straightened and looked down at her for a long minute. “Sleep well.” He touched the pearls at the base of her throat and then he was gone. Lisa blinked and rubbed at her eyes, trying to figure out how he’d moved so quickly or what trick of the light made it seem like the night swallowed him.
If she hadn’t still been holding the jeweler’s box and wearing the necklace, Lisa would have found it very easy to believe she was dreaming now. Maybe going out wasn’t such a good plan, after all. In fact, she felt so sleepy it was hard to imagine why she’d wanted to leave.
Time for a nap, she decided, and went back inside.
Chapter Four
“I see you like your present.”
Valentine’s voice made her shiver in pleasurable anticipation. The first time she’d met him, everything about him had struck her as wicked. The look in his eyes. The little smile that played around the corners of his mouth. The animal sheen of his sun-streaked hair. And above all else, his voice. He could make the most innocent words sound carnal and intimate by the way he spoke.
She let her eyes open halfway to regard him from below heavy lids. She felt her mouth curve from happiness and a little wicked streak of her own. “I do. Do you like how it looks on me?”
She stretched, displaying herself and the necklace to advantage as she lay naked on their bed. The strand of pearls, worn without being looped, hung low enough to rest against her sex as she lay with one knee raised and one bent to the side.
“Beautiful.” His hand settled on her bare thigh and stroked up until his fingertips rested just short of her bared sex, almost but not quite touching her in that most intimate of places. “I should have you painted like this.”
“It would be a scandal.” But the idea thrilled her. He found her beautiful and enticing enough that he wanted to capture the image she made, to preserve the memory of this moment and immortalize it on canvas.
“You, my love, are a scandal.” He ran his finger over the pearl that laid against the sensitive bud of flesh between her legs, pressing it lightly into her. His indirect manipulation of that secret source of pleasure made her shiver. Would he lift the necklace aside to touch her directly, stroke his fingertip over that sensitive nub? Would his hand then probe lower, deeper, his clever fingers opening her body for his?
“If I am, the fault lies with you for corrupting me. I was pure and innocent when I fell into your hands.” She let her other leg drop so that her thighs were splayed open for him.
“Ah. That explains why you couldn’t wait to have your wicked way with me on our wedding night.” He rolled the pearl over her clitoris and then covered her sex with his hand.
“It is a wife’s duty.” She gave him a solemn look. “I would not give you cause to complain that I shirk my duties.”
“I’m fortunate to have so dutiful a wife.” He ground the heel of his hand into her swollen flesh, and she gasped in pleasurable reaction. “I want to take you on your knees. Turn over for me.”
She laughed and did as he asked, rolling onto her knees. She looped the necklace around her throat in a triple strand that fell over her breasts and stretched upright, twisting to the side to show him. “Perhaps it would be better if I wore it like this?”
He used the strands to caress her nipples, rolling the pearls under his hands so that they massaged the sensitive skin of her breasts, making the peaks swell into taut rosebuds. “I think you are a wicked wanton.”
His lips followed the arcs the looped pearls made over the curves of her breasts, tasted the valley between, and then drew her nipples into his mouth, sucking and laving them with his tongue by turns until she felt as wicked and wanton as he claimed she was, aching for him to take her.
“Valentine,” she whispered.
“Yes, my sweet?” He raised his head and pinched her nipples lightly. The stimulation made her sex clench between her legs. She was liquid and hot, swollen and needy.
“Take me. Take me now.”
He pushed her down onto her hands and knees and settled behind her. His hands shaped her buttocks, gave them a squeeze, then a sudden stinging slap, followed by a gentle caress. Blood rushed between her legs in response, her sex swelling further in readiness.
“You are wicked, but I know what to do with such a wicked creature. You will serve my cock until your thighs ache.”
She giggled at the sensual threat and then gasped as he thrust into her. “Valentine.”
“Mine.” His voice was a fierce growl behind her. “You are mine, only mine. Always and forever.”
“Yes.” She belonged to him. She knew it and admitted it readily. She was his, as he was hers.
Her body stretched to take him, enclosed him. He withdrew and then thrust back into her in hard, fierce strokes, sheathing himself so fully that the head of his cock probed the entrance of her womb. Then there were no words at all, only sighs and moans and gasps as sensation and emotion overwhelmed her and she shattered.
Lisa opened her eyes and sat upright on the couch where she’d curled up, too tired to go further, once she’d reentered the house. “What the hell?”
She looked down and saw the necklace still around her throat. Not triple looped, but looped just once around her throat. The way Valentine had put it on her. She wasn’t naked and she didn’t have company. But the dream had felt so vivid, so intense. So real. As if she’d been there, done that. With him.
The pleasure had been real enough, at least. She could still feel her sex throbbing in reaction to the dream, the rippling aftereffects of orgasm tightening her womb, and knew she was going to have to change her underwear.
A wet dream. How adolescent. How ridiculous. She was too old to have some sort of teenage crush complete with sexual fantasies. She was an adult. If she wanted to be with Valentine, all she had to do was ask. He’d made it clear he was interested and available.
Her reaction to him in person and in the dream told her she was equally interested. And conveniently available too. So why hadn’t she invited Valentine in? How long had it been since any man had caught her eye? What was she waiting for? Not every man had to be the man, and it wasn’t like she’d been holding out for marriage. Which made the dream even more surreal.
Maybe she’d fantasized they were married as a sort of mental permission, a way to make her out-of-character attack of lust for a stranger more acceptable. Although that kind of thinking seemed as old-fashioned as the setting she’d imagined the two of them in.
Except it hadn’t been a purely sexual fantasy. She’d felt like there was a bond between them, a connection that went far beyond the physical. She’d felt happy. Secure. Loved. She’d felt confident and relaxed, as if she could trust Valentine with anything, and that level of trust had led to the freedom to enjoy the physical expression of passion without any reservations.
For God’s sake, she’d fantasized about him spanking her and it had been a turn-on. When had she ever experimented with anything like that? What man had she ever trusted enough to play kinky games with instead of sticking to basics? This man unlocked her fantasies, apparently, and not just the physical ones. It was the emotional component along with the sense of pure sexual freedom that made her wonder now if she’d done the right thing in accepting the necklace from him.
Lisa toyed with the troubling rope of pearls as she leaned back into the couch cushions, debating with herself. Take it off and put it away? Give it back? Should she pretend she wasn’t having these ideas about Valentine and hope they went away, or invite him in the next time he asked to see what it led to?
A buzzer rang, telling her somebody waited at the gate outside. The sound made her look at the clock. It was only 10:30, although it seemed later.
It wouldn’t be him again, Lisa thought, although she wanted it to be Valentine with an irrational yearning. Probably just somebody looking for Paige, who’d gone to Port Townsend for a few days. It occurred to her that the four of them were going their
separate ways and leaving the house the Sirens shared on Queen Anne Hill one by one. First Lorelei, then Meghan. There was only Paige and herself left now.
The buzzer rang again. Lisa stood, one hand still playing with the pearls as absently as she’d brushed at her hair earlier, and went to the intercom to find out who was at the gate.
When Valentine answered her “Yes?” with, “My favorite word. Does that mean I can come in?” Lisa leaned her forehead against the wall and closed her eyes.
A kaleidoscope of images filled her mind. Valentine wearing the strangest suit, holding her hand in a chapel made of stone while a man in robes chanted over them. Valentine sitting at the far end of a table from her that was ridiculously long and lit only by candles. Valentine, naked and leaning on one elbow in a great bed, patting the empty space beside him in wordless invitation. Valentine, on her doorstep, asking her to invite him in.
She didn’t know what any of it meant, but she wanted to find out. “Yes. Come in.”
Lisa pressed the button that made the gate open and then went to open the front door.
Chapter Five
“Did you know many people consider today the first day of the new year?” Valentine asked her when he crossed the threshold and joined her inside.
“No.”
“It’s true. November first, Samhain. An appropriate time for a new beginning.”
“Is that what this is?” Lisa asked. Her eyes met his as she asked the question. Everything else fell away again as she was lost in the spell of his gaze and the yearning he awoke in her.
“This is what we make it.” He bent his head towards hers, slowly, giving her plenty of time to understand his action would end in a kiss and to move away if she didn’t want it.
But she did want it, as fiercely and unexpectedly as she’d wanted the necklace as soon as she’d opened the box and seen it. She wanted his lips on hers, his body against hers, and then she wanted a lot more.
Night Rhythm: Sirens book 3 Page 2
