He laughed. “I’m glad to hear it.” He ran his fingers back and forth across the ball of her foot.
“That feels good, Deke,” she said, leaning her head back on the cushions. She wore no makeup, and her hair was damp. It gleamed in the slanting rays of the sun, which was now disappearing below the trees. He thought she had never looked more desirable.
“I’m glad the Dr. Feelgood job has made life easier for you financially.”
“I suppose I should say thank you.”
“You got the job on your own,” he reminded her.
“Only because I was so angry with you. If I hadn’t barged into that meeting and thrown the keys to the car at you, I wouldn’t have met Maxie Lubner. I wish—” she began, and then stopped.
“You wish?” he prompted.
“I wish I could be sure I got the job on my own,” she said in a low tone.
“What difference does it make?”
“A lot.”
He sighed and massaged her instep. “Friends help friends.”
“You weren’t what I’d exactly call a friend at the time.”
“I am now.”
There was a long silence. “Yes,” she said cautiously.
He put down her foot and picked up the other one. She had the most remarkable feet, slim and delicate, with soft white skin. She arched her foot against his hand. The wineglass dangled from hers.
The sun had now sunk below the edge of the trees on the opposite shore of the lake, and the sunset’s pale apricot glow rippled the surface of the water. The room around them was cast in dusky shadows.
“I want us to be friends, Dorian. To feel comfortable with each other.”
“I’m feeling extremely comfortable at the moment. And,” she went on, “I could feel even more comfortable.”
“What would you suggest?” he asked, matching the light in her eyes with one of his own.
She reached out her hand. “That you come up here. That you stop doing what you’re doing to my foot.”
He rose to his knees and took the glass from her hand. He set it carefully aside.
“Good idea,” she whispered, winding her arms around his neck.
He closed his eyes for one ecstatic moment, letting himself feel her breath so soft upon his cheek. She had the sweetest breath. He had trained himself to distinguish flavors and scents, the better to perfect the herbal blends of his teas. But Dorian—she was the essence of rosebuds on a rainwashed day with an undertone of green, reminding him of spring in the air after a drab and dreary winter.
She was so beautiful, his fantasy woman, her mouth slightly parted, her chin piquantly pointed, her cheeks shadowed by dark, curving lashes, and he touched his lips to hers, first tentatively, then more forcefully.
Dorian was a consummate kisser. For a moment, he was swept with a fierce jealousy for all the other men she must have kissed in her lifetime, but the thought didn’t last long. It flew away like every other thought he ever had when he was kissing her.
He realigned his head, liking the way she sighed when he kissed her, and he slid his arms under her. She halfway rose to meet him, holding her hair back with one hand until he reached up and pushed her hand away so that her hair tumbled over his face. It was clean and slightly damp and fragrant with the scent of the shampoo she had used after her swim.
Every cell of his body sang in anticipation. He wanted her, all of her, and he longed for her to want him as desperately. He slid his hands up under the sweatshirt and blouse she wore and encountered satin and lace.
He half expected her to twist out of his grasp, but she surprised him. “Wait,” she said, sitting up straight. And then she was pulling the sweatshirt up over her head, and then her other shirt, and finally unhooking her bra. She tossed the garments to one side, completely without modesty or artifice as she sat limned in the rosy light of the sunset like a young goddess.
Her breasts were milk-white and cast a shadow over the flatness of her belly. The nipples were swollen and pink.
“You are so beautiful,” he said, a lump in his throat. She took his breath away; she hypnotized him. Seeing her this way as he had so often in his dreams made him unable to move, to talk, even to touch her.
“Now you,” she said, reaching for the buttons on his shirt.
She unbuttoned them slowly, and it took an excruciatingly long time. She helped him to shrug out of the shirt, and, as he took the fullness of her breasts in his hands, she said, “No, let’s not stay here.”
“Where?” he asked hazily, living a dream, touching a dream. Her breasts lay warm and heavy in his hands, and he didn’t want to go anywhere else. He wanted to slide his body over hers and take her here and now, on the rug in front of the couch, to pour himself into her, to make her truly his own as she had never been any other man’s.
“Outside?” she asked tentatively, her voice quavering with emotion.
He bent slowly and touched the tip of his tongue to one nipple. “No,” he said against its warm softness. “I don’t want to wait that long.” She arched against him as he grazed her nipple with his teeth, her sigh bearing him away on a tide of yearning. After he had tasted of her breasts, he rained little kisses upward to her throat. He reached for the button on her shorts at the same time that she tugged at his zipper, and although her shorts shimmied easily down her legs, his jeans were more tenacious.
“I’ll help,” she said, and she bent to peel them off. When they lay on the rug at his feet, she started to get up, but he knelt down beside her, evidence of his excitement plain to see.
In one swift movement he yanked a thick quilt off the back of the couch and spread it on the floor.
“Touch me,” he said, and her gaze meeting his, she wrapped her fingers around him.
She pressed close, and he felt a frisson of delight. He rested his hands on her waist and slid them downward to cup her lush curves. It was excruciating to wait, and yet he wanted to take his time for her sake, to make it as good for her as it already was for him.
“Tell me your all-time sexual fantasies,” he said. She had let her head fall forward so that her forehead was resting on his collarbone; her hands were busy elsewhere.
“I—I can’t think,” she whispered. Now she was bestowing little nipping kisses along the side of his neck where his pulse beat like a jungle drum.
“Anything,” he murmured. “Tell me anything.”
“I’ve thought about—about making love with you,” she said, her face hidden in his shoulder.
“How? When?”
A low moan escaped her as he again slid his hands over her breasts, touching, teasing, tormenting until the nipples puckered into knots.
“How have I thought about it? Passionately. When? Ever since—ever since the day on the MARTA. No, before then. Before—before—”
Her words excited him almost as much as her actions. “In Fontana’s? Did you think about it in Fontana’s?” He lifted her breast to take it in his mouth, and she bent backward, her body as supple as a willow wand. He supported her back with one hand, her breast with the other, sucking at the tender pink tip. Her skin was soft and slippery and sweet.
“Yes. Yes. In Fontana’s. Oh, Deke, that feels so good,” she whispered.
He lifted his head to see that her pupils were enormous and dark with pleasure. She was a responsive woman, her hips moving even now in rhythm with the blood pulsing through his veins. From outside, the gentle inquiring cries of birds finding their roosts drifted through the open door.
As much as he desired her, he had to look at her for one long moment. Her skin seemed sheened with silver in the dim light; he was so moved by the splendor of her that he could barely speak.
“Oh, Dorian, you are everything I’ve ever wanted in a woman,” he said brokenly, scarcely believing that she was his. His senses reeled with the joy of the moment.
His fantasy woman wound her arms around him, urging him closer, and she lifted her lips and drew him into a long, deep kiss, drinking of hi
m as if she could not get enough.
He wanted nothing so much as to be consumed by her, to become part of her, to partake of everything that she was. And she wanted it, too.
Her fingers fluttered against his back, and he wove his hand into the pale golden tendrils at the juncture of her thighs. She was warm and wet and pulsing against his fingertips. His breath caught in his throat, escaping in a low moan.
“I want to feel you,” she said, her body quivering beneath his.
He pressed his arousal against her.
“Not like that,” she murmured.
“Where? Tell me where!” he demanded gruffly. He had waited for her so long, and he wanted her to know what it was like. Waiting made the wanting all the more sweet, and it made the slaking of desire all the more fierce.
“Everywhere,” she said.
He slid his hands around her to draw her buttocks closer. Tantalizingly he withheld himself above her, poised and ready.
“Where?” he asked her again, burying his face in her hair. Although she so inflamed his desire that he thought he would explode, he forced himself to hold off, to delay the final moment as long as possible.
“Inside me,” she whispered, her lips wet against his shoulder. Her hands were trembling when she found him, but they were strong and sure as she guided him to probe her liquid softness. All the sharp longing of his desire pierced through to her core, his cry of exultation echoing in his ears.
Her mouth on his was urgent, their tongues desperate to meet as their bodies thrust to completion. With one long gasp, she reached her climax first, her slim body tightening beneath his like a tensed spring, then shuddering with the strength of her release. Possessing her at that moment was an aphrodisiac so powerful that he couldn’t hold off any longer. He plunged deeper into her with a ferocious, soul-shaking spasm, his body exploding for what seemed like an eternity until he collapsed, wet and weak and satisfied beyond belief.
Afterward, as she lay in his arms, sated and drowsy, he said, “I’m awfully glad you’re not a pushmi-pullyu.”
She chuckled against his shoulder. “Me, too,” she replied, sliding her fingers across his stomach, and not at all to his surprise, he felt himself surging against her hand.
“Ah, darlin’,” he moaned as her body slid into position over his, and he gave himself up to her magic again.
* * *
“YOU,” HE SAID LATER as he lay with his head pillowed on her thigh, “are my ultimate fantasy woman.”
“I’m not a fantasy. I’m real,” she said, her eyes closed, her fingers caressing his face.
“That’s the best part.” He captured her hand in his and kissed the palm. She sighed with pleasure.
“Now that I’ve found you, I want you around me all the time,” he said.
She opened her magnificent blue-and-heliotrope eyes. “Just because we’ve made love doesn’t mean this is going to be a permanent thing.”
“I know, I know. You have your life, and I have mine. But let’s face it, we liked making love. Didn’t we?” He sat up and shot her an anxious glance.
She smiled up at him. “Certainly. But neither one of us is the type to settle down. We both know that.”
“Settle down? Who said anything about settling down? Why should we when we have passion and excitement and the freedom to do exactly as we please? I’d say we’re in for the time of our lives. I’m going to track you morning, noon and night. I want to make love to you outdoors in the moonlight, on the roof of my corporate offices—”
“On the roof!” Dorian exclaimed, dissolving into shocked giggles.
“Don’t laugh. I’m serious. Isn’t there someplace that you’ve always wanted to make love?”
She didn’t hesitate. “In Paris. I’d like to fly off to Paris for a week and stroll beside the Seine, stay in a luxurious hotel, and make love whenever and wherever I want to,” she said dreamily.
“I could go for that. Paris is one of my favorite cities.”
“When were you there?”
“Years ago, when I backpacked through Europe.”
“I’ve never been to Paris. But I’ll get there one of these days, if it’s at all possible.”
“At the moment it seems as if all things are possible, including that. Especially that. Let’s go sometime, Dorian. Just you and me.”
“We’ll see.”
“Okay, so you don’t want to be pinned down. What else do you fantasize about?”
“You don’t expect me to tell you, do you?”
“I certainly do,” he said, trying to look stern.
She laughed and settled closer. “Well,” she said, “there’s this certain script for a Dr. Feelgood’s commercial that has erotic possibilities,” she said. She sent him a covert look from under her lashes.
“Not the mummy one?” he said, showing his trepidation.
This was greeted by a peal of giggles. “No, and it’s not the Casablanca spot, either. The one I have in mind is going to be filmed in the manner of an old-time movie, and it’s about a Rudolph Valentino-type man who dashes in and out of tents in the desert looking for a certain blonde harem girl.”
“And when he finds her, it’s harem-scarem, right?”
“When he finds her, she offers him a cup of tea.”
“I’ll bet this particular harem girl has a lot more to offer than tea. That is, if you’re the one who plays her.”
“She might be more than he bargained for if the commercial went far enough. But it fades out with them riding into the desert on matching camels and gazing soulfully into each other’s eyes as they sip from sloshing cups of Dr. Feel-good’s Happy Talk.”
“What a disappointment! Not the tea, of course, but the fact that the commercial ends prematurely.”
“The man they cast as the Rudolph Valentino guy looks a lot like you,” she said.
“And the fantasy is—”
She pulled him down for a kiss. “The fantasy is X-rated. But it goes something like this,” she said, kissing him deeply. “And this,” she continued afterward, touching him where he most wanted to be touched. For good measure, she ran the tip of her tongue around the rim of his ear.
“I’d like to make that fantasy come true for you,” he said, distracted by what she was doing to him.
“You say that so tentatively,” she murmured against his cheek even as he felt her lips curling into a smile.
“That’s because I camelp it.”
“Do we have to do this on the floor? Don’t you have a Bedouin here?” she said, scarcely able to control her laughter.
At that he lifted her triumphantly in his arms and bore her away to his grandmother’s huge brass bed where he burrowed into her, wrapped himself around her, and became one with her with more enthusiasm than he’d ever felt for any woman in his life.
And she met him more than halfway, urging him on, murmuring sweet things in his ear, riding him mercilessly until he gave himself up to her once again. There was nothing shy about Dorian when she made love; she was a full participant and more innovative than he’d ever dreamed a woman could be.
Deke didn’t know how he was going to accomplish it, but he had made up his mind that somehow he was going to become Rudolph Valentino for her. At least for one memorable night.
Chapter Nine
“So you had a good day at Blue Lake,” Jill prompted over a late lunch at a popular sidewalk café the next day.
Dorian manufactured an enigmatic smile. She didn’t want Jill to know how good it had really been.
“You’re not fooling me,” Jill said. “You’re interested.”
Dorian twirled the edge of her paper napkin into a spiral. “He’s more fun that I expected,” she admitted. She didn’t mention that he was a fantastic lover, anticipating her every desire with uncanny skill. She didn’t mention that Jill had been right about the length of his fingers correlating with the length of other parts of his anatomy. She certainly didn’t mention that she became aroused by merely thinking a
bout these things.
“So what’s the deal?” Jill wanted to know. “Are you a couple?”
“A couple of lunatics.”
“You know what I mean,” insisted Jill.
“I have no idea if we’re a couple or not,” Dorian said, returning her attention to her veggie taco as if it made no difference whatsoever.
“Well, are you going to see him again?”
“I think so. Of course, with my shooting schedule for the commercials, we’d have to work around that.”
“Somehow I never figured you as the type who would go for a good ole boy from the country, personable though he is,” observed Jill.
Dorian raised her eyebrows at this. “He’s hardly one of those guys whose car horn plays the first few bars of `Dixie,’” she said in Deke’s defense. “And so far, he hasn’t cut loose with one rebel yell. He’s educated. Brilliant. Couth, even. Sort of a country gentleman.”
Jill treated her to a keen-eyed glance. “Dorian Carr, I do believe you’re smitten with Deke Washburn,” she said in a tone of disbelief.
Even as Dorian framed her reply, a mental picture of Deke standing in the lake, his body slick with water, his hair as smooth as an otter’s pelt, his eyelashes beaded with droplets, flashed into her mind. She felt a thrill of pleasure; for a while, he had been hers. All hers, over and over again. Not only in front of the couch and in his bed but later on the deck in the dark, with a whispering canopy of leaves overhead and the water-scented breeze from the lake cooling their bodies. She was smitten, all right, totally and completely, though she never would have admitted it to anyone, Jill included. But with her roommate, it wasn’t necessary.
“Oh, I wouldn’t say that.” Dorian attempted to lie.
“I would,” Jill said in delight.
Dorian gazed at the slow line of traffic cruising by on the busy street, wondering if a denial would be believed.
“It’s plain that you don’t want to talk about it,” Jill said.
Dorian adopted a matter-of-fact air. “You know I’m not interested in a full-time, permanent relationship with anyone, and neither is he, which makes us perfect for each other,” she said.
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