by Tami Hoag
“Alaina,” Dylan said breathlessly, dragging his lips across her cheek to the shell of her ear, “if we—don’t—stop now …” His sentence was punctuated by pauses made to nibble at the ruby stud in her earlobe. “I won’t—be able to.”
When Alaina made no comment, he drew back a little, cautious but hopeful. “Alaina?”
Blue eyes gazed up at him, dark with desire. She pulled one corner of her lush lower lip between her teeth.
She wanted him like she’d seldom wanted anything. Shivers of mingled fear and anticipation raced over her. She had nearly lost any chance she had with him, had nearly pushed him out of her life. But here he was, in the flesh. They both may have been tentative about testing the waters of a relationship, but there was nothing tentative about the physical need that hummed between them like electricity. She had never been given to wild impulses, particularly of the sexual variety, but when it came to Dylan, the control she had so carefully cultivated all her life went right out the window, and all that hot blood she’d inherited from Helene came sizzling to the surface.
“The blinds are closed,” she whispered, her voice low and hoarse. She stepped back from him and slipped her suit jacket off, tossing it onto her chair.
Dylan never took his eyes off her, but reached up and began unbuttoning his shirt. “I locked the front door when Perkins left.”
Alaina stepped out of her pumps and popped the gold cuff links from the sleeves of her white blouse. “Marlene won’t be back until one.”
Dylan shrugged out of his shirt and toed his battered sneakers off, revealing the long, bony feet he wasn’t self-conscious about. Leaning back against the sturdy table that was serving duty as a desk, he held his hands out to Alaina and whispered, “Come here.”
She stepped closer. Her blouse was untucked and unbuttoned. Dylan slid his thumbs inside the open placket and drew the fabric to the sides. His breath caught in his lungs at the sight of the silk and lace camisole she wore beneath it. It was filmy and French and barely hid the dark rose-colored circles around her nipples. He sighed as he pulled her into his embrace and caressed his own fevered skin with the feel of cool silk while his fingers worked down the zipper of her snug skirt.
“Are you sure about this?” he whispered.
“There are a lot of things I’m not sure about when it comes to us,” Alaina admitted, her lips brushing the skin of his throat. “This isn’t one of them.”
“Thank God.”
Smiling, she nuzzled into his warmth, drinking in his clean masculine scent, tasting his skin with a moist trail of kisses across his solid chest. Her fingers traced the ridges and valleys of his back, drawing around to his belly when she reached the waistband of his jeans. She worked the button free as he worked her skirt down over her hips.
“Holy Hannah,” Dylan murmured reverently. His gaze fell down Alaina’s supple back to her delectably rounded derriere and beyond to the backs of those shapely legs that filled his dreams. She wore stockings rather than panty hose, stockings that were held in place by a trim white garter belt. The panties she wore were mere whispers of lace, designed to drive a man wild at the sight of them.
He turned, holding Alaina against him with his left arm, and cleared the tabletop with one sweep of his right. Lifting her onto the smooth wood surface, he bent and fastened his mouth on her breast, sucking at her through the barrier of silk.
Alaina moaned and arched her back, tangling her fingers in Dylan’s dark hair. She let her eyes drift shut and concentrated on the sensation of his tongue rubbing the wet fabric of her camisole back and forth across her nipple. Incredible. Wonderful. Right. So right. She’d never known what it was to crave a man’s touch this way. The prospect had always frightened her. But there was no fear in her now, not with Dylan. When he touched her, she wanted to offer him everything she had, everything she was, everything her lonely heart had stored up inside it.
“Dylan, now,” she whispered, reaching for him.
He raised his head and stared down at her, his blood surging in his veins at the erotic picture she made, her fair skin against the dark wood of the tabletop, her hair disheveled, her lips full and pouting from his kiss.
“Not yet, Princess,” he said. This desire had sprung up between them suddenly, unexpectedly, but Dylan was determined that it would not pass as quickly. He wanted to prolong this for them both, to stretch out the sweet torture of waiting, making their ultimate reward all the more special.
With his hungry gaze fastened on her long right leg, he unsnapped the tab of her garter. He rolled the stocking down an inch at a time, his lips following the descent with a trail of kisses. Down her thigh, across the inner side of her knee, over the swell of her calf, his mouth drew a line of heat and sensation. The stocking floated to the floor like a silken ribbon. Dylan moved to her left leg and repeated the process, ending with a passionate kiss against the arch of her foot that had Alaina writhing in totally unexpected ecstasy. She had never imagined her foot as an erogenous zone. Dylan was proving her wrong, and for once, she didn’t mind.
Lulled to complacency by the languid waves of pleasure he sent rolling through her, she lay back against the table, watching through heavy lids as Dylan bent with a wicked smile and kissed her through the lace of her panties. She sucked in a surprised breath, but made no move to stop him from doing it again. Then the scrap of lace was gone, and long, questing fingers gently probed the tender warmth between her thighs, seeking the source of her heat and making the flames burn hotter all at once. Desire coiled inside her like a spring, tighter and tighter with each caress.
The rasp of a zipper being lowered drew her undivided attention. She leaned up on her elbows and watched with undisguised hunger as Dylan hooked his thumbs under the waistband of both jeans and briefs and eased them slowly downward. He was a beautiful man, a well-endowed man, a fully aroused man … and he was all hers.
She reached out to touch the very tip of him, and it was Dylan’s turn to suck in a breath. He groaned as her hand closed around him and stroked him, gently tugging him toward her.
“Now, Dylan,” she murmured in his ear as she brought him against her own hot, sensitive flesh.
“Now, Princess,” he murmured in return, arching his hips into hers.
He entered her as slowly as he could stand to, holding her gaze with his as she accepted him into the tight silken sheath of her womanhood. Their lips met in one tender, clinging kiss. Then control vanished, driven out by need and desire and a love neither dared voice, a love that had taken fragile root in two wary hearts.
Chapter 8
“Can I ask you a question?” Dylan murmured when he had gathered enough strength to lift his head and look down at Alaina’s flushed face.
She opened her cool blue eyes and stared up at him, and he actually felt his heart lurch. He was well and truly in love. The idea made his stomach churn. He hadn’t planned on falling in love. He especially hadn’t planned on falling in love with Alaina. It seemed he hadn’t had a choice. The only thing to do now was proceed with extreme caution.
She reached up and brushed her bangs out of her eyes, then brushed at the dark curls that tumbled across his forehead. “What?”
What? He drew a blank for an instant, so caught up in the confusing whirlpool of his feelings he’d forgotten the question. Lighten up, Harrison, he warned himself.
“Why does Alaina Montgomery, yuppie perfectionist extraordinaire, have a table in her impeccably decorated office instead of the latest in executive desks? Not that I’m complaining, mind you,” he hastened to add, caressing the polished wood surface with a loving hand. “I’ve become inordinately fond of this table. In fact, I think maybe we should have it bronzed and set on a pedestal like a work of art. We could call it ‘Plateau of Passion.’ ”
A wry smile tilted Alaina’s lips as she decided to follow Dylan’s lead—light and easy, let the future take care of itself. “ ‘Dais of Desire.’ ”
He lowered his head until the tips of t
heir noses touched. “ ‘Table of Titillation,’ ” he said in his sexiest voice.
“Enough,” Alaina declared, wriggling out from under him and sitting up. She tugged down the hem of her rumpled camisole as she slid off the table and started scavenging for her clothes. “I think it’s painfully obvious the art world can get along without us.”
“Yes,” Dylan said gravely, eyeing her fanny as she bent to retrieve her blouse. “I’ve seen your painting.”
Alaina turned and slugged him in the arm, trying not to laugh. She was a horrible painter. What had ever prompted her to think otherwise, she couldn’t imagine. Still, a gentleman wouldn’t have pointed out the fact. “That’s low, Harrison. They laughed at van Gogh, too, you know.”
“Yeah, but that was because he was funny looking with only one ear.”
“And if he were alive today, Marlene would try to fix me up with him.” She shuddered at the thought.
“See, now aren’t you glad you decided to hang on to me for a while?”
For a while. His words hit her in an especially sensitive spot. He wanted them to pursue a relationship, but it sounded as if he still thought of it as only a temporary thing, an interesting diversion. Keeping company with sex.
You’re not a mind reader or a fortune-teller, Alaina, she told herself as she snapped her cuff links back in place. Leave that malarkey to Marlene.
“I’ll say,” she quipped, forcing her mood up. “At least you have all the right parts.”
“In all the right places,” he boasted, striking a comically macho pose.
Alaina rolled her eyes as she zipped her skirt. “You’re okay for an old geezer. Don’t let it go to your head. To answer your question, I don’t have a desk because I haven’t found one I like yet. I want an antique. Something substantial, yet elegant.”
He nodded knowingly. “Quietly pretentious.” When she narrowed her eyes and glared at him, he turned his palms up in innocent surrender. “What can I say? It’s you, Princess. Can I ask you another question?”
“What?”
He picked up her brass nameplate from the tabletop and tapped a finger to the engraved surface. “What does the N stand for, Alaina N. Montgomery? Nicole? Nola?”
“None of your business,” she said coolly as she slipped her suit jacket on.
Dylan gave her a sideways look. “I always feel like people who go by their initials are hiding something.”
“Like a name they hate.”
“Nadine?” He rubbed his chin in thought. “Norma?”
“No way am I telling you.”
He sighed in defeat and looked as sad as a lost puppy. “I’m crushed.”
Alaina crossed her arms and tilted her head to an angle that hinted at impatience. “Tough.”
Dylan grinned suddenly and draped a long arm around her defensively squared shoulders. “I’ll let you off. Temporarily. Now put that pretty patrician nose back in joint and let’s go desk hunting. There are zillions of little antiques shops around here. I’ll be your personal guide.”
“What about the bar?”
He waved a hand in dismissal. “It’s only money. I’d rather spend the day with you.”
Alaina gave him a look.
He gave up with a shrug. “Okay. It’s my day off.”
“Come on, Mr. Magnanimous,” she said, reaching for the half-eaten Gucci handbag Dylan’s dog had tried to devour. “Let’s go shopping. You owe me a purse.”
Shopping was delayed. They drove first to Alaina’s house for a quick shower—which turned into a long shower, a kind of aquatic lovemaking marathon, abandoned only when the hot water ran out and they were forced to leave the stall or suffer hypothermia. Then Dylan fixed them sandwiches while Alaina dried her hair, reapplied her makeup, and dressed in smart white chinos and a blue-striped silk and cotton sweater. On impulse, she added the Crystal to her outfit before nodding her approval at her appearance and marching out of the room.
Dylan frowned at her when she entered the kitchen looking as if she’d just stepped out of the pages of Glamour. “Don’t you own a pair of jeans?”
“No.” She smiled as if she were immensely proud of the fact.
He gave her slacks a dubious look. “You’re going antique hunting in white pants?”
“Don’t worry,” she said, nibbling at the corner of a tuna sandwich. “I don’t get dirty. It’s against my religion.”
She was true to her word. They sifted their way through piles of junk, centuries of stuff people had stopped using but refused to throw out. Alaina came out of each shop daintily dusting off her palms, with not so much as a piece of lint on her impractical white pants.
Dylan simply shook his head. Of course Alaina wouldn’t get dirty. She was prim and stylish right down to her oxford-style huaraches. She wasn’t the type of woman to get dirty. Veronica had been the same way. The mere thought of getting rumpled had given his ex-wife a migraine. Part of her dissatisfaction with motherhood had been her natural aversion to sticky fingerprints and drool on her wardrobe.
Watching Alaina pick her way through the rubble in yet another backyard antiques shop, Dylan felt a knot of nerves roll around inside his stomach like a golf ball. How would Alaina take to motherhood? She’d said some women didn’t take to the role, but had she been talking about her own mother or herself as well? She claimed his kids had avoided her on the Tardis, but she hadn’t exactly gotten down on the deck to play with them either. Still, he remembered that poignantly wistful look that had come over her when she’d first seen Cori and Sam, and he took hope. The longing in that look was a rare loose thread in the tightly woven fabric of Alaina Montgomery’s image. He intended to take hold of that thread and unravel it.
“Last stop,” he announced as he turned the Bronco in at Lindquist Antiques. “If Addie doesn’t have it, it probably can’t be found on this planet. Of course, Addie might not be able to find it herself. She’s a little … eccentric.”
“Everyone you know is eccentric,” Alaina said. “Except me.” She frowned prettily. “I hope that doesn’t make me eccentric by association.”
“I wouldn’t worry. Alaina … Naomi.”
She rolled her eyes and opened the truck’s door. “No chance, Harrison.”
As they strolled up the sidewalk Alaina stared at the house. It looked like something out of a Vincent Price movie: an eerie, enormous, incongruous blend of turrets, gingerbread, and gables painted a putrid, peeling green. The house was perched on a cliff above the bay on the very northern edge of Anastasia, a lonely promontory where the wind seemed to howl incessantly.
“What a creepy place,” she muttered, momentarily forgetting she was too levelheaded to be spooked by such things. “I feel like someone’s watching us.”
“Someone is watching us.” Dylan nodded toward a narrow window on the first floor where a hand was drawing back the curtain and a pair of eyes peered at them from the interior gloom as they mounted the creaking steps to the porch. “It’s Addie.”
The woman cracked the door open in much the same manner as she had held the curtain back, peering out at them with a wary look.
“Hello, Addie,” Dylan said, sending her his most amicable smile.
“I don’t know you,” she said flatly. Glancing over her shoulder, she said, “I don’t know this person, Wimsey.”
“Dylan Harrison, Addie,” Dylan said calmly. “You know me.”
“I do? Oh, well.” She swung the door open and stared up at him. She was a trim woman in her early sixties with graying blond hair and sharp blue eyes. She wore a printed cotton dress and green rubber garden boots. “Of course I know you,” she snapped impatiently.
“I brought a friend. She’s shopping for a desk.”
“Well, why on earth would you bring her here?”
“Because you sell antique furniture.”
Addie turned and shushed her companion. “Yes, Wimsey, I know that. What do think I am, senile?”
Alaina gave Dylan a look. He just shrugged. Th
e door swung open and Addie Lindquist waved them in. She was completely alone.
“And I thought Marlene was weird,” Alaina muttered.
The entire first floor of the house was crammed with old furniture and relics, odd bits of junk the equally odd Addie Lindquist had collected over the years. Room after room was crowded with dusty, moldy tables and chairs, dressers and bureaus. One parlor held nothing but church pews piled like cordwood. A sunroom was wall-to-wall with old birdcages.
Just when she was ready to give up and go home, Alaina stumbled across exactly the piece she had had in mind all along. It was a large walnut partner’s desk with brass ormolu handles on the drawers. What made it different from all the others she’d seen was that it was surprisingly feminine in style, with cabriole legs and graceful carved moldings. It was perfect. And the price tag read $91,763.48.
“It’s a tad out of my range,” she said dryly, showing Dylan the dusty yellow tag. He choked.
“Addie,” he said cautiously, “is this negotiable?”
The woman gave the price tag a glance, then shot Dylan and Alaina a shrewd look. “Maybe. What’ll you give me?”
“I was thinking more in the line of three hundred,” Alaina said, hoping to get it for five hundred, willing to go to six fifty.
“Hmm … well …” Addie rubbed her chin in thought. She scowled over her shoulder and snapped, “Oh, don’t be such a piker, Wimsey.” Turning back to Alaina, she said, “You can have it for two fifty.” A mischievous smile lifted her pale mouth. “Wimsey will help you load it.”
Cursing her conscience under her breath, Alaina wrote the check for five hundred and gave Dylan a look that dared him to comment. His smile warmed her like a shower of golden sunshine. He wrapped an arm around her shoulders as Addie wandered off.
“Come on, you tough cookie, you,” he said. “I have a feeling Wimsey isn’t going to be a whole lot of help loading this thing.”
“Are you sure I won’t be imposing?” Alaina asked, unable to keep all the nervousness out of her voice as they pulled up in Dylan’s driveway. It welled up like floodwaters inside her and seeped through the cracks in her shield of self-assurance.
