Calder Promise

by Janet Dailey

  Angling his head in her direction, he let his glance run over her and studied the play of light and shadow on her face, accenting the high, strong line of her cheekbones and marble perfection of her skin. The night gave a silvery sheen to her hair, lightening the color of that glorious blond mane tumbling about her shoulders.

  At that moment she had the cool, untouchable look of a goddess, beyond the reach of any mere mortal. But Sebastian knew she had but to turn those sultry dark eyes on him and the impression would change to that of a siren, tantalizing in her beauty, with glistening lips promising rapture.

  He smiled inwardly at such fanciful thoughts while simultaneously aware that there was more than a little truth in them. Just being near her aroused all his male instincts. Sebastian suspected he was in danger of completely losing his head over this woman. But that only seemed to add some spice.

  “You seem to be in deep thought,” he observed, seeking to pull her attention back to him.

  She drew in a long breath and released it in a slow and soft exhalation. “I guess I was.” A small curve lifted the corners of her mouth.

  “What could possibly require such heavy contemplation at this late hour?” he asked in mild jest.

  “The future,” Laura replied without any hesitation and continued to face the city. “I have some important decisions that I need to make.”

  “Such as?” Sebastian prompted, determined to engage her attention.

  With a slight toss of her head, she turned at right angles to face him and leaned a hip against the terrace wall. “Oh, very important things,” she assured him in mock earnestness and dipped her chin, her head cocking in a pose that was provocative and alluring. “Whether to travel the world or rule it, whether to feed the starving children in Africa or . . . go to bed with you.”

  Heat surged through him with rocketing force. Desire was a hard, stony ache in his loins that somehow managed to thicken his voice. “Personally, I am highly in favor of the latter.”

  Her smile widened, Cheshire-like. She moved toward him, maintaining her hold on the blanket edges as she opened her arms, the material winging from them in a gesture that reminded him of an exotic butterfly emerging from its chrysalis. But his view of her body was brief as she curved her arms around his neck, wrapping him inside the blanket with her.

  Head back and lips parted, she challenged huskily, “Show me.”

  His hands had already moved around the bareness of her waist to mold her more firmly against him. This time her skin was hot to the touch, but just as silky smooth as before.

  Before he could take possession of her mouth, she began eating at his lips, taking playful bites of them with her teeth. In all such previous occasions, Sebastian had been the one doing the seducing. But Laura was the aggressive one now. Something told him that was a dangerous precedent. Seeking to claim the initiative, he scooped her off her feet and swung her toward the suite entrance.

  Laughter gurgled in her throat. “How masterful,” she purred and stroked a hand along his jaw before sliding her fingers into his hair.

  “I assure you I am well-equipped for the role,” he murmured, matching the racy lightness of her tone.

  His response surprised a laugh from her, and her dark eyes took a new measure of him, a suggestive gleam in their depths. “Is that boast or brag?”

  “I’ll let you be the judge of that.” He negotiated the steps into the suite’s sitting room.

  “That will be my pleasure,” she informed him as her fingers found the top button of his shirt.

  “Indeed it will.”

  “Have you always been so confident of your prowess in bed?” she teased while her fingers continued to undo more buttons.

  “I have never heard a single complaint.” He carried her through the sitting room into the suite’s sumptuous bedroom.

  “Ah, but men never do—not if a woman is smart. The male ego tends to be much too fragile.”

  Control: he could sense her subtle attempt to exert it again. “And I have never met a woman willing to concede that she might be a disappointment in the bedroom.”

  He stopped near the bed. A single lamp burned on the bedside table, throwing a pool of light over the downturned bedcovers. He let her feet sink to the floor while keeping an arm around her. The blanket fell away, only a corner of it caught by his encircling arm.

  “That’s hitting a bit below the belt, isn’t it?” she challenged lightly while her hands glided down the opened front of his shirt, halting when they reached the waistband of his slacks.

  “But that’s often what happens when Mars and Venus collide.”

  “But what a magnificent collision it can be,” she murmured, her dark eyes shining with promise.

  “Indeed,” Sebastian agreed and stayed her attempt to unfasten his trousers, catching hold of her hands and pulling them away despite the hot and hungry part of him that was eager for her to continue. “But you are rushing things.” He set her away from him and made a quick, appreciative skim of her uptilted breasts, slender waist and curved hips. “We men tend to be dreadful creatures of habit.” He steered her toward the bed, maintaining discreet pressure until the back of her knees made contact with the mattress. Then he gave her a little push that forced her to sit down. All the while she watched with intense curiosity and interest. “Each of us has our own particular routine when it comes to disrobing. Some prefer to start at the bottom and remove their shoes first. Others begin with the tie.”

  “You have a head start there.” She reclined onto the bed with languorous ease, bending one leg over the other to show him the full rounded curve of her cheek bottom.

  “And I have been remiss in not thanking you for that before now.” Which was the truth. There was hardly a part of him that didn’t feel thick and rigidly swollen. Sebastian doubted that in his present condition his fingers could have managed the intricacies of unknotting a tie or unbuttoning his shirt. Clamping down on a very primitive urge to rip off his clothes and join her on that bed, he pulled the tie from around his neck, striving for a leisurely air that he was far from feeling. “Myself, I do a combination of top and bottom.” He draped the tie across the overstuffed armrest of a nearby chair and shrugged out of his suit jacket. “After the tie, comes the jacket.” After making a show of precisely folding it, he laid it on the chair. “Then the shirt.” He pulled the tails loose from his pants and proceeded to remove it as well, conscious all the while of her avid gaze.

  Again, he was anything but casual about the way he arranged it on the chair. At that point he paused and faced her once more. Her eyes made a greedy, almost tactile inspection of the muscled width of his chest and shoulders, taking special note of the curly mat of auburn chest hair.

  “This is where I reverse the procedure and begin from the bottom.” He sat down on the edge of the cushioned seat, careful not to muss the clothes already there, and began removing his shoes. After he had arranged them neatly side by side next to the chair, he peeled off his socks, shook them out, and laid them precisely one on top of the other.

  “First the top, then the bottom. The middle must be next,” she declared, her dark eyes agleam with anticipation.

  “An astute deduction.” He smiled lazily as he stood up, unzipped his trousers, and stepped out of them. Wearing only his briefs, he folded the dress pants together, leg crease against leg crease, draped them over their suit jacket, and gripped the elastic waist of his lone remaining garment. “Last, but far from least, I remove my briefs.” As he stripped them off, he turned his back to the bed and fixed them on the chair with the rest of the clothes.

  “Thus the deed is done,” he announced, squaring around to face her once more, quick to notice the way her gaze instantly zeroed in on his erection.

  After a moment’s pause, she lifted her glance to his face. “Are you quite sure you’re British and not Greek?”

  “Quite sure.” He arched an eyebrow in silent question.

  “You look like Adonis.” Her voice, lik
e the smoldering heat of her gaze, had the breathiness of arousal.

  “That’s a relief.” A smile twitched the corners of his mouth. “For a moment I thought you were going to compare me with Michelangelo’s young David, able to show off only big hands.”

  Her head fell back against the pillow as she broke into laughter. Sebastian took advantage of her distraction to climb into bed with her, stretching out on the inside, keeping her in the lamp’s pooling light. Quick to recover, she rolled toward him and arched her body closer, her hands reaching to spread her fingers over his chest and the mat of hair on his chest.

  “I understand,” he began in a voice husky with suppressed desire, “that lovemaking techniques may vary from man to man as well. Some”—with his fingertips, he brushed wayward strands of hair off her cheek—“start at the top.”

  Featherlight in his pressure, he nuzzled the corner of her eye and the prominent ridge of her cheekbone, followed the curve of her cheek to the corner of her lips, and rubbed his mouth over them, exploring their shape and softness. When he felt her straining toward him, inviting his full possession, he took a couple of tasting kisses, lipping their moist softness, then backtracked along the sculpted line of her jaw to her ear.

  He took his time tracing the outline of its delicate shell with his tongue, nibbling at her lobe and nuzzling the sensitive hollow behind it. An involuntary quiver traveled through her when he located her particular erotic spot. He went back to ignite it again and again, taking satisfaction in the faint, animal sounds of pleasure and need that came from her throat.

  All the while her hands moved over his back and shoulders, her fingers flexing and curling, while his own made long, slow strokes down her spine and up the side of her waist, allowing his thumb to only occasionally brush the outer curve of her breast. Yet, ever so gradually, he worked his way down, abandoning the erotic spot by her ear and transferring his attention to the arcing curve of her throat and the hollow at its base.

  When his hand at last cupped the underside of her breast, her body arched in anticipation. Its firm roundness was nearly his undoing. Even as his thumb circled its peak, feeling it grow hard under his stimulation, he struggled to keep control. Drawn by its irresistible lure, his mouth began a slow foray to it. Upon arrival, his tongue encircled her button-hard nipple, and she breathed in sharply in reaction.

  She dug her fingers into his hair, applying downward pressure. His mouth opened on her breast, drawing its nipple inside. Conscious as he was of her every response, he knew the exact moment when her inner thighs tightened and her hips writhed slightly in an attempt to ease the building pressure. Heat flamed through him. He knew he could easily take her over the brink right now. But it was too soon.

  While he still could, Sebastian pulled away and worked to even his breathing. His glance lingered on her parted lips, then lifted to her dark eyes, heavy-lidded with desire.

  “And, of course,” He ran a hand down her leg, letting his gaze follow it, “there are those who prefer to start at the bottom.”

  As he shifted to focus his attention on her feet, she murmured, “God, but you are a horrible tease.” Mixed in with her frustrated tone was amusement and a touch of curiosity.

  The narrow heel, the delicate arch, the ball of her foot, and each individual toe, his mouth wandered over all of them before it began the upward journey to her slender ankle and the curve of her calf.

  As he nuzzled the back of her knee, the bedside telephone rang. “Feel free to answer that,” he told her while lightly rubbing his mouth along her inner thigh.

  “Oh no, I’m not,” Laura rejected his suggestion out of hand, unwilling to allow anything to intrude on this new, exciting seduction and the desire that swirled around her. “It’s probably a wrong number. If not, they can leave a message.”

  “Whatever you say,” he murmured, continuing his leisurely ascent.

  She dug her nails into the bedsheet, gripped by an ache that was more intense than any she had ever known. His teasing foreplay was fast becoming more than she could stand.

  In a voice tight and throbbing with that need, she said, “I have one question.”

  “What’s that?” His mouth brushed across her pubic hair onto her lower stomach, his moist breath warming her skin that already felt feverishly hot. The intimate touch only intensified the powerful need. Her voice shook with it. “When do we . . . meet in the middle?”

  “Do you think it’s time?” Sebastian countered on a dryly teasing note.

  “Past time.” Laura replied with impatience, aware she had never before been aroused like this—not with this driving need to possess and be possessed. In open demand, she reached for him. “No more.”

  Hot with his own throbbing need, Sebastian needed no second urging and levered himself up and onto her. The driving pressure of his claiming kiss forced her lips apart even as his hand slipped under her, lifting her hips, arching in eagerness for his entry.

  When he slid into the tight opening, her astonished groan of pleasure nearly had him exploding on contact. For a moment he went rigid to check it. She shifted under him in grinding urgency.

  Exerting every ounce of control he could summon, he gripped her hips and held them still as he moved slowly against them. But the pressure grew. Soon she was all motion under him, her tongue pushing into his mouth to make demands from him. He drove into her, letting the thing that rocked them both take over. The tempo increased, sensation kicking through them in a golden and violent storm.

  The lingering dampness of perspiration clung to her skin as Laura lay, arms and legs still tangled with Sebastian, her body tingling with those delicious aftershocks. She had never felt so gloriously spent or so incredibly energized in her life.

  Reaching up, she lifted a lock of auburn hair off his forehead and idly curled it around her finger. “You lied to me.”

  “When was that?” His head faced hers on the pillow, his mouth quirking in a lazy smile.

  “When you claimed to be Sebastian Dunshill. That’s merely an identity you have assumed.”

  “Really? And just how did you come to that conclusion?” Amusement gleamed in his eyes.

  “I deduced it.” Laura replied, stretching and curling catlike against him. “You have such a mastery of the art of lovemaking, it’s obvious that you must be James Bond in disguise.” The impossibly beautiful thrill she had felt still flowed through her. Lying there beside him, Laura had a moment’s regret that he hadn’t been her first man—although her mind told her it was best that he hadn’t been or she might have become his slave.

  “I hate to disillusion you, but 0-0-7 I am not.”

  “What a pity,” she declared and released an exaggerated sigh.

  “It is, isn’t it?” he murmured and bent his head to nuzzle the rounded point of her shoulder. “How did I overlook such a delectable shoulder?”

  She felt that familiar shiver of pleasure dance over her skin and closed her eyes to focus solely on the sensation. “You seem to be making up for—” She broke off the sentence, startled by a sudden series of hard, insistent raps. It took her a full second to realize that someone was knocking on the door to her suite.

  The sharp rap, rap, rap was repeated again. This time followed by a muffled female voice calling, “Laura, are you in there?”

  “It’s Tara,” she murmured in recognition, unable to recall a single other time when Tara had knocked on her door in the middle of the night. “I’d better see what she wants.”

  Laura quickly untangled herself from Sebastian and rolled out of bed. On her way out of the room, she grabbed the robe the night maid had left lying on a corner of the bed and pulled it on.

  “Just a minute,” she called when the rapping came again. Hurriedly she knotted the sash and pulled the door open.

  “You are here,” Tara stated the obvious as her glance made a rapid survey of Laura’s tousled appearance. “I’m sorry to waken you, but your brother just called my room.”

  “Trey?” Lau
ra said with some surprise. “Why did he call you?”

  “Evidently he has been trying to reach you, but you haven’t answered your phone, so he called to see if I knew where you were,” Tara explained. “He wants you to call him right away. He said it was important, but he wouldn’t tell me why.” Which clearly irritated her.

  Laura dismissed the possibility his reason was anything earthshaking. “Knowing Trey, he probably took first place at some roping contest. I might as well call him, though. Thanks,” she said and closed the door before Tara could invite herself in. As she started back to the bedroom, the telephone rang. Laura picked up the extension in the sitting room. “Hello.”

  “Where the hell have you been?” Trey’s familiar voice responded. “I’ve been trying to reach you for over an hour. I couldn’t even get you on your cell phone.”

  “I didn’t take it with me tonight.” Aware that Trey had absolutely no understanding of fashion, Laura didn’t even attempt to explain that the cell phone added too much bulk to her evening bag, ruining its line. “Why are you calling at this hour? Do you have any idea what time it is here?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe two or three o’clock.” His tone made it clear that he didn’t know and didn’t care. He had something else on his mind. “Mom will call you tomorrow, I imagine, but . . .”

  He paused, and in that hesitation, Laura knew immediately that something bad happened. “Trey, what’s wrong? It’s Granddad, isn’t it,” she guessed, tension knotting her stomach muscles.

  “No. No, he’s fine. It’s Quint,” he said, referring to their older cousin, Quint Echohawk, who had followed in his father’s footsteps and become a Treasury agent right out of college.

  “What about Quint?” She clutched the receiver a little tighter, bracing herself for bad news.

  “He got shot in the leg. It broke one of the bones.” After a barely perceptible pause, Trey added, “He’s going to be worthless as a team-roping partner for a while.”

  Laura sensed his attempt to make light of the incident, but she knew this had hit him hard. He and Quint had always been as close as brothers. Taking Trey’s cue, Laura searched for a light retort.