Open Invitation?

by Karen Kendall

  8

  LIL SAT FROZEN in her chair as Dan stood to his full height of six foot two or so and came around the table. The truth was, she had no idea how to behave in these particular circumstances.

  Dan didn’t seem to find the situation awkward at all. He took two steps toward her, caught her hand and pulled her up. “You’re not used to issuing invitations like that, are you, Lil?”

  She shook her head and stared intently at the logo on his T-shirt, her heart pounding.

  He tipped her chin up. “So why me? What does Miss Manners want with a rude rancher who don’t know his butt from his elbow at a formal dinner?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “I don’t know, either, but I think you’re beautiful.” And Dan put his big, warm, newly soft hands on either side of her face and kissed her.

  He tasted of tart wine and lime, sweet cake and rich, dark coffee. He smelled of warm skin, an outdoorsy aftershave and male musk civilized by soap and laundry detergent. His lips parted hers and he delved into her mouth with a sure, skilled tongue that knew exactly what it was doing.

  Li Wong had poked uncertainly at her tongue with his own, both of them vaguely wondering why. Li Wong had no part of this kiss, though, and she banished him as unworthy of comparison.

  Dan rubbed his lips against hers in a sweet, sensual dance. He caught her bottom lip between his teeth and sucked at it before releasing it to wander to the corner of her mouth, where he licked gently and brushed his jaw against her cheek.

  His mouth whispered up to her temple, down to her cheekbone, over to her ear. Her scalp tingled as he brushed a loose strand of her hair behind it, and she shivered at his breath, which awakened every tiny nerve ending north of her lobe.

  Heat bloomed on her skin and spread throughout her body, even though the man hadn’t touched her below the neck. His fingers threaded through her hair, obliterating the French twist so that it fell free around her shoulders.

  “That’s better,” he murmured. “Gorgeous. So soft.”

  Like a cat, she curled her head into first one hand, then the other, helplessly craving more of his touch.

  Then his lips were on hers again, awakening some response deep inside her that she hadn’t even known existed. It flickered out of her and then spread throughout her body.

  Her nipples tautened and hardened, begging for his hands and mouth. A very unladylike dampness spread between her thighs and a hot spot throbbed there, a strange sexual pulse.

  It made her want things; dirty things that she wasn’t accustomed to wanting. None of what she desired had any relation to etiquette.

  Dan groaned and pulled her against him, moving his hands out of her hair, across her shoulders, down her spine. She felt that bulge of his, unmistakably hard, against her belly, and as he cupped her bottom she slid her own hands down to explore.

  She heard his swift intake of breath as she brushed her knuckles down the thick, long ridge in his jeans and then wrapped her fingers around it.

  His hands tightened on her rear, and his heat burned through the thin skirt and stockings—not the sexiest items, nor the easiest to get off. Lil bit her lip. If she’d known, she’d have put on the garter belt and thigh highs that she’d gotten last year in the hopes of spicing up Li’s reaction to her. Instead he’d scoffed and told her she looked like a whore.

  Now he’d say she was behaving like one, but she didn’t care. It felt a lot better than the dismal prospect of becoming a repressed Chinese matron.

  Dan enjoyed exploring her back there, and when he’d had enough he stroked up to her waist and then, yes! To her breasts. She let her head fall back as he cupped them, and he kissed her throat as his hands delved under her camisole and came into contact with her bare skin.

  Deftly he unhooked her bra and slid up the camisole. He groaned at the sight of her breasts, bent his head and captured one in his mouth. Lil cried out at the contact, at the hot, wet suction of his lips, at the sensations that rushed from her nipple to the juncture of her thighs.

  He stripped off the camisole and bra, then his own T-shirt, giving her another glimpse at his broad, bare chest and the muscles honed from long hours working outdoors. She went weak in the knees.

  Dan bent toward her breasts again, took the other one into his mouth and backed her to the other end of Nana’s heavy, mahogany dining room table. Before she realized what he was doing, he lifted her up and sat her on it, nestling himself between her legs and rucking up her skirt.

  He kissed away her protest and went back to her breasts, palming them, rubbing them, plucking her nipples while she grew increasingly restless with need.

  “I know, I know, darlin’,” he said. “I’ll give you what you want.” Dan pushed her down onto the table, still standing between her legs, and ran his hands up her thighs until he was under her skirt.

  The stockings were sheer and he could see straight through them, but they created a difficult barrier for him. He stroked all the way up to her mons, where she was helplessly damp, and played her there with the pad of his thumb.

  She quivered and whimpered as he teased her, shifting her hips and biting her lip.

  Finally, when she thought she would die, he slid his fingers under the very unsexy waistband of the hosiery. She expected him to pull them down, expected an awkward moment.

  Instead he bent to kiss her lips again. Staring straight into her eyes, he ripped the stockings down the middle, dropped to his knees and settled his mouth right at the core of her.

  He licked once, and she screamed, hoarse and helpless. He licked twice, and she rode a moan. He licked a third time, and she came apart. A tide of pleasure rushed over her and color burst behind her eyelids.

  She fell to earth again and opened her eyes to find him watching her, still in position, and very pleased. The shreds of her stockings clung to her legs, which were draped over his shoulders, and candlelight flickered behind her. She started to get shocked at herself, spread-eagled on Nana Lisbeth’s dining room table, doing dirty things with a complete stranger.

  Then he put his mouth back on her and she bucked while he rumbled with amusement. She clutched at the sides of the table while his lips and tongue gave her impossible pleasure and she began to shake all over.

  He pushed her thighs even wider and plunged deeper. He increased his range, moving from top to bottom of her cleft and then back to center, where he suckled until she exploded again and again and again.

  Though she would have sworn she’d died, she came back to reality and lay spent while he chuckled.

  “What…” she asked weakly. “What…?”

  “That’s called a multiple orgasm, darlin’.” He got to his feet and put his hands on either side of her, grinning down. “Did you like that?”

  She could only blink at him, dazed. Finally she nodded. “But—what about you?”

  He laughed. “Well, I have to admit that Wally, here, is real, real, ready to come out and play with the beav.” Dan unbuttoned his fly and slid his jeans off while Lil pulled off the embarrassing remnants of her stockings, taking a sneak peek. He was beautiful and huge. She’d never seen anything like it. And he was coming at her.

  “I, um. Dan? I don’t know if that—if it, is, um, going to—”

  “It’s okay. We’ll make it fit. I’m not going to hurt you, I promise.” He pulled her by the knees to the edge of the table again and took her hands. He put them on his cock and slid them up and down. It was velvety-soft at the tip, but muscular everywhere else. He showed her how to help roll on a condom while she simply marveled over his size.

  Dan touched her between the legs with it, rubbed his moisture into hers, parted her. Her smallness was only a hindrance at first. He worked his way in very slowly, pleasuring her there with his hands and then cupping her bottom, tilting her back.

  Amazingly enough, her body stretched to accommodate him and the fullness was blissful. When he was finally sheathed in her, he kissed her deeply, pushed her back onto the table again, an
d slid out a few inches. Then he pushed in again, into the warm fist that her body created for him.

  As they established a rhythm, meeting thrust for thrust, she felt a different kind of tension building in her, and thrilled to it.

  She clutched for the edges of the table again, feeling the cool, polished surface smooth under her bottom. Dan’s hands found hers, though, and held them tightly as they both climbed together.

  “I’m not gonna last, Lil, I’m sorry,” he told her. “You feel so good…I’m only human…oh, yes!”

  His rhythm quickened and intensified, his eyes shut, and he assumed an expression of half pleasure, half pain. Finally he pulsed within her, once, twice, three and four times, groaned helplessly and let his forehead fall to the table next to her neck.

  Lil lay impaled and still dazed, pinned by his big body, quivering with yet another pent-up, not yet released climax. It’s okay, she thought. Because I’m not sure I can stand another one. I think it might really kill me.

  “I’m sorry,” he said into her ear. “I couldn’t hold on anymore.”

  She started to say that it was all right…but he moved out an inch or so and she tensed and quivered. He glanced at her face, pushed the hair away from her forehead. Then, touching his tongue to hers and sucking her bottom lip into his mouth he slid back in and ground the root of himself against her in an excruciatingly slow circle.

  He pulled her hard against him, his fingers once again under her bottom, and rocked. The inner contact and the outer contact at once worked a magic of some kind, and she convulsed around him in yet another shower of pleasure, unintelligible sounds coming from her own throat.

  “Atta girl,” said Dan. “Now I don’t feel quite so guilty.”

  Lil couldn’t even hold her own legs around him any longer. She would have let them fall, but he hooked his elbows under her knees so that they couldn’t. She lay satiated, like a blob of jelly, gazing up at Nana Lisbeth’s crystal chandelier. She supposed she should be embarrassed, but she honestly couldn’t muster the energy.

  “You’re so beautiful,” he told her, looking first at her face and then between her thighs. “Down there, too. All pink and plump and pretty.”

  She flushed and tried to close her knees. Exactly what could he possibly think was attractive about that area?

  She’d marveled over the sheer ugliness of it as a teenager, wondering what drew men to it at all. She’d finally decided it must be just the feel of it, because nobody could possibly want to get near the thing.

  Yet Dan had…she shut her eyes. And she’d let him! He wasn’t letting her close her knees, now, either.

  “You embarrassed?” he asked.

  Duh. She licked her lips. “Yes.”

  “Why? It’s part of nature.”

  I’m not too sure about that. I’ve never heard of cows or horses having oral sex… But she didn’t say it aloud.

  “God wouldn’t a put it there if we weren’t supposed to enjoy it, Lil. I sure enjoyed it. How ’bout you?” He grinned down at her and finally pulled out, taking her hand and helping her to sit up.

  She wasn’t sure her joints would work again, and as she slid off the table her legs were still trembling. She tucked her hair behind her ears, not sure what to say other than an inane, “Wow.”

  Finally she looked at him shyly and said, “Well, Dan, I can’t teach you to be any more of a gentleman in the bedroom, can I?”

  He laughed and looked down, suddenly modest. “I have always had a policy of ‘ladies first’—even if we’re in the dining room.”

  She cringed as she saw Sir Henry’s portrait, which hung next to the curved china cabinet, bulging with Royal Doulton and Meissen. Was it her imagination or was his white hair standing up more than usual? “I can’t believe…”

  “What?” He followed her gaze. His mouth twitched. “How’s it hangin’, bud?” And Dan saluted Sir Henry.

  “We…in front of him, and on my grandmother’s dining room table!” Lil put her hands to hot cheeks and found her camisole and skirt.

  “You don’t think she’d approve?”

  Lil choked.

  “Maybe you should hire me to uncivilize you, then. Because there are all kinds of places far more shocking than that, babe. You ever done it in a public place?”

  Her eyes flew to his, startled. “No!”

  “Would you like to?”

  “No! I couldn’t possibly—”

  “Sure you could.” He grinned at her like the devil himself. “You can do it in a car. You can do it in a bar. You can do it anytime, or even with a twist of lime.”

  Lil began to laugh. “I didn’t know you were a poet.”

  “Robert Frost, eat your heart out.” He waggled his eyebrows evilly. “You can have sex on a plane, you can have sex on a train. You can have it in the breeze, you can have it wearing skis!”

  She groaned, then thought about it. “Actually I don’t think that’s possible, Dan…”

  He ignored her. “You can have sex at a fair, you can have sex anywhere! You can do it with a clown, or even while you wear a crown…”

  “Enough. Here, put on your pants.”

  “Sex will put a smile on you, so you should go and have some, too!”

  “Are you done, yet?”

  He mock-frowned at her. “I’m starting to get the feeling that you don’t appreciate my way with words.”

  Lil stepped into her skirt and zipped it up. She pursed her lips. “I appreciate your way with women a lot more.”

  He yawned and stretched his hands over his head to crack his back.

  Her mouth went dry at the sight of all that lovely muscle in motion, held taut for her viewing pleasure. Then she noticed how incongruous this naked cowboy looked standing in front of her grandmother’s sideboard, showcasing his penis next to Nana’s cut crystal punch bowl.

  “Pants!” she said. “You’ve got to put your pants on.” Dear God, what if Nana had been looking down from above? The woman whose graciousness and reputation she’d always tried to live up to…

  “Why are you in such a hurry, Miz Lil? The night is young. I have about as much use for my jeans right now as I have for that skirt you’re wearing. Did I say you could put that back on? I don’t believe I did.”

  She arched a brow and stuck her head through her camisole. “I didn’t realize that I had to ask your permission.”

  “Here in Uncivilization 101, you gotta do as the alpha dog says.”

  She forgot her manners even further and stuck her tongue out at him—as though he were a good friend like Shannon or Jane.

  “Rule number two of Uncivilization 101. You are not allowed to stick your tongue out unless you plan to use it on the alpha dog’s bod.”

  “And what’s rule number three?”

  “Rule number three is that once you invite the barbarian to ravage you—”

  “Ravish,” she corrected.

  “—you can’t put on your skirt again until he says so, though he does appreciate the fact that right now you have it on with no panties.” Dan took two long strides toward her and grasped the hem, pulling it upward and kissing her.

  She could smell herself on him, and it should have horrified her but it didn’t. She fell into the kiss for a moment, but then remembered—she couldn’t do this again in front of these photographs and knickknacks. It made her too uncomfortable.

  She engaged in a little tug-of-war with him over her skirt; pulling it down as he tried to raise it. “My bedroom,” she whispered. “I can’t—” She broke away from him and made for the stairs.

  He caught up with her at the foot of them. “Rule number four of Uncivilization 101. Bedrooms are hohum. Do it anywhere but in a bed.” His arm snaked around her and pulled her back against his chest. With the same hand, he cupped her breast almost roughly and rubbed her nipple with his thumb.

  His other hand went directly under her skirt, searing her flesh everywhere he touched, moving from her bare buttocks to her inner thighs and then upward
into the very light sprinkling of hair at her core.

  Lil sagged against him, and then found herself grasping the newel post as he bent her forward to play with her from behind. He touched her so lightly, tantalizing her there with his fingertips, fluttering against every nerve in the region.

  He gave a rumble of contentment as she gasped raggedly and then pushed herself against him, gyrating helplessly, wet again with want.

  Her skirt was bunched up around her waist, and the fabric of her loose camisole grazed her nipples when Dan’s hands weren’t. She wanted him inside her. “Please,” she whispered. “Please.”

  She clung to the newel post as he fished out another condom from his nearby pants and then obliged her, taking her inch by inch from behind. She arched her back and pushed against him, craving that complete fullness of before. Once he was sheathed fully, he pulled almost all the way out before driving in hard. He set a more rapid tempo this time, sliding in and out of her like a well-oiled piston, driving her crazy with each stroke.

  He began to play her with his fingers again in front, and the combination of pleasures overwhelmed her. She tensed and climbed up, up, up—then exploded without warning into a million particles of light.

  Dan drove into her furiously in a shorter, more staccato rhythm and then erupted into soft curses behind her before stiffening and driving home one last, quivering time.

  Lil noticed that he, too, was now hanging on to the newel post. They stayed that way for a minute or so, unable to move, until Nana’s grandfather clock sounded twelve sonorous chimes in succession.

  The stroke of midnight reminded her of Cinderella at the ball. Would her sexy siren self just disappear now?

  9

  DAN DROVE BACK to his hotel with the Mustang’s top down and the Connecticut wind in his hair. What in the Sam Hill had gotten into Miss Manners?

  Whatever it was, he liked it. He’d greatly enjoyed teaching her all the basics of Uncivilization 101. Well, all the basics that he could pack into one short evening. And it made him feel better, somehow, about knuckling under to the standards and expectations of Lovely Nigel and his mother.