Lee signaled the waiter to bring him another beer. “I’m not sure, Azure, but as long as you’re having a good time, giddy is fine with me.”
“Maybe,” she said, frowning slightly, “we should eat dinner. But first I’m going to hit the ladies’ room to freshen up.” She got up and started across the room, and Lee thought he detected a definite wobble to her path.
While she was gone, he slipped the head waiter a twenty-dollar bill, and when Azure came back, they were led to the best table in the place, which overlooked a garden planted with orchids and banana trees and a lot of other tropical foliage that he didn’t recognize.
“Nice restaurant,” Azure said after they were seated. “Tell me, Lee, have you ever been to Boston?”
“One or twice,” he said.
“You could come for a visit sometime.”
He tried to imagine this and couldn’t. He was so into his masquerade as Lee Sanders that it was difficult to picture going to Azure’s apartment, watching her cook dinner for him, meeting her friends from work. But it was heartening to know that she would like him to come to see her. Would it actually happen? He didn’t know. He only knew that he wanted her to be part of his life from now on, and when he returned to his Leonardo Santori persona, her perception of him would change.
He felt a certain regret at the inevitability of this. He liked things the way they were. He liked sitting across the table from Azure and watching her flip her long hair back with the thumb and forefinger of one hand. He liked anticipating making love with her. He liked his illusion that they could somehow create a life together—but was it only an illusion? Or could he make it real?
They ordered hearts-of-palm salad, to be followed by paella for two. By the time the entree arrived, Azure was on her third drink. Nevertheless, she attacked the paella with gusto, proclaiming it the best she’d ever eaten. “And we have great shefood—seafood—in Boston. Really great.”
“I know,” he said. He thought about tonight and the secret that he needed to reveal to her. There was no telling how that would go, he knew, but, assuming that she accepted who he was and what he was, he’d want to see her tomorrow.
“If you don’t have any plans for tomorrow, let’s get together,” he said. He’d show her the Samoa, introduce her to Fleck. He’d ask for dinner to be served on the aft deck for only the two of them, a truly romantic evening.
She smiled. “I’d like that.”
He gestured toward the mussel shells that she was lining up in a row across the tabletop. “What are you doing?”
“Making a barrier across the table. You cross it at your peril.”
“And is there some reason you don’t want me to cross it?” he teased.
“No, I want you to. It’s a silly thing, this line. Because I’ve wanted you to cross it since the night before last.”
“I can assure you that the line will be crossed,” he said seriously. “You and I are going to resume where we left off.”
“Left off. I left off something…but not my swimsuit. At the nude beach, I mean.” She laughed, a tinkle of sound so melodious that it sounded like little bells.
“I told you I’d never go to that beach again, but if you want to, I’ll consider it,” he said, holding back his own laughter. He was pretty sure that Azure didn’t know what she was saying. By this time, she’d already downed three drinks, and the waiter was bearing another toward their table.
“Your free drink, ma’am,” he said, setting it in front of her with a flourish. “Congratulations on finishing three Mango Tango Surprises.”
“Congratu-gratu-lay-shuns to you for bringing four of them,” Azure said to the waiter seriously, ending with a little hiccup.
“Would you care for dessert?”
“How about it?” Lee said.
“I am not getting dessert. I have run up a huge enough check already. And if I get fat, I jiggle. I worked out today, but not enough to go around eating desserts. You have dessert, Lee.”
He signaled for the check. “No thanks. I think we’d better go.”
“We should,” Azure agreed. “Got to cross that line. But not yet, even though the tarot cards said that you are ‘the ultimate in masculinity and dominate sexually.’ Do you intend to dominate me sexually, Lee?”
“I think,” he said seriously, “that a sexual relationship is something to be shared. I don’t want to dominate anyone, Azure, and certainly not you.” He paid the check with cash, not a credit card, which might draw her attention to the name of Leonardo Santori.
“That’s good,” she said dreamily. “If I were dominated, I don’t think I could give you the sensual bliss that the tarot promised.”
Was she serious? He didn’t know. But she was tipsy, that was for sure.
“I’m thinking maybe we should go in the bar and dance,” she said.
He recalled the obstacle card in his tarot reading. Maybe that was why things kept happening to keep them from making love. Still, dancing wasn’t a bad idea. At least he would be holding her in his arms. “Would you like that?” He held her chair while she stood up.
“How else will I get to show off my rhumba?” she said, treating everyone in sight to a suggestive little wiggle that only whetted his eagerness to get her back to Paulette’s empty apartment.
Before he knew it, she had dragged him to the middle of a tiny dance floor in the bar and he had his arms around her. But dancing slowly and holding her close was not to be. Salsa, this Latin music was called, and Azure flung herself into the merengue with wild abandon.
Lee was game enough. He had learned to dance all the Latin dances in Rio de Janeiro during a month-long stay, but even the South American women who had been his partners there didn’t quite have the sexy moves that Azure did when she put her heart, not to mention her hips, into it.
“Where did you learn this?” he panted against her ear as she delicately bumped her pelvis against his. He had to admit it: this was his kind of dancing.
“Oh, you don’t want to know,” she said.
He swung her out and around, holding his breath as her breasts crested over the top of her bodice. “I do want to know,” he insisted.
“From Paco. My unfaithful Argentinny—I mean Argenty—Argentinian—boyfriend.”
The music segued into a soulful tango. “We used to dance a lot,” she said. “The samba. Merengue. Flamenco. And he may have been a jerk, but Paco could sure dance the tango,” she said.
“So can I,” he answered, prepared to prove it.
The tango was a sensuous dance, a passionate one, and as he led Azure through the steps, the dance seemed to mimic the sex act. Advancing to the throbbing beat, then retreating; caressing, then flinging themselves away from each other only to rendezvous again with more passion and soul. He thought that he had been mistaken when he thought that Azure was too reserved. Her usual demeanor might be cool as ice, but something had ignited a fire in her blood and he hoped it was her feelings for him.
As the last beat of the music died away, several onlookers clapped, and Lee was sure that more than one of them realized that he and his gorgeous partner were headed for a torrid session of lovemaking that night.
Azure stumbled against him as they reached the door. He gripped her arm firmly for support and wondered if four Mango Tango Surprises had been such a good idea. On the other hand, after a few drinks Azure had finally shown herself to be a wild woman at heart.
“Are you all right?” he asked anxiously.
“I am quite all right,” she said with dignity.
When they reached the car, he opened the door on the passenger side and waited for her to get in. But she didn’t get in immediately. Instead, right in the middle of the parking lot with the sodium vapor lights glowing orange overhead and a clump of crispy critter tourists exclaiming about each others’ sunburns as they passed, she flung herself against him, pressing so close that he felt her breasts full against his chest. She kissed him, an expert kiss involving teeth and tongue a
nd her body molded against his all the way to his feet. His hand, moving of its own volition, swept up to cup the bottom of her breast, and she stopped kissing him to take a sharp little surprised breath, exclaiming, “Oh!”
He bent his head and breathed deeply of the scent of her soft skin as she arched her back in response. She smelled slightly of suntan lotion, of strawberry-scented shampoo, of tropical flowers. He wanted to bury his face in her breasts, could have become lost in her, wanted to take her right there and then, but he was brought rudely to his senses by the slam of a car door only a few feet away and the roar of the car engine to life. Suddenly they were illuminated in a pair of bright headlights, and he and Azure sprang apart, blinking.
He watched as Azure collected herself and slid into the car, then went around and got in beside her. When he glanced over at her, her head was lolled back against the seat, exposing her delectable throat and emphasizing her well-toned shoulders. And that dress, that beautiful dress—well, it showed so much of her breasts that he could hardly think straight. Lee swallowed; he didn’t think he had ever been more excited by a woman in his life.
“Azure? Is everything okay?”
She opened her eyes, and he wanted to sink into their blue depths. “I was woozy for just a minute,” she admitted. “I had a lot to drink tonight.” She reached over and rested her hand on his thigh, and her touch sent a frisson of excitement zinging through his veins.
“Let’s go break down all the barriers, Lee,” she murmured. “All of them.”
“You got it,” he said, and he rammed the Mustang’s gearshift into reverse. Which was not at all appropriate, he reflected, for a relationship that was at long last going forward.
GOLDY WAS OFF DUTY. Azure had to use a passkey to enter the Blue Moon, and the lobby was shadowed, quiet, and dark as they passed through. Once in the apartment, Azure turned on the glaring overhead light, then shook her head. “This won’t do,” she said, and she rummaged in a kitchen drawer until she found candles and matches. She went into the bedroom and lit some candles there, but when she came back into the living room and started to light the ones in the brass holders on the trunk that was the coffee table, her hand trembled.
She knew she shouldn’t have had so much to drink. “You’d better do this,” she said shakily, handing the matches to Lee.
She switched on soft music while he lit the candles, and when he had finished, she gazed at him across a distance of awe and wonder and held her arms open wide. He had been waiting, it seemed to him, far too long for that simple gesture and for the welcoming light in her eyes.
He went to her, enfolded her in his strong arms and listened to her pulse beating at her temple as he held her close. It felt right, this embrace, right and proper and true.
She lifted her face to his, and a slow heat seemed to emanate from her body and draw him in. “Azure,” he said unsteadily, his voice rough with emotion. Not passion, he noted even as his lips took hers, though there would be that. The emotion that he was feeling was something finer and more real; a sparkling, shining, joyous delight that he was finally going to be one with the only woman who mattered.
He caressed her spine, slow and easy, taking his time with kissing her. Responding, she curved her body against his as though they had practiced this, but why wouldn’t they know this dance when they had done the other so well?
He should have asked this earlier, but there hadn’t been a good time. “Azure,” he said gently, “are you protected?”
She shook her head, her eyes registering concern.
“I’ll take care of it,” he said.
“Thank you,” she said, her voice no more than a whisper.
Somehow she slid fluidly out of her dress, somehow he was divested of his jacket, his shirt, his underwear, and when she stood at last before him totally revealed to his gaze, he could only say as she moved closer, “I never dreamed you would be so lovely.”
She was staring at his tattoo. Or something in that general region.
“Somehow,” she said slowly, “I don’t think we need to talk about your tattoo for distraction.” She ended her sentence with a little hiccup, and he was reminded of how much she’d had to drink.
“In fact, we don’t have to talk at all,” he said.
“Let’s get on with this then,” she said, and he almost chuckled at her urgency. She flowed smoothly into his arms, pressing her lips to the hollow of his shoulder, whispering his name against his hot skin. Her nipples rose into sharp little points against his hands, and her breasts felt warm and swollen and heavy. He wanted to taste them, draw them deep into his mouth, but she said, “Wait” and led him into the bedroom.
There seemed to be candles everywhere, on the dresser, on the windowsill, on the bedside table. Smiling up at him, she drew him down on the bed beside her, and he felt kindled by the light, energized and wholly aroused by it. As she lay back amid the pillows, his heart began to beat so loudly that he thought it would burst through his chest.
He heard himself moan deep in his throat as her hungry mouth opened to his. And then, as he had imagined he would do, he was trailing kisses run together like a string of pearls to the hollow of her throat, his mouth moving lower, lower. She gasped softly as his tongue outlined the circle around one nipple, then the other. At last he cupped her breasts in the palms of his hands, and they were exactly as he knew they would be—round and full with dark areolae.
He took his time exploring her, wanting to know every part of her body. But she was eager, urgent, trembling beneath his touch. When he felt her hands clasp possessively around him, he knew he couldn’t wait much longer. He caressed the soft cleft at the juncture of her thighs. “You’re ready,” he said, and she replied, the word a mere murmur, “Yes.”
He knew he would remember this moment all of his life. Slowly he raised himself over her, felt her rising gracefully to meet him as he readied himself. He closed his eyes, steeped in sensation, lost in longing, and knew the agony of holding himself back for one more excruciating moment before he plunged into her with an exaltation that knew no bounds.
He thought she cried out at that moment, but he could not think, could not speak, could not do anything but thrust himself repeatedly into her, wanting to be enclosed by her, swallowed up by her. He felt her greediness, her abandon as they welded together in a heated collusion of bodies, flesh against flesh, heat against heat, two become one. And then, when he was lost inside of her, lost to himself and to the world, she cried out for release until he imploded in upon himself in a giant shock wave of heat and light, taking her along with him.
Together they spiraled gently down from that magnificent high, clinging to each other in moments of pure contentment and peace. Azure came to rest with her head upon his chest, listening to his heartbeat as it quieted beneath her cheek.
He traced her cheek with a finger. “My love,” he said, but she thought he couldn’t, didn’t mean it. She remained silent, overwhelmed by the depth of her feelings for him and knowing that the landscape of her life had been transformed by this, by him.
He thought sleepily that this was the time that he had intended to tell her his real name. His eyes refused to stay open, and as he closed them, breathing in the scent of Azure’s perfume, anticipating her surprise tomorrow when he took her to the Samoa. He smiled to himself, eager to see her reaction when she learned that he was the owner of it.
Azure, made stone-cold sober by the terrifying emotions called forth by his use of the L word, waited until Lee slept before pushing herself up against the headboard where she sat listening to the thrum of a steel drum band and the sound of traffic outside on the street.
Lee had called her his love, but how could she be? She had to go back to Boston, and the more she thought about it, the more her innate common sense told her that Lee Sanders with his hair bleached yellow by the sun and his red Mustang with the loose door handle wouldn’t fit in there. Could she imagine him driving down Newbury Street with her in the passenger seat?
Could she picture him at the symphony, an art gallery, a theater? Riding with her on a swan boat in the Public Garden? No, she definitely could not.
She had the sudden unsettling realization that she would have been better off to stick to her guns and not go out with Lee Sanders. Never mind that he was fun, he was considerate, he was a great dancer, and totally enamored of her. He was a boy toy for a night, and that’s all. Nothing more. A vacation fling.
But he was wonderful. She was crazy about him. And she couldn’t bear the thought of leaving him.
It wasn’t until the wee hours of the morning before she finally fell asleep in exhaustion, and when she did, it was with a miserable feeling of impending doom.
9
WHEN LEE WOKE THE NEXT morning, Azure’s hair was spread across his face, a sweet-smelling flaxen curtain separating him from the rest of the world. That was the romantic version; the reality of it was that he had to pick strands of hair out of his eyelashes and spit them out of his mouth, all without waking her. Not that he minded! He didn’t. He had, ever since he first set eyes on her, wanted intimate knowledge of her hair. It—and the rest of her body as well—were as glorious as he had imagined.
She looked beautiful as she slept, her cheeks rosy with sleep and sun, the rest of her tanned body naked under the sheet. Last night she had been magnificent. He’d been right, he thought happily. She was a tigress in bed.
He didn’t have the heart to wake her, so he tiptoed into the living room and pulled on his pants. He slid the sliding glass door open and took the phone out on the balcony before dialing the Samoa.
Fleck, summoned to the phone by Miguel, answered with a cautious, “Hi, Lee.”
“Fleck,” Lee said easily, pulling the glass slider closed to make sure there was no chance Azure would hear the conversation. “It’s me. Would you mind letting the cook know that I’m bringing a guest to dinner tonight, and tell the stewards that she’ll be staying overnight.”
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