The sensation triggered the ancient primal reflex, present even in newborns, to open the mouth and seek sustenance. But the satisfaction she sought was of a woman’s desire. It shuddered through her body, and she fastened on his lips, frantic with the sudden craving to have her mouth filled.
The large, hard hand cradling her skull tightened. With a small groan he obliged her with slow, deliberate strokes and velvety glides along the edges of her tongue, but then he went back to the bites and soft grazes with his teeth that made her frantic.
His other arm had come around her at some point, pressing his unmistakable erection against her belly.
She looped her good arm around his neck and rose on tiptoe to bring their bodies into better alignment. As if they had practiced a hundred times, his hand moved down to cup her bottom and balance her against him. With tender purpose he stroked the lower curves of her buttocks. Butterfly strokes so light she could have been imagining them. Not that she was. Oh, no, those light grazes were landing with far from accidental accuracy and awakening nerve endings across her whole vulva.
She’d always thought sex was for, well, sex, and the structure of interest, the clitoris. Since a woman had to lubricate, and that took time, a certain amount of stimulation was necessary. Foreplay would be better named forework-tasks to be checked off in preparation for the main event. She had never experienced being touched as a pleasure worth taking for its own sake.
The back strap of the thong posed no barrier when his magic fingers found their way into her cleft, questing deeper and deeper into her moist center.
He left her mouth to dot kisses down her neck. “You’re wet already.” His voice was a rumbly moan. “Do you want more?”
She tried to answer and discovered her voice was little more than a croak. She wanted to scream, “Yes!” She tried again and managed a not-quite-whispered yes.
“Do you want to come?” he asked against her lips. Before she could answer he brought his completely opened mouth over hers.
“YBuTH.”
He lifted his lips long enough to teasingly ask, “What’s that?” before he deliberately did it to her again, taking shameless advantage of the control he had of her head.
If he could hold her head in the place he wanted it, she could do the same to him. With her right arm, she reached for his chin. White hot pain, so intense she saw stars, streaked from her shoulder to her neck.
Immediately, he released her and set her on her feet.
“You’re not really in any shape to be doing this,” he snapped, his burnt umber voice more gritty than usual. He sounded disgusted, and as if he’d heard himself, he shook his head and offered a rueful, country-boy smile. “I have a hard time knowing what to get a hold of you by. I thought if I supported your head, you’d be okay.”
“It was okay,” she assured him, a little chilled to think he had calculated exactly how to hold her even though she had been the beneficiary of his care. “I moved my arm. Big mistake.”
He stepped around her and scooped the dress from where it puddled on the carpet. “Want me to hang this up?” The subject was obviously closed and he was moving on. He held up the dress by the bodice. “What do you hang it up by?”
As she showed him the tiny straps sewn to the inside lining and found the padded hanger, Emmie didn’t understand how he could be so matter-of-fact and businesslike, when hot, urgent desire still thrummed deep within her. It was like he had a switch he could turn off.
He’d been passionately engaged. Or maybe not. She’d felt his hardness straining through the front of his pants. A man could lie about a lot of things, but not about that. Still, a man didn’t have to feel anything for a woman to be aroused. He didn’t even need to want her. He only had to be horny. Maybe he could act like nothing had happened because from his point of view, nothing had.
“I’ll go forage in the kitchen for a snack,” he said when he had hung up the dress and evenly spaced the rest of the hanging clothes, “so you can take your meds.”
Emmie used the toilet while he was gone. After a minute, studying her face in the vanity mirror, she decided not to wash the makeup off, yet. She still felt a little zip of surprise every time she saw how much different hair and makeup changed her. He wasn’t going to hang around long, and she’d like for his last sight of her to be this.
“I brought you some of the pecan pie we had on Thanksgiving,” Caleb said when he returned. He grinned. “I brought me some too.” He set the food down on the nightstand and piled the pillows against the headboard. “Why don’t you get in bed, and I’ll eat with you.”
Emmie slid under the covers he held for her, bemused. She kept thinking he was going to drop her at any moment. Politely make his excuses and leave, and he kept not doing it. Once their roles in the wedding were fulfilled, no one, least of all her, expected him to stay by her side. But here he was. Which made her think of a question she needed to ask.
“Why did you accept the invitation to the open house? You don’t want to go, do you?”
“Why not? Don’t you usually go?”
“Not if I can help it. The party is absolutely bottom tier-five hundred supporters who’ll be flattered to be invited to the great man’s house.”
“You’re not flattered.”
“No, and I’m not one of his supporters.”
“I didn’t mean to put you in a bind. I-uh”-he forked up a bite of pie-“I wanted to see you again. Accepting the invitation seemed easier”-he shot her a mischievous look-“than coming out and asking for a date.”
Emmie’s tilt meter hit the red zone. She knew she wasn’t at her sharpest right now, fuddled by alcohol and pain meds. A lot of what had happened today was a blur, and those feminine instincts other girls seemed to have in abundance had been left out of her DNA. Pickett and other friends had told her she was unaware when guys were coming on to her-but this was over the top. She was supposed to believe he was interested in her, personally?
She almost choked on her incredulity. “You want a date?”
“Emmie, you must realize we’ve got something going.”
“You don’t even like me.”
“What do you think that heavy petting session was about?”
She dismissed that. “Even I know a man will take what’s offered. I wasn’t exactly holding you off-and you sure didn’t keep going.” She knew she was right, knew there’d been a moment sometime today when his attitude had changed, and it hadn’t had anything to do with her. But she couldn’t think what it was. She fell back on what she knew. “You don’t like me.”
“I didn’t when I first met you. I thought you were cold and snooty. I’ve gotten to know you today, and I really would like to see you again.”
She wanted him to explain, but her tired brain couldn’t form the questions. She clenched her teeth to hide a yawn, but it didn’t work. He saw
it.
“You can hardly keep your eyes open. If you don’t want to go to Calhoun’s, we don’t have to. I’ll call you in a couple of days, okay? Go to sleep now.” He stacked the plates together and stood. He bent to give her a careful kiss on the forehead. “I’ll bring in the wedding presents, and then I’ll let myself out.”
With a final good night, he closed the door behind him.
Chapter 15
“Emmie, are you awake?” Pickett’s mother’s voice came from the bedroom door.
Emmie rolled over and pushed herself to sitting. “Umm. Come on in.”
Mary Cole Sessoms entered, belting a smoky gray all-weather coat that perfectly complimented her stylish silver hair, around her slender middle. “I’m on my way to church for the early service. You don’t have to get up if you don’t want to, but if you do, there’s coffee made and some of Floris’s cinnamon buns defrosting on the counter. Lyle’s still asleep, and Grace won’t be here until later to organize the presents, so you have the house to yourself. Take it easy this morning, okay? You’ve been such a good sport.”
Emmie felt heavy and out of it, aware she’d slept more deeply than since she’d injured her shoulder. Just this once she’d like to stay in bed and snooze, but once Emmie was awake, she was. She’d never been able to laze in bed and rarely needed an alarm clock.
She fumbled for the tiny china clock on the nightstand.
Nine- thirty. She’d slept later than usual. She padded to the bathroom and looked in the mirror. The princess from last night had turned into a hag with hair mashed on one side and standing straight up on the other, and black smudges of mascara under her eyes. Sic transit Gloria Mundi. All her worldly glory of makeup and style had indeed passed. Maybe when Lyle got up she’d know how to restore what the night had taken away.
Once she’d washed her face and combed her hair, she didn’t look a lot better. Her face was pale, her eyes dull, and her hair was still flat on one side and bumpy-looking on the other. One good change-her shoulder felt stiff, but didn’t hurt. Davy had been right when he said that if she took the pain medication on a schedule, she would rest more deeply and heal quicker. He’d also promised that her body would adjust to the Vicodin after a couple of days, and it wouldn’t make her so groggy. She hoped so. She had rarely felt so out of it. Her shoulder gave a twinge, letting her know that it could hurt if she didn’t take her meds.
She pulled on the powder blue terry robe, another item purloined from Grace’s six-four husband. Like the pajama top it was roomy enough to slip into without twisting her shoulders. It hung almost to the floor and the sleeves were so long that Grace, who thought of everything, had pinned them back practically to the shoulder seam with safety pins.
Emmie pulled the cobalt blue shoulder harness over the whole and headed downstairs to the kitchen.
The microwave heating her cinnamon roll dinged at the same moment the doorbell bonged. It bonged twice more as she made her way down the hall to the front door, confirming Emmie’s assumption that some member of the family had forgotten their key. No one else would drop in for a visit at this hour on Sunday morning.
The fan and sidelights admitted the gray light of the drizzly morning, but when she opened the door no one was there.
She closed the door, and the bell sounded again. Finally, it penetrated her mental fog that she was hearing just one note, not the full Westminster chime. Which meant someone was at the driveway door.
By the time she had traversed the hall again, banging could be heard. Without even a thought that she should find out who was on the other side first, she opened it.
Caleb, with Davy at his shoulder, stood there framed by the deep green twining smilax Pickett’s mother had trained to cover the stoop.
Both men were dressed in jeans. Davy’s were faded almost white along the seams. At the fly, darker blue streaks, where the jeans had worn into permanent folds, pointed like arrows to his package. Davy wore a tee shirt that displayed his chest development and the girth of his biceps. He’d might as well have had a sign that read, “I’m a stud.”
Caleb’s jeans were newer, not tight-fitting, and ironed. He had paired them with a dress shirt open at the throat of some close-to-white olive shade that brought out the green in his eyes and the same rust-flecked tweed sport coat as yesterday. No one could miss the strong column of his neck or mistake the confident set of his shoulders. He looked exactly right.
Caleb’s eyes swept over her taking in the lopsided hair, her pale and puffy face, the shapeless man’s bathrobe. His smile was tentative. “Sorry for the banging. Did we get you up?”
“No, I was awake,” answered Emmie a split second before she realized if ever there was an occasion to lie, it was this one. Too late, she saw the faint sneer that twisted Davy’s too-perfect smile. She should have said she was sound asleep and thinking the house was on fire, had rushed to the door. She should have said an evil witch stole into her room as she slept and turned her into a Simpson refugee. She should have said-anything at all, except the truth. Like a character in a fairy tale, all her gossamer had turned to cobwebs. This was why if she gave herself a birthday party, somebody else would be the guest of honor. She tugged the lapels of the robe together. “May I help you?”
“Grace called this morning to say a whole table full of presents were left at the country club. She asked me to pick them up and bring them here. Can you open the garage door? It’s started to rain. Don’t want the presents to get wet.” He paused, clearly expecting something from her, but Emmie couldn’t imagine what. At last he asked, “May we come in?”
“Um, sure.” Emmie stood aside to admit them. “I’ll open the garage door, if I can remember where the button is.”
Caleb walked unerringly to the small button beside the door that opened into the garage. “This it?”
After she’d shown them the formal living room where the gifts were displayed, she placed her hand on the newel post of the stairs. “I’ll just go upstairs and get into some clothes.”
“Fine. We’ll bring in the presents.”
Emmie was at the door of her bedroom when she remembered her cinnamon roll still in the microwave. She couldn’t take her medicine until she ate it. She reversed her steps and was almost to the foot of the stairs when she heard the men’s voices coming from the living room.
“I don’t know who I feel sorrier for, you or Lon.” She heard Davy laugh.
“What are you talking about?” Caleb asked.
“You know Jax’s ex-mother-in-law? She got loaded at the reception. She wound up spending the night with Lon in his hotel room.”
“I’d suggest you don’t spread that around.”
“She’s a lush, but at least she’s beautiful.” Davy pursued the subject, ignoring Caleb’s warning. “But you, you were stuck with the dork last night.”
Caleb mu
mbled something Emmie couldn’t hear, but that Davy laughed in response to. “I admit,” Davy said as he chortled again, “she looked better last night, but good God, man, even with great hooters, that’s a pity fuck if I ever saw one!”
All the nasty snickers she’d ever heard reverberated so loud she hardly heard Caleb when he rumbled, “Shut up, Davy.”
Emmie gripped the balustrade tight enough to leave dents in the polished oak. Her heart beat so hard she was afraid she was going to pass out-or explode. Her fingertips tingled as if she’d had an electric shock.
Then Caleb growled. “Go get the last of the presents.”
Oh, God! Davy was going to come into the hall and see her. He was every reason she had preferred to be invisible. Or make sure she only dealt with the Davys of this world from a position of authority. She knew she needed to run back upstairs, but she couldn’t make her feet move.
And it was too late anyway. Throwing some remark over his shoulder, Davy exited the living room and saw her at the foot of the stairs.
Who knows what confluence of events makes a turning point in someone’s life? Later, Emmie wondered if the fact that she was on the third step from the bottom, which put her head higher than his, was the deciding factor, since it made her literally look down on him. Maybe the flood of adrenaline pounding through her system had burned out something. Maybe it was the fact that she saw in his shocked brown eyes and the embarrassed red of his smooth cheeks just how young-how young and callow-he was.
At any rate, although a second before she would have slunk away to nurse her wounds in private, she wasn’t going to do so now. She had had it.
Sealed with a promise Page 16
