He muttered something against her mouth; she didn’t try to decipher it. She opened her lips, and took him back inside.
He took a step closer, and she encircled his neck, drawing him to her. Only then did he put his hands on her.
He skimmed one palm along her arm slowly, following the line from her shoulder to the back of her hand to where her fingers disappeared into his hair. As if to reassure himself that she really was holding him, her arms really were around his neck. His palms rubbed circles on her shoulders as the kiss grew hotter and deeper. Cupping her shoulders, he drew her tight against him. So it didn’t matter when her knees felt as if they would give way; he was there to support her.
Maybe that was how it happened that she never quite recalled covering the distance down the hall, into her bedroom and to the bed. But she remembered the surge of satisfaction when she started to lie back, and Grady’s hands were there to ease her descent. Even better, Grady’s body was there next to hers, partly covering hers.
It was the way it had been at Tanner’s Inn. The wanting, the drumming of more in her head, the craving for what she’d told herself she couldn’t have, didn't really want. Oh, but she did want it . . .
He started unbuttoning her blouse, the motions seeming so easy to his practiced fingers, while his other hand stroked her from waist to hip to knee and his mouth dazzled hers. Then the second-to-the-bottom button stubbornly refused to budge, and she felt the slight shake of his hand against her skin. Not as easy as she’d thought.
Tugging until she could reach his shirt, she started unbuttoning. She felt and heard his sharp intake of air. He gave her recalcitrant button a yank and it came free. One more button and he was pushing open her blouse, sliding the straps of her camisole down her aims, following its retreat with his hands and mouth. And she was drowning. Slipping into a sea of sensation where the only elements were his touch and her skim.
He dampened her nipple with a circle of his tongue, then slowly drew it into his mouth. Sensation swamped over her, and she clutched at his arms, but that was no way to save herself from this drowning, it only sank her deeper into the wanting.
She gasped a little as she shifted He moved so his weight didn’t pin her. She sat up and he followed.
“No, wait, Grady.” She couldn’t control her breathing. “We need to talk about this. We need—”
“Need? You want to talk about need, Leslie?"
From the first word, his voice, raw and smoky, held her immobile. She moved only her eyes. Watching as he jerked open the remaining buttons of his shirt. He took one of her hands in each of his, opening them with his thumbs when she clenched reflexive fists. “I’ll tell you about need. I’ll tell you about needing you, Leslie. Are you going to deny this?”
He pressed one of her palms to his bare chest and the other to the hard ridge below his waist. She felt the pulse of his blood through her palms, up her arms and into her own heart.
“This is need, Leslie.”
He muttered the words almost into her mouth as he held her against him. She felt the jolt of his need under her hands when their lips met, and the surge of her own need.
“Grady . . .”
He lifted his head just enough to meet her eyes. Under the heat, his eyes were wary, his body tense. He expected her to say no, to pull away, and he would make himself accept it.
But she couldn’t. She couldn’t accept not giving this man what he needed. She couldn’t accept not having what he offered. This one night . . . one night . . . she would give and she would have. In the morning, well, this night came before the morning after, and she would think only of the night.
Stretching her neck, she brought her mouth to his as she caressed him with long, deliberate strokes.
His response leaped under her hands, but he didn’t move other than that. She ended the kiss. For an instant he stared at her, but only long enough for her to think that the blue of his eyes had burned clear of all protection. Before she could look into those eyes and see the man behind them, he locked his arms around her and brought them both back down to the bed.
His lips and teeth feasted on the tender skin where her neck met her shoulder. When he soothed it with his tongue, she arched in response.
That was the last clear moment she remembered. The rest was impressions, echoes of emotion. The hoarse, almost guttural sound of his words of need and praise and desire. The strained, taut clenching of his muscles under her hands. The clutch of sadness and regret when he opened a small foil packet. The prod of conscience to tell him, and the welcome weakness when his kiss drove away all thought. The film of sweat that made her hand glide down his bare side when she grasped his hip. The scent of soap and man as their legs and arms tangled and clasped. The sensation of cloth against her skin as clothes that proved too intricate to remove were shoved aside in haste.
Oh, yes, she knew need.
And she knew the incredible, joyous sensation of having it met, and of meeting his.
She told him of the joy in small soft sounds and glorious shudders of pleasure. He answered in a strained, hoarse explosion of completion.
Holding him, absorbing the heaving of his chest into hers, feeling the beating of his heart against hers, she knew she would always remember the honesty of his need, and hers.
* * * *
She might have drifted, into sleep or simply out of conscious thought.
They lay tangled together, arms wrapped tightly around each other as if fearing that bodies this close could somehow slip apart.
But their breathing eased and their heartbeats steadied. At some point Grady shifted most of his weight to one side. Maybe that woke her. Or feeling the rub of her camisole twisted around her waist.
She eased from Grady’s hold, gaining just enough room to sit up. With her hands on the camisole, preparing to pull it off, she looked over her shoulder and found Grady awake, and watching her.
A look. That’s all, and she could feel her breasts tightening, her blood stirring.
Then he touched her, light fingers low on her back, just below the gathered material.
Still caught by his eyes, she let out a breath, slowly, audibly. In a smooth motion he sat up, his hands replacing hers on the bottom of the camisole his mouth touching her shoulder. She had only to raise her arms, and that’s what she did. He slid the camisole leisurely up, letting his fingertips trail over her waist, her ribs, her breasts—oh, so slowly there—before a touch to her shoulders. Then he drew the filmy material over her head and sent it arcing gently into the room’s shadows.
His hands returned to cup her breasts, drawing her back against the sleek strength of his chest, which she’d seen gilded by noontime sun or silvered by moon. Those beach memories now melded with the sensation of the warmth and solidity of skin and muscle covered by a fine prickling of hair.
The urgency of their lovemaking hadn’t allowed for exploration. She didn’t—couldn’t—regret that, but this, oh, this was another introduction to pleasure.
His head next to hers, he gently stroked her breasts with fingers and palm but without touching the sensitive centers. He was so blond, yet his hands looked dark and strong against the glowing paleness of her skin. Watching, and knowing he was watching the same play of hard and soft, dark and pale, was a pleasure that rose from inside. Against her back, his chest moved with harsher breaths as he finally took each peaking nipple between thumb and finger.
A moan escaped, and she dropped her head back to his shoulder, while his hands continued their pleasurable torment. She could feel his body changing, tightening. Turning, she kissed his neck, tasting the faint saltiness and taking more of it with her tongue. He shifted until he could meet her mouth, opening her lips, kissing her deeply. She was panting at the end, drawing oxygen in thirstily at the same time she tried to return to the kisses.
But he was more urgent, his strong hands shifting her, steadying her when she hardly kept her sense of balance. He seemed to understand her balance better than she did
, bringing her to equilibrium astride his thighs at the same time he dizzied her with his mouth and hands.
She waited for him to complete their joining, but he didn’t, drawing her down to him, but no farther. He slid his hands up her belly, across her ribs and around her breasts, his thumbs brushing the tips with a feathering touch so she wanted to cry out for more. She needed more.
And he gave it to her.
He lifted up to take one nipple in his mouth, tugging gently, then more deeply to suckle strongly.
Still she needed more, and she reached for it in the only way she could, by seeking to take him inside her, just as his hips surged to meet her.
She did cry out then. A cry of completion, and of a beginning toward another kind of completion.
What had started slow and dreamy, ended in need nearly as frantic as the first time. Replaced by the necessity of meeting each other as fully, as strongly, as possible. And left her sated and exhausted.
She fell asleep marveling at that.
Grady knew by the rhythm of her breathing against his arm that she was asleep. It was his first realization when he came back to rational thought.
The second was a kind of self-horror. What had he done? He wished he didn’t know the answer, but he did: He’d lost a precious level of control. Not all of it, thank God, not enough to hurt her in his driving desire—he never wanted to hurt her. Still, too much. Much too much.
He’d always prided himself on being a considerate, patient lover. No woman had ever faulted him there. Smooth, that’s how he liked to think of himself.
But there had been nothing smooth about this lovemaking. Nothing considerate, nothing patient. It had been as raw as the need he’d expressed in words and actions.
His feelings for Leslie had been stripped to a primitive base he’d never recognized in himself, much less expressed.
And now he didn’t know how to reclothe those feelings in polite trappings.
He prided himself on comfortable mornings-after. He worked hard to make them that way, by never doing anything that could be regretted in the light of day. No declarations, no impulses, no revelations.
But hadn’t their lovemaking been all those?
A glance toward Leslie ended almost before it began. He swore viciously at himself. He couldn’t even look at her when she was asleep. How could he when she woke? He tried to imagine enacting the casual, urbane behavior of his customary mornings-after. He couldn’t.
Carefully he eased out of the bed. He stilled when Leslie stirred, but she didn’t wake as he silently dressed. He found a piece of paper and pen by the telephone. He stared at it a long time, finally wrote a few words, signed it and propped it against the phone.
He opened the door but before he crossed the threshold, he turned and looked back.
The shadows seemed to shift, break up and reform, like clouds in a restless sky. But he could make out Leslie’s face, the strength and beauty of the bone structure highlighted like a pen-and-ink drawing. Her right hand, pale and elegant in the faint light, rested on the sheet. It would have rested on his chest if he had stayed where he was, a gentle weight against his skin.
He walked out without closing the door behind him.
* * * *
“So you wrap up the Burroughs deal this afternoon?” Paul asked before taking a healthy hunk out of his hamburger. Since Bette had developed an aversion to onions and pickles, he indulged those tastes at lunch.
“Two-thirty, so we have to keep this get-together short.”
Grady would have preferred not to have it at all. But when Paul asked him to lunch, he could think of no excuse except the truth—he didn’t want someone who knew him so well examining him. Bad enough that his housekeeper, Harriet, his employees and the man at the newsstand looked at him as if he were a bomb about to go off. At least they didn't say anything. Paul wouldn’t be that reticent.
“Bette said you stopped by the house last week.”
"Yes."
“She said you planned to spend the Fourth in D.C.”
“Yes.”
“Suppose, you planned to see Leslie Craig?’
“Yes.”
“Must have been a short trip.”
“Yes.”
“Things didn’t go the way you planned?”
“Back off, Monroe.”
“Boy, you're in a foul mood.” Paul placidly chewed another hefty bite without taking his eyes off Grady. “Here I am, trying to catch up on what’s going on in a friend’s life and he jumps on me. Something bothering you?”
“I said back off, and I meant it. The last thing I want right now is some lecture from you on not hurting people. Unless I do it from—what was it you called it?—honest thoughtlessness. Good to know I’m an honest jerk.”
Paul studied him with narrowed eyes, then put clown the burger. His brows slowly rose as his expression changed.
“How the mighty are fallen.”
Grady swore, but Paul leaned back comfortably and grinned. “You know one of the things I noticed when I was first seeing Bette was a tendency to snap at my best friends. First I made some crack to Michael, then I ripped your hide a bit. Strange thing, huh?”
Grady glared at him.
Looking hack I figure it was because I was fighting myself, but it was easier to take it out on you guys.”
Paul was full of it. He wasn’t falling for Leslie, not the way Paul had fallen for Bette. He just . . . cared about her. And he didn’t have experience at dealing with anyone as a friend and lover. He needed time to adjust.
“On the other hand, maybe it’s simpler in your case. Maybe it’s the Burroughs deal, having something you thought was wrapped up only to have it unravel again, when you’d rather be in Washington getting that operation going. And you’d rather be spending time with someone nice.”
Grady knew Paul Monroe too well not to realize his words, placating as they might sound, carried a strong element of teasing, if not downright glee. But he wasn’t in the mood to battle this one out.
“Maybe.”
“Sure, that’s probably it,” Paul said cheerfully. “You’re overworked and you miss—” Their eyes met, Paul’s dancing, Grady’s warning. “Uh, Washington. Pretty city, Washington. Exciting, too. Center of power and all that. And of course there’s your business there.”
That conclusion allowed Grady to relax enough to get through the rest of the meal on good terms with Paul. But all that afternoon and throughout a celebratory business dinner with Burroughs and the other principals, a persistent thought jangled in his head.
He did miss Washington. But it had nothing to do with the city or business. He missed Leslie.
The next day he flew to D.C.
* * * *
She’d expected it. Though never, even in her most pessimistic moments, quite that quickly.
I will call you. Grady.
That’s what the note on her nightstand said. Should she contact the Guinness Book of World Records? This had to be a record for fastest, shortest brush-off.
She’d gone to bed with a man with a long-standing reputation for being all pursuit, and she’d woken up to a four-word note—five counting the signature. Did signatures count? Why should she be surprised? Or hurt.
This man she’d set out to get to know so she could help him had, instead, come to know her too well. He knew how to short-circuit her resolve to break off with him for good. And he knew, God help her, how to make her happy. She wouldn’t—couldn’t—let that become an ability to make her unhappy. She’d learned a hard lesson when her marriage ended: never look to anyone else for happiness.
But she knew Grady, too.
She’d known what was likely to happen and it had; knowing what to expect, she’d still done it. Craigs learned early to accept the consequences of their actions; she’d handle this. Not even the best mother hen succeeds every time. She’d salvage what she could of her pride and poise, and smooth it over so Tris, Michael, Paul and Bette wouldn’t feel forced to choose o
ne or the other of them.
So when her buzzer sounded early Saturday afternoon and the voice over the intercom announced it was Grady, she knew what she had to do.
She had a bad moment when he walked in. Echoes of his touches still sang in her body, and it was hard not to reach for him. Harder still to take the necessary step back when he stretched out a hand that would have caressed her hair, He dropped his hand to his side and went past her. She didn’t offer him a seat, but he didn’t seem to notice. He paced to the far end of the couch, turned and came back to her, before repeating the pattern.
"I guess I should have called, let you know when I was coming back to town instead of showing up at your door, but I wasn’t sure how to . . . I mean, what to say to you."
"That’s all right. I didn’t expect to hear from you.”
He spun around and stared at her. He looked irate.
“Why not? I said I’ll call you.” He sounded irate, too. “You didn’t believe me?”
Stifling the questions that surged to her lips—Should I believe you? Do you want me to believe you?—she marshaled the approach she’d planned.
She shrugged, as if his calling didn’t matter.
He winced, masking those beautiful blue eyes for an instant.
“I meant it, Leslie. I may be a lot of things not all that admirable, but I am not a liar. I meant it.” He looked at her, then out the window, then at the wall before zeroing in on the hack of the sofa. “And I mean it when I say that the other night . . . It—being with you, making love with you . . .”
His voice trailed off, and she could feel the prickle of awareness shimmer along her skin. No, no, she couldn’t let herself think.
“Making love with you was—” He’d started off well, but came to a stop. “Was good—-I mean, it was so good, it was . . . special.”
She could safely look at him because he was looking everywhere but at her. He’d sounded miserable at the end. The misery of sincerity, the frustration of trying to express unaccustomed emotions and feeling you failed? Could he—
No! How could she let herself think that way? It was awkwardness. The awkwardness of a decent human being in an uncomfortable situation he didn’t know how to extricate himself from without inflicting pain. That’s where she came in—Make-It-All-Better Leslie.
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