by Alison Kent
She gasped as the same suction echoed at the very core of her. Desire flowed strong and hot, moving south as his tongue trailed a path over her belly and down.
She was moaning helplessly when he parted her thighs and slipped between.
When he touched her with his tongue, a long, slow lick, she shuddered. He didn’t tease her, for which she was grateful, but he didn’t rush her along, either, simply took the time to taste and explore, always returning to her burning clit with those long, slow, ice-cream-cone licks that built her up and up.
When she’d tossed her head about on the pillow so much that her hair was snapping with static electricity, he cupped her hips in his big, hot hands and tongued her to a deliberate, pulsing rhythm.
The tension within her was building, roaring in her ears when he increased the pressure and speed of his movements. She felt such a power surge she damn near shorted out.
That banshee wail echoing off the walls couldn’t be coming from cool and controlled Arianne Sorenson, could it?
She raised up onto her elbows to see if there was somebody else in the room screaming her head off, but her gaze encountered only Rafe grinning up at her, his head so dark against her white limbs.
He kissed his way up her body while she tried to catch her breath and slow her slamming heart. She wondered how much more of this she could survive.
While she contemplated the fact that his male power was running pretty potent tonight, as well, he leaned over her and grabbed a condom from his bedside table.
“Wait,” she said. “I want to do that.”
What she really wanted was to touch him, unencumbered by latex.
He handed her the condom and she pushed him onto his back then encircled him with one hand. As she’d suspected, he was hard as marble, but much, much warmer.
His skin was silk-soft over his stiff erection, and she took a moment to enjoy all the textures. The smoothest skin was at the tip, which she circled with her index finger. She traced her way down his just-as-smooth shaft until she reached coarse springy hair. The sac was as leathery and alive as the skin wrinkled and shifted under her hands.
If she’d almost screamed herself into passing out, Rafe sounded as though he might pant himself into unconsciousness.
She smiled a little as she bent down and took him into her mouth. Mmm. He tasted good. Once more she thought of warmed olive oil and fresh herbs baking in the sun. No, not pizza, she thought fuzzily, but focaccia.
Thinking about food and flavors got her a little busier with her tongue than she’d intended.
From what seemed a long way off she heard a groan and a curse in Italian. Suddenly, Rafe flipped her onto her back so fast she almost swallowed her tongue.
“You took too long,” he complained, grabbing the condom and sheathing himself.
“I almost made you lose control,” she corrected, noting the sweat beading his forehead and the ragged breathing of an extreme athlete who’s reached his extreme.
“Yeah.”
He kissed her and along with the excitement that still ran so high in her body, she felt a rush of tenderness that made her wrap her arms around him and cling. She’d come so far, she couldn’t back out now, but it occurred to her that once Rafe entered her body, nothing was going to be the same.
6
“OPEN FOR ME,” he said softly.
“Yes,” she whispered, feeling her body do just that without any conscious effort. As greedily as her mouth had opened on his tongue, so now did her body open for him.
She slipped her legs wide apart, and he moved between them until she felt the blunt probing of his cock, amazingly hot.
“Yes,” she said again as their gazes locked.
He entered her slowly, and as she accepted him inside of her all the pieces of her life suddenly felt as if they clicked into place. All those jigsaw-puzzle-piece moments of decision. Moving to New York, volunteering for the charity auction, ending her engagement to Charlie, going to work for Rafe, the way they’d teased, flirted, danced.
So many images suddenly fit together into a single one that made sense. The pair of them connected in this intimate, magical way.
He began to move and she moved with him, as perfectly, harmoniously in time with each other as they had been on the dance floor.
He held her tight, and pushed up inside her, seeming to drive deeper with each thrust.
That power—her magical female power—was building again, flowing through her body.
Power was building inside Rafe, too. Faster and stronger. So fast she needed to cling to him, wrap her arms and legs hard around him to stop from flying into a million pieces.
But, of course, there was no way to stop it and suddenly she was doing just that. Flying into a million separate, sparkling pieces. Her entire being burst into glitter—like one of the fireworks she could hear exploding outside.
As her climax rocked her, she felt Rafe’s own fireworks as he shuddered and pulsed deep inside her body.
Tears came from nowhere to sting at the corners of her eyes. She was moved to her very depths by what had just happened, floating on a wave of contentment.
I love you.
Her eyes flew open and her body clenched with embarrassment. Had she said those words aloud? Oh, lord. What was she thinking? A woman like her didn’t blurt out declarations of love to a man like Rafe just because they’d had sex together. How naive, how provincial how…true.
He was muttering in Italian. “Come cazzo mi fai impazzire,” and something else she couldn’t understand. It sounded like piano. He whispered the words, kissing her eyes, her cheeks and finally her mouth. She didn’t know what all of it meant, but cazzo was one of those words he used when he was angry about something. A curse.
In spite of the soft kisses, she could imagine what the words were in translation.
She turned her face away from his too-warm and inviting lips. She wanted to roll into a ball and sob.
The truth was devastating. She, Arianne Sorenson, tried one time, once in twenty-seven years to be wild and spontaneous and it ended in disaster.
She, who spent her life preaching prudence, budgeting, sensible investments for the long term, checks and balances, had taken a flyer. Bet her life savings on a whim.
She’d fallen in love with a womanizing playboy.
Where she’d reveled in her nakedness before, now she felt miserably shy and awkward. She wanted to turn back the clock, to go back to the moment she’d had a premonition and tried to turn back from the party.
Isabel and Nat had talked her into going ahead and they’d never given her worse advice.
“Arianne?” Rafe smoothed his hand over her hair, the pale gold strands silky-smooth to the touch. “What is it?”
She’d turned from a wild, soft, giving woman to a plank in the space of five seconds.
“Could you maybe move off me? I think I’m getting claustrophobia,” she said in a small voice, addressing his sock drawer rather than him.
He rolled to the side, but didn’t get out of bed. Instead he took her chin and pulled until she was looking at him. “Better?”
“Yes, thanks.” She didn’t look better, she looked as though something really, really bad had just happened to her. Now, Rafe was probably as insensitive as the next red-blooded male, at least if women’s magazine headlines were to be believed, but he didn’t think their lovemaking could be causing the tragic expression on her face.
Hell, they should be out there whooping and hollering with the rest of the New Year’s revelers. They’d touched the bloody stars, he and Arianne. What wasn’t terrific about that?
“Tell me. What is it?”
“What was the last thing you heard me say?” she asked him quietly.
Okay, something was going on here. He had no idea what she wanted him to say, but the best he could manage was giving her the courtesy of being honest. “Let’s see.” He traced the undersides of her pert breasts with a finger, drawing a shallow W. “I think it was
yes.”
“Yes? That’s the last thing I said? You’re sure?”
“Well, if you want the complete replay, it was Yes, oh, Rafe, yes, Rafe, yes…”
He could hear her now, her cries looping through his head like the favorite line of a favorite song. It wasn’t just the words, but the tone of them. Chanted to the same rhythm as her thrusting hips. She had sounded amazed, thrilled…awed. He knew, because he’d felt the same emotions.
His answer seemed to satisfy her, for she lost the rigid set to her jaw, but he didn’t need to be a sensitive new-age guy to realize there wasn’t going to be another round of gravity-defying lovemaking anytime soon. It was as though she’d withdrawn.
She’d shut her glorious passion away in some icebox of her own making, and he didn’t have a clue what that was about. Puzzled, annoyed, and even a bit hurt, he wondered what more a woman could want from him than a declaration of love.
Or was that the problem?
“Do you remember my last words?” he asked.
She glanced at him. “They were in Italian.”
“Really?” He started to laugh. His mother would be delighted. A man who made love to the woman of his heart in Italian would father a lot of kids. “Do you want a translation?” He felt a little weird asking her. A couple of minutes ago when things were warm and they’d been as closely connected as two people could be, he’d felt natural expressing his love. But now that she’d turned cold, it seemed an awful risk. Still, if she wanted to know, he’d tell her.
Instead, she sent him an icy, close-lipped smile. “No thanks. I’ve heard those words before. You always curse in Italian.”
He sat up in bed so fast his head spun. She thought he’d been cursing? They’d touched some new universe together; how could she believe he’d…
There was no point wondering. She was already out of bed, dressing with the same frantic haste he’d used in undressing her.
He watched her from the bed. With his hands stacked beneath his head, his position may have looked casual, but really it was to stop them from breaking something.
“Stay,” he said.
She glanced at him, pale and startled, as though he were speaking a foreign language. Again.
“Stay,” he repeated. “With me. Tonight.”
“But you’re the host.”
“My mother will do a brilliant job without me.”
“But, but…if I stay the night, your mother will know…Isabel and Natalie will know.” She was growing paler and paler. In a minute or so she was just going to disappear. “Everyone will know.”
He was getting a bad feeling in his gut. “Everyone will know what?”
“That I…that we…”
“Made love? Had sex? Screwed? F—”
“Stop it! I know what we did. I just don’t want everyone in the five boroughs to know.” She shoved her feet into her shoes blindly and stumbled toward the door.
He rolled out of bed and stalked her so fast she jumped. “Don’t forget all the old boys at the Italian-American club, and everybody I’ll e-mail about my latest conquest.”
She flapped about like a flustered white dove. “Stop it! I don’t mean that, I’m just not ready, I don’t want…I can’t…”
Even through his sudden fury he could see she was in serious emotional distress. Maybe those women’s magazines were right after all. Men and women were never going to get each other. The sex he and Arianne had had tonight made him want to weep with joy and start planning the wedding. It seemed to be sending Arianne straight to a shrink’s couch.
He grabbed her shoulders as gently as he could considering he wanted to shake some sense into her. Once he had her immobile and glaring at him, he said, “If you go downstairs like that you’re going to fall and break your neck. Your shoes aren’t done up. And if you survive that, anyone will take one look at you and see what you’ve been doing.
“Personally, I’m proud of what happened. Since you don’t feel that way, give me five minutes to get dressed and out of here and you can take your time. The bathroom’s through there. You can fix your hair and stuff. There are fresh towels in there.” He gestured to a bank of cupboards.
She nodded. “Thanks.”
He was as good as his word. In less than five minutes he was back in his tux and heading out the door.
Since he didn’t know what to say, he decided not to say anything.
At the door she stopped him.
“I’m not ashamed of what happened,” she said softly. “I’m confused.”
“You’re confusing the hell out of me, too.”
7
FOR THE SECOND TIME that evening, Arianne found herself staring at herself in one of the Monticello house mirrors. Sometime between the first mirror and the second, all her female power seemed to have drained away. Fizzled. Evaporated.
She sighed. She had raccoon eyes and smudged lipstick to deal with as well as rat’s-nest hair.
Thank goodness Rafe had stopped her from rejoining the party in her current state. She shuddered and walked to the cupboard where he’d told her the towels were kept.
She opened the burled maple door and found not towels, but ties, socks, underwear, and shirts, all in fitted drawers and shelves of the same wood.
She paused for a moment to enjoy the faint scent of Rafe that clung to his things.
Arianne was so embarrassed she’d been such an idiot, that she’d been stupid enough to fall in love with a man she could never have. Sniffing his clean laundry seemed pretty minor by comparison.
Either Rafe or some efficient member of the house staff was very neat. Everything was in perfect order. Ties were arranged by color, shirts hung at attention, whites first, then the colors. She was about to close the door and try the next one for towels when a scrap of pale blue caught her eye from the drawer beneath the one that contained his socks.
She pulled it open, and her eyes opened wide.
No wonder it had seemed as though the blue silk didn’t fit with the rest of the items in this closet. It was a woman’s camisole.
And it was perfect. Clearly it had never been worn, for the tag was still attached. She peeked and frowned. Three thousand dollars? Maybe the silkworms had been singing the “Hallelujah Chorus” when they spun this silk, because it was so rich, so soft and touchable that she couldn’t resist playing the fabric between her thumb and finger.
An ice-blue camisole, three thousand dollars. He didn’t buy those in bulk at Costco. She remembered perfectly well teasing him about the item, and about the lady friend for whom he’d purchased it. He’d certainly given Arianne the impression it had been gratefully received and well worn.
She hadn’t thought she could feel any more confused, but now she did. Confused and wretched. What a way to start a whole new year.
Once she was tidied up and had repaired everything but her shredded heart, she crept back downstairs and slipped into the still-partying throng.
But, if she’d ever been in a party mood, she no longer was.
Across the room she caught a glimpse of Natalie in the arms of a tough, quiet-looking man. They appeared to be more than new friends. Natalie couldn’t seem to keep her eyes—or her hands—off him. Interesting.
Arianne made her way over, and tapped Nat on the shoulder. “Listen, I’ve got a headache. I think I’ll grab a cab home now.”
“Everything okay?”
She forced a smile. “Yes. Of course. I’ll tell you everything tomorrow at Isabel’s.” They’d already arranged to have New Year’s Day brunch at Isabel’s SoHo loft. As much as she wanted to spill her problems right now, she knew she’d have to wait. Natalie clearly had something on the go with the tough-guy hunk she so obviously wasn’t introducing to Arianne.
“Tell Isabel goodbye for me when she surfaces. And Happy New Year.”
They hugged each other, and then she slipped out.
A polite person would thank Rafe and his mother for their hospitality. To hell with it. A polite person coul
d send a card. Much more her style. Polite and impersonal.
She began composing it in her head.
Dear Rafe,
Thank you for a lovely evening. The sex was particularly exciting.
Cordially yours, Arianne.
There was nothing spontaneous about a woman who used words like cordially, which had such a distant, old-fashioned ring to it, and who wrote formal thank-you notes.
And Arianne had just decided she was never, ever doing spontaneous again.
Plans, controls, checks and balances. Order. That was for her. None of this willy-nilly tossing caution to the wind and her heart to a man who collected them like bottle caps.
When she got to the coat check, she gave her name and asked them to call her a cab. She accepted her coat, and the attendant also handed her the trademark gold Monticello shoe box that she knew contained this year’s pair of black shoes—the closest thing to sensible you could get in the Monticello line.
She squelched an impulse to turn down the gift. That would only arouse comment she was anxious to avoid, so she tried to smile and appear delighted.
By the time she arrived home, her headache was no longer feigned. She gulped a couple of painkillers, tried to ignore the sounds of merriment that continued out on the streets and undressed and slipped into pajamas.
She crawled into bed, but her cold single-girl sheets only reminded her of the feel of Rafe’s sheets against her skin, his hot body moving against hers. How warm she’d been when Rafe had shared the bed.
She slapped her hands over her face and did a groan, howl, sob combo.
After a long time spent listening to everyone in Manhattan but her having the time of their lives, she sat up and flipped on the light.
A glow of gold from the corner of her room caught her attention and she padded barefoot to open her box of shoes. Might as well take a peek.
She slipped the lid off—even the box was so expensive she handled it with care—expecting to see shoes the color of her mood. Solid, unrelieved black.
She gasped and blinked. Nestled inside a layer of tissue was a pair of strappy red shoes with crystal-studded ankle bands.
