by Anthology
He relished the sensation of having a sexy woman undressing him, taking control of him. Grabbing her hips, he locked his arms around her waist. A possessive rope of muscle.
Olympia lifted her head when his fingers found her core again. Her eyes were a deep pure green and seemed to burn into his. For an instant, his heart gave a long, hard thud against his ribs and the world around them stilled.
The spell broke when she pushed his jeans down to where his legs met the inside of her thighs. On a growl, Harlan was forced to lift her up and attempt to kick the offending pants to the side. They got stuck on his ankles.
“Here, let me.” Olympia reached down to help and they both lost their balance, toppling over the side of the bed to land on the floor with a loud thud and mutual squeals.
“Shh!” He silenced her laughter with a kiss. “The baby.”
He didn’t want to wait anymore. Couldn’t, not when she was looking at him, her gaze heated and sending streaks of lightning through his system. Pawing through his pants pocket, Harlan found his wallet, found the condom he’d stuck in there that afternoon. A just-in-case thing he’d hoped and prayed he would need later. Gut instinct had told him he would. Luckily, he’d listened.
“Whatever you’ve done to bewitch me, I won’t let you get away with it,” Olympia warned, watching him with dark eyes.
“Nothing much. A little voodoo, some wishing upon a star.” He swallowed, mouth suddenly dry, rolling the condom down over his erection. It was all he could do to tear open the packaging and slip the little sheath over his throbbing erection. Hot and hard and ready. Her body, with its lush and glorious curves, had bewitched him the second he saw her. “But I’ve dreamed about you. This moment. I want to touch you until you’re screaming in pleasure. I want those beautiful breasts in my face as I thrust inside of you. I want to feel you gripping me and tightening until you make me come…”
Her nostrils flared. “How can you talk to me like this?”
“Do you like it?”
She growled and fell on him, found his mouth, kissing the thoughts right out of his head. She was ready for him when he parted her thighs with his hands, pushing them apart before driving himself into her.
It was hard and fast and enough to make him lose the rest of his mind. She tightened around him, gripping him, her legs straddling his hips. It was a race of pleasure with the end in sight far too soon. She stole his breath, her nails raking against his shoulders, his fingers digging into hers while he pounded. Still they pushed each other for more.
She nuzzled her cheek against him and a streak of fire shot down to his groin. She was so soft. He wanted the moment to last forever, especially when she linked her fingers with his. Wanting him. Needing him.
Her arms latched around his neck and he twisted to bring her onto her back, the plush carpeting beneath them providing enough softness for comfort.
And there she was. Staring up at him with none of her filters. None of their combined hang-ups or arguments or apprehensions. She groaned as his teeth nibbled at her nipples. He wanted to rub himself all over her, touch and taste and savor her until morning. Her legs were clamped tight around him and he continued to buck up and into her, keeping her unable to move away or do anything except arch against him.
Her eyes were brilliant and blazing with need, her voice hoarse as she begged him to continue. He shook with the intensity of feeling, her breath hot on his ear when he stroked deeper and deeper. Olympia clutched at him, her body tensed and tight, pulling her legs up higher. He felt the moment she reached orgasm. Everything inside of her exploded.
His own was close behind and the joy of it shot through him as he strangled a yell, arching up and pounding out his own moment of rapture. Finally, he collapsed, and Olympia kissed him, her hands stroking along the damp planes of his back, still quivering with little sparks of pleasure.
“Don’t ever,” he managed through gasps, “let a man tell you we don’t get aftershocks. We do.”
CHAPTER SEVEN
Sometime later, when her chest finally stopped heaving and she could breathe without gasping like a fish on land, she propped herself up to look at him. “Where do you find the energy?”
“I’ll tell you once I make sure I’m still alive. I’m searching for a pulse. Can’t find it.”
She laughed and pinched him. “Has anyone ever told you you’re incorrigible?”
“Stop talking dirty to me. Those big words…they get me every time. I’m not ready for round two yet.” He drew in a shaky inhale. “I mean, yeah, round two is coming, but I need more than five minutes of turnaround time. I’m still enjoying our last bout.”
It was the strangest sensation, she thought, sprawled on top of him. To have a man with a happy and healthy appreciation for a woman with a sexual appetite. An appetite she’d suppressed for a long time because she thought it was too much. She’d certainly suppressed that part of herself with Dan, because he’d been too stressed with work, too preoccupied with his anxieties to want to make love longer or more often than simple perfunctory physical need. When she dared to ask for more, he called her selfish, unwilling to see things from his perspective. It should have been a warning sign.
No, there was no room for those thoughts anymore. Not here, not now. Not with Harlan.
His eyes were closed but he was smiling. “You wrung me out, woman. Do I look like wet laundry? I feel like it.”
“I didn’t think we would end up here,” she murmured.
He rolled onto his side, trailing a finger down her clavicle between her breasts. “Here…on your bedroom floor? Where exactly did you think we’d end up, the kitchen counter? Although that—”
She punched him playfully. “I let you seduce me. When you kissed me, I think you disconnected my body from my brain and I allowed my vagina to do all the thinking.”
“There is nothing wrong with letting your vagina do the thinking. Especially if it means I get to lavish more attention on these truly wonderful breasts of yours. They’re fabulous.”
“Oh, you like them, do you?” she asked against his lips, unable to stop kissing him.
“I like everything about you.” His answer was another touch, his hand sliding down to her hip this time. “It would be nice if we could stay here for a day or so. Forget about everything, focus on each other.”
She chuckled. “Things like that only happen in movies. It isn’t real life.”
“It could be if we let it.” Her skepticism must have gotten across to him even in the dark because he chuckled too.
“You know, no one has ever brought me to orgasm from sex before.”
His magic fingers stilled against her and she looked at him, wondering why he’d stopped. “What?”
“You must be really good,” she continued, suddenly self-conscious at having given voice to that revelation.
“Your husband, he never…well…he never made sure you got yours from sex?” Harlan’s eyebrow cocked halfway to his hairline in disbelief.
She shook her head and reluctantly slid off, moving to the bed. “No. He tried ahead of time, if you get my meaning, but most days he was simply too busy. Most months, rather, because once a month became our norm before he died. Most of the time I got myself off when he wasn’t around.” And where had she found the courage to reveal that to Harlan?
He rose from the floor and joined her on the bed, cradling her in his arms. “You don’t know how sorry I am to hear that. I hope you’ll let me make it up to you.”
She blinked. “It isn’t your job to make it up to me.”
Whatever else he wanted to say on the matter, he zipped his lips and kept it to himself, shifting the subject seamlessly. They talked to each other for hours until Harlan had recovered the strength to make it up to her. Which he did twice more before five o’clock in the morning. Then Olympia used whatever brain cells hadn’t been burned away to ask him to leave. It was better to have him gone than risk Renee waking up and finding him there.
But the
bed felt empty without him. Big and empty and cold. Her body was used and sore in the best ways, and if she didn’t focus on the ache between her legs, she might have wondered if it really happened. Had she really let herself go and spent the night with Harlan Anderson? Harlan, her ward’s manny, the one who made inappropriate jokes and could never be quiet for more than a minute. Harlan, who thought he knew best and didn’t hesitate to let her know when she was being a pill. Who took her shit and dished it back in the nicest of ways.
Yes, yes, she had. It was her first intimate encounter with a man since her husband had died.
And she didn’t regret it for a moment.
She tried not to think about the way her legs still felt boneless or the way she remembered the taste and feel and scent of him. How all three had been absorbed into her subconscious and she could recall them at will. He’d managed to melt away the last of her reservations, all of her worries and concerns and stresses about how a smart woman would conduct her relationships—because smart women did not get involved with the manny hired to care for their children. They certainly didn’t throw themselves at a man who depended on them for a paycheck. A man who wasn’t their significant other.
She must have drifted off at some point. In her dream, she didn’t have to go to work. Her time was occupied with caring for Renee and creating a proper home. And the scary thing was? It frightened her. She’d spent a large portion of her life thrown into her job, and it had gotten to the point where she felt more comfortable busting her ass for someone else’s dime than she had being alone with herself. There was an aura of escape to the dream, but not in the way she expected. There was no comfort in it. She knew she was dreaming, and tried to get out of it by doing what she normally did at work. Methodically checking off one item at a time from her list, turning what should have been happy and fulfilling housekeeping chores and child-rearing duties into items on a pre-arranged agenda. But that only took her deeper into the dream instead of the opposite.
She woke up on a ragged inhale, wondering just what the hell her mind was trying to tell her. And came face to face with a drowsy Renee.
“Sweet pea,” she said, trying desperately to get her lungs to resume normal functions without coming off sounding like a crazy person. “What’s wrong?”
“I can’t sleep.”
There was the honeyed voice, the whispered syllables with a hint of an accent.
“Do you want to climb in here with me?” The offer was automatic.
Oddly, her heart quieted when Renee nodded, lifting her arms for assistance in getting into the large bed. Olympia made a nest of covers around them, bunching them on either side until it brought a smile from the child.
“Bad dream?”
Renee nodded again. “I didn’t want to be alone.”
Olympia was astounded when the little girl snuggled against her. She felt strong, and strangely at peace. It had been a long time since she’d felt so at ease.
So needed.
She didn’t want to move a muscle, didn’t want to disturb the tentative silence and peace. This was the first time Renee had actively reached out to her for comfort. If she thought too long about it, she’d wonder at the timing, at the message her dream was trying to tell her coupled with this new milestone.
Renee dragged Olympia’s hand to her belly. “When I had a bad dream, my mommy used to rub my tummy to make me feel better.”
“Then I’ll rub your tummy. It’s okay. It was only a dream. It’s gone now. It can’t reach you.”
The baby nodded again and Olympia made small clockwise circles gently on the child’s stomach.
“I don’t feel well,” Renee admitted.
“What’s the matter?”
“My throat hurts.” Renee coughed and snuggled closer.
“Is that what woke you up?”
“Mm-hm.”
It didn’t take Olympia long to realize why Renee wasn’t feeling well. The thermometer she pressed to the child’s forehead revealed a fever of one hundred and one, and the coughs soon turned into a hack deep in the little chest. Thank God she’d had the foresight to stock up on children’s aspirin and other such necessities. Her first real test at surrogate parenting was about to begin.
But instead of striking fear into her heart, it galvanized her. Olympia was all Renee had to count on now, and she wouldn’t let the child down. No matter what.
“I don’t think I’ll need you today,” she told Harlan over the phone a few hours later. She jiggled a fussy Renee on her hip, her other hand holding the phone with Harlan on the other end, and she tried not to let the goose bumps of memory distract her.
“I know it’s my day off, but I can come if you need to get things done,” he offered. “I know I took you away from your work last night.”
His voice deepened on the last two words and she fought against another shiver. “Yes, you did,” she purred. “But it’s Sunday and it’s the only day off you get. Renee isn’t feeling well, so I’m just going to take the time to focus on her instead of what I need to be doing for work.”
“Renee is sick? Why didn’t you say so?” he said urgently. “Does she have a fever? Is she vomiting? Can she tell you where it hurts? Do you think you should call an ambulance?”
Olympia could hear the panic rising in his voice and hurried to reassure him Renee was fine. The children’s aspirin along with some cough syrup and more sleep had done wonders for the little girl, although she was still cranky and restless. Unless her fever spiked again, Olympia thought she would get over it without a visit to the emergency room.
“Renee’s going to be fine,” she repeated. “And if I can get her to take a nap, I might be able to sneak in some work from here. Otherwise, Carl will just have to wait another day for me to get the invoices to him.”
“He won’t be happy, you know. He hates when you work less than seventy hours a week.”
It was true. Any time she’d tried to take some time for herself, even a half day, he got testy. And Ashleigh was more than happy to step up and offer her services. It used to rub Olympia the wrong way, make her feel like she was being displaced. Or maybe replaced was a better word for it. At the moment, with a pathetic Renee curled at her shoulder like a weepy shrimp, Olympia didn’t feel like going anywhere.
“I’ll pop in at the end of the day anyway,” Harlan was saying, “because I’ve got a killer veggie and chicken noodle soup recipe that is great for colds. Kid tested and kid approved, by the way. I wouldn’t mind seeing you, either.”
The shiver was back with a vengeance, and Olympia opened her mouth to respond when the phone beeped, signaling a second call. “I’ve got to go. There’s someone on the other line.”
“Okay. I’ll see you later.”
She clicked over, tightening her hold on Renee. “Hello?”
“Olympia? It’s Ashleigh.”
Speak of the devil. Even the girl’s voice grated on her nerves, which couldn’t be helped, but it was the last thing she wanted to hear. “It’s Sunday,” she reminded Ashleigh with tempered annoyance.
“I know, but with the gallery fundraiser coming up in two weeks we’ve been putting in overtime.”
She hated how Ashleigh emphasized the word we, like Olympia wasn’t part of the group anymore. Or maybe she only imagined it. At the moment, she was running on little sleep and caring for a fussy toddler, which made rational thought nearly impossible. “Yes, I realize the fundraiser is in two weeks. I’m the one who arranged the date,” she said. “What’s the trouble this time?”
“It’s Paolo.”
“The night manager?”
“He’s gone crazy. He tried to attack John today, and when Mrs. Palmer came to drop off the tablecloths we asked for, he came at her with a candlestick.”
Olympia’s spine jolted straighter. Paolo had never given her a bit of trouble. “Why would he do that? What’s going on there? Did you call the police?”
“No, but we cornered him in the staff bathroom and he says he
won’t come out for anyone but you. You have to come and talk to him. Please,” Ashleigh begged.
She could do with more begging. When Renee whined and tightened her grip on the hairs at the back of Olympia’s neck, she sighed. “I have a sick kid at home. I can’t come in today.”
“What? No, you must. He threatened to slash the Davidson nude!”
Oh, that was the last straw. Olympia sighed again, this one burning the back of her throat, and straightened her shoulders. She drew the line at the desecration of fine art. “Give me fifteen minutes.” She hung up the phone with a click, then rubbed the back of her hand along Renee’s shoulders. “Honey, we have to go to work for a quick minute.”
“Oly, no.” The baby tugged those fine hairs again, struggling to get closer still. It was like trying to hold onto a sweaty, squirmy ball of fire.
She usually tried to dissuade Renee from the cutesy nickname Harlan thought it hilarious to call her behind her back. Today, however, it was said with such sadness she had no choice but to let it slide. “Do you want me to call Harlan back and have him come to watch you? Either that or you can come with me. I want to give you the choice.”
There was no way Olympia felt comfortable leaving the toddler, even with Harlan. Renee slowly nodded and, although she wasn’t sure which option the child agreed to, she opted to go with the latter, not wanting to disturb Harlan again.
She didn’t want to need him.
Bundling Renee in several layers to keep her warm, Olympia packed her up in the car and drove to the gallery. She arrived minutes later and hurried toward the staff workroom with the child on her hip.
“What’s going on here?” She kept her voice authoritative, praying no one would notice the giant dark circles under her eyes that made her look like she’d been sucker punched.
Ashleigh turned to her with wild eyes, trembling like she was the one who’d been attacked. “We managed to corner him in the bathroom but he’s going nuts. Off his meds or something. He started screaming and yelling and threatening anyone who came near him.”
