"I thought you wanted me to kiss you all over," he said. He was breathing as hard as she was. As he held her gaze, he kissed her just below her belly button. "You want me to stop?"
Lib didn't answer. She couldn't answer.
He kissed her again, lower, and then lower, and he ran his tongue along her skin just above the bikini-cut waistband of her panties.
"Should I stop?" he said again, his voice no more than a velvety whisper.
Lib found her voice. "No," she said, most definitely. "No, don't stop."
Luke smiled again, and reaching for the white cotton of her panties, he pulled them down, off her hips, down the long, shapely lengths of her legs and over her feet.
He kissed the instep of her foot, then left a trail of warm kisses as he worked his way up, up to her ankle, up her calf, up past her knee, up to the soft, extra sensitive area of her inner thigh.
And, as she'd requested, he didn't stop there.
Lib caught her breath as he touched her, then kissed her most intimately. The sensations were incredible, exquisite, and her hips thrust upward, almost of their own accord, driving him harder, deeper into her.
He kissed her again, caressing her with his tongue, stroking, laving, driving her to the edge until she writhed beneath him.
It was too intense, too much, too one-sided. Lib tried to pull back, away from him, pushing herself along the bed. But he followed, holding tightly to her hips.
"Luke!" she said.
He lifted his head, smiling at her, a devilish glint in his dark eyes. "You said not to stop."
"I don't want you to stop," she said. "I want..."
He was touching her, his fingers taking up where his mouth had left off. Somehow he knew exactly where to touch her, exactly how to make her feel so good...
"What?" he whispered, shifting his weight so he was lying beside her, still touching, always touching. He lowered his mouth to her breast, encircling her nipple with his tongue. "What do you want? Tell me what you want."
Liberty wanted forever, and gazing into his eyes, she could almost believe it was hers to have. She honestly believed that he loved her. How could he look at her that way, how could all that love she saw in his eyes be anything but genuine?
"At the risk of sounding old-fashioned," Lib said softly, "I want you to make me your own."
"I hate to break it to you, babe, but you already are mine," he said. "And I am absolutely all yours. We sealed that deal with our first kiss."
He was serious.
Lib felt all of her love for this man rise up and lodge tightly in her throat. "Make love to me," she whispered.
Luke smiled. "I thought that was what I was doing."
She wriggled free from his arms, raking her tousled hair back from her face as she knelt beside him on the bed. She slipped her fingers underneath the elastic waistband of his briefs and tugged them down, freeing him from their confines.
She let him see the pleasure in her eyes as she looked at him. She didn't try to hide the fact that his body — all six foot four inches of it — turned her on.
It was more than clear that she turned him on. She closed her hand around his hardness and he murmured his pleasure as she stroked him. She straddled his legs, still touching him, knowing that it wouldn't be much longer until he was inside of her.
He watched her, his gaze holding her in place, hypnotizing her with his intensity.
She had to have him now. Right now.
But first
Luke was thinking the exact same thing. Together, they dove for the side of the bed, where Lib's purse sat on the floor. She reached it first, pulling it up onto the bed with them. She quickly found the box that she'd picked up at the drugstore only a few days ago, in anticipation of this very event.
Luke took the box out of her hands and nearly tore it in half in his haste to open it.
As Luke tore one apart from the rest and then open, Lib pushed everything else off the bed. And then, God, he was covered and she lunged for him even as he grabbed for her.
He kissed her hard as he pulled her down on top of him, and Lib gasped as then, oh, he was inside of her, filling her completely, incredibly, perfectly.
Luke breathed her name, and as she looked into his eyes, she knew that this magic she was feeling was mutual. She knew he felt it, too.
Forever was starting right here and now. This love-making was a marriage of souls, a joining of hearts as well as bodies.
Luke kissed her, her mouth, her neck, her breasts, moving beneath her, holding her tightly in his arms, anticipating her every pleasure, her every want and need.
Liberty was in heaven.
Luke lowered himself back onto the bed, driving himself even deeper inside her. And Lib climaxed, waves of colors and lights and incredible, powerful pleasure lifting her up and spinning her around. She threw back her head and laughed with the sheer joy of the sensations, both physical and emotional.
It couldn't get better than this — but it was hers, Luke was hers until the end of time.
His body tightened and bucked as he found his release and she leaned forward and kissed him. He kissed her back, hungrily, savagely, inhaling her, possessing her as thoroughly as he possibly could. And then, spent, he held her tightly, as if he would never let her go.
* * *
Beep, beep.
The sound of a car horn cut through the early morning stillness, and they both stiffened. Lib lifted her head, staring down into Luke's deep brown eyes.
Beep. Bee".
"That's my ride," Luke realized. It was nearly five-thirty, and the limo driver had arrived, ready to take him to the little local airport. He closed his eyes, swearing softly. "Lib, I don't want to go. I'll tell the driver I won't be needing him today."
Lib sat up, surprise in her eyes. "Luke, you can't be serious."
He pushed himself up on his elbows. "Sweetheart, I'm damned serious."
"You've been waiting three weeks for this meeting," she said. She lifted herself off of him.
"I've been waiting longer than that to make love to you," Luke countered, reaching for her and holding her close. "Now that I have, I'm not going to just get up and run out of here."
The limo horn honked again.
"Luke, please," she said, wiggling free from his arms. She sat next to him on the bed and pushed his hair back from his face. "If you don't go to the meeting in Boston, your deal could fall through. I'd never forgive myself."
"To hell with the deal," Luke said, leaning forward and kissing her.
Lib closed her eyes. It would be so easy to give in. He would go and dismiss the limo driver, and they would spend the rest of the morning, the rest of the day and probably most of the night right here in her room, in her bed. But eventually reality would return, and Luke would come to realize all that he had given up.
No, it would be a mistake.
She pulled away from him. "There's no way I'm going to let you stay," she said. "My God, Luke, before we got sidetracked, you were telling me just how important that land is to you! No way am I going to let you jeopardize your plan to buy it back."
"To hell with the land," he said, reaching for her again.
But she stopped him. "You don't mean that, and you know it," she said, her violet eyes serious. "Go to Boston. I'll be here when you get back."
She could see the uncertainty in his eyes, and she climbed out of bed, collecting his clothes from where he'd thrown them on the floor. She picked up his suit jacket, turned the sleeves right side out and brushed it off. "Maybe you should shower," she said. "I'll put on a robe and tell the driver you'll be right down and—"
"No," Luke said. He stood up and went into the adjoining bathroom, but he didn't turn on the shower. When he came back out, he pulled on his shorts and then his pants. "If I'm going, I'm going with your scent still on my body. I'll shower tonight. When I get back."
Lib handed him his shirt. She smiled at him. "What time will your flight get in?"
"Five
-thirty," he said, slipping his arms into the sleeves. "Earlier if I can, and believe me, I'll be trying." He shook his head with a rueful laugh. "I can't believe you're standing here naked, and I'm leaving. "
He pulled her into his arms and kissed her, running his hands up and down her bare back. Lib laughed and tried to button his shirt. "You're making this difficult," she said. "The driver's going to leave."
"No, he's not," Luke countered. "He's fifteen minutes early. He's going to sit there the way he always does, and drink his coffee and eat a donut and wait for me to come out."
Lord, she was beautiful, and not at all embarrassed by the fact that she was still naked while he was nearly dressed. He couldn't resist, and his fingers found the warm, slick area between her legs. "I want more," he said, his voice husky. He could feel his body responding, hardening, as if he were some seventeen-year-old kid. She moved against him, and he groaned. "Liberty, how can I leave?"
She kissed him and her mouth tasted like paradise.
"If your plane gets in at five-thirty," she said, "I'll see you at six." She smiled as she gently pulled free from his hands. "We can celebrate the sale of your video stores."
Luke was silent as he watched her cross the room and slip into an old-fashioned-looking silvery-grey silk robe. It covered her, but it clung in all the right places. If anything, she looked even sexier. She crossed the room, holding out his tie.
"Let's go out to dinner tonight," he said, tying it around his neck and tucking in his shirt. Damn, was he going to have an erection all day? Funny, he'd thought making love to Lib would relieve some of the pressure he felt. Instead, it made it worse.
"Pizza or the Inn?" she asked, leaning closer to adjust the knot in his tie.
"The Inn," he said. "Let's get dressed up. I want this to be special." So what if it was a few weeks early. He'd ask her to marry him tonight.
"You want me to make a reservation for dinner?" she asked as she led him out of her bedroom and down the stairs. Her smile turned decidedly wicked. "At, oh, say, ten o' clock?"
Their gazes locked as Luke grinned back at her. "Yeah," he managed to say, his voice husky. "That sounds just about perfect."
Chapter Nine
At five-thirty, as Lib was putting the finishing touches on her makeup, the telephone rang. She put the top back onto her lipstick, and answered the phone after the second ring.
"Hello?"
"Lib, you're not going to believe this, but I'm still in Boston." It was Luke, and he didn't sound happy.
She slowly sat down on her bed. "What went wrong?" she asked quietly.
He laughed, but there wasn't a trace of humor in it. "What didn't go wrong?" he said. "We've been negotiating since nine-thirty, and I still don't have a clue as to what these guys really want. If I knew, I'd be more than willing to give in — simply for the sake of getting the hell out of here."
Lib looked at her reflection in the mirror of Harriet's vanity. She was wearing her black dress — the one she used to wear as a movie extra for party scenes — the one Luke had liked so much. And she was actually wearing panty- hose. The gleaming black silk made her long legs glimmer, and the black leather of her high-heeled pumps gleamed in the late afternoon light.
"I'm sorry," Lib said.
"I am, too," Luke said. There was silence for a moment, then he said, "Lord, you don't know how much I want to be home right now."
Lib smiled. "Yes, I do."
She heard him take a deep breath and let it out slowly. "Damn," he said. He sounded so tired and discouraged.
"I loved what we did this morning," Lib said softly.
Luke didn't say anything, not at first, but she could almost feel the sudden electrical energy crackling through the telephone wires.
"Yeah," he said huskily. "I did, too."
"I'm glad we waited," she said, "but I'm also glad that we finally stopped waiting."
"I should be kissing you," Luke said. "I should be taking off your clothes, not preparing for another damned meeting."
"I love the way you feel inside me," Lib said. "And when we move... oh..."
Luke groaned. "Lord," he said. "Are you trying to kill me?"
"And your mouth," Lib said. "The way you kissed me... I've been thinking about kissing you."
All over. She didn't say the words. She didn't have to. But the image it brought to mind was excruciatingly delicious. "You're torturing me," he said.
Lib laughed. "Think of it as anticipation," she said. "Or incentive to close this deal and get back here soon."
Luke sighed. "I wish," he said. "The real bitch of the situation is that I'm not sure when I will be back. We've got a dinner meeting scheduled tonight, and Rich thinks it'll run into the early morning. I've got a room reserved at the Adam's Mark Hotel, if you need me."
"I need you," Lib said, her voice husky, "but I can wait."
* * *
Rich Lowell frowned at Luke across the breakfast table. "You can't be serious."
Luke pushed his half-eaten omelet back from the edge of the table, eyeing it with distaste. "I can't remember the last time I've been more serious," he said, taking a long swallow of his tepid coffee.
"You gonna eat your bacon?" Rich asked hopefully.
Luke waved the uneaten food on his plate away, and Rich reached for it. "You're not eating enough," the lawyer noted, for the first time looking Luke over carefully.
The man looked like hell. Slumped in his seat, nursing a cup of black coffee, Luke looked more like a refugee than a man working to unload a pair of very healthy video stores in an economically undepressed part of New Eng-land. His eyes had smudges of black underneath them, as if he'd slept very little during the past three days of negotiations. His handsome face was lined with fatigue, and he pressed the heel of one hand to his forehead as if he had a headache.
"If you leave now," Rich said, using a strip of bacon to point in Luke's direction, "you can kiss this whole deal good-bye."
"They're not gonna buy," Luke said flatly. "We're wasting our time."
"Give it another twenty-four hours," Rich said. He looked back at Luke's barely touched omelet. "You want me to order you something else?"
Luke shook his head. He'd already looked. Liberty Jones wasn't on the menu.
* * *
Luke sat on the hotel room bed, telephone to his ear, listening to the electronic ringing. He'd packed up the extra shirts and underwear he'd been forced to buy when he realized he'd need to stay over in Boston more than one night. The inexpensive overnight bag he'd picked up was sitting next to the door. He let himself sink back onto the bed, lying flat on his back as, all those miles away in Sterling, the phone continued to ring.
Brenda picked it up on the sixth ring, out of breath. "Yeah, I'm here, I'm here," she said. "I was outside in the garden."
"Brenda."
"Luke! Did you close the deal?"
Luke closed his eyes. "No. It fell through."
"I'm sorry," she said. "Can I help?"
"You have ninety thousand dollars I can borrow?"
"I wish I did—"
"Damn it, Brenda, I was so close," he said, then took a deep, steadying breath. "What are my chances of selling either the pizza place or the ski shop before next Friday?"
Brenda couldn't hold back a skeptical laugh.
"That good, huh?" Luke said.
"Giving me six business days to sell a piece of real estate is hardly realistic," she said.
"Yeah, I know," he said. "But give it a try, will you? And can you do me another favor? Can you run over to Lib's, give her a message for me? I tried calling her, but she didn't answer. She's probably working outside, and she doesn't have an answering machine. See, I won't be home until Wednesday at the absolute earliest. Rich got a line on a couple of guys down in Texas who might be interested in the video stores. Tell Lib I'll call her as soon as I know where we'll be staying. And tell Lib..."
"Yes?" Brenda prompted.
Luke stood up, putting the base of th
e telephone back on the nightstand. He looked out the window at panoramic view of the city of Boston. "Tell Lib," he said again. What? That he ached for her? That he burned for her? That he wanted her more than he'd ever wanted any other woman in the world?
Or maybe that he loved her?
No, he hadn't said those words to her yet, and he wanted her to hear them directly from him, and in per-son, too.
"Tell her with any luck, I'll see her on Wednesday."
* * *
Lib was nearly finished painting the trim of the house when she saw the cloud of dust that heralded the arrival of a car on Forest Road.
Luke, she thought, with a surge of excitement that quickly turned to disappointment when she realized the car in question was a sporty station wagon, not an airport limousine.
As she watched from her perch on the ladder, the station wagon pulled into her driveway. The engine was turned off, and the sudden silence was broken only by the quiet ticking sound of the engine cooling. Then the front door opened, and Brenda Fulton stepped out.
Luke's sister was wearing tailored pants and a matching jacket with a crisp white blouse underneath. She shielded her eyes against the bright sun as she looked up at Lib. "Hi," she called out.
Lib unhooked her leg from the ladder and climbed down, carrying her paint bucket and brush in one hand. "Hi," she said, when she reached the bottom. She set the paint down on the grass and wiped her paint-splattered hands on her cut-off jeans. "This is a surprise."
"Luke called me," Brenda said, noticing the light of hope that leapt into Lib's eyes.
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