by Carole Buck
The stroke of his fingertips against the entrance to her feminine core made her arch and vibrate like a plucked bowstring. Chis found the nerve-rich nubbin sheltered amid the fragile folds of flesh and teased it very, very gently.
Her hips jerked. She rolled her head back and forth, clutching at the bed linens.
Chris lured her to the edge of fulfillment and held her there for what seemed an eternity before he granted her release. Her body spasmed, racked by a spill of pleasure so intense it was almost beyond endurance.
And then, finally..
Lucy felt Chris shift his weight, positioning himself between her legs.
“Open to me, Lucy,” he urged in a velvety whisper. “Please. Open to me.”
She did.
There was an instant of discomfort as he entered her. A disorienting sense of having lost dominion over her own body. Then came an exquisite feeling of fullness. The solitary ecstasy she’d experienced a few moments before paled in comparison to the consummation this sensation promised.
“Yes.” She embraced Chris with her arms and legs, offering everything. This was what she’d wanted. This. With him. Now. “Oh ...yes.”
They moved together, two as one. There was nothing planned about it. Their physical attunement was utterly instinctive. Like yin and yang, they counterbalanced and completed.
“Lucy—”
“Chris—”
They reached the ultimate peak. Clinging together, they hurtled over.
There were no words.
For a long, long while, there didn’t need to be.
“Are you all right?” Chris eventually asked.
“Mmm.”
“Is that a yes?”
“Mmm...hmm.”
He ran a hand down her back, stroking gently against the hollow at the base of her spine. Lucy stirred and pressed a kiss against the side of his neck.
There was a soft, sweet silence. Then Chris said in a meditative tone, “I’ve never been anyone’s first time before.”
Lucy laughed a little, not really understanding why. She raised herself up a few inches and gazed down into her lover’s face. She smiled teasingly. “Were you nervous?”
“What do you think?” He flushed, suddenly boyish.
She dipped her head and brushed her lips against his. The flavor of his mouth was wickedly familiar. She suspected it might be addictive, too. “If you were,” she murmured, “I didn’t notice.”
He reversed their positions in a sequence of moves Lucy couldn’t quite follow.
“If that’s the case...” he kissed the tip of her nose “...I was the epitome of calm. Completely in control the whole time.”
She laughed again, then surrendered to an impulse she knew was unwise. “Who was your first time?”
Chris didn’t miss a beat. “At the moment, I can’t remember anything that happened before you said the only thing you were going to want to do afterward was do it again.”
“All right.” Lucy suppressed a sigh. She hadn’t really expected him to kiss and tell names. Christopher Dodson Banks was a gentleman. “Forget who. How about when?”
Someone called her name.
“You’re asking for a specific date?”
“A general time frame.”
Someone called her name a second time. Lucy tried to gesture for quiet, but found she couldn’t seem to move her hands.
“End of high school.”
Again, her name. It was inflected more imperatively than on the two previous occasions, and followed by an order.
She shifted, trying to figure out why someone who sounded remarkably like the man she was questioning about his romantic history would be telling her to waka up. She was up!
Wasn’t... she?
“Dammit, Lucy...”
Lucia Annette Falco’s wonderful dream smashed head-on into awful reality.
Nine
Finally, Chris thought as his ex-wife jerked awake with a gasp. She looked around, her flushed face revealing a combination of disorientation and dismay.
He’d been angry when Lucy went to sleep on him. He wasn’t going to deny that. But he’d understood why she’d sought to shut down, at least temporarily. And angry as he was, he’d intended to let her slumber in peace. He’d even tried to will himself into dropping off.
He’d been right on the verge of dozing, too, when his companion in captivity started to murmur. It had sounded like nonsense at first, so he’d told himself to ignore it. And he had. He’d ignored it right up until the instant she uttered his name in a voice so filled with sensuality that every nerve in his body snapped to attention.
He’d opened his eyes and looked at her. This had been a mistake. A big mistake. One glimpse of the unmistakably erotic way Lucy was shifting her hips had kicked his libido into overdrive. The fact that the budding thrust of her nipples was very obvious beneath the wine-colored wool of her dress had done nothing to cool him off.
He’d tried to clamp down on his responses. He’d closed his eyes. He’d clenched his hands. He’d counted aloud, by threes. But the fuse was lit and his imagination fully engaged.
Besides. While he could block sight and sound, he’d had no way to disconnect his nose. The storage room was small. Lucy had been very stimulated. Within a matter of seconds, he’d caught the distinctive scent of her arousal.
He’d endured it as long as he could. But it had soon became throbbingly evident that he was teetering on the brink of a major embarrassment. That was when he’d started calling Lucy’s name and ordering her to wake up.
“Wh-what...happened, Chris?” his ex-wife asked throatily. “Why did you wake me up?”
“You were moaning. And moving around.”
Her eyes widened. The color in her cheeks intensified. She shifted. Her nostrils flared. The color in her cheeks turned hectic.
The collar of Chris’s shirt got very tight. Likewise, the fit of his briefs.
“I was afraid you were having a nightmare,” he added, lying through his teeth. He knew perfectly well what she’d been having. And unless he was very much mistaken, she’d just had another one.
Lucy licked her lips, studying him with disconcerting directness. “I’m sorry if I disturbed you.”
“You said my name.” Chris wondered fleetingly how he would have reacted bad it been another man’s. He decided he didn’t want to know.
“That’s why you thought it was a...nightmare?”
“Something like that.”
Her mouth curved into a smile that was lush with feminine secrets. Her lashes fluttered down to veil her dark eyes. After a few seconds, she said, “Well, it wasn’t.”
There was a long silence. A long, long silence. Somewhere during the course of it, Chris’s pulse rate eased out of potential stroke territory and the fit of his undershorts loosened to the point where he could shift position without worrying about humiliating himself.
Then Lucy squirmed.
“Uh-oh,” she muttered, furrowing her brow.
“What?” He was wary.
She lifted her gaze to his, plainly embarrassed. “How do you think Tom, Dick and Butch would respond to a request for a visit to the rest room?”
Chris frowned, suddenly conscious of the pressure of the three cans of soda he’d chugalugged with the pizzas he’d purchased.
“There’s only one way to find out,” he said. “Let’s get them in here and ask.”
Lucy glanced at her wristwatch and grimaced. It was 3:46 a.m. on the first day of a brand-new year. She’d been sitting in a toilet stall for nigh on five minutes with no results. It was time to take action.
“Tom?”
“Yeah?”
“Would you turn on the tap, please?”
“Oh, uh, sure. Hot or cold?”
“Your choice.”
“Oh. Okay. I’m, uh, gonna do hot. Here goes.”
Yes, she thought gratefully as the gush of running water started to work its magic.
“I’m really sorry I have t
o stand in here, Lucy.” The tone was plaintive. “But Butch said, since there’s a window...”
“It’s okay, Tom,” she responded, wondering how many more times he was going to apologize.
“I’m keepin’ my fingers in my ears, so I don’t really hear anything.”
“That’s very considerate of you.”
“Huh?”
“That’s very...” She broke off. stifling a sudden yawn.
“Lucy?”
“Nothing, Tom. Nothing. Tell me a little more about you and Dick and Dora-Jean.”
“I told you mostly everything. Dora-Jean divorced Dick ‘cause he paid her too much attention and she divorced me ’cause I guess I ignored her. Then she married and divorced Dick again because I don’t exactly know why except maybe she didn’t have anything better to do. This isn’t bad-mouthin’ her, but sometimes it’s really hard to figure out what Dora-Jean wants, you know? I’m not even sure she’s sure.”
Lucy experienced a twinge of emotional kinship. “That happens.”
“Can I tell you the rest of our escape plan now? ’Cause it really is a planned plan.”
“Sure, Tom.”
“How far did I get before?”
“Uh...” Lucy tried to recall. The bearded Mr. Spivey had started chattering about the plan out of nervousness, she suspected. Still feeling the aftershocks from her incredibly erotic dream—as well as trying to cope with the emotions roiled up by some of the things Chris and she had said to each other—she hadn’t really listened.
“Oh, I know!” Tom announced excitedly. “I was tellin’ you about how we made a list of the countries where you can go and they won’t send you back.”
“Right.”
Her mind started to drift after the first three or four words. Her thoughts weren’t terribly coherent, but they all revolved around her ex-husband. She also kept returning to the realization that she and Chris probably had talked more intensely—more openly—during the past eleven or so hours than they had during their entire marriage. She’d vented feelings she’d scarcely been aware of having. She’d told truths she’d taken more than a decade to discover.
She suspected—No. She knew. She knew that Chris had done the same.
But for all the openness and intensity, they hadn’t spoken of what had happened ten days before their first wedding anniversary. Not... yet.
Lucy drew a shaky breath, knitting her fingers together, then pulling them apart. The question was hers to ask. Or not to ask. It was plain that Chris had left the final decision up to her. It wasn’t emotional cowardice on his part, of that she was sure. Instead, it seemed to be a form of—
“I don’t believe this!” It was Dick Spivey. He was inside the rest room, and he sounded furious. “You told Lucy our entire escape plan?”
Uh-oh, she thought with a guilty grimace.
“So what if I did?” Tom’s tone wavered between defiance and anxiety.
“So what? So what? So you’ve wrecked everything, you dimwit!”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Yeah! Do you know how mad Butch is going to be?”
“B-B-Butch?” The defiance was gone. Anxiety gave way to something more acute.
“Uh-huh, Butch. We worked weeks planning this escape route! We cashed in all our frequent-flier miles. I even used those coupons me and Dora-Jean were saving for our, uh, second second honeymoon! And now it’s all ruined! We’re going to have to cancel everything, Tom! Do you hear me? Every single solitary thing! We’re probably going to have to hitchhike out of the country! Or take a bus—”
“No! No! You promised we were gonna fly in first class! With free champagne!”
“Forget first class.” The tone was trenchant. “And forget the fancy restaurants and big suites. It’s gonna be greasy spoons and roach motels for us, because you couldn’t keep your mouth shut!”
“But why?”
“Because Lucy will tell the police everything!”
Lucy froze in the act of peeling off her ruined panty hose. It had never even occurred to her, she thought, pressing her lips together to hold back a semihysterical giggle. She’d let ninety-nine and nine-tenths percent of Tom’s babbling go in one ear and out the other.
Chris would have been taking notes, she told herself. And he would have been asking cogent questions. He would have found out all there was to know about the escape plan and then some.
She shook her head despairingly. She’d gone beyond the soft-touch stage and into mush-brain territory.
“So?”
“So, blabbermouth, if we do any of our escape plan, they’ll be able to catch us! They’ll be waiting for us!”
There was a long pause.
“Lucy wouldn’t do that,” Tom finally asserted. Then he raised his voice and demanded, “Lucy! Tell Dick you wouldn’t do that!”
She gulped. “Uh—”
“The police would make her do it,” Dick declared fiercely.
“They would?”
Lucy bit her lower lip, thinking hard. A fragment of the conversation she’d had with Wayne Dweck skittered through her brain. Then a tidbit of the one she’d had with Jimmy Burns. Oddly enough, it triggered the memory of Butch Johnson’s explanation of how he’d ended up doing time for burglary.
She stiffened suddenly. Her heart skipped a beat. Maybe two.
What if—?
No, she quickly told herself. It would never work. Only an idiot would fall for such a transparent—
Oh.
Oh...my.
Hmm.
Well, maybe it could work after all.
“There’s only one way to find out,” she whispered.
“Lucy?” It was Dick.
“Just a sec,” she called back, tidying her clothes and fluffing her hair.
“We sort of have a problem.” It was Tom. A very glum-sounding Tom.
Lucy took a slow, steadying breath, then squared her shoulders and unlocked the bathroom stall. Flinging open the door with a flourish, she stepped out. The tiled floor was cool against the soles of her feet.
“Tom and Dick,” she began, consciously mimicking the confidently coaxing inflections of Tiffany Tarrington Toulouse, “I understand you have some trouble with your travel plans.”
The Spivey brothers looked at her.
They looked at each other.
Then they looked back at her.
Finally, they nodded.
“Well, guys...” Lucia Annette Falco spread her hands in a ta-da! gesture. “I’m a travel professional! ”
Although he generally tried to steer clear of gender stereotyping, Chris did subscribe to the notion that women took longer rest room breaks than men. Thus, he was not particularly surprised that he was able to go to the john and back and be tied up again by Butch before Lucy returned from her visit to the loo.
The fact that she was still absent after ten minutes triggered some concern.
What if she’s gotten ill? he asked himself, remembering her earlier pallor. Or had an accident? Damp rest room tiles could be treacherous, especially in stockinged feet. She’d seemed a wee bit wobbly when Tom had escorted her out.
Concern metastasized into fear at the end of twenty minutes. It was obvious that something was wrong.
What if he’d driven her into making some sort of escape bid? Chris demanded of himself. Why hadn’t he shown her some sensitivity? Why hadn’t he cut her some slack? They were being held prisoner, for God’s sake! Granted, their captors seemed more dangerous to themselves than to anybody else. But still! He should have offered his ex-wife upbeat and encouraging conversation, not handed her can after newly opened can of emotional worms!
His mood spiraled downward. What if Tom and Dick and Butch weren’t as harmless as they appeared? Lucy was an intensely alluring woman. What if one of them—
He’d kill him, Chris thought savagely. If any of those bastards dared to touch Lucy, he’d rip the guy’s heart out.
At twenty-one minutes after his ex-wife’s departure fr
om the storage room, Christopher Dodson Banks started yelling for help.
He was still yelling fifteen minutes later, when Tom Spivey opened the storage room door and gestured Lucy inside.
“What’s wrong with you, Chris?” The question was cranky. “Jeez, Louise! Do you have any idea how tough it is to make an entire new escape plan when you’ve got some guy hollerin’ for help in the next room? Poor Lucy could hardly concentrate at her computer!”
Chris barely registered a word of this ridiculous recitation. He was focused on his ex-wife. To say that she had returned to him safe and sound didn’t begin to tell the story. She looked...incandescent.
Her cheeks were flushed with excitement. Her dark eyes were dancing. The curve of her rosy mouth made him think of cats and cream and canary feathers.
For one dizzying split second, it also made him think of kisses. Then he stomped out the reaction and kicked it away.
“I was...concerned,” he finally managed to explain, looking up at Tom.
“About what?”
“Lucy was gone a long time.”
Tom regarded him blankly. “Well, yeah,” he finally conceded, scratching his chin. “I suppose. But you knew she was with us, right?”
Chris glanced at Lucy. Her expression told him to let it go. He did.
“Right,” he agreed, transferring his gaze back to the bearded Spivey brother. “I guess I’m starting to get a little stressed out.”
“Oh, you gotta watch that. Stress can kill you. Try takin’ deep breaths.” Tom demonstrated, hyperventilating to the point of wooziness.
“Tom!” Lucy exclaimed, preventing him toppling over.
“Whuh...whuh h-happened?”
“You need to go outside and sit down, Tom,” Lucy said firmly. “You’ve been working every, very hard. You should take a break.”
The bearded man blinked several times, then shook his head. “I ...I gotta tie you up first, Lucy.”
“No.” She patted his arm, maneuvering him toward the door. “You don’t have to tie me up.”
“Yes, I do. It’s like a...uh...rule.”
