Watching Jason stride rapidly away, Morgan gnawed anxiously on her lower lip. Although everything appeared to be going well so far, she had to wonder if this plan was going to work. None of the others had, and she only had the next few hours to try and win Jason back. Morgan had promised him that tonight would be the end of it, and whether he believed her or not, she was a woman of her word.
She would have to be a fool, however, not to realize that her chances were getting slimmer by the minute. And she was no fool, even if, at times lately, she had been acting like one.
Something else was bothering her, too. A fact she had been deliberately pushing to the back of her mind. The first time she had gone after what she wanted it had ended in heartache, and she couldn’t help but wonder if the same thing would happen this time.
Groups formed, broke up and formed again, and Morgan moved about the room with bright friendliness, meeting and talking with fellow business owners. Every once in a while, she would look over at Jason where he was lounging against the bar, and their eyes would lock. The passion that raced between them was a very real thing. It had substance and a life of its own. Jason could try to deny it all he wanted, but it was something that neither of them seemed to be able to help. It was just there—like the sun in the morning, the moon and stars on a cloudless night.
Morgan started toward him, but Dirk appeared at her side. “I’m here to claim my dance, pretty baby.”
Morgan hated Dirk’s habit of calling women by familiar pet names, and the forced smile she gave him almost cracked her face—although from a distance, it must have seemed genuine. “Some other time, perhaps. I’ve decided I’d rather not dance tonight.” The last thing in the world she wanted to do was to dance with Dirk Concannon.
“But I’ve been waiting since dinner. You can’t tell me no now!”
Dirk took the matter out of her hands by leading her onto the dance floor, and once there, holding her in what was no doubt his idea of a romantic embrace. In actuality, it was a bear hug, and Morgan found it terribly hard to breathe. But she couldn’t complain. She had brought it all on herself and it served her right for bringing up the subject of dancing within his hearing. It was a bad sign that she couldn’t seem to learn.
Doing her utmost to keep in step with Dirk’s erratic sense of rhythm and, at the same time, to relax against him, Morgan looked over his shoulder to see Jason watching them closely. Never one to miss a shot, Morgan adopted a sultry look and mouthed the words, “You’re beautiful,” to him. To her great surprise, she saw a dark flush creep up his neck to his face, coloring it with an uncharacteristic blush. Immediately afterwards, though, he tossed down a glass of some potent-looking beverage and turned his back on her.
What now? Morgan considered. Unfortunately, she could only concentrate on one problem at a time, and for the moment, Dirk’s wandering hands demanded her immediate attention. He was moving the blue chiffon over the green silk in a manner that Morgan found nauseating. She managed to wedge one of her hands between them, but he paid no attention.
“Oh, baby,” he crooned into her ear, “you really take my breath away. I’ve been after you for a long time, and I’ve finally got you in my arms.”
“D-Dirk.” Morgan pushed against him. “Why don’t we go get something to drink?”
He pulled her closer. “Yeah, sure, baby, in a minute. Right now, I just want to feel you against me.” His hands had moved down to her hips, roaming more and more freely.
Trying again, Morgan protested, pushing a little harder, “But I could really use a drink, Dirk. There are too many people on this dance floor. It’s so close in here, and I’m getting hot!”
“That’s the whole idea, baby. That’s the whole idea.”
Dear Lord in heaven, Morgan thought despairingly, Dirk Concannon must be made of solid wood from the neck up.
The next moment she was free and standing beside Jason. He had Morgan’s wrist circled with one of his hands and the front of Dirk’s shirt twisted securely in his other. “Morgan’s through dancing for the night,” he informed her startled partner tersely. “As a matter of fact, Concannon, she’s through with you, period. And the next time I see you, if I ever see you again, you had better be as far away from Morgan as possible.”
“Jason!” she exclaimed, trying to contain her happiness over his obvious jealousy as he dragged her off the dance floor and over to a secluded corner of the room. “That was very rude.”
“I’ll tell you what’s rude,” Jason rounded fiercely on her once they had reached the relative isolation of the corner. “It’s rude to allow one man to practically make love to you, when you’re on a date with another man.”
Observing that his eyes were almost black, Morgan told herself that she should be congratulated on her brilliant job of arousing him. But what had caused it? Passion? Anger? Or maybe it was simply a combination of both. Perhaps it didn’t really matter. The important thing was she had gotten him to drop his attitude of cold indifference and to show some honest emotion.
The level of excitement between them had been steadily escalating all evening and now a familiar languor entered her bloodstream, causing her voice to give away her state. “You’d like to make love to me, wouldn’t you, Jason?”
“Love doesn’t enter into what I’d like to do to you, Morgan.” His hold on her wrist tightened painfully.
“Then, you call it what you want, and I’ll call it what I want. Words won’t change anything.”
“What I want is for you to give up, go away and leave me the hell alone.”
“I can’t believe that’s what you really mean. I love you, Jason, and—”
“Don’t say that!”
“All right,” Morgan agreed softly, edging forward until her body rested against his and putting her free arm around his neck, “I won’t tell you I love you. Instead I’ll tell you how much I desire you and crave you.” She pointed the end of her tongue and flicked it into the deep cleft of his chin. “Wanting someone so badly and not being able to have them is a living hell.”
“What do you know about hell?”
“Hell is really a very simple term to define, Jason. Hell is not having you.” He tried to put some distance between them by taking a step backward, but Morgan followed. “I miss everything we had together in Martinique. We need to be that way again, to laugh, to play, to make love …”
“Stop it, Morgan! You don’t know what you’re saying.”
Her eyes glistened with her love for him, and her voice cracked with longing. “Oh, Jason.”
He looked down at her for a long, endless moment. “Damn you, Morgan Saunders. Damn you, damn you, damn you.”
“I am damned without you.”
“Come on,” he choked. He propelled her forcefully out of the room, procuring their coats and shoving hers on her, then pushing her outside into the cold, starless midnight toward his car.
He seated her, then stalked around to his side and got in. He started it, then sat back, allowing it to idle in order to warm it up.
For a long period of time that seemed to stretch to forever, Jason stared straight ahead into the darkness, apparently wrestling with the blackness of his thoughts and leaving Morgan to deal silently with her own. Even so, there was a highly charged awareness that streamed between them, making it impossible for one not to be aware of the other’s every breath.
Suddenly and without warning, Jason turned. Grabbing the front of her coat with one hand, he jerked her to him and his lips came down on hers in a forcefully sensual kiss.
Morgan didn’t even think about resisting. It had been so long since Jason had kissed her and held her. All she could think about was that she had finally broken through his control. She had won … hadn’t she?
His hand went inside her coat, delving into the neckline of her dress, feeling, exploring and kneading her breast as if he, too, had been starved for the touch of her. Leaving her breast, his hand skimmed restlessly down to her hips, descending and then ascend
ing until it was high up under her skirt.
“My God,” he ground out hoarsely. “You really don’t have anything on under this dress.”
“I don’t lie, Jason.”
For some reason, her shakily spoken words infuriated him. His fingers began to stroke her with a breathstopping imperativeness—not caring that they were in a parked car on a well-lit parking lot where anyone might happen to walk by—and all the while holding her fast to him.
Morgan pushed aside Jason’s coat and with fumbling fingers unbuttoned his shirt. Then, moving the top of her dress down to below her breasts, she leaned against his chest, glorying in the textural sensations of the coarse hairs that rasped against her.
Jason groaned, a sound that seemed to come straight from his soul. “You said that no one would know you didn’t have any underwear on underneath this dress … maybe they didn’t, but I did, and it worked on my mind—just as you knew it would. Every time a man came near you tonight, I lost a little more of my sanity.” His breath warmed her as he talked and dropped tiny, ravenous kisses all over her face. “And now I’m afraid you’re going to have to pay the consequences.”
Shoving her away with the exact same swiftness that he had pulled her to him, Jason put the car in gear. Racing through the city streets, they reached his apartment in record time. Not a word had been spoken between them since they had left the parking lot, and Morgan wasn’t sure what to expect. Jason wasn’t acting quite as she had imagined he would. Where was the love and the gentleness he had showed to her in Martinique? And in the end, at this precise moment in time, did she really care?
But once they were both in his apartment, some of the urgency that Morgan had sensed earlier seemed to leave him. He closed the door behind them, and locked and bolted it with systematic care. Then leaning back against it, he made a thorough and devastating inspection of her.
She stood uncertainly, still wearing her coat, but Jason didn’t change his position. He just stayed where he was for an endless length of time, observing her through slitted eyes. At last, just when Morgan’s nerves were about ready to shatter, he pushed away from the door and moved toward her. Grasping the lapels of her coat, he stripped it off her and permitted it to fall to the floor.
Jason smiled, and a frigid shiver of alarm rushed down Morgan’s spine. It was a smile unlike any he had ever given her and the dangerous intent of it was evident. She knew that he was a man who had been driven almost beyond his endurance, and his control had at last broken.
Laying the back of his hand against her chest, he ran a finger inside her dress, rubbing it back and forth across her breast, exerting a light pressure, the tip of his finger barely brushing the erogenous rim of her nipple.
She loved Jason, she wanted him, she was on fire for him. Morgan slumped against him, but Jason pushed her upright, watching with an almost unreal detachment the longing expressions flit across her face.
All at once, he took a firm hold of the upper part of her dress and yanked. The beautiful garment tore in two pieces from top to bottom, and Morgan stood before him naked. Jason became motionless. His gaze touched every square inch of her, from the aquamarine iridescence of her eyes, to the lushness of her full mouth, down to the proud uplift of her breasts, on to the silky length of her legs, and right on down to her toes.
When his gaze came back to her face, he stepped toward her, bringing his body into full contact with hers. Gripping her shoulders, his mouth brushed up and down her neck, tracing across her collarbone to the other side, where his mouth repeated his kissing actions.
Morgan could feel his pelvic hardness against her lower body and it excited her beyond belief. “Jason?”
His lips stayed at the base of her throat, feeling the rapid fire beat of her pulse. Taking a deep shuddering breath, his words sounded forced from the very depths of his being. “Lord help me, but I’ve got to have you.”
He swept her into his arms and carried her into his bedroom, depositing her on the bed. Shedding his clothes with little attention to where they fell, he let his full weight come down on top of her, his mouth covering hers almost in the same instant. Morgan opened her mouth eagerly to the hot raspiness of his tongue and curled her legs around his back with a naturalness born of love and desire.
But there was no gentleness to Jason’s touch. Instead, there was an urgent need, a naked hunger, a raw passion, and yes, a rage that was hurting them both.
His mouth roved impatiently over her face and then lower, to her breasts, fastening firmly onto the receptive tip. His teeth circled her breast in tiny nips, galvanizing electric bits of delight into her system. He sucked first one nipple, then the other, creating an intense and gratifying suction and bringing a helpless moan from Morgan.
The sound seemed to excite Jason further, and his lips nibbled down her stomach, halting between her legs where his tongue took over. He was consuming her, and it was plain that his need to taste all of her was acute.
Morgan’s body was clamoring for his with a sizzling severity that exceeded anything she had felt for him before. Jason came back up to her mouth, crushing it with his, reaching his tongue deep into the sweet recess, until apparently he could wait no longer. Lifting his lower body, he probed the opening he sought, rubbing against her, until Morgan cried out her need.
Jason drove into her with an almost pagan savagery, time after time, and Morgan urged him on, more than meeting his demands with those of her own. A hot, spiraling tension built quickly until, in one tumultuous burst, the world the two of them had created came to an end, and they were suspended together on a plateau of almost unendurable pleasure.
Descending slowly, they fell asleep with their bodies still joined.
#
Morgan awoke in the early hours before dawn with the feeling that she was alone. Jason’s body was no longer lying curled around her, and it was a loss she felt greatly. Her body felt incomplete without his.
Telling herself that he couldn’t have left her and that he had probably awakened hungry and was in the kitchen getting something to eat, she stretched with a satisfied abandon and rolled over.
Jason lay on the other side of the bed, awake and staring at the ceiling. He must have felt her movements, yet he didn’t turn.
Watching him for a moment, a sense of unease stole over her. Something was wrong, and Morgan asked quietly, “What is it that you see on the ceiling?”
“You,” he responded. “Everywhere there’s you.”
He still didn’t look at her. His face was a chiseled profile, hard and dark. Morgan pursued. “Why did you blush last night when I mouthed the words, ‘You’re beautiful’? I had never seen you do that before.”
“Because … right at that moment, I had been thinking the very same thing” —Jason’s voice was a monotone, colorless and dull— “and I was having to fight to keep myself from going to you.”
“But you did anyway.”
“Yes … I did.” He turned his head toward her, and his words had a certain resigned flatness to them. “I couldn’t stand to see that jerk’s hands on you one more second.”
Morgan mouth curved gently. “That proves that we belong together.”
“Together in hell.” It was a statement of fact.
“How about heaven?” Her smile broadened, trying to infuse lightheartedness into the heavy atmosphere. “I hear the climate is much better.”
Jason reached across the bed and touched her mouth with his forefinger. “Why are you smiling?”
The strangeness of Jason’s mood pervaded the bedroom, causing Morgan to stay where she was, and she answered him in a tone as solemn as his. “Because everything is going to be all right.”
“You think so?”
“Yes. Things are working out between you and me, and when David gets back, we can all three sit down and talk. He’ll be all right. You’ll see.”
“Shut up, Morgan.” He reached over and pulled her to him. “I’m not through with you yet.”
And this
time, he made love to her with exquisite slowness, reminding her of their lovemaking in the rain forest. But when next she woke, she was alone again.
A momentary wall of despair hit her. She didn’t think she could cope with even one more setback. Morgan felt as if she had been beating her head against a brick wall for far too long, and she was tired of the pain.
Muffled sounds from the other room soon reassured her that at least Jason was close by. Getting up from the bed, Morgan decided upon a shower. This time she was able to linger for as long as she wanted, the warm steam permeating the pores of her skin, opening them to the fragrant smell of Jason’s soap.
Once again, she chose a black velour towel over the ever-present bathrobe, and, feeling refreshed, sauntered forth to find Jason.
Standing by the telephone, as if he had just completed a call, or was thinking of making a call, he was drinking a cup of coffee. The way his gaze followed her movements made Morgan slightly uncomfortable, but she stubbornly shrugged off the feeling.
“Good morning, darling.” She pressed a kiss onto his cold cheek.
Jason took another sip of coffee and put the cup down. “You’re looking beautiful as always, Morgan. How do you manage it?”
His words were a compliment, but the intonation was something else. Morgan shook her head. “Lucky genes, I suppose.” Noticing that a mist of heat still rose from his cup, she raised it to her lips. “Do you mind?” she inquired, taking a drink of the bracing black liquid.
“Not at all, Morgan. By all means, help yourself to anything of mine that happens to take your fancy.”
She had been walking toward the couch, but now she turned around. “I beg your pardon?” Again, it wasn’t so much the words, as it had been the tone.
“You heard me.”
Morgan sat down, eyeing Jason’s granitelike countenance with a profound sadness. Here it was, then. Even after everything she had done, it wasn’t going to work. Nothing had really changed between them, except that they had made love. She exhaled wearily. “I gather there’s something in particular you’re referring to?”
The Seduction of Jason Page 13
