by Susan Ward
Whatever I imagined kissing Alan Manzone would be like—in shame, I admit, I have imagined it more than I want to—it was not this. Erotic and knowing, a total onslaught against the senses, carnality and tenderness blending in waves impossible to fight, turning my body into an uneasy, alternating flow between arousal and fear. Both emotions I don’t want and can’t stop.
In dismay, I realize I’m kissing him back and my body is answering the moves of his pelvis in a hungry, insistent way. I jerk out of his kiss, turning my face away from his.
“Let me go, Manny. Stop this,” I whisper raggedly.
The heat and bulging harness straining within his tight leather pants pushes into me and I reel.
His cheek is pressed against mine, his lips close to my ear. “You don’t want me to let you go. I brought you here to be part of everything I’m doing. To be part of something instead of living hanging onto to the pieces of Jackson Parker. You can have everything with me. Everything you want. Yours and not the legacy of a man who has already lived his life and can only offer you memories and stories of what was and never something you experience for yourself. I’m offering you the opportunity to be what you want to be. A success in your own right. A part of what we’re doing.”
“By fucking you in a dressing room?” I counter scathingly, and then let out a harsh laugh. “Excuse me, Manny, but this is not exactly a novelty to me and we both know where this leaves me. You must think I’m an idiot if you think I’ll fall for a slick line and a fast fuck.”
He jerks my chin so I face him. His eyes begin to flash. “I think you’re an idiot because you don’t want to or can’t understand what it is I’m offering you. What it is I feel for you. What it is I want. You wouldn’t be here if I didn’t care for you, Linda.”
He says that harshly, arrogantly, and yet somehow it’s a turn-on. My head spins, my limbs go weak, and I am pulsing like the beat of a marching band in my sex. I am terrifyingly aware of the feel of him, the taste and the urgency of his body and my own. Out of nowhere I’m nearly out of my mind with the want of him.
I fight to maintain some level of emotional control. “I don’t know what kind of messages you think I’ve been sending out, but it’s not that I want this. If you’ve misunderstood, I’m sorry, but this isn’t what I’m looking for.”
His fingers close around my jaw. “I’m offering you me.”
And before I can break free he is kissing me again and everything inside me rages to match the careening want of his desire. I want to resist, but his mouth punishing against mine moves me at his will, reminding me of my sex-starved flesh and wounded heart, fragile for days because I can’t reach Jack. And in a place deep inside me, my inner woman is exploding with excitement that this beautiful guy is heated and ragged and wanting me. I shouldn’t be thrilled by that, and yet I am rapidly losing myself in the unexpected flash of powerfulness I feel from it.
He pins me against the wall, his lower body grinding into me, his mouth an unrelenting seduction. I mold into him, moving my body there, meeting the dance of his tongue.
His mouth lifts and his panting drowns out my own rapid breathing. He rubs his cock into me.
“I stared at you from the stage, watching me, wanting me,” he whispers against my skin, “and all I could think about was taking you to this room and fucking you here.”
He nips at my neck and I arch upward into him. I let his lips roam my body down to the swell of my breasts, and I am yielding, breathy and exited. He is consumed by an odd, angry desperation to fuck me, and there is still that girl locked inside me, even after Jack, who craves rough, brutal, emotionally void fucking. He’s offering me a hard fuck. Nothing more, and in distress I note I am more than a little tempted.
A measure of sanity stops me from going further. “I thought you only did two women. That you didn’t want emotional complications. We should stop this now since I have no intention of doing the group thing.”
“For you, I’ll make an exception. I want to fuck you with all of me.”
A lump rises in my throat since I haven’t a clue what he means by all of me and I’m disarmingly eager to explore it. He brushes against my sex with his swelling cock, and I grow more wet and pulsing there. My heart commands me to run from the room, but my body holds me here.
I don’t want this, my mind is screaming no, but somehow I can’t stop it. I’m only vaguely aware that he’s moved us to the couch and he’s set me there. I stare up at him, expecting him to cover me with his body, desperate for the feel of him, but he hovers just out of distance, his gaze slowly roaming me in a way that intensifies my arousal.
He takes off his shirt and I can hardly take in air. Every inch of him is perfection. Smooth lines, defined muscles, and tanned skin.
His features looked strained. “I don’t want you to move. To touch me.”
He takes hold of my ankle and slips off my pump. I suck in a deep breath. Everything about him has switched in a blink of an eye from ragged and heated, to slow, gentle and in command.
“No?” I can barely get the word out.
Alan doesn’t answer me. He puts a kiss on my arch and then reaches for my other leg. I hear the shoe dropping to the floor and the feel of his mouth against my ankle.
His hands slowly brush up my legs. “I don’t want to miss even a drop of what this can be,” he murmurs before his mouth descends over my cunt, and even with my body encased in my pants, the first touch of him there nearly makes me come.
He kisses the inside of my thigh as his fingers deftly unfasten my pants. A light tug lowers them from my hips and his mouth makes a light kissing trek from hip bone to hip bone.
Deep down I know this is wrong even as I let him push up my shirt and take a nipple between his teeth. I arch into the sucks and tugs of his mouth, and my body moves against the hand massaging my throbbing sex.
My eyes drift closed. I want so badly to touch him, to taste him… I am snapped from my thoughts by his fingers harshly clutching my chin. My eyes fly open.
“Don’t close your eyes,” he commands. “Don’t look away. I want you to watch me make love to you.”
His voice and his words startle me and my careening senses come to an abrupt halt. Every emotion inside Alan shoots through my veins like an electric current. My passion-frenzied cells lose all sensation. I am frazzled and disoriented and too abruptly comprehending this.
Oh God…he doesn’t want sex. That’s not what he’s after. It’s more dangerous than that. Alan is starving, desperate and wanting, to be loved.
I spring from the couch, avoiding his arms and jerking my clothes back into place. “I can’t do this. I’ve got to go.”
I start to move toward the door and he whirls me back around to face him. “What’s wrong? Why has everything changed?”
He sounds anxious, distraught and young in a way that makes my heart ache for him. I can’t look at him.
I latch onto the first thought I can form in my head and say, “I can’t give you what you want. I might have been able to do this if it was only a fuck, but I’m not even sure of that right now. But I do know that I can’t give you what you’re looking for. I can’t love you. I’m in love with another man and always will be.”
Before he can answer, I dart out of the room and rush toward the theater exit. Tonight may cost me my job, everything I’ve worked for, but I don’t care. I need to put as much distance between me and Alan Manzone as possible.
I’m in love with Jack. I stopped before making the biggest mistake of my life. But I went far enough to know that a piece of me is already halfway in love with Alan.
Everything inside me is still frantic and loose when I reach the hotel. I cut through the crowded lobby, bypassing the elevators and take the stairs two at a time to the third floor.
I’m distraught beyond composure by what I nearly let happen. How could my body betray me to the point that I nearly fucked Alan Manzone? I love Jack. How could I let that happen?
I’m confused and
in disarray in a way I’ve never experienced before. A part of me wants to run back to California. A part of me wants to return to the theater and Alan.
Inside the hotel room I freeze.
Jack whirls away from the window to face me. His brilliant blue eyes lock with mine. “I have three days, baby. It’s all I could manage, but they’re yours if you want them. Something in your voice the last time we spoke told me to come here. I’m sorry I hung up on you. I’m sorry I didn’t call you. It took some doing to get here, but I didn’t want the next time we spoke to be on the phone. I wanted to be able to look into your eyes and tell you there is no one else. There will never be anyone else. I am in love with you, Linda.”
That dear, sweet wonderful man. I step into his arms and he folds me protectively against his chest. I don’t know why, but between kisses I start to cry. And without another word, Jack takes me to bed.
~~~
I lie in Jack’s arms, nestled as closely into him as I can be, and I never want to let go of him again. For the first time in many months, everything in me is in comfortable order. I didn’t fully comprehend how much I missed him until that moment I first touched him again.
I kiss his chest. “I still can’t believe you’re here.”
He brushes the hair back from my face. “I’ve been kicking myself for days over how I treated you. You deserved a little extra effort from me. I definitely did not deserve the welcoming you gave me.”
Our eyes meet and I flush, the memories of last night moving warmly through my senses. I ease up on his chest to kiss him. “You deserved last night. You deserve more than last night. I was the one who was a bitch and fought with you. I don’t know why you are always the first one to apologize.”
He touches his lips against my nose. “It doesn’t matter who is at fault and who makes up first. It only matters that someone does. I love you, Linda. I don’t want to lose you.”
“I don’t want to lose you either, Jack.”
He buries his lips in my hair. “Then come back to the States with me. Whatever you think we need to work through we’ll work through it better together. Last night made that abundantly clear to me. It should have made it clearer to you.”
I study him, knowing he’s right and knowing I can’t do it. The reasons are more fuzzy, less logical, but still there. Walter. The custody battle. The problem that is Chrissie. It would be selfish of us both to put our happiness before the resolution of these issues. If Jack lost his daughter because of me, he would never recover, and in the end he’d blame me for it if I ever allowed myself to be in the position where Walter could use me against him.
It would be selfish to put myself ahead of all that in Jack’s world, and loving Jack makes that something impossible to do.
I ease back down against him with my cheek resting on his chest. “It’s only a year.”
He tilts my chin until he can see my eyes. “Come back with me.”
The way he says that makes my heart clench. “I can’t.”
He sighs, running a hand through his hair. He kisses my curls. “I know, baby. It was selfish of me to ask.”
That nearly makes the tears give way. “You’re the least selfish man I know, Jack.” I feel awful again. Absolutely awful. I tighten my arms around him. “Make love to me again.”
He turns me until I’m beneath him on the bed. His mouth moves along my jaw in light kisses, then down my neck to the swell of my breasts, his fingertips brushing me with featherlike softness. Each touch, each kiss, is leisurely, thorough and complete. Down my arm to my palms, back up again. The other side. To my breast, then lower, lower. Only gentle touches and airy kisses, but the urgent demand shoots through my cells. I am pulsing and moist, heated and ready for him, and he’s done nothing beyond loving touches and kisses.
No, Jack, no. I’m the farthest thing from patient right now.
He eases back, balanced above and staring down at me. I slip my hand around his neck, my fingers tightening in his golden hair, and I drag his mouth back to mine and alter the kisses into a deeper, more frantic, more ragged exchange.
I arch up into him, brushing my sex against him there, my tongue fucking him with the urgency of my body there. I can feel his flesh resistant, trying to temper my assault, wanting to consume me slowly, and it heats my arousal into something sweetly painful.
I nip his neck in the spot that makes him crazy. He inhales deeply. I rock my hips and his erection twitches. The tip of his cock is at my entry, not buried within, not out of me. We are joined, we are separate and his quiet is driving me crazy. I want him so badly I am not even conscious of his touches and kisses or the moves of his body that pin me to the bed, his body surrounding me.
My breath catches as I become a tingling, quivering mass ready to swallow him within me. I groan as he thrusts into me, his hips moving in the rhythm of my want, filling me so deeply that my head starts to sway on the pillow. We are moving in an effortlessly matched perfection. My lips on his lips. My hands on his body. His cock stroking my inner spot of arousal with the same potent sureness of his caresses.
I have no idea what I’m doing. The command of my limbs is no longer my own, all coherent thought banished by the feel of him.
My fingers curl around his shoulders. I open my eyes to find him watching me.
“I love you,” I whisper against his lips. I take his mouth in a deep, thorough kiss.
I roll my hips, the pace slowly increasing with each thrust. I watch him. I move my body. I kiss his jaw. Soon, my need is desperate and so is his, and I am nothing but frenzied movements.
I come apart, my flesh burning from the force of my release, and I feel his body tighten with his own orgasm. He says my name in a hoarse voice and his limbs tremble as he spills into me.
We quiet slowly, me stroking him, him waywardly touching and kissing me, our flesh joined and rightly so. I don’t want him to ease out of me. I hold him there with the wrap of my legs. I don’t let go and Jack is savoring this like a guy who has missed me in a way that makes my heart ache.
Nine
One Month Later
I hate this job, that’s all there is to it.
I stare down at the completed press release, shaking my head, and for what is surely the thousandth time I kick myself for not hopping the plane back to California with Jack in August. I let him go without me, and some inner instinct, frantic and never resting, warns me that I shouldn’t have.
Returning to London, my less than comfortable living circumstance with the Graysons and my job in Sandy Harris’s public relations office hasn’t helped improve my life in the UK. At least, not the way I want to.
Alan Manzone is a force impossible to escape. He is all the rage in every corner of the country and is keeping the presses running full print. Fuck, even the stack of briefs dumped on me to complete today were about him and Blackpoll. He’s become such a sensation that I even hear his name when I’m home because he’s even captured the fascination of Jeanette.
I crinkle my nose. Haughty, uptight Jeanette is teenage-girl-like obsessed with him, and if she backhanded tries to maneuver me into introducing her to him, I swear I’m going to freak out.
The only pleasant thing in my world is my calls with Jack and they are too infrequent since the court proceedings rapidly started to heat up two weeks ago. Even my doses of Jack aren’t enough to soften the turbulent impact of Alan’s unrelenting presence in my world. Alan doesn’t give up, even though I harshly rejected him. It’s illogical in every way. His repeated advances. His pointed insistence that I work the US tour in January. The way he looks at me, waiting, wanting, and heart-wrenchingly him.
My thoughts drift back to the morning Jack left, three days after that hideous scene in the dressing room, when Alan showed up unexpectedly at my hotel room. I cringe as the two men introduced each other, the surface of their exchange oddly normal and at odds with the currents in the room. After Alan left, I could see it in Jack’s eyes, an unspoken comprehension that something h
ad happened with me and the kid.
Tears burn behind my lids as I kick the memory away, but my heart aches anyway, remembering the understanding I could see in those brilliant blue eyes, the worry and the apprehension about leaving me.
The most dreadful mistake of my life was in the room with me and Jack, not voiced, but known to us both in a way that devastates me and makes me afraid we won’t make it through another eleven months of this.
I do a quick scan of the paper, making sure there are no typos or fuck-ups needing correcting, then slap shut the file and go down the hallway to drop it into the wall hanger outside my boss’s office.
I hurry back to my desk to gather my things. I check my watch. I’ve got twenty minutes to grab the tube to Belgravia for another excoriatingly tense night home with Jeanette and her parents. Then morning and the tube to school, followed by five hours in this dreary office, and home again.
Why the fuck do I stay here?
When I push through the main doors of the building to step out onto the street, of course it is raining. Why does the weather have to be so unpredictable here and why the hell can’t I remember just to take an umbrella everywhere regardless of how it looks at the start of day?
I hitch up my collar and pause beneath the entryway awning, not really thrilled yet again with the prospect of wet streets and damp clinging hair as I trek down the four blocks to the rail station.
I let out a ragged exhale of breath and start to move to the sidewalk.
A hand on my arm stops me.
I look up, surprised. “Get your hand off me, Len, or so help me I’ll punch you today. I’m not in the mood to be fucked with.”
He laughs and a smile teases my lips. He’s a good-hearted guy, and likeable in his own quiet way. He is a far cry from the rest of the peckerwoods in the band, Alan Manzone included.
“And here I was trying to be nice, stopping you before you stepped out into this, and offering you a lift,” he says affably.
My brows hitch up. “You have a car?”
