Beguiled Again: A Romantic Comedy (18 page)

“I stand corrected.” The belt buckle clicked free, then he slid the belt out and dropped it on the floor.

Cecilia closed her eyes and swallowed. What had gotten into her? She opened them again, and he was sliding his chinos down his thighs. He dropped to the piano stool; it squeaked in protest. He tugged first one leg, then the other, free.

Red plaid.

She caught her lower lip with her teeth.

“Don’t you dare,” he threatened.

“They’re not... they’re not classy, Jeff.”

“All right,” he growled. “Go ahead. Get it over with.”

“They’re…” She almost choked on the word. “They’re sexy as hell.”

A slow stain crept over his cheeks, and she ducked her head. “Well, you asked!”

“Cecilia, I feel ridiculous.”

“They’re your shorts.”

“That’s not what I mean. I mean, pulling off my trousers just so you can ogle my boxers.”

She raised her head and met his gaze. “You mean...you mean, that’s the only reason you took them off?”

CHAPTER NINE

IN THREE STRIDES Jeff crossed the room to scoop Cecilia, twisting and giggling, from the floor and into his arms.
 

“You’re driving me crazy, woman,” he growled. He nudged the door open wider with his shoulder and carried her through.

“Put me down!” She kicked her legs as he headed down the hall to the bedroom. “Ow!” she howled, pain shooting through her toes. “I kicked the wall!”

“Serves you right. You’re going to pay for this.”

Then his head dipped and his mouth went unerringly to the gaping spot on her—his—shirt. He buried his face in the soft flesh of her stomach and nibbled, tickling her unmercifully.
 

Her howl turned into a squeal. “Jeff! Stop! I-I—” She twisted in his arms, but he was relentless, and she laughed and cried and laughed harder, until she was gasping for air.

“Ticklish?” he drawled, and she felt his shoulders flex, his arms tense, as he held her over his bed and, laughing, let go and watched her fall.

Her body left her stomach behind a split second before she hit the bed, and it took a good three seconds for her stomach to catch up. “You—you’re a maniac!” Cecilia gasped.

“I beg your pardon,” Jeff said, tugging his shirt over his head. He grabbed her from behind when she started to squirm off the other side of the bed. “Not so fast.” As effortlessly as if she were a bag of feathers, he draped an arm across her and pinned her down while, with his free hand, he pulled his socks off, one after the other. “Now repeat after me, 'I will never laugh at plaid underwear again.’”

“Good grief,” she groaned, rolling her eyes, and attempted to wiggle free.

“No, no,” he chided. “You haven’t learned your lesson. Now repeat after me. 'I will never laugh at plaid underwear again.’”

“You’re despicable.”

“No. As a matter of fact, when I consider the hell you put me through all those long years ago, I think you’ve deserved this for a long time.” His fingers skimmed down her side and she flinched and squeaked and arched away from them.

“Stop it!”

“’I won’t laugh at plaid underwear ever again.’” This time his tongue found the sensitive spot behind her ear, and she couldn’t help it; she arched with pleasure.

 
“Nope. Wrong reaction,” he apologized, and snatched her arm, the better to tickle the inside of her elbow, the soft underside of her upper arm and then higher—

“I won’t laugh at plaid underwear ev—ever again!” she screeched, then collapsed, limp, when he pulled back and grinned.

“There. Was that so difficult?”

“Damn you. Damn you, Jefferson Smith.”

He shook his head sadly. “I’m afraid so, Cecil. And you did it.” He bent closer, found her lips clamped shut against him, and teased them to soft compliance.

“If... if you really must,” she grumbled, straining to keep some semblance of irritation in her voice, “could you please turn on the radio?”

Giving her a iazy, superior look, he reached for the bedside table and hit at the On button of the radio, missed, but still didn’t trust her enough to release her. The third attempt was the charm, as music filled the room.

“’
They just wanta—they just wanta—
.”
 

“Cyndi Lauper is not exactly the right mood.”

Jeff hooted with laughter. “But it’s the sentiment that counts. Let’s let the girl have fun.” He slammed the radio off as his lips captured hers again, and she didn’t try quite so hard to avoid them. “I think...” he whispered into her ear, “I think I left something in my pocket.” Cecilia craned her neck to see what could possibly be so important, and spied the pocketless polo shirt on the floor.

“Not that one.” Jeff’s fingers delved into the pocket of his silk shirt, the same pocket that now covered her breast, and she gasped. Her nipple’s hard, pebbled surface ricocheted with sensation as his fingers rubbed it. “Found it.”

“Oh... my.” She sank into the mattress, giving up completely. She didn’t have the strength or the desire to fight. Besides, there were times when surrender was so much more rewarding.

“Did you say something?” he asked.

“’Oh... my.’” She glared up at him. “I believe you’ve heard it before.”

“Eloquently, my dear. Eloquently.” Under his expert tutelage, her other breast learned to quiver at the touch of silk and knowing fingertips, and then of moist warmth as he captured it with his mouth, his tongue, until it pressed against the wet silk.. “Are you... learning your lesson?” he rasped.

“I don’t know whether to hit you for being a jerk,” she moaned, “or... or…”

“I definitely prefer the 'or.’” He popped the buttons open one by one and spread the shirt. The cool air hit her, tightening the flesh around her sensitized nipples. The eyes he raised to her were filled with awe, with amazement. “You are so beautiful.”
 

“Don’t say—”

“I will say it.” He moved over her, smoothing her curls away from her face, holding her cheeks between his palms to keep her from turning away. “You have to listen to me, Cecilia. You are so full of something... bubbly. I can’t describe it, except to say it’s you. If someone were to bottle champagne in a woman, it would be in you. In your voice, in your eyes, in your laughter, in the way you wiggle when you walk.” He placed a kiss on her eyelids tenderly, teasingly. “That’s as poetic as I know how to be, and every word of it is God’s honest truth.”

Something in her blossomed, aching and new, something she didn’t dare name, something she had to deny at all costs. “You’re quite good at this, you know,” she said weakly.

He took the fingers that twined in his hair and freed them, kissing their tips, taking the smallest one into his mouth and sucking gently with teeth and tongue. “I believe anything worth doing is worth doing well,” he promised ardently. “It’s part of my nature.”

And she believed him. Oh, my, did she believe him. She believed him from the tingles in her toes to the tightening between her legs. She believed him when his eyes loved her with liquid brown warmth. She believed him when his lips whispered sweet nothings that echoed meaninglessly, yet were fraught with meaning.

She gasped, arched, trembled when his fingers slipped between her thighs and probed, found, stroked. Her legs were leaden; her hands clenched restlessly as he built and nurtured that lovely ache. She heard the whimper escaping her lips, and he kissed her, capturing her desperate whimpers. His tongue stroked, matching the rhythmic assault of his fingers and filling her with languid desire. Erotic tension mounted in her with an urgency demanding release. She slid her trembling hands down his body, found him, felt him throbbing with need for her, and guided him into her, to a tumultuous response that started, for her, almost before he was fully in her

Her lips trembled, her body convulsed around him, as he drove slowly, deliberately, bringing her off and and driving her over the edge. She was on fire as she writhed beneath him, found his shoulder and bit against it to keep from crying out, to keep from crying. The tears were lodged in her throat, and she swallowed them back, gulping, gasping, until she couldn’t move, and still he filled her, still he held back, patiently, oh, so patiently.

She lay beneath him, shaken, almost destroyed by the knowledge of what this man could do to her that had never been done before. She’d shared loving experiences, but she’d never been totally and completely loved; she had never had every nuance of her reactions painstakingly responded to by someone more intent on her pleasure than his own. And it was more than that. She’d never felt so vulnerable, so emotionally naked. She was numb. She was terrified.

His shoulders were rock beneath her kneading hands. She tasted the salt of his skin as she tried to soothe away the marks of her passion. Her thighs wrapped him more tightly, her hands stroked down his taut back, and even when she thought to do so would shatter her, she began to move against him, building his heat with her friction.

Every nerve ending was jagged sensation pushed beyond endurance, and yet she more than endured, she gloried in the feel of him driving, shaking, shuddering, and then arching, burying himself in her with a cry no effort could stifle.

“Hold me,” he finally whispered into her shoulder. “Hold me.”

And she clung, because to let go was to lose him. To let go was to lose now. And now was all they had.

“Did I hurt you?” he asked when his fingers found her cheeks damp.

“No,” she whispered.
But you will. You will
. "But I hurt you." She leaned forward and pressed her lips agains the imprint her teeth had left in his shoulder, white against tan. Stricken with guilt, she raised her head to kiss, to apologize with actions because she had no words she dared to speak.

Where were the bubbles of laughter, of joy? His heat had boiled them out of her. She didn’t feel there was any laughter left in her, so intense was the response he had pulled from her.

“You’ve got the weekend, Cecilia,” he murmured against her. “Stay again with me tonight.”

She stroked his temple. “I have to go home.”
 

~o0o~

An hour later Jeff stood by helplessly as Cecilia scurried up the stairs for the fourth time, disappeared into the spare room, came out again. “What are you looking for?” he asked again.

She shook her head. “Nothing. Just making sure I don’t leave anything.”

He had supplied her with the only apparel he could come up with that even came close to being appropriate. In the midday light, her skin was pale against his old University of Texas T-shirt and faded worn, black biking shorts. Her dress, shoes and stockings were in the brown bag she clutched in her hand. Her eyes were large and dark in her pale face. Even her freckles seemed to have been swallowed up by her pallor. She acted as if she felt displaced.

His arms ached to encircle her again. His hands wanted to seek the tangled confusion of her hair. He wanted to pull her into his lap and convince her the world wasn’t ending just because she was going home. He wanted to believe it himself.

She waited by the door, hardly seeming to notice him as she stared into the spotless living room where newspapers no longer spread helter skelter across the floor and the stereo system now played his jazz.

And then her gaze landed on Toulouse. Her eyebrows met in a frown. She stepped up to the parrot. Toulouse ruffled his neck feathers and lowered his head, aiming his orange-eyed glare at her.

Before Jeff could stop her, she offered the bird her hand.
 

The bird struck with a squawk and a beating of wings and bit her.

Cecilia jerked her hand back but stood firmly in front of the perch. Jeff lunged forward, his hand raised. “I ought to—”

She grabbed his wrist, her blood hot and wet, bonding them. “No. It’s not his fault.”

He clasped her hand. “Why did you—Cecilia, what were you thinking?” He pulled out a handkerchief to stanch the flow of blood. “For pete’s sake, what were you thinking?”

She watched him work on her finger without flinching. “I thought maybe if I met him halfway."

Jeff shook his head, confused. “What’s wrong, Cecil?”
 

She ran her uninjured hand through her hair, brushing it out of her face, avoiding his eyes. “I’m tired, that’s all. I need to go home.”

He didn’t want to let go of her hand. He didn’t want to let her leave. He touched her face, tracing her cheek, her jaw, then placed a curled finger under her chin and gently forced her to look at him. Her eyes shimmered; her lower lip quivered. “Cecilia, something has happened between us, and I don’t know what.”

“I can’t talk about it now.”

“Whatever it is, promise me we’ll talk about it later.”
 

She glanced away, then back again.

“Don’t shut me out, Cecil.”

She smiled tremulously and he felt the tightness in his middle lessen.

She raised her bound finger between them. “I might sue your lousy bird.”

He tweaked her chin. “How about an out-of-court settlement?”

“Maybe...” Her smile took on a devious glint. “And there’s also the matter of you making me miss the hottest basketball game of the season.”