Commitment (11 page)

Tom smiled and began to unbutton his shirt. “Good.”

The shirt hit the floor as he toed off his shoes. She tried not the stare. Hell, she’d been eyeballing, kissing, licking, and stroking that same bare chest for the past ten hours. The allure should have worn off by now. But it hadn’t. She ogled the man as if he were a pastry in a glass case. A thatch of lustrous brown hair curled between his
pecs
. It straightened into silky strands of sable as it narrowed to a fine line bisecting the hard ripples of his stomach. The tempting trail disappeared into the waistband of his pants, beckoning to her like a flashing neon ‘Follow Me!’ sign.

Maggie tried to rein her lustful thoughts in. After all, she already tumbled into that particular rabbit hole. A couple of times. She glanced at the clock. If he didn’t
wuss
out, she still had over thirteen hours of completely mad and astoundingly passionate tea partying to go. She needed to pace herself.

Bare-chested and beautiful, Tom moved the tray of drinks aside and opened the bakery bag. “Your bear claw, madam,” he said, presenting the flaky pastry to her wrapped in a sheet of waxed paper.

“Thank you, kind sir.”

Perched on the edge of the mattress, he bent to strip off his socks. In profile, the bump on his otherwise perfect nose was slightly more noticeable. She cocked her head, gazing at him intently as he sat up. He unhooked his suit pants then paused, a worried frown furrowing his brow when he caught her stare.

“Is this okay?” he asked, nodding to his pants.

“Taking them off?” She raised one shoulder in a shrug. “Why wouldn’t it be okay?”

“You’re looking at me funny. Do you want me to leave?”

Startled that he’d ask, she blinked. “Do you want to leave?”

“No, but…What?” He shook his head. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong. I was just looking at you.”

Tom rolled his eyes. Nodded to the orange cat curled at the foot of the bed. “Wondering if you can toss me out without the help of your bodyguard?”

“Wondering how you broke your nose,” she said, hoping her shrug conveyed just the right amount of nonchalance.

“Sean.”

“Sean broke your nose? How?”

He chuckled. “He has a mean right.”

She kept her eyes locked on him as she took a dainty bite. A flurry of tiny almond pieces freckled her chest. His gaze locked on them like a tractor beam. Maggie wet the tip of one finger and collected the stray slivers. “He hit you?”

She smiled as she sucked the tiny morsels from her finger, watching his eyes darken to indigo. “We’ve hit each other lots of times. That time, he got lucky.”

She laughed. “He’s bigger than you.”

“Taller,” he countered.

“Taller, bulkier, bigger.”

He snorted. “Taller and bulkier, but definitely not bigger,” he asserted, fixing her with a meaningful glare.

Maggie laughed. “Well, I wouldn’t know about that, so I’ll have to take your word for it.”

Tom grinned and rubbed the bump with his knuckle. “Actually, he hit me with a two-by-four.”

“I hope not on purpose.”

He twisted his torso to face her, propping one knee on the bed. Maggie eyed the tiny bulge of flesh above his waistband and smiled. She plucked an almond from her pastry and popped it into her mouth, pleased with the knowledge that the
studly
Mr. Sullivan wasn’t immune to a little middle-aged spread.

“I have my suspicions, but he claimed it was an accident. I worked for Uncle George during college and law school.”

She grinned, trying to picture the delightfully rumpled but normally spit polished and urbane attorney sitting on her bed wearing a hard hat and a tool belt. “I can’t picture you working construction.”

His smile widened and his eyes lit with a wicked gleam. “Destruction. I was the demolition man.”

She laughed. “Okay. That I can see.”

“Unlike Sean, I hate the fixing, building, and restoring parts, but tearing things to pieces? I’m all over that.”

Something about what he said struck a nerve. Maggie pressed her lips together, staring at the bear claw in her hand as if she were plotting her next bite, and parsing his simple statement for tone and subtext.

“Maggie?”

Her head jerked up. She met his gaze and found only frank appreciation shining in his dark blue eyes. “Hmm?”

“Pants on or off?”

“Well, if you’re keeping them on, then I get your shirt,” she bargained, testing out a teasing smile.

“Off,” he said with a decisive nod, launching himself from the bed and fumbling with his zipper.

Maggie laughed. She had to laugh. Despite her uncertainty about his motives, she had none about her own. She needed this. She wanted him. A last hurrah. The fling to end all flings. In just a few short hours he’d be a memory. A hot, happy memory to warm cold, lonely nights.

Naked, he reclaimed his spot on the edge of the bed, bracing his arms on either side of her hips. A self-conscious blush burned her cheeks, but Maggie took a defiant bite of her pastry. A hailstorm of sliced almonds sprinkled her chest and slithered under the sheet.

“Want me to get those?”

The deep, rumbling rasp in his voice rolled through her. Her fingers closed around the flaky pastry. She snagged a sliver of almond from the corner of her mouth with the tip of her tongue then nodded slowly. “Why, yes. Yes, I do.”

A devilish gleam burned in his eyes when he leaned in. Hummingbirds took flight in her stomach. His lips parted. The tip of his tongue grazed the edge of his teeth, and she held her breath.

He lunged, those sparkling white teeth sinking into the edge of her bear claw. Maggie gasped at the injustice as he consumed a third of her breakfast. Her hand jerked and she opened her mouth to protest, but the pastry sailed across the room, hit the wall, then plummeted to the floor.

A streak of orange sailed from the bed. Fred pounced on his prey, nipping and licking at the remainder with gusto.

“Look what you made me do!” Maggie cried.

The deep rumble of his laugh bounced off the bedroom walls. His chest heaved as he pressed sticky lips to the hollow at the base of her throat. Short, hot strokes of his wet tongue collected stray slivers of almond, teasing the tops of her breasts. He grasped her wrists and pressed them into the pillow, working his way back up her throat. His lips closed over the pulse throbbing beneath her ear. Her breath caught. He drew the sensitive skin into his mouth, laving it with his talented tongue. A tremulous breath seeped from her lungs.

Tom nipped her jaw. Moist, hot breath tickled her ear. “There’s a cherry
danish
in the bag,” he murmured. “Wrestle you for it.”

****

A crab…No…Flower. One of those big
poofy
mum things guys used to give girls for the big homecoming game. Tom blinked and tried to focus the Rorschach blob, but his vision remained too blurred to make heads or tails of it. A swarm of bees buzzed in his head. He gave it an experimental shake, but they refused to be dislodged. A laugh clutched his stomach, rolling through his chest then tickling his throat, but he couldn’t catch his breath. Mustering what little strength he had left, he stared at the blob. Plumbing. Rain. Roof leak. Water spot.

The rustle of paper shooed the buzzing bees. His hair scraped the cotton pillowcase. He blinked, and Maggie swam into focus.

Her cheeks glowed with a rosy flush. Acres of alabaster skin were semi-cloaked by the color comics from the Sunday paper. She chuckled and took a healthy bite of the cherry
danish
balanced on her fingertips. He tried to snatch it from her hand, only to be caught up short when his necktie tightened around his right wrist. She raised one knee and the flimsy newsprint draped one succulent thigh.

He gave the tie another half-hearted tug then rolled onto his side to face her. “I let you win.”

Her green gaze flickered over his face and she smirked, swirling the pad of her finger in the pool of cherry glaze then popping it into her mouth. Her eyes locked on his as she slowly withdrew the damp digit. “You got a little something in exchange.”

Another laugh bubbled in his belly. He clenched his abs, trying to stave it off. His muscles ached. They weren’t used to this abuse. Crunches, yes. Those sadistic rowing machines at the gym they could handle. Laughing like he’d laughed in the past twelve or so hours? He couldn’t remember ever laughing this much.

“Don’t you want a little
somethin
’ in return?”

His voice sounded strange to his own ears—throaty and rough. A thread of promise wound its way into the words that rolled off his tongue so easily. It was a far cry from the calm, practiced tone he employed every day. This wasn’t just any day. This was a day with Maggie. And, if it was possible, the day with Maggie was proving to be even better than the night.

“I’m good.” She took another huge bite of the pastry, smiling as she chewed. He almost purred like Fred when she reached over and smoothed his hair into place. “Want me to read the comics to you?”

His eyelids drooped. The warm, fuzzy buzz of post-orgasmic bliss threatened to pull him under. He struggled to keep his eyes open. He didn’t want to miss a minute of his time with her and he didn’t have the energy or the heart to peek at his clock. Burrowing into the pillow, he stared up at her. “You
gonna
untie me?”

“You’ve got one hand free,” she pointed out.

“If you don’t untie me, I’m going to assume you plan to have your way with me again.” Her smile blossomed. Color bloomed in her cheeks, pretty and pink and perfect. His smile faded, and he stared at her solemnly. “Why didn’t we do this a long time ago?”

The question seemed to surprise her as much as it stunned him. He wasn’t exactly sure where it came from, and he didn’t know if he wanted to know the answer. Maggie set the comics aside and slid down on the pillow, breaking off a chunk of pastry and holding it to his lips. Tom took it, chewing slowly as he waited for her response.

“Well, I think part of it was because you were trying to screw your way through every blonde bimbo on the north side.”

“I don’t do bimbos,” he grumbled.

“From what I hear, you do just about anything.”

He raised an eyebrow. “You don’t think very highly of yourself, do you?”

Maggie shrugged and took another bite. “I know I’m an anomaly for you,” she mumbled through stuffed cheeks.

He opened his mouth to retort, but a muffled buzz distracted him. For a moment he wondered if there really was a swarm of bees in the room. Maggie read the confusion on his face and nodded to the floor.

“Your phone. You forget a date today? Your phone has been seeing more action in the last hour than my vibrator has in a year.”

He rolled over and glared at the crumpled suit jacket on the floor. “No, I didn’t forget a date. Listen, I don’t know what you think you know about me…Oh, shit!” He lunged for the phone, only to fall back on the pillow when his shoulder nearly popped out of its socket. “Crap,” he grunted, fumbling with the knot in his tie.

She stared at him impassively. “You
did
forget a date?”

The frost in her voice nearly froze him to the spot. Her green eyes were cool as glass. The tail of the tie slipped free and he yanked his arm from the headboard. “With my mother,” he muttered. He lurched from the bed and snagged the collar of his jacket, shaking out the worst of the wrinkles as he searched the pockets. “I was supposed to clean her gutters today.”

“Gutters? You do gutters?”

The marked disbelief in her voice stung his masculine pride. He scanned the list of missed calls then glanced at the bedside clock. His mother had called six times in forty-five minutes. He pushed a hand through his hair, pulled the sheet over his crotch, and punched a button. “Yes, I can do gutters.” The petulance in his tone would have embarrassed him if she wasn’t staring at him with those luscious lips parted in shock. He pressed the phone to his ear and grumbled, “I can do all sorts of things.”

His mother answered on the first ring. “Hi, Ma. Sorry….” He sneaked a glance at Maggie. “I got tied up trying to work out some custody thing.”

That shut Maggie’s mouth. Of course, those lips just curved into a smug smirk. The urge to kiss it off of her made his foot twitch with impatience. He let his mother ramble on a bit, knowing he couldn’t squeeze a word in without using a machete to cut her off. Maggie plucked the Sunday comics from her lap and folded them neatly. She set them aside, slipped from the bed, and reached into the closet. He followed her every move with interest. She belted a long, fuzzy robe securely at her waist and he snapped from his stupor.