Dream Trilogy (96 page)

“I have to figure it out.” She blew out a breath, toyed with the buttons of his shirt. “I’ve got another secret.”

“If it’s anything like the last one, it’ll probably kill me.”

“It’s not a good one.” Now her lips pouted. “Well, maybe since it turned out this way it is. Peter never ripped my clothes off.”

“Christ. Forget it, and him.”

But when he reached up, she evaded him. “I want to tell you so you’ll know. It’s kind of funny, really. We always had very appropriate sex. Not like with you.” She traced the vee above the button with a fingertip. “Always proper sex, except when we didn’t have sex at all which was most of the time and all through the last year we were married. And you know what?” She placed her hands on either side of his head and leaned down, a heavy-eyed, more-than-tipsy woman.

“What?”

She hummed in her throat as he stroked her breasts. “You can do that,” she murmured. “I don’t mind at all. But I was saying. We had a system. No, he had a system, I was just there. He would put on classical music. Chopin, always the same sonata. I sometimes still get a tick in my eye when I hear it. He would close the door, lock it, lest a wandering servant be shocked by the goings-on, though the staff would hardly have business in there at ten forty-five in the evening. It was mostly always at ten forty-five.”

“So he was a creature of habit.” Michael flipped open buttons and found her flesh.

“Umm. No, you don’t.” She sat up again. “You’re trying to distract me. He would turn off the lights, get into bed. He would kiss me three times. Not two, not four, but three times. Then he would—”

“I don’t think I want a play-by-play here of Ridgeway’s style in the sack.”

“In the marital bed, please. Well, we’ll just skip right along, then, since it isn’t very interesting anyway. At eleven-oh-five, he would wish me a pleasant night and go to sleep.”

“The twenty-minute special, huh?”

“You could set your clock by it. Oh, Michael.” She stretched her arms up, giving him tempting glimpses of soft white swells. “I thought it was me. I thought that was just the way it was, had to be. But it isn’t, it wasn’t, it doesn’t.”

She cupped her breasts in her hands, let her eyes close. “It’s never predictable with you. I never know what you’ll do, where you’ll touch me next, or how. And it’s never proper. It’s so wonderfully improper. The things you do with your hands, with your mouth on me.” She dropped her hands to his chest. “Do you have any idea what it’s like to discover, at thirty, that you have a sex drive?”

“No.” He couldn’t help but smile at her. She was so beautifully drunk. “I found mine at sixteen and never lost sight of it.”

She laughed, flinging her head back and making his teeth ache with the need to bite into that slim white throat. “Oh, but this is better. Has to be. It’s like finding Seraphina’s dowry. Somehow you know it’s there, somewhere, or hope it is. And then when you find it, after all that time, all that wondering, it’s so sweet.”

“Since you found that elusive sex drive”—his hands slid up her torso—“why don’t we put it to use?”

“I’m going to make you sweat.” She eased down again, scraped her teeth over his jaw. “You might even beg.”

“Now you’re getting cocky.”

“I take that as a challenge.” To demonstrate, she shoved up her sleeves, which fell right back down again. “Are you man enough to agree not to touch me until I say you can?”

He lifted a brow, wondering just what the lady had in mind. “Your loss, sugar.”

“I don’t think so, ultimately. No hands,” she murmured and pressed his to his sides. “Except mine.”

She lowered her lips to his, brushed, teased, nibbled. “Margo said you had a very tasty mouth.” She smiled when he winced. “She was right. I think I’ll stay right here a while.”

She lingered on his mouth, changing the angle, the depth, the tone of the kiss. Light one moment, intense and urgent the next, then sultry, smoky.

His fingers, aching, curled into the carpet. “Not bad for a beginner,” he managed in a voice rusty with need.

“And I learn fast. Your heart’s pounding, Michael.” She nipped at the pulse in his throat, cruised over dampening flesh. Then she gripped his shirt at the shoulder, pulled. When the seam stayed fast, he chuckled from both humor and frustration.

“Want me to do that for you?”

“I can handle it.” She eased back, kept her eyes on his as she yanked hard. The seam ripped, exposing muscle and skin. She pounced on it like a starving cat. “Oh, your body,” she whispered, then crossed her hands, taking hold of his shirt and sending cloth and buttons flying. “You have such a body. Tough and scarred and tight. I want it.”

Her mouth streaked down his shoulder, over his chest. Quick, greedy bites and sucks, feathering openmouthed kisses and flicks of tongue. But when his hands came up to grip her hips, she shoved them away with a single word.

“Mine.”

Rising up, she shrugged off the shirt, then once more bent to her task.

She was destroying him in a way he hadn’t known he could be destroyed. Slowly, inevitably. She was taking him in a way he hadn’t known he could be taken. Greedily, intently. His breath thickened, caught, released on a groan when she laved her tongue low on his belly. Every muscle quivered, taut wires close to snapping.

Thoughts filled and emptied from his mind so rapidly that he couldn’t gain hold. Sensation rammed violently into sensation like two clenched fists. The scent of her, elegant as royalty, the sheen of her skin, glossy as a damp rose, and the stroke of her hands, restless as lust.

Giddy on her own power, she tugged open the button of his jeans, felt his body tense like a runner on the mark. She lowered her mouth, tasting there, just there where denim and flesh met. And heard him choke out her name.

She could do this to him, she thought as she dipped her tongue under the denim to tease. She could create this desperation, and weakness, this violent need in a strong, vital man. She could make him want her to the point of madness, and she could take whatever she wanted from him.

She nudged the material down, closed her teeth over his hip. And heard the breath explode out of his lungs. He was helpless, she knew, lost in her. And she could make him ache.

She took him into her mouth, clamped him in a wet velvet vice and shot his system into chaos.

His hands fisted in her hair as his body bucked under her. When her mouth cruised up to his belly again, over quaking muscle, he was ready to kill to have her.

Still gripping her hair, he yanked her head back, reared up. She felt one shocking jolt at the dark burn of his eyes, then his mouth was clamped on hers.

“I didn’t say you could touch me.” She panted it out as his lips branded her throat, her shoulders, her breasts. “You didn’t beg.”

“I need you.” He found her with his hand, shoved her over the peak he was still clinging to. “Now. Goddamn it, take me in.”

Triumphant, she threw her head back, and her laugh was rich and wild. Locking her legs around his waist, she arched back, “Yes.” Bowed like a bridge when he drove himself into her.

She cried out, no longer surprised but shuddering nonetheless over the speed and violence of the orgasm. She arrowed up again, her body locked to his, her hips pumping.

“More,” she demanded, tearing nails down his back. “Michael. More.”

Blind with greed, she shoved him back, dug her hands into his waist, and took more.

The storm raged through him, whipping toward peak, but he could see her. Rising and falling over him, her eyes closed to heated slits, her head back in abandon. The animal inside him mated with hers until she’d ridden both to exhaustion.

Through hazy vision he saw her melt down on him. And felt the quakes of the aftershocks rush through her. His own body felt bruised, numbed, weightless so that he wasn’t even aware that his arms were locked tight around her, like a man holding everything that mattered.

“Told you I could do it,” she murmured, turning her lips to his throat.

“Yeah, you sure showed me.” He pressed his lips to her hair, wallowed there. “Laura.” He said her name quietly, almost to himself. Then closed his eyes and tried, for both their sakes, not to hear the rest of it.
I love you. Love you.

“You wanted me.”

“Yes. I wanted you.” Her hair smelled like sunlight, weakened him all over again.

“Will you do something for me, Michael?”

“Yeah.” Anything. Terrifying thought. Anything.

“Will you carry me to bed? I’m still drunk.”

“Sure, baby. Just hold on.” He rose with her, a feat that even in her impaired state made her heart flutter.

“And one more thing.” Her head dropped limply against his shoulder, and when she moaned he had panicked visions of finding a basin to shove under her face before she was sick.

“Okay, don’t worry. I’ll take care of you. It’ll be fine.”

“All right.” Warm and soft and trusting, she curled into him, then blinked against sudden hard light. “What? What?” Her head cocked curiously. “Why are we in the bathroom?”

“It’s the handiest place to be sick. Go ahead and toss up that wine, sugar, you’ll feel better.”

“I’m not going to toss up perfectly good champagne.” She wrapped her arms tighter when he tried to set her down. “I’m not going to be sick.” Then she flopped back, dead weight, like a woman in a faint and laughed until it echoed off the walls. “Oh, that’s so sweet. You were going to hold my head while I vomited. God, Michael.” She raised up again, kissed him sloppily. “You’re the cutest thing. Just so cute and sweet I could eat you right up. My hero.”

Embarrassed, he narrowed his eyes. “Maybe I’ll just stick your head in the toilet anyway. If you’re not going to lose the champagne and chocolate, what do you want?”

“I told you to carry me to bed. I would think it would be obvious.” Smiling, she traced a finger down his chest. “I want you to want me again. If it wouldn’t be an imposition.”

He glanced down at her, warm, rosy, naked female. His female. “I guess I could manage that.”

“Good, and do you think you could, well . . .” She leaned over and whispered something in his ear that made his blood take a quick trip to his loins.

“That’s pretty inappropriate behavior, but . . .” He made a beeline for the bed. “Under the circumstances . . .”

Experiencing a first hangover, Laura discovered, wasn’t nearly as much fun as experiencing a first drunk. Instead of having a head filled with light and color and gloriously rambling ideas, she had one crammed with noise—along the lines of a poorly directed high school band, with the percussion section banging away gleefully at her left temple.

Her system didn’t feel free and floaty, but clogged, the way her mouth seemed clogged with enough dirt to make half a dozen mud pies.

She was grateful that Michael had left her alone rather than witness the humiliation.

She wouldn’t think about the fact that she’d spent the night in his bed and now would have to stagger into the house, where her family and the staff would shoot her questioning looks.

She tried to drown those unmerciful drummers under the shower, then bit down on her lip when she realized the new sound she heard was her own whimpering.

Under normal circumstances she would never have gone through any of Michael’s things, but she finished up a fumbling search through the mirrored medicine cabinet and bathroom drawers and nearly wept when she found a bottle of aspirin.

She took four, another break in tradition; then, deciding she couldn’t be much more intrusive, used his toothbrush.

She didn’t look in the mirror until she’d dressed, and even then it was a mistake. Her face was deathly pale, her eyes smudged and swollen. And as she didn’t have so much as a tube of lipstick with her, there was nothing she could do about it.

Knowing she had to get it over with, she stepped outside and moaned quietly as the sunlight sent hot little spears into her eyes. Her head didn’t feel like the practice field for a marching band now; now it felt like glass. Very thin, very fragile glass. And it was balanced precariously on her neck.

“How’s it going, sugar?”

She winced, jerked. Her head fell off, smashed on the steps at her feet. Thank God she had another one. She turned it, struggled to smile as Michael dusted his hands on his hips and walked toward her.

“Good morning. I’m sorry I didn’t hear you get up.”

“The way you were sawing them off, I figured you’d sleep till noon.”

The insult of the headache faded. Snore? She certainly did not snore. She wouldn’t dignify such a lie with a comment. “I have to be at the shop in a couple of hours.”

“You’re working today?” She didn’t look to be in any shape for it to him. “Give yourself a break, Laura, and go crawl back into bed.”

“Saturdays are our busiest day.”

He shrugged his shoulders. Her choice. “How’s the head?”

“Which one?” Now she did smile, a little. Certainly a man like Michael would understand hangovers. “It’s bad, but no longer unbearable.”

“Next time you go on a bender, chug plenty of water and pop a couple aspirin before you pass out. It usually helps take the edge off the morning after.”

“I don’t intend to have a next time, but thanks.”

“Now that might be a shame.” He trailed a finger over the back of her hand. “You make a very inventive drunk. How’s the memory?”

Her blood must have been moving still, for she felt it rise up to sting her cheeks. “It’s good. A little too good. I certainly wouldn’t have—I can’t believe that I—” She shut up, closed her eyes. “You can stop me anytime from making a total fool of myself.”

“I kinda like it. Come here.” He drew her against him, cradling her aching head on his shoulder. “Ice water,” he murmured. “Stick your face right into a bowl of ice water, try to get some food in your system, then you just have to tough out the rest of it.”