Everything in Between (21 page)

“It’s called potpourri. And you’ve got a nose like a bloodhound. I was in their guest bath for two minutes, tops. I went there after settling things with Dr. Dudley. I didn’t want to come back here too soon.”

He softly sniffed her once more, behind her left ear. “Citrus and cinnamon. And some kind of flower. It’s very sweet.”

“Mignonette,” Zae said.

“So who was the stiff at the club with you tonight?”

“Professor Dudley Dexter, doctorate of English and American Literature at New York’s Mulvihill State College.”

“How do you know him?”

“Professional acquaintance.”

“It seemed personal to me.”

“Mind your business.”

“Why did you bring him tonight?”

“He came to town unexpectedly, and I wasn’t in the mood to entertain him alone.”

“Is that the only reason?”

“I was upset with you for transferring out of MU. I wanted to prove that I didn’t need you.”

“Did it work?”

She smiled through a sigh. “No.”

“Good. Because I need you, too.”

“Then why did you let me go with him? Why didn’t you take me home with CJ?”

“For the same reason I left MU. Because I love you.”

Zae turned her face to his. She met his gaze for a moment, then kissed him. He tasted faintly of cigarettes and whiskey, a combination she found oddly thrilling. He caught her by her waist, cradling her in his lap. His lips sought her eyelids, the tip of her nose, her earlobes, leaving no part of her face and neck unbranded with his kiss.

She wrapped her body around his, encouraging his hands to roam over the cool silk of her dress, to explore beneath it. Her full skirt pooled at her waist, and Chip stroked her leg from ankle to upper thigh, almost unable to tell the difference between the silk of her skin and her stocking. Zae started to unfasten her stocking from her garter belt, but Chip closed his hand over hers.

“Leave them on,” he groaned against her lips. “Please.”

Chip stood, taking Zae’s hand to help her to her feet. He unbuttoned the line of pearl buttons fastening the back of her vintage dress as he followed her to the stairs. With Chip’s help, the dress slithered off her shoulders and from her body in the upstairs corridor leading to the master bedroom. In her black satin corset and matching panties, garter belt, stockings and four-inch heels, Zae reclined on her bed, propped up on her elbows.

“If you want me to leave, tell me now,” Chip said, desire lowering his voice.

“I want you to stay.”

He dove onto the bed, careful not to land on Zae with his full weight. Laughing, she started unbuttoning his shirt. She did so slowly to better appreciate every inch of skin she bared. He smelled of Del Brown’s—of cigarette smoke, liquor and cinnamon toothpicks. His own scent lingered beneath it, and Zae kissed his chest, tasting the salt of his sweat.

She tugged his shirt from his shoulders, kissing the flat disk of his nipple. Flicking her tongue over it, she enjoyed Chip’s moaned response. Facing each other, they worked together to strip off his clothes. He slipped her panties from her, but insisted she leave everything else on.

“Even my shoes?” she asked.

“Especially the shoes,” he replied, dragging her leg over his hip.

Grinding his hot, hard length into her, he half covered her with his body, kissing his way from her hairline to her breasts. He treated each in turn, barely taking his fill of one before moving to the other. Zae’s hands moved over the muscles of his arms and back, learning every curve and hollow. He was so hard and strong, yet handled her with such tenderness, she nearly wept.

She was cherished. Desired. Loved. Through touch, Chip answered her every doubt, pushed back her reservations. Their bodies moved in harmony to an ancient rhythm, movements and notes pure perfection in a crescendo that left them rigid and shuddering in the swells and staccato pulses of their intimate duet.

Chip lay atop her, snugly cradled between her legs. A fine sheen of perspiration adhered his torso to hers, and he kissed away a crystal dot of sweat from her brow.

“Am I too heavy?” he asked.

“No.” She stroked damp curls from his face. “You’re just fine.”

Chip maneuvered them until they lay on their sides, face to face, still joined at the hips. He pulled Zae’s leg over his and caressed it from her ankle to her backside.

“Remember when you and Gian helped me move this bed into the house?” she said.

“As I recall it, Gian and I did all the moving. You mostly pointed to where you wanted it to go. We must have repositioned it six times.”

“You’re the first man I’ve shared this bed with.”

“I want to be the only man you share this bed with.”

Pillowing her head on the crook of his arm, she said, “In all the years I’ve known you, I never imagined this could happen between us.”

“I imagined it.” He chuckled. “When Gian introduced you to me at Sheng Li’s grand opening, I thought you were one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen.” He stared at her, fondly remembering that moment. “Man, the twins were around ten or eleven, right?”

She nodded.

“Time sure has a way of sneaking past you.”

“You know what I thought when I first met you?”

“This should be interesting.” He laughed.

“I thought, ‘This boy needs a haircut.’ ” She ran her fingers through his hair. “Your hair was so long back then.”

Staring at her lips, Chip ran the pad of his thumb over them. Even though he felt as if he were living a fantasy, everything about Zae was real. Her warmth, her scent, her touch—Zae was a woman of incomparable substance.

His previous paramours, with their skinny arms and legs, more often than not made him feel as though he were in bed with a bag of broomsticks compared to Zae, whose flesh and weight led him to appreciate the shape and feel of a woman. She rendered him helpless to hold anything back, and he gave her all he had, knowing she had the strength to receive it. He had never been with a woman who responded to him as Zae did, and that responsiveness was like a drug. The only thing that would make it better was knowing he had the same effect on her.

Zae’s fingers played in the dark gold hair of his chest. “You don’t manscape.”

He shook his head. “All that primping isn’t for me. Plus, it itches somethin’ fierce when it grows back in.”

“So you’ve done it before.”

“Once. An old girlfriend wanted to wax it off, so I let her.”

“Hurt, didn’t it?” Zae laughed.

“I thought she ripped my nips off. It felt like she was taking the hair off with a blowtorch.”

“Now you know what women go through to be perfect and beautiful,” Zae said.

“Do you ever wax anything?”

The sparkle in his eye and the twitch of his mouth clued Zae in to what body parts most interested him.

“I wax my nipples,” Zae said. “They’re normally very hairy.”

Chip’s eyes popped with a start. “You’re kidding, right?”

She answered with a wicked laugh.

In one swift movement, Chip pressed her onto her back and took her right nipple in his mouth. He circled it with his tongue, teasing her first with its gentle rasp and then its satiny underside. Lightly sucking, he pinched his lips around it, drawing it to pebbled erection. With a moan, Zae arched her back, offering him the fullness of her bosom. Chip held her in place with a hand on her abdomen.

She let her knees fall wide apart, and she hoped his long fingers would venture further down.

Chip pulled away to look at her. “You don’t wax these.” His right elbow resting on his pillow, he propped up his head with his right hand. “They’re too smooth.” He caressed her nipple with his thumb. “They’re too perfect.”

“That’s nice to hear after nursing three children.”

He passed his hand over the faint stretch marks on her lower abdomen. He didn’t understand why women were so self-conscious about the little physical reminders of their lives. Zae’s stretch marks, the faint lines at the corners of her eyes when she laughed—they were signs of life—the life she had given and the life she’d lived. They added to her remarkable beauty, rather than detracting from it.

“How did you manage to live so long without marring this perfect envelope you were born in?” he asked. “You don’t have a single scar.”

“Lucky, I suppose.” She shrugged. “I had my share of skinned knees like everyone else. I heal well.”

Chip repositioned himself on the bed, sliding away from the headboard to clasp Zae’s left knee. He kissed it, tilting it slightly outward to more easily ply his lips to the soft skin of her inner thigh. The curls framing his face tickled the apex of her thighs, and she laughed.

“What’s so funny?” he smiled against the dark curls at his lips.

“I was thinking about the condom nicknames the kids gave your girlfriends.”

“I didn’t realize people were so interested in my love life.”

“Did you love any of them?”

He parted her with his tongue, giving her a long, luxurious stroke before saying, “No.”

Zae inhaled sharply, her hips inching to meet his tongue. “Why haven’t you used condoms with me?”

Chip sat up. He licked his upper lip. “Aren’t you on something?”

Zae rose on her elbows. “I’ve been practically celibate for eight years. I haven’t needed birth control pills.”

Chip gripped her hip. “The night of the wedding…is there a chance…?”

“We’d have known long before now. I’ve been tracking my periods since I was fourteen. I know when I’m ovulating.”

“Of course…” He eased back onto the pillows, pulling her into his arms.

“You seem disappointed.”

“No.”

“Relieved?”

“Not that, either.”

“Then what is it?”

“I don’t know. I can’t put my finger on it.”

She took his hand and placed it between her thighs. “Put your finger on this.” She moaned as he followed her suggestion. “And I’ll put mine on this.” She took him lightly with just her fingertips, caressing him to his full, straining length. “I love being with you,” she whispered in his ear, her breath coming hard and quick with the work of his finger. “I never feel more alive than when I’m with you.”

“I think that’s the nicest thing you’ve ever said to me, Zae.”

“Nicer than this?” she whispered in his ear, her words drawing pictures that her hand brought to life as it worked Chip’s hard flesh. She nibbled and suckled his earlobe between words, stoking his fire along with her own. She straddled him, leaving room between them so their hands could continue their thrilling work.

Unable to stand it anymore, Chip whirled onto his knees, flipped Zae onto her back and shoved himself into her with a loud groan of relief. Zae shaped her body to his, fully receiving him. Their muscles hardened with the effort of their union. Chip, his head thrown back, displayed his sculptural beauty. Starting at the tip of his chin, Zae’s gaze traced the angular line of his jaw, the column of his tense neck and the cords and veins standing against his skin, the breadth of his shoulders and the broad, well-shaped muscles of his chest. She wrapped his arms around his torso, pressing the stack of muscles to hers to feel their movement.

Chip widened her legs and tipped her hips a little higher, sinking deeper within her. Zae clapped her hands to his hard buttocks, helping him drive himself home.

Chip gritted his teeth. His jaw muscles ached from the effort to prolong what Zae’s tight, hot tunnel sought to steal from him. He’d never had this much trouble controlling himself. Not since he was a horny sophomore in high school eager to boink any girl who’d have him had he been so helpless to control his own body. He’d never wanted any woman as he wanted Zae, yet the touch of her body rendered him incapable of maintaining the control he needed to please her as well as he could.

But when he opened his eyes and gazed at Zae’s face, he saw that her struggle was no less than his own. Where he fought to maintain control to prolong the buildup to that moment of ultimate pleasure, Zae wantonly submitted to every sensation of their union. His chest hair grazing her sensitive nipples, the bunching of his abdominal muscles against hers, the slap of the heavy, fleshy twins at her backside with each lunge of his hips—every detail of their coupling aroused her, leaving her body mindlessly reacting to delicious pleasure.

His sweat dripped onto her chest to swim with hers. She reached between them to feel his hardness in motion, coating her fingers with the musky spice of her nectar. Chip took her hand and sucked her fingers, earning a decisive response from her sheath. It tightened around him, weakening him. With a groan of surrender, Chip stiffened, his buttocks clenching, his back arching, his arms locked as his heat shot from him.

Zae hooked her ankles at the small of his back, riding the short, hard pumps of his body. A tiny moan escaped her with each one, her inner muscles gripping him in rhythm, her climaxes moving through her like soldiers in formation.

Even though he was spent, Chip continued his thrusts, building Zae’s army of ecstasy until he shrank and let her push him out of her. He lay on his back beside her, panting. “I’m sorry,” he managed, once his breathing slowed enough. “I couldn’t hold out any longer.”