HiddenDepths (5 page)

“I don’t know. What’s your excuse?”

“I’d hardly compare us. You live on a one-man island and I
live in the middle of Manhattan.”

“Sometimes it can feel the same.”

“Yes. I suppose it can.” She wound a lock of his hair around
one finger and he kissed her palm, lightly, pushing her back to the pillows.

“You don’t talk much during sex,” he observed.

“Why? Do you go for that kind of thing? I don’t recall you
asking for much conversation the other night.”

Grinning, he palmed one of her soft breasts, bringing the
nipple to attention, and she arched her back. “You’re never getting your bra
back, Miss Sassy Pants.”

When he dipped his head to suck, she squirmed beneath him as
he skimmed one hand down her thigh to the inside, rubbing her clit before
sliding inside. “I could fuck you all day,” he murmured. “With my fingers, my
tongue…”

She hummed, smiling. “If your penis gets involved, I’m on
board.”

“
Penis
,” he mocked gently, looking up over her plump
tit, laving it with his tongue. “Say something dirty to me in a different
language.”

Laughing, she tossed out a phrase that sort of sounded like
spaghetti
and meatballs
.

“That’s not very sexy,” he admitted. “What does it mean?”

When she told him, in English, he sighed. “Now that’s sexy.
Say it again. In English,” he added hastily.

“I want you to slide your cock in my cunt,” she whispered
and he almost thought he detected a faint blush on her cheeks as she did.
“That’s the literal translation, just about the same level of vulgarity.”

He smiled. “Does it embarrass you to say that?”

She nodded. “I’m a wimp on the dirty-talking front, I
guess.”

“I wouldn’t suspect that of such an accomplished linguist.”
He moved his attentions to her other breast. “Did you mean it, though? What you
said.”

“Oh yes,” she breathed. “Vulgar as it was.”

“When you say it, it doesn’t sound vulgar. Just sexy. What’s
the sexiest language you know?”

“Sanskrit, I suppose. The Kama Sutra in its original
language is,” she hesitated, “hot.”

He transitioned up from her breasts to her lips and said
against them, “And you, Miss Prentiss, are the very definition of hot, whether
you open your mouth or not.”

But he did open her mouth, with his lips, his tongue,
nipping at her, tasting her as he reached for a condom, pulling away only to
rip it open and roll it on.

“Say it again,” he urged as he came down over her.

“The, ah, the sliding your ah, into my…”

“Yeah.”

Opening her thighs wide, she said, “Why don’t you just do
it?”

“Okay.” With a grin, he slid his cock into her soft, wet
depths. Wow. That still felt so very good, third time being the charm and all,
although the first two were pretty spectacular as well.

She moved underneath him, slowly, naturally, and he savored
the unbelievable chemistry he knew he had with this woman, even when he thought
she was being paid to sleep with him. Pushing her hair away from her eyes, he
kissed her temple and then, with a spine-numbing friction, slid out, or almost
out.

One fuck tonight had taken the edge off and he intended to
make this one slow and savor every second. With that intent, he rolled over
onto his back, keeping inside her, bringing her on top of him, her hair falling
around her in a dark curtain.

The change in position felt wonderful to him, but it seemed
to stall her and she came up a little on her knees, her palms on his chest,
looking down at him, almost in confusion.

Rubbing the small of her silky back, he moved his hands
around and up to take one handful of perfect tit in each of his palms, rubbing,
caressing. His cock throbbed but he stayed still, wanting her to set the pace.

“Do you like to be on top?” he asked, and it came out lower
and hoarser than he would have thought for such a relatively innocent question.

“I—” She swayed slightly on top of him, his cock registering
it with every nerve. “I guess I do.”

The swaying was slow and mesmerizing at first and then
faster as she found her rhythm, circular, giving him intense pleasure but not
enough to come. He slid his finger to her clit, rubbing as she moved.

“Oh yeah,” he encouraged softly. “Just like that.”

He wished he’d put some music on in the background, if she
didn’t want to talk while they made love.

“What kind of music do you like?” he asked.

She tightened her knees around his hips, bearing down, and
began to drop light, feathery kisses along his neck, his jaw, his ear.

“Because I could get up for a minute and—”

She nipped his earlobe playfully and he brought both hands
around to her ass.

“Or not,” he amended. Her skin was incredibly soft as he
rubbed the firm cheeks lightly, still not controlling, and enjoyed the mellow
feel of her riding him.

When she moaned, her eyes falling shut, and shuddered, he
could feel her climax with every inch of him.

But it wasn’t enough to bring him with her. He pulled her
head down and kissed her, burying his tongue in her mouth and, almost
involuntarily, lunged up into her still-spasming cunt.

With a grunt, he immediately forgot his vow to take it
slower and allow her to set the pace. He fucked her from below, moving her,
moving his ass, trying to get closer, harder, until she broke away from his
kiss and cried out and he came, shivering with it.

It felt as if it took him longer than usual to recover,
mentally that is, as if he was in a daze or something. One minute he was
beneath her, boneless—his cock soft and satiated, but not quite slipping out of
her yet—and the next minute he was stretched out on the bed, alone, listening
to her take a quick shower.

If he’d been on his game, he would have been in there with
her.

She came out quickly nonetheless, wrapped in a towel more
modest than most cocktail dresses these days, and proceeded to look around for
that damn bra.

He came up on his elbows. “So you want to get some room
service?”

“No, thank you. I must be going.”

As if she’d simply stopped by for tea. She located the bra
beneath one of the chairs.

“Where are you going?”

“Back to my apartment.”

“Why?” He ignored the unusual sensation of feeling like a
whiner. “Can’t you stay longer?”

“I’m afraid not. I have to go to work tomorrow.”

He smiled, still not getting out of the bed, as if that
possibly could entice her back into it. When she dropped the towel, he was
heartened. “You’re going to work?”

“It’s sort of a habit of mine, Evan. I do it most every
morning.”

“I don’t know why you bother,” he pointed out. “It seems
like you bring your work wherever you go. Who needs an office?”

“It’s easy to be casual about making a living when you don’t
have to.”

“You’re right. I’m sorry. It’s just I hate New York.”

“Thanks for sharing.”

“I mean I can’t stay here and wait for you to get done with
work.”

“Who asked you to?” she snapped, surprising him. She was a
prickly little thing.

He cut to the chase. “I want to see you again. Come with me
back to Maine.”

“I’m afraid that wouldn’t be wise, Mr.—”

“Mister?” he interrupted incredulously.

“All right. Evan then.”

“Why won’t you come to Maine?” It wasn’t just the
sex—although he felt a pathetically acute sense of loss as she tucked her pert
little tits back into her bra, put on her red panties and then pulled her dress
over that lovely sight. He watched as she slipped her black heels back on.

He wanted to show her his house, his island. He had
practically rebuilt the whole structure with his own hands, and the wild cliffs
and beaches of the island itself were built by some force that never ceased to
awe him. He wanted it to awe her.
He
wanted to awe her.

“I’ve never asked a woman back there,” he blurted out,
horrifying himself as she glanced at him out of the corner of her eye, her hair
tumbling around her shoulders until she ruthlessly twisted it into a bun at the
base of her neck and reached into her purse to locate a clamp to hold it in
place.

Was it her self-possession that somehow seemed to cause him
to lose his?

He stumbled on. “The island is isolated. I know it is. But
it’s phenomenal too.” He sat up straighter in bed against the headboard. “All
my life I’ve been dragged around and shown places and people and
things
that were supposed to impress me. That impressed everybody. Big office buildings
full of people toiling away who did my family’s bidding at the drop of a hat.
Big mansions filled with doodads that cost more than most people made in a
lifetime. Big…” He paused. This was stupid. He didn’t know what he was trying
to say. But she was listening now, looking down at him, and he tried again.
“They didn’t impress me. Nothing really impressed me.”

She nodded. “That’s understandable, Evan. You get used to
it.”

“Until I made this doghouse.” Talk about blurting out.
Doghouse?
Christ. If she was as smart as she was reputed to be, Andrea Prentiss would
make a quick getaway while she could. Instead she came closer and sat on the
side of the bed, waiting.

“My grandfather had bought me this huge dog. It was like a
horse it was so big. The thing had bloodlines back to the Russian czars or some
crap. God knows how much it probably had cost. But anyway, our estate manager
was put in charge of directing a whole construction crew to build this behemoth
thing its own digs, out in a corner of our summer estate.”

“Your father’s Long Island estate?”

“No, no, it was an Evans estate, in California. I still own
it…” His voice drifted off. “I think.”

“So you helped build the doghouse?”

“Oh no. That wasn’t allowed. I could’ve gotten a splinter,
or picked up some bad grammar or something. No, the construction crew built the
doghouse, which was more like a dog palace. But I watched.”

She laughed. “A dog palace?”

“Really, it was in
Dog Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous
or something like that. It was opulent, perfect and completely terrifying to
this poor dog, who it turned out was like the cowardly lion in
The Wizard of
Oz
. The thing was scared shitless by it. Wouldn’t even go in it. But my
grandfather had gone to all this trouble and though he was usually a big softie,
he could stick to his guns sometimes and he was mad at the dog for not
appreciating all the trouble he, meaning his estate manager and construction
crew, had gone to with the doghouse. So Grandpa wouldn’t let the dog sleep in
the main house.”

She shrugged. “At least it was California, not some winter
wonderland.”

“Maybe, but it was a particularly rainy season that year
and, well, I was afraid the poor dog was going to catch pneumonia. So I snuck
out one night and borrowed some of the crew’s tools and built this…well, it was
really a little shack compared to the dog palace.”

“But it was a hit with your cowardly lion horse-dog?”

“A huge hit.” He grinned. “And for the first time, I was
impressed by something. The god-awful little shack I’d built. I was fucking
impressed by it and I was hooked.”

“How old were you?”

“I don’t know.” He did know actually. He was six years old.
But he didn’t want to tell her that part for some reason. That wasn’t the point
of the story. He didn’t want any oohs and ahhs about how cute he must have been
with the oversized hammer, although Andrea Prentiss didn’t strike him as the
oohing and ahhing type. But again, that wasn’t the point of the story. The
point was… Actually, what the hell was the point? “What I mean is that I discovered
with that doghouse that the only thing that impresses me is what I do with my
own two hands and what God, or whoever runs the rest of everything—and contrary
to popular belief, that’s not either Damien or Michael Reynolds—does with the
rest of the planet.”

He was smiling at her, but she wasn’t smiling back, and
consequently he lost his own. She watched him, carefully, quietly, and for one
hopeful second, he thought she was going to climb back into bed with him, but
she only reached one long delicate finger, perfectly manicured, along his jaw,
saying nothing.

Finally he said, “Anyway, more information than you needed
to know, but what I’m trying to say is I want to bring you back to Maine with
me. I want to show you—”

She stood up abruptly. “I can’t. I have work to do.”

“Come on. You get a vacation, don’t you?”

“I don’t believe so.” She reclaimed her purse. “As a matter
of fact, no.”

That stopped him.

“You’re kidding.”

“Well, there are times when Mr. Reynolds takes a vacation
and I occasionally don’t go into the office then. Is that what you mean?”

She was either playing dumb or his brother was the worst
boss since Scrooge.

“Never mind.”

She said nothing until she got to the bedroom door. Then,
over her shoulder, she said, “Call me next time you’re in town.”

And she was gone.

Jesus, why the hell did that piss him off so much?

* * * * *

Pretending he needed to go see his mother was better than
pretending he wasn’t staying in town to see Andrea Prentiss.

Evan didn’t care about money. Men born rich rarely did,
although Evan’s particular brand of insouciance did not include the flip side
of that, which was the automatic dependence on it, the almost erotic belief
they were entitled to it. The luxuries of his mother’s Upper East Side
townhouse—the private elevator, the three stories of space, the priceless
artworks—made absolutely no impression on Evan, just as he’d tried to explain
to Andrea the night before. Amanda Evans Reynolds was almost, but not quite, as
rich as her ex-husband, the Evans fortune being from railroads originally but
culled into a more diverse portfolio over the generations. As an only child,
Amanda Evans had been spoiled and adored by her older parents, indulged in
every whim, including her ill-fated marriage to the worldly Damien Reynolds. And
when that marriage ended with her brokenhearted at not being able to replace
Damien’s long-dead first wife—as all of Damien’s marriages since the first had
ended to varying degrees—Amanda took her only child back with her to live with
her parents, who spoiled him every bit as much as they had spoiled her.