One Night With You (18 page)

This was insane, she knew, totally, deliriously, deliciously insane. It would solve nothing, change nothing. But it
felt
so right, so good to feel her body surge joyously in response to the experienced touch of his hard lips. They traveled down her neck to tease at the shadowy cleft between her breasts, and she could feel her blood racing madly through her veins, throbbing in her temples and setting the telltale pulse in her throat to dancing wildly in heated excitement.

It had been so long, was her last rational thought, so long since she had felt his fevered, fever-inducing touch.

Just this once more, she promised herself. Just once more.

"Jake," she whispered huskily, a throb of feminine need in her voice. Her hands came up to curl possessively into his rich brown hair, pulling his head up from the cleft of her breasts to silently demand his kiss. "Oh, Jake," she sighed, just before his lips closed hungrily over hers.

He tipped her backward onto the sofa, pressing her gently into the rose-colored cushions. Desi offered no resistance. She couldn't, not with his strong hands at her back and the feel of his lips and tongue so tenderly, sweetly ravaging her mouth. She slid her arms around the strong column of his neck, making sure he followed her down.

It was suddenly as if the past eleven and a half months had never happened. As if they were still two lovers locked in that magical hotel room, hiding from the world and from reality. As if she hadn't experienced the pain, the emptiness of those long months, and as if he had never said any of those harsh, hurtful words to her. It was only the two of them again, each unable to turn away from the other. Seemingly compelled to touch and explore and murmur half-heard words of love and passion.

"I've thought of you like this. But I've already told you that, haven't I?" Jake said gruffly, as though the words were being dragged out of him, but Desi didn't seem to notice how unwilling an admission it actually was. She was lost in her love and need for him, overwhelmed by the fact that he seemed to be returning those emotions.

All she knew was that his lips were against her ear, his tongue lightly outlining the delicate curves, causing her to shiver deliciously under him.

"I've thought of your soft skin and the sweet fragrance of your hair." He raised himself up onto one elbow, his other hand reaching up and under her head, pulling loose the ribbon that bound her hair. He trailed her hair down and around her neck, so that it slithered silkily across the delicate skin of her throat, down her chest, and drew it slowly, tantalizingly, around the smooth mounds of her breasts.

"I've thought of how all that wild red hair curls over your shoulders and down your naked back. Hiding you from me ..." He let go of her hair, as if suddenly tired of his teasing game and his hot hard fingers nudged aside the silk of her robe, exposing one creamy breast to his avid gaze.

"You won't hide from me now, will you, Desiree?" he growled, his breath burning against the silk of her still-covered breast. "Will you, Desiree?" he demanded.

"No," she whispered breathlessly. "No, Jake, I won't hide."

He nodded once, satisfied with her nearly inaudible answer, and then his hand covered her exposed breast, thumb and forefinger teasing the nipple to rigid excitement. His head bent and his mouth closed over the other nipple, tonguing it through the thin silk of her kimono.

Desi moaned, deep in her throat, and arched her slender body against the almost unbearable pleasure of his skillful touch.

"Ah, Desiree," he breathed against her tormented flesh. "Tell me, Desiree. Tell me what you want."

"Please, Jake," she babbled incoherently. "Please... ah, Jake!" The last was a cry wrenched from deep within her as he used his teeth to tug aside the damp material. He closed his lips very gently over her nipple, causing an exquisite pleasure that snaked hotly down her flat stomach, tensing her insides into a tight, hard, burning knot of desire.

"Tell me."

"Jake, please," she whispered again, almost mindless with the feelings he was so skillfully inducing in her. She had no other words. "Please, Jake. Please," she moaned, and her hand came up to his on her breast, pushing it downward across her stomach.

He didn't make her ask again.

His hand paused at her waist, fumbling at the knot of her sash, and when it came loose he raised himself up off her, sliding to his knees beside the sofa. Almost reverently he opened the pink kimono, revealing the creamy perfection of her to his eager eyes.

Desi lay still for a brief minute, her blue eyes opened wide, watching his face as he gazed at the curves of her exposed body. He looked tender and puzzled at the same time, as if he couldn't decide whether to make love to her or not. Then his hand reached out, lightly skimming her from neck to knees, and the ambivalent look was gone, swiftly replaced by one of soul-searing, raging hunger.

Desi's eyes closed, then, and she gave herself up totally to his touch. She felt his hand skim lightly over her body again, just barely outlining the soft curves of her breast and hip and thigh. And then he moved, leaning over her recumbent form, and it was his lips she felt now, worshipping her body.

He started at her forehead, pressing soft kisses to the arch of her eyebrows...on her eyelids and temples...the tip of her nose...the curve of her cheek and jaw... moving slowly, ever downward, with little openmouthed kisses...across her shoulders and breasts, her flat, quivering belly, her navel...the little reddish mole on her left hip.

"That's how I know you're real," he'd told her the last time, touching that mole. "You have a tiny imperfection. If I had imagined you, you would have been perfect."

"I have more than one imperfection," she'd laughingly tried to tell him. He had silenced her with a kiss, sliding her down from the pillows stacked behind her head.

"Ah, Jake... oh!" she'd said then.

She said it again now, over and over—"Oh, Jake. Yes, Jake. Please Jake,"—as his mouth traveled back up her body to greedily claim a breast and his hand moved down, across her flat stomach to the flaming triangle at the apex of her thighs. All she could do was to murmur his name, over and over, like a chant, until she convulsed suddenly in a shattering climax. She bit her bottom lip, muffling the sound of her cries, and her hands clutched at his shoulders, frantically urging him to a final union.

His name was the only thing she seemed to be able to say.

"Tell me, Desiree," he urged, raising his head to look down into her passion-drugged face. "Tell me what you want."

"You," she managed to whisper then. "You, Jake."

She struggled to a sitting position on the sofa, shrugging her arms totally out of her kimono as she did so, and began hurriedly to unbutton his shirt. But her fingers were clumsy in their feverish haste, and Jake brushed her hands aside to finish the job himself. He slid the unbuttoned shirt off, pulling the tails from the waistband of his slacks, as Desi's hands reached eagerly for the buckle of his belt.

In minutes he was as naked as she and he moved swiftly, sliding over her body, parting her willing thighs with his knees. For a heartbeat or two it seemed as if he hovered, suspended, over her supine body, and Desi drank in the sight of his male beauty with greedy eyes. His lush head of dark hair, his beautiful smoldering eyes, his strong jaw, his powerful shoulders and arms, the muscles bulging as he held himself suspended above her. She devoured him with her eyes, visually caressing the hard broad wall of his hair-covered chest, his firm flat belly, narrow hips and turgid, virile manhood. And then her arms reached up for him. Her pale hands clutched at his shoulders to draw him down to her.

"Ah, Desiree," she heard him moan raggedly as he thrust forward into her body.

She held him tightly as he strained against her, her fingers digging into the corded muscles of his shoulders as they climbed together toward the fire and fury of a mutual fulfillment that had been too long denied. And then her arms enfolded him, slipping around his back when the impassioned frenzy had passed, holding his trembling, sweat-sheened body to the comfort of her breasts while she was cradled in the tender haven of his arms.

"Jake," she murmured softly after a few minutes, planting moist, tender little kisses along his neck and jaw. "Oh, Jake... It was.... I don't know how to describe it.... You were...."

"
We
were great," he said, his deep voice still muffled in her cloud of hair. He raised himself up onto his elbows to look down into her face. "We've always been great together. Right from the first time," he said, and his voice was more normal now, no longer husky with passion or suppressed desire. "That's not something that happens too often." He brushed a few stray strands of coppery hair away from her face, and Desi had the distinct impression that he was finding his next words hard to say. "I didn't mean for this to happen when I came here tonight." He paused uncertainly.

"Neither did I," she murmured, waiting for him to continue.

"I'm not saying that I'm not glad that it happened." He smiled a little self-deprecatingly, "At least, I
think
I'm glad. But I was just going to talk to you tonight. To, ah, apologize to you for what I said about Eldin. I was wrong about that." His eyes avoided hers. "And even if I wasn't. Well, it was none of my business anyway." His hand clenched in her hair. "I have no hold over you."

None that you know of, she thought, but said nothing.

"Anyway, what I'm trying to say, Desiree, is even though I didn't intend for this to happen, now that it has we ought to take advantage of it."

He untangled his hand from her hair and kissed her lightly, not seeming to notice the slightly stunned look on her face, and pushed himself up off her to sit on the edge of the sofa. He reached down to the floor for his clothes and began dressing.

Desi lay where she was, staring up at him. "Take advantage of what?" she said in a small careful voice.

"This. Us," he said, glancing down at her as he stood up to zip his pants. "There's an incredibly intense sexual energy between us that's very rare." He bent down to retrieve his shirt from under the coffee table. He went on casually, buttoning his shirt as he spoke. "Only one couple in a hundred—hell, in five hundred, maybe, can generate the kind of reaction we do together." He flashed her a quick grin; charming, boyish and comically lewd, all at once. "Be a crime to waste it."

Desi found that she couldn't return that grin. She didn't even try. She sat up, drawing on her rumpled silk robe, tying the sash securely around her slender waist. She felt suddenly hollow inside, used and cheap.

Sexual energy, was that all he felt for her? Just the novelty and excitement of an intense sexual spark? Felt by only one of every five hundred couples?

It was obvious now this encounter—soul shattering to her—was no more than a roll in the hay for him. An exciting, intense roll in the hay, to be sure, but no more than that. And it was also obvious that he thought she felt the same way about it.

Didn't it show on her face? Didn't any of it show? The love, the passion, the tenderness...and now the hurt? Couldn't he see it? Apparently not, because he stood there smiling down at her, an expectant look on his face.

"I'm sorry," she said, realizing that he must have spoken to her. "What did you say?"

"I asked you if you'd like to drive up to Sonoma with me tomorrow?"

Desi stood up. "Tomorrow?" Her voice was vague and then, "No, I'm sorry, but I can't," she said, just as if she had actually considered it. Fool! "We're—I'm driving down to see my parents tomorrow. I'm going to spend the weekend."

Jake shrugged, an odd look on his handsome face. Disappointment, she would have said if it had been any other man. But that was ridiculous in Jake's case!

"I'm sorry," she said again, edging toward the front door. Stephanie lay asleep in the other room, she remembered belatedly. A baby who might wake up any moment and start to cry. She had to get him out of here. Now. "I'd... I'd ask you to, ah, stay but I have to be up early tomorrow and well... it's late."

"Yes," he agreed. The odd look was gone from his face, replaced by... what? Anger? Disappointment? Pain? She couldn't tell. "You're right. It's late." He looked around him. "Where the hell is my jacket?"

Definitely anger, she decided, feeling suddenly a little nervous of him, remembering another angry scene. Then her back straightened.
He
had no reason to be angry at her.
He
had used her, not the other way around. She was the one who should be angry!

Curiously, though, she wasn't. She couldn't seem to summon up the energy to be angry. She just felt drained and empty.

"It's here," she said, bending to retrieve his jacket from under the edge of the sofa.

You were wrong, Dorothea,
she thought.
Wrong. And I was right. It was lust, pure and simple
. A spectacular sexual attraction with nothing behind it, not on his side at least.

Do I still love him?
she wondered, holding the leather jacket out to him.
Can I possibly still love him?

She didn't know anymore, she told herself. She just didn't know.

"Desi?" he said, taking the jacket from her.

She looked up. It was the first time he had ever called her that. Not in the maddeningly seductive way he said Desiree, nor with the careless indifference with which he said Weston. Just Desi.

"Yes?"

"Have a good time with your parents," he said softly, and then his hand reached out to cup her chin and he bent his head to kiss her. "See you Monday morning."

He was gone.

Desi stood with her forehead resting wearily against the closed door. Why had he done that? Kissed her like that? Not as a lover, exactly, nor as an enemy, but almost as a cherished friend.

It answered one question for her, anyway. She still loved him.

Chapter 10