Release (9 page)

He drifted off.

His stomach growled, rousing him just minutes later. He cracked open his eyelids and saw a vision.

Genny walked toward him wearing a soft-looking light blue sweater and tight jeans that showed off coltish long legs and the enticing curve of sashaying, feminine hips. He reluctantly removed his heavy-lidded gaze from the juncture of her shapely thighs and looked upward.

And to top off this unearthly vision of loveliness?

She carried a plate with an egg, cheese, and ham sandwich and a steaming cup of coffee in her hands.

“Angel of mercy,” he murmured.

“Where your stomach is concerned, anyway,” she replied dryly before she set the food on the coffee table in front of him.

He caught her hand and pulled her down in his lap when she tried to walk away. A little yelp of surprise popped out of her throat when her ass thumped down on his thighs. He wrapped his arms around her ribs and pressed his mouth to her throat, as if to soothe those jostled vocal cords. He felt the tension in her sleek, soft body, but he kept on holding her anyway.

Selfish. Kids who never had anything always were.

It never struck him that what he said next was in direct opposition to his thoughts, despite the fact that he’d never been more honest in his life.

“I’d do anything to make things right for you, girl.”

She went still in his arms. He held his breath when he felt her hand move. Her fingers stroked the hair at his nape, furtively at first. A shiver of pleasure rippled up his spine when a fingernail scraped his scalp.

“Just don’t . . . don’t
fret
about it anymore. Okay, Sean?” He pursed his lips against her skin, feeling her earnest plea vibrate from her flesh to his.

“I won’t if you won’t.”

Her fingers stopped moving in his hair when she recognized the hint of a dare in his tone.

He twisted his face, rubbing his whiskers into her neck. She jumped in his lap. Her initial shriek of alarm segued into hysterical laughter. He played her ribs with his wriggling fingers. Her squirming ass in his lap consisted of the sweetest kind of agony. Her loose hair swished around him as she giggled and struggled, perfuming the air with its clean, fruity scent.

Sean released her after their little tickle and tussle match when he realized his intentions were turning to things besides getting Genny to relax at his touch. He planned on touching her a lot in the next few days, and the sooner she acclimated to that fact, the better.

She scrambled out of his lap and stood unsteadily. Her glare of condemnation didn’t bother him overly much. A grin fought against a scowl on her pretty mouth.

She wasn’t going to run—at least not right now. He could just tell. The opportunity to spend time with her, to coax her back into his life beckoned to him like a whispered promise.

Genny’s expression turned suspicious when she noticed he was grinning like an idiot. “You know I hate to be tickled.”

“I seem to recall something about that . . . yeah.” He was distracted by how soft and firm Genny’s heaving breasts looked beneath her sweater. The shine in her gray eyes that had been so wary and sad just minutes ago made him happy beyond reason.

She snorted and picked up the cloth napkin she’d placed beside his plate and tossed it at his chest forcefully. “Just eat your sandwich before it gets cold, boy.”

“Yes, ma’am,” he said, his gaze fastened on her swaying ass as she stalked away. He shook his head as if to clear it when she passed out of his vision.

Damn,
he thought appreciatively when he bit into the chewy toasted Italian bread that surrounded scrambled egg, asiago cheese, and thinly sliced prosciutto.

The woman knew how to cook almost better than she knew how to walk.

 

 

 

Genevieve became consumed with the idea that she and Sean needed something to
do
, some sort of activity or purpose. If she spent too much unstructured time alone with him in this penthouse during the biggest snowstorm in five decades, thoughts and feelings were inevitably going to turn in the direction of sex. They certainly had earlier, when Sean had teased and tickled her. She didn’t need to be an expert on human behavior to know what that heavy-lidded gaze he’d been giving her while he stared at her breasts meant.

And the growing hardness between his thighs when he’d held her against him didn’t require interpretation, either. Neither did the dampness in the crotch of her panties that grew more and more noticeable the more time she spent with him.

When Genevieve had agreed to allow him to stay there with her, she’d accepted the inevitability of making love with Sean. Some things were fated to happen, and her and Sean exploring the depths of the singular passion they’d shared since their first glance was one of them.

Genevieve just wished she knew if their coming together finally on their own terms was a fate of the happily-ever-after genre or the plane-crash variety.

Not that there could
really
be a happily ever after with Sean. Not with Max always standing between them.

She wished there was a guarantee that she’d made the right decision in letting Sean stay there, but there wasn’t one, so she’d just have to live with that. She’d come to terms with the fact that she couldn’t fight her need for him any longer.

But now that they’d finished eating, the rest of the day and night loomed like some kind of vast, frightening chasm that needed to be crossed.

She inspected the television set in the living room while Sean cleaned up the breakfast dishes. Watching TV was the only distraction she could think of in the midst of a snowstorm. Unfortunately, the penthouse didn’t have cable installed, but at least there was a working DVD player. She hadn’t been the one to furnish the unit; Max had done it all. She couldn’t recall ever watching a movie here. They usually were too busy attending social events or the theater. The penthouse had never been used for lying around and being lazy. It was ideal for weekend city activities.

Apparently, that’s what Sean used it for. Not that his affairs were illicit, necessarily.

Her heartbeat escalated at the volatile thoughts. What was so terrible about being Sean’s next conquest in the penthouse? She’d wanted to be with Sean practically since the moment she’d first seen him. Maybe she hadn’t been conscious of it then, but some nameless, formless thing had clicked into place when she’d first looked into his eyes. She’d already accepted what would happen between them over the next few days was an inevitability.

But that didn’t stop her insecurity from zooming off the charts.

She’d only been to bed with four men in her life. One of them had been a guy she’d dated seriously in college; the other a man she’d gone out with for two and a half years named Dave. She’d actually been on a date with Dave when she met Max at a party given by a socialite who owned the Oak Street building she rented for her boutique.

The other two men she’d slept with had been her husband and Sean. She’d been planning to sleep with Jeff at some undefined point in the future. It was obvious Jeff was more than interested, but he’d also been willing to be patient. He knew she was a widow . . . seemed to guess she was unsure about becoming intimate with a man again, although he couldn’t understand the true circumstances of why that was.

Jeff knew she was hesitant, but he more than likely was wrong about why she was so unenthusiastic to jump into bed with another man.

The truth was, something about having sex with Sean had changed her,
transformed
her on some deep level until she no longer recognized herself.

No longer trusted her desires.

She kept thinking about the orgy of pleasure they’d indulged in on that New Year’s Eve night. Her inhibitions had been dampened by champagne and a desire denied for too long. She’d
needed
to release it, or she would have eventually gone mad. When she’d finally touched Sean, when he’d kissed her, it’d been like lighting a fuse to dynamite.

Sean probably thought she was like that all the time in bed. Wild and uninhibited. Shameless. He’d probably be shocked to know that while Max’s and her sex life had been satisfactory, if not spectacular, initially, toward the end of their four years of marriage, it had dwindled into nonexistence.

For all she knew, Sean thought she and Max were swingers. Max had proposed the whole thing so casually on that night. Genevieve had never protested, and just stood there frozen in shock. Sean and she had never discussed the events of that night afterward.

Genevieve wouldn’t allow it.

Why
wouldn’t
Sean make the assumption that she made a regular practice of going to bed with two men?

The fact of the matter was, before that New Year’s Eve night they’d spent with Sean, Max and she hadn’t had sex for almost a half a year. Initially, she’d worried Max was having an affair, but he always seemed so warm with her, so interested and proud of her work, so kind. And there was never any indication of a lover—no furtive phone conversations, or even a particularly attractive female at the office who had made Genevieve suspicious.

Then she’d met Sean, and the issue of being intimate with her husband had slowly faded in importance. She’d told herself it was natural for married couples to become less active in regard to sex. Besides, Max was in his fifties. He didn’t have the drive that a younger man did.

Or a younger woman.

Genevieve hadn’t known the depths of her sexual desire until she’d met Sean. Hadn’t known what she was capable of in bed. Or what she was capable of allowing someone to do
to
her.

Not just anyone,
she corrected herself.
Sean.

Heat flooded her cheeks as graphic memories played across her brain—looking up at Sean while his cock had been in her mouth and Max had been behind her. Fucking her.

She had, and so had he. Exactly in the manner Sean had orchestrated it.

“What’s wrong?”

She started at the sound of Sean’s voice. She’d been so lost in the charged, erotic memory she hadn’t realized he’d finished cleaning up in the kitchen and reentered the living room.

“I . . . nothing. Why?” she muttered, flustered. She opened up one of the cabinets on the television console and peered inside, even though she’d already discovered it was empty.

He studied her speculatively for a few seconds with eyes that were far too alert for Genevieve’s comfort. “You had a funny look on your face.”

“There’s no cable and no movies for the DVD player, either.”

Sean yawned and plopped down in the leather chair. “There’s a place around the corner that delivers DVDs, but I noticed on the way to Salvatore’s they were closed. Probably because of the storm.”

She stood from her kneeling position and walked over to the couch, her anxiety building as Sean continued to watch her. She picked up the remote control and turned on the television.

“Maybe there’s something on one of the networks. I’m not used to watching television at this time of day. We could watch a football game, but you know I’m not much of a sports fan except for baseball. But maybe there’s a movie, or—”

“Genny,”
he interrupted her blathering.

Her gaze shot over to him.

“What’s wrong?” he barked.

It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him that he shouldn’t expect much from her. She
wasn’t
that woman he’d had hand-cuffed last night. She wasn’t even that woman he’d made love to with such ruthless precision on New Year’s Eve three years ago.

But she’d told him she didn’t want to bring up that anxiety-provoking topic, the night she’d lost all her illusions about Max . . . and about Sean, too.

The night that led to Max’s murder.

She closed her eyes briefly. She felt trapped in a prison built by her own desires and insecurities.

Trapped . . . but afraid of the consequences of release.

“Nothing’s wrong,” she told Sean gruffly. She flipped the channels with the remote control, not really taking in much on the screen. An image suddenly penetrated her distraction. Her jaw dropped open.

Sean’s head swung around when he saw her reaction. He sat forward in the chair. Neither of them spoke as they watched the local news story—the gold and orange flames leaping ominously against the shadow of the roof, the black night sky, and the outline of the thick, surrounding forest. Genevieve saw herself on the screen—her eyes looking huge in a face that had been washed out by the camera lights, the surrounding emergency vehicles, and the rising anxiety for Jim, who stood next to her.

“The owner of the Lake Forest mansion, thirty-three-year-old Chicago fashion designer Genevieve Bujold, was not in the house at the time of the fire. There were no fatalities, despite the complete destruction of the multimillion-dollar home.”

The footage altered to several hours later. Snow fell and the gray light of dawn illuminated the image of firemen carrying a few blackened items out of the smoking skeleton of the house and laying them out on the front lawn.

Genevieve hastily changed the channel. She didn’t want to see any surviving remnants of her life with Max.

She flipped the channel to a black-and-white rerun of the
Andy Griffith Show
, not really aware of what she’d chosen, and settled back into the corner of the couch.

It somehow seemed fated—sad, but appropriate, too. Her marriage to Max had gone up in figurative flames three years ago. The destruction of the Lake Forest mansion by fire was like a long overdue period at the end of a story that never should have been told.

 

 

 

Sean kept his eyes on the television, but he was aware of Genny unfolding the blanket and curling up in the corner of the couch, her posture stiff and guarded. Seeing her house burning on the television screen hadn’t been the only thing that had gotten her uptight, although it sure hadn’t helped matters any.