The Fifth Favor (20 page)

Then Adrian shifted himself next to her, eliciting a moan of frustration from her throat before his impatient tug came at her button fly.

The transition revived her; her lashes fluttered open to the night and to his rapt, shadowed features above hers. Something about his intent, his sudden stillness, told her he wanted more than she could possibly give, here in the open, in the exposed gloom.

But she’d promised. She’d sworn to her need, and there was no turning back.

“What are you going to do?” She caught his face in her hands and found his cheeks feverish to the touch. “Adrian, we can’t—”

“I know we can’t. But you can.” He curled himself around her, effectively shielding the movement of his hand inside her jeans from any unforeseen witnesses.

Billie tried to focus on his face in the dusky, fading light, found his eyes liquid and watchful, before lust weighted her lashes and she felt his fingers furrow between the wet, wanting folds of her sex.

109

Shelby Reed

Everything honed down to that one, electric sensation, and the world disappeared.

He circled her slick flesh, teasing, slid one finger inside her, deep, curved upward to stroke and play an ultra-sensitive spot she hadn’t known existed in her own body…and opened his mouth over hers to swallow the whimper that shuddered forth from her throat.

Her body arched beneath him in surprised delight.

“You like that?” he whispered, retreating and offering a second’s respite from the searing sensations.

“Oh, my God.” She clung to him, gasping. Nothing had ever felt so good. He’d touched her before, sent her soaring to orgasmic heights, but this…
this
… “I’ve never…what are you doing?”

“Bringing you pleasure, and not nearly as much as you bring me.” He sank his finger inside her again, and she felt her own body instantly draw him in, deep, deeper with the answering spasm that shook her frame.

“You’re so soft.” He shifted and penetrated her more deeply, taking in her harsh gasp with an indrawn breath as his lips hovered above hers. “So wet. Like drenched silk.”

The promise of orgasm clamored within her, and in response her fingers dug convulsively into his back. “Oh, no…”

He lifted his head to look at her and stilled the rhythmic stroke of his finger, all the while applying pressure to that magic place deep inside her, so rich with nerves and promise. “No? I should stop?”

Her eyes fluttered open at the teasing query, tried to focus. “No! Oh, God. It’s too much. Adrian…
yes
,” she hissed when he plunged inside her again.

A smile drifted across his lips as he kissed the corner of her right eye, then her nose, her forehead. Chaste kisses, so incongruent to the sinuous invasion between her thighs.

“Take it,” he whispered, inserting a second finger into her yielding, hungry flesh.

“Take your pleasure, Billie.”

Her body bowed beneath him, trapped against the stretchy give of weathered rope, her legs sprawling wide on the hammock, hips counter-thrusting toward his cadenced penetration.

The lucid, rational part of Billie wanted to laugh. Here she was, out in the woods of middle-class suburbia, with a man’s fingers inside her panties, inside
her
, a climax of unimaginable force trembling at the edge of her grasp. And the man who now plied her and played her…a prostitute. A gigolo. A beloved brother and son and uncle, and a suspect, with too many secrets and too much sexual prowess.

A man she was falling in love with.

The impossibility of it, the crazy, twisted potential swept over her, then ebbed, lost in the surge of unbelievable pleasure that built and built within her like strings drawn too tightly across a fine-tuned instrument. She would die from this, die and scatter into 110

The Fifth Favor

a million fragments and drift like dust on the wind. The mounting tension frightened her, even as she strained toward its apex.

Brushing back the damp strands of hair that clung to her temple, Adrian nuzzled her cheek, found her mouth again with his velvety, sinuous tongue, and carefully slid a third finger inside her body, edging her closer to the ecstasy she craved…and feared.

“Open your eyes.”

Someone spoke. A phantom. A satyr. Adrian.

“Billie.” His lips moved over her chin, his words thick with lust and satisfaction.

“Open your eyes and look at me.”

When Billie did as he asked, he kissed her, breathed his need against her lips. “No, don’t close them. Let me see you, just as you are, before it’s too dark.”

Sensing the telltale, fluttering constriction of the silky muscles surrounding his fingers, the mounting, soundless cry under his mouth, Adrian quickened the movement of his caress, never losing contact with that one place deep within her that made ecstasy so very accessible to her, a woman who’d had pleasure withheld from her enough to scar her heart.

She wound handfuls of his shirt in trembling fists, gaze wide and fixed on his until pleasure brought her head off the hammock and she buried her face against his neck, where she could shout out her climax only to have it muffled by his skin.

Her shudders of release went on and on, one spasm rolling into the next beneath him, shaking the hammock so violently, Adrian had to set one foot on the ground to keep them from flipping.

He closed his eyes and rode the wave with her, every nerve in his taut body singing in response, electrified by joy.

When had satisfying a woman become this ambrosial treasure? When had the entire, sensual routine gone from mere product to something of value? He hadn’t seen its potential, hadn’t been aware of the gossamer threads that bound carnal fulfillment to pleasure of the heart.

It terrified him; it moved him. It dislodged his beliefs like a vast puzzle upended and falling into a million irretrievable pieces.

Gradually, Billie’s body collapsed into the hammock’s easy yield, and Adrian brushed a kiss against her open lips, a sentiment born of astonishment and exultation.

She tasted like wine and passion, a flavor so luscious, he settled his mouth over hers and kissed her more fully, tongue sliding over hers and committing her essence to memory. Satiated woman. The sweetest flavor of all.

When he carefully withdrew and refastened her jeans, Billie snuggled against him, and he eased his arm beneath her again, their bodies settling together as though passion had never detonated between them, as though they’d never moved from the lazy, swaying position of two people reveling in the summer night.

111

Shelby Reed

It came to him then, permeated his disjointed thoughts. Billie was teaching him—

him
—how to make love. With a jolt of surprise at the crashing irony, Adrian realized he hadn’t known how until now. He, the consummate lover, so renown for his sexual skill, so proficient and controlled and practiced, had only played at making love, where Billie…
God
. Clearly, it was all she knew. Pretense just wasn’t in her spectrum of capabilities.

Her breathing came light and even against his throat, fingertips resting, relaxed, over his heart. He laid his cheek on her hair and thought she might be drifting into sleep, but then her voice broke the night, languorous and hushed.

“Incredible.”

He smiled at the one-worded précis. “Was it?”

“Yes. And you’re
terrible
.” Her wry humor diluted the tension choking the air, a mild distraction from the low, driving need that still pulled insistently in Adrian’s belly.

“God, Adrian, I can’t take you anywhere.”

Laughter vibrated through him. He stroked her hair, pressed his lips against her damp forehead, submitting to the subtle liquidation of lust into tenderness.

After a moment she said, “So how many other girls did you say you’ve brought out here?”

“I didn’t.”

“Hmm,” vibrated against his chest.

“No one as delectable as you.” He caught her chin, lifted it to examine her eyes in the darkness and lost himself in the heat and acuity of her gaze. “No one but you in a decade.”

The vulnerability of his own words etched in his mind, a flicker of warning that he’d gone too far. He started to shift away, but she drew him back with a gentle hand on his jaw. “I owe you.”

His brow lifted. “Oh? And how will you pay me, Ms. Cort?”

Her fingers slid down his stomach to the front of his jeans, where his erection, still rigid and aching, instantly surged against the contact. For a moment he allowed it, closing his eyes, letting himself fall into the pleasure of her caress.

Then he caught her hand and lifted it to his lips, and she uttered a sound of protest.

“Don’t you ever let anyone return the favor without putting up a gallant fight?”

He kissed her fingers, one by one. “There are other things I want from you.”

“Like what?”

“I’ll have to think about it.” What he wanted was to strip away her clothes, free himself and drive into her moist, delicious heat until he exploded inside her, and her primal scream flew over the treetops. Instead he forced himself to relax beside her, into the gentle sway of the hammock and the fragrant warmth of her body.

They could have remained as they were, wrapped around each other in languid, sleepy pleasure, until the night passed and morning sun pierced the boughs overhead.

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The Fifth Favor

But Rosalie’s strident soprano, rounding up the children for the night, floated over the trees and roused Adrian at last. Extricating himself from the hammock, he helped Billie to her feet and waited while she refastened her bra, tucked in her shirt and ran her hands through her tousled hair.

They walked together back toward the house, fingertips loosely laced, their steps slow, somnolent. Adrian set aside his unmet desire for another time, an excuse to see Billie again, to touch her, taste her.

Make love to her
.

The thought lowered his brows. No. Not Billie. She would swallow him in impossibilities, enfold him in warmth and love and commitment. And realize, eventually, that she’d settled for a man whose only value lay in his ability to sexualize everything around him.

He searched his heated mind for a time before he knew her, before he wanted her, but the memories slipped like silken skeins through his fingers.

Cold reality washed away his newfound peace. He was fooling himself, lost in this little suburban fantasy, where he could merely step from Avalon and into her life, arms open to take the bounty of emotion and domestic bliss she could offer.

The man within him who could love Billie Cort didn’t exist.

A hollow sensation expanded in Adrian’s chest as he released her hand and put a subtle distance of a few feet between them. For a little while, he’d nearly forgotten he had nothing to give anymore.

* * * * *

In the bathroom, he washed her silky scent from his hands, splashed cool water on his face, braced his palms on the sink and let droplets run down the bridge of his nose and chin, refusing to look at himself in the mirror. Billie was downstairs saying goodbye to his family, ready to return to reality, innocent to the fact that he planned to drop her off at home and then set fire to the bridge that spanned their worlds.

He’d made mistakes before, but he’d never hated himself for it until now. He would hate himself for so many things after this night.

“Leftovers,” Rosalie said when he came downstairs again, and placed a Tupperware container in his hands. “Feed your beautiful girlfriend. She’s too skinny.”

He leaned to kiss his sister’s round cheek. “Thanks for having us, Rosie. And Rudy thanks you, too.”

“No, Zio, no! You can’t take him!” Adrian’s six-year-old niece, Tina, scampered through the living room in a pink Barbie nightgown, fresh from a bath, face frantic with dismay.

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Shelby Reed

“Yes, he can,” Rosalie told her firmly. “We don’t need another mouth to feed in this house, especially one as picky as Rudy’s.” She squinted at Adrian. “You know he’ll only eat beef and chicken. He turns his nose up at dog food. You’ve ruined him.”

Adrian smiled and knelt to Tina’s level. “You hear that? I’ve ruined Rudy. I guess that means I’m going to have to take him home.”

She gazed back at him with wide eyes, confusion stamped across her tawny features. “But I thought he was going to stay with us from now on.”

“The dog was just visiting, Tina,” Rosalie said in a gentler tone. “Tell your uncle to come visit more often so we can see Rudy.”

“Will you bring him back, Zio? I love him.” Tina’s fingers buried themselves in the dog’s soft fur and she hardly flinched when Rudy’s tongue slurped a wet streak across her face.

Adrian regarded her with a grave expression. “Of course I’ll bring him back. But tell me,
bella
—is there anyone else you love besides Rudy?” He reached out and gently tugged her hair. “Say, maybe, me?”

She gave him a speculative look, weighing the options behind eyes as big and brown as chestnuts. “You’re taking our dog,” she said finally. “But I guess I love you.”

Dutifully, she smacked her lips against his cheek, and he immediately wiped away her kiss with a sigh of mock disgust. “That was really wet.”

Glee instantly melted the somberness from her features and she threw her arms around his neck.

Clasping his niece’s thin little body for a sublime moment, Adrian breathed in the scent of bubble bath and a child’s purity, and told himself he would come back to this lost place in his past. If only for the poignant reminders of what life was supposed to be.

Rosalie trailed him and Billie down the flagstone sidewalk with Rudy in tow.

“You’ll come back soon. The kids never see you. I swear I forget I even have a brother, much less one in the same town.” She caught the front of his shirt and kissed both his cheeks. “
Ti amo
.”

“
Ti amo
. I’ll call.” He hugged her, then watched, amused, as his gregarious sister embraced Billie with rib-crushing fervor. Rosalie didn’t always warm up to strangers so quickly, but his sister must have seen in Billie what so fascinated Adrian from the start.