The Satin Sash (30 page)

“Late afternoon.”

Perhaps he didn’t ask why, because he knew, or perhaps because he didn’t want to know, but Toni offered it, anyway. “I want to say good-bye, Grey,” she said in an odd croak.

The broken admission didn’t mean anything else, except that she couldn’t bear to part like this. They had shared moments, and they had shared lovers, and though they had been joined by Grey at the beginning, now they were joined in ways she couldn’t fully comprehend.

But the anger in Grey’s eyes flared bright, though fleeting. As soon as it appeared, it faded into coolness; his eyes became like fog. He seized her elbow in his hand, a dangerous muscle ticking in his jaw. “Fuck him well and hard,Toni, ’cause that’s the last time you’ll be fucking him.” Toni was ready to shout and deny his accusation, more than ready to fight with him, when he tonelessly added, “Here. He left this for you.”

Her stomach constricted when he draped the familiar shimmering red around her neck. The cool material slid sensuously across her nape, making her heart hammer against her ribs.

When Grey stepped away and disappeared into the house, the tip dangling across one shoulder was all Toni could hang on to.

Clutching it on an end, she yanked it off and gathered it in one hand. She’d never thought the sight of such a soft, pretty thing could ever render her so wretched.

Heath had left her sash.

Out in the hallway,Toni thanked the cleaning lady who opened the door for her and stepped into the small hotel room.A faint smell of tobacco lingered in the air, and the bone-colored tapestry on the wall seemed peeled in places. At the end of the room, leaning over an open suitcase propped atop the bed, a shirtless, jeans-clad vision went utterly still at the sight of her.

Shutting the door behind her, she leaned back against it, drawing in breath after labored breath.

“So you’re not that good at good-byes, huh?”

The atmosphere was charged with electricity as black eyes met green. Through the silence, the bitter wind outside blasted across the city and stormed across Lake Michigan. Rain pelted against the sidewalks, gently smacked the windows.

With a hard, bitter, uncompromising thinning of his lips, Heath wadded a shirt in his hands and shoved it into the rumpled suitcase. “Does Grey know you’re here?”

“Yes.”

His head fell forward as though it weighed too much; then he sifted five restless fingers through his hair and made a low, cynical sound. “He must think me more saint than devil.” He stalked over to the window and shoved his hands into his jeans pockets, his posture rigid. In silence, he watched it rain outside.

She’d wanted to say good- bye, and yet a part of her was reluctant to do so when he seemed so distant.With a mounting sense of despair, she took a step forward, finding it hard to imagine that she’d clawed at that broad, ridged back only yesterday and had taken tiny bites of those beautiful square shoulders. They had been hers for a weekend, and a wealth of resentment filled her over not feeling free to touch him now. “You leave early tomorrow?”

“First thing.”

She paused behind him and inhaled a breath. His earthy scent was so powerful in the little room she thought she’d be intoxicated by it. “Canada?”

“Yes.Vancouver.”

Her control deserted her, and she pressed her cheek to his muscled back. He stiffened under her lips as she whisked them across his skin, but the yearning in her was so great, she did not care that he did not want her touch.

“Cat, I don’t know what rules we’re playing by here.” His voice was coarse and broken as he shifted his weight to his left side—away from her.

Did he feel they’d been playing a game? It had felt so real to her, fun like games, but serious like . . . life.

Putting space between them, she circled the room even though there wasn’t much to see. A TV cabinet, a floor lamp, a landscape painting behind the bed. “Your flight from Cabo all right?” she asked.

He splayed one tanned hand on the windowsill, unwilling, it seemed, to face her. “Yes.”

“Heath, about last night . . .”

“I’m sorry, Cat.”

“No, I’m sorry. I had no right to . . . expect anything from you.”

“You had every right.” When he looked at her, his expression bleak with meaning, the shining light in his eyes made her heart leap in a strange forlorn joy. “You have me by the balls,” he admitted.

She wrung her hands, not entirely sure what he meant, but certain he wasn’t too pleased about it. “W-we were both tense.You were leaving, and things were so intense.”

For one long, tantalizing moment, he seized her chin and ran his thumb along her lower lip, and an aching tenderness both bloomed and died inside her. She had to forget Heath....

“Heathcliff . . .”

“On your lips, I love my name.” He tipped her face up to his scrutiny and slid all his fingers into her hair, cradling her so gently she felt like porcelain. “Can I kiss you one last time?”

“Please.”
Oh, please.

“This is your kiss, Cat, and I swear I’ve never kissed a woman the way I’m going to kiss you.” He whisked her mouth with his, scorching her with that fast pass.A sea of anticipatory ecstasy surged inside her.“It’s going to last forever, kitten. I’m going to take it with me.”

She sucked in a breath when his lips whispered across hers. A flood of wanting drowned her words when his mouth opened and he leaned in to kiss her. His tongue massaged hers softly at first; then it raked across her top and bottom lip.

She sobbed his name, and he whispered hers, and then he delved and delved and delved his tongue into her hungry mouth until his lips closed fully around hers. His kiss was like the storm outside, starting with a drizzle and then bursting with passion once unleashed.

She felt his teeth behind his lips as his tongue pushed and then as he caught her lips between them. She could only moan when the pressure of his hands on her back glued her against him. Their sexes rubbed as hungrily as their mouths, their entire bodies.

Their tongues tangled and melted against each other, their mouths slanted, their ravenous kissing sounds echoing in the room. They kissed until her mouth felt swollen, until her tongue felt numb and she was hardly moving her mouth. She just let him plunder, take it, take it all. He panted against her when he withdrew, leaning his head against hers as they tried to recover.

“Go now,” he whispered, setting her away.

She couldn’t bear to, held herself between both her arms. “Talk to me a little.”

He expelled a frustrated breath. “Cat, go.”

“Just talk to me; say nonsense.”

“Nonsense.” He smiled for the briefest, most enchanting instant; then he sobered up and touched her nose with a fingertip. “Did you sleep well?”

His palms were rough running along her cheek, and she found herself tucking her chin into his hold. “Like a baby.”

“I woke up, and you were curled on my stomach like a kitten.” He smiled fondly as if remembering.“Grey had nearly tossed us out of the side of the bed.”

Her smile didn’t quite make it. She felt so wet. So achy. So trem bly. She made an ugly sound and choked,“I’m so wet, Heath.”
And I’m so sad you’re leaving us.

“Argh, Christ, don’t. How many times do I need to fuck you to make you not want to anymore?”

She sifted her fingers through the fine hairs across his torso with her fingers, then bravely traced his right nipple. It was so small and dark, a temptation to her lips. “I had the most amazing time of my life.”

He drew her closer and seized her lips again, growling when she pressed her breasts against him.They nibbled at each other’s lips and continued kissing, tonguing, the bulge of his erection pressing insistently against her belly swamping her pelvis with heat.

When he pulled free at last, he expelled a ragged breath and pressed his hands to his temples, as though his hands were all that kept his head together. “Go.”

She was shaking, couldn’t seem to make her legs move. “I’ll miss you.”
Come home with me and Grey. . . . We’ll make love until morning. . . . We’ll laugh and eat and sleep. . . .
“I’ll really miss you, Heath.”

His beautiful black eyes ran over her face, taking in her anguish, mirroring it with a spark of pain in his own. “Shit, come here.” He wrapped his arms around her shoulders and pulled her close, burying her face in his neck in a protective way much like Grey’s.

Against his throat, and reluctant to move from the circle of his arms, she whispered, “Maybe you can come to the city more often and—”

“No.”

It was a chore to speak, but she forced the words out of her dry throat. “Why?”

“Grey’s not comfortable with it.”

“But why?” She drew back to stare into his eyes. “He was fine in Cabo.”

He lifted one challenging brow, then two. “His dad’s not in Cabo, is he?” At Toni’s confused frown, Heath explained, “Lucien Grey Richards has spent his lifetime tailoring a perfect son. Grey’s not going to do anything reckless. Not where the old man can see, anyway.”

“But Grey
is
perfect,” she countered, anger raising her voice. “No matter
what
that old fart thinks.”

“I know.” With tenderness shining in his eyes, he rubbed the gooseflesh off her arms.“He doesn’t want to expose you to anything that may harm you.You’re his everything—do you know that?”

“I adore him.”
And why do I feel this strange other thing toward you?
“So even if you wanted to come back, he wouldn’t let you?” she questioned.

“I leave because I want to. He doesn’t send me off.”

When he noticed she wasn’t convinced at all, he chuckled and reached for her arms. “Come here, my sentimental little bit.”

“I’m sentimental?” She scowled, but still allowed those thick arms to wind snugly around her. “Tell me you wouldn’t like to be with me again, Heath,” she dared.

He did not deny it, but stood embracing her in silence. She shook her head, realizing how selfish she was. She had never realized how much so until she couldn’t stand the thought of letting him go.

“Heath, you deserve to be loved.You deserve to have anything you want. . . .” She smiled brightly, even though her every expression seemed like pain on her face today. “Don’t settle for less.”

“I never planned to settle.” He held her at arm’s length and delivered a meaningful look.“Now I might never.You make me want things,Toni.Things I cannot have.”

She did not want to hear more.

She wanted to hear it all.

“At the benefit, did you want to get to Grey through me?”

“No. Cat. No. I wanted
you
. I still want you. I’d spent months dreaming of you, and the moment I saw you . . . I needed to have you. I’d have taken you for myself if you weren’t his.”

“But I am his.”

Their eyes locked for an electrifying moment.

“Don’t make me hate him,” he said hoarsely, and, jerking his eyes away, raked a frustrated hand across his hair.

“Heath, what if—”

“No what-ifs. Only what is.” Her stomach muscles clenched as he fixed her with a black, tormented look, his profile as hard as granite, and said, “Go home to Grey.”

That was all the good-bye she was going to get; Toni realized she was being dismissed when he went to the closet to fumble around with more of his clothes. He did not glance back at her, didn’t so much as give her another view of his face.

Some emotion demanded justice, but she could not speak it, could not even name it. Impulsively, crazily, maybe desperately, she pulled the sash out of her bag and buried it deep in his suitcase, and thought, hoped, prayed before she made her way out of his room,
Come back, Heath Solis.

Grey waited in a cloak of obscurity, sprawled on the couch among the shadows. His thumb steadily clicked the ballpoint pen in his hand. Click. Click. Click. The tip went in and out, in and out. A panel of light from the hall streamed into the entry when the front door opened. He sucked in a breath, his finger frozen on a click.