Prelude to a Wedding (The Wedding Series Book 1)

by Patricia McLinn

  * * * *

  Bette woke up with no confusion. She didn’t even need to open her eyes to know where she was or whose arms held her, whose legs weighed hers down, whose breath stirred her hair and whose shoulder pillowed her cheek.

  She knew.

  A powerful, potent drug this lust could be. It lulled her from the tenets of a lifetime, so that as she rested in the circle of Paul’s arms, she found herself thinking not of the future, but of the past. The immediate, incredible past.

  She felt her cheeks warming, not in embarrassment but in renewed desire. He wasn’t a smooth lover, or particularly gentle. But he was thorough. And powerful. The glimpses she’d had of his sensuality hadn’t prepared her for the whole. She was honest enough with herself to admit that if they had, she might still be running.

  Although he’d given her chances to run. She thought of the moments he’d hesitated long enough to let his eyes ask her if she wanted to back out. Not once, but twice.

  A slight frown of concentration tightened muscles in her forehead. She had the impression a pattern was there somewhere, a pattern she hadn’t recognized yet. What was it?

  Still sleeping, Paul shifted, drawing her closer and making a low sound against her hair. Her eyes opened, the frown disappearing as her mouth curved.

  Patterns and contemplation could wait. If she’d learned one thing tonight, it was the power of the moment. Under Paul Monroe’s touch, now was the only time that existed for her.

  The room was softly aglow from a single shaded lamp on the nightstand. Sometime while she slept, he must have gotten up and switched off the other lights. How long had she slept? She really didn’t care. Still night, she thought. The drapes showed no crack of morning light and the city seemed hushed beyond them.

  The light burnished his skin and the blaze of hair, darker than on his head and arms but still with a glint no one would confuse with brown. It trailed the valley between his ribs only to disappear under a tangle of covers at his waist. Their earlier urgency had left no time to contemplate and explore his body. Her fingers lightly dusted along the tickling cover of hair. She lifted her head, and considered the form that had pillowed hers.

  He was beautiful.

  His eyes still closed in sleep, his personality for once stood second to his physical presence. His shoulders were broad, his torso narrowed to taut waist and slim hips, though she knew the power those sleek lines could produce. A swimmer’s body, rather than a weightlifter’s, she thought. Strength without bulk, hardness without display.

  She bent, putting her lips to the flat brown disk where the dusting of hair grew thinner. She let her tongue taste it, taste him, and felt the response—in him, and in herself.

  He muttered something she chose to take as encouragement. When her stronger ministrations brought his hands to her hair, holding her tightly against him, she knew she’d been right. Tension hummed along his skin, a vibration that communicated itself to her through her tongue and lips.

  His hands tugged at her, drawing her over his body, holding her shoulders above him.

  “Bette, let me kiss you. Open your mouth to me.”

  The kiss started as a gentle one, then deepened and quickened to pulse with a beat she recognized and welcomed. Paul’s hands clenched hard around her upper arms, then purposefully loosened, and the kiss eased back to tenderness.

  He parted their mouths, and hitched himself to a sitting position against the padded headboard. Still lost in the kiss and her sense of loss that it had ended, she allowed herself to be twisted and adjusted until she sat back against his chest with his arms around her, the covers up to her shoulders.

  “Are you okay?” His lips followed the question with a whispery touch to her temple.

  The question and the concern of voice and touch surprised her.

  “Fine,” she said first. Then amended it to, “Wonderful.” And turned to kiss his chin.

  “Really? I was rather rough. And in a hurry.”

  She tilted her head to see his eyes. He wasn’t searching for reassurance on his performance, but was truly concerned.

  “Yes, you were,” she answered slowly, remembering. “And it was wonderful.”

  The concern in his eyes lessened, but didn’t leave.

  “You’re sure you’re okay?”

  She kissed his throat, just under his jaw, then nipped at it before kissing the spot once more. “I’m sure. Though I might be a little sore . . .”

  He grinned. “You know what they say is the best cure for sore muscles?”

  “What’s that?”

  “Use them.”

  “Ah, why’d I have a feeling you’d say that?”

  “Because great minds think alike?”

  “I don’t think that was it.”

  “Because you’d heard that wisdom before?”

  “Not that, either.”

  “Because you’ve known that I’ve been fantasizing about you for nearly a month now?”

  It was odd the things that could catch you off guard. “Fantasizing? About me?” She wasn’t a woman to spark fantasies. Respect, yes. Maybe even admiration. But fantasies?

  He must have heard her disbelief. He placed a hand on each side of her head and turned her so she had to see the utter conviction in his eyes. “You better believe it, Bette Wharton. Fantasizing hot and heavy.”

  Feeling part of him harden against her hip lent credence to his statement.

  “Like what?” She could feel her cheeks burning under his hands, and this time there was embarrassment mixed with the desire. She couldn’t believe she’d asked the question, but she sure as hell wasn’t going to stop the answer.

  “I have one where you come to my office.” His voice sounded husky, but his eyes didn’t leave hers. He cleared his throat. “It’s late. The building’s empty. And you walk in the door, unexpectedly and . . .” His hesitation let her heated imagination fill in details that gathered her blood, hot and heavy, in her breasts and loins. “And we make love on the couch. Long, slow, lingering love.”

  “I have one too,” she murmured. “A fantasy.” She didn’t know where she got the bravery. Unless it was from him.

  “Tell me.”

  “There’s a boathouse where my parents live. They bought the house years ago to retire to. We used to go there for vacations, even when I was a girl.” She was explaining too much, she knew, but she couldn’t help it. She wasn’t accustomed to this. “I’ve fantasized about making love in this tiny, private boathouse. It would be warm and dark, and so beautiful. But I never could see the man’s face.” Still, she’d known it would be the face of the man she’d love for all her life.

  “Can you see the man’s face now?”

  He had needs, too. If she hadn’t known it before, if he’d tried to hide it before, it was there between them now. Could she say no, and hurt him that way? Could she say yes, and hurt herself?

  “I —” Paul’s face swam before her in a shimmer of tears. “I think maybe I can.”

  Their lips met. This time he wasn’t rough. Or in a hurry, though she witnessed the cost of his patience in muscles that quivered and tendons gone tense. She would have spared him that, in fact tried to tempt him beyond it, rolling her hips in invitation. But he resisted, tempting her instead. His mouth and hands and skin were a sensual abrasion, traveling lower and deeper across her sensitized skin. And in the end, she succumbed, falling first and fast as he found her moist warmth and brought there the beat they’d perfected before. She fell a second time when he joined her, but this was slower and deeper, and all the more wonderful because she watched him, his face rapt and taut, follow her to the ascent, and then over.

  They lay as they had collapsed, too exhausted, too sated to move. When his voice came, it seemed to float between them.

  “I have one question.”

  “Hmm?” Forming a word took too much energy.

  “Don’t your parents live outside Phoenix?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “A boa
thouse? In Arizona?”

  She poked at his ribs and got a muffled chuckle in reward. “Shows all you know. Yes, a boathouse in Arizona. There’s a lake with sailing and swimming and everything. Mom and Dad have lakefront property, and a little, enclosed boathouse.”

  He seemed to accept that. After a minute or two, he mentioned in an offhand way, “You know I have this other fantasy, too.” He stroked his palm over her skin, from hip, over fanny, waist, back, shoulder and neck, then back down. “And for this one we don’t have to go to Arizona, or even leave the hotel. We only have to move about ten feet to accomplish it.”

  He drew her up, disregarding her halfhearted protests, and she saw they were heading for the bathroom.

  “It has to do with being hot and wet and close,” he murmured into her ear before stooping to snag the bath sheet from the tumble of objects at the foot of the bed. A froth of royal blue wove in among the other items. “Are you ever going to show me this nightgown?”

  She stifled a throaty chuckle. “I did show it to you, remember?”

  “I meant on you, this time.”

  “I thought you had a fantasy you wanted to show me first.”

  He looked from her to the gown swirled at their feet, then back to her.

  “Will you promise to show it to me later?”

  “Later,” she promised. “Much later.”

  Chapter Nine