He lived on Commonwealth Avenue, on the third floor of a time-honored six-story building. Naturally the rain had stopped by the time they reached it. He knew not to point that out to Jessica, and ushered her into the lobby before she could figure it out for herself. Though she’d stopped crying, she was distraught. The tension in her body wasn’t to be believed.
“Here we go,” he said as he quickly unlocked the door to his place. He led her directly into the bathroom, pulled a huge gray bath sheet from a shelf and began to wipe her arms. When he’d done what he could, he draped it around her, took a smaller towel, removed her glasses and dried them, too. “Better?”
Jessica refused to look at him. “I’m hopeless,” she whispered.
“You’re only wet,” he said, setting the glasses by the sink. “When I saw you crying, leaning against the wall that way in the alley, I thought you’d been attacked. I honestly thought you’d been mugged. But you’re only wet.”
She was beyond being grateful for small favors. Turning her face away from him, she said in a woefully small voice, “I tried so hard. I wanted to look nice for you. I can’t remember the last time anything meant so much to me, and I almost did it. I was looking good, and I was looking forward to tonight, and then it started to rain. I didn’t know whether to go back or go on, and the rain came down harder, and then it didn’t matter either way because I was soaked.” Her eyes were filled with tears when they met Carter’s. “It wasn’t meant to be. I’m a disaster when it comes to nice things like dinner and the theater. There was a message in what happened.”
“Like hell,” Carter said, blotting her face with the smaller towel. “It rained. I would have been caught in it, too, if I’d walked, but I was running late, so I took a cab.” He began to gently dry her hair. “Sudden storms come on like that. If it had come fifteen minutes earlier or later, you’d have been fine.”
“But it didn’t, and I’m not. And now everything is ruined. My dress, my shoes, my hair—”
“Your hair is gorgeous,” he said, and it was. Moving the towel through it was like trying to tame a living thing. Waving naturally, it was wild and exotic. “You should wear it down like this more often. Then again, maybe you shouldn’t. It’s an incredible turn-on. Let everyone else see it tied up. Wear it down for me.”
“There was a clip in it. It looked so pretty.”
Carter found the clip buried in the maple-hued mass. “Here. Put it back in.”
“I can’t. I don’t know how to do it. Mario did it.”
“Mario?”
“My hairdresser.”
She’d gone to the hairdresser. For a dinner and theater date with him. That fact, more than anything else she’d said, touched him deeply. He doubted she went to the hairdresser often, certainly not to have something as frivolous as a clip put in. But she’d wanted to look nice for him.
“Ah, Jessica.” Towels and all, he took her in his arms. “I’m sorry you got rained on. You must have looked beautiful.”
“Not beautiful. But nice.”
“Beautiful.”
“But I’m a mess. I can’t go anywhere like this, not to dinner, not to the theater. Call someone else, Carter. Get someone else to go with you.”
He held her back and stared down onto her face. “Are you kidding?”
“No. Call someone.”
He was about to argue with her when he caught himself. “You’re right,” he said. “Stay put.” He left the bathroom.
Sinking down onto the lip of the tub, Jessica hugged the towel around her. But it was no substitute for his arms. It had neither living warmth nor strength—either of which might have helped soothe the soul-deep ache of disappointment she felt.
She knew it shouldn’t matter so much. What was one date? Or one dress? Or one hairdo? But she’d so wanted things to be right. She hadn’t realized how much she’d wanted that. But it was all ruined. The dress, the hairdo, her evening with Carter.
“All set,” he said, returning to the bathroom. He’d taken off his jacket and tie and was rolling up his sleeves.
“What are you doing?” she asked, staring at the finely corded forearms that were emerging.
“Getting you dry.”
“But I thought you phoned—”
“The ticket agent. I did. He’s calling the tickets in to the box office. They’ll be resold in a minute. We’ve got new ones for next week. Friday night this time. Okay?”
“But I thought—”
Hunkering down before her, he said softly, “You thought I was calling someone else to go with me, when I’ve been telling you all along that I don’t want to go with anyone else.” Leaning forward, he gave her a light kiss. “You don’t listen to me, Jessica.”
“But I’ve ruined your evening.”
“Not my evening. Our evening. And it’s not ruined. Just changed.”
“What can we possibly do?” she cried. Absurdly her eyes were tearing again. He was being so kind and good and understanding, and she hadn’t been able to come through at all on her end. “I’m a mess!”
Carter grinned. It was a dangerously attractive grin. “Any more of a mess and I’d lay you right down on the floor and take you here. You really don’t know how sexy you are, do you?”
“I’m not.”
“You are.” His grin faded as his eyes roamed her face. “You are, and I want you.”
“Carter—”
“But that’s not what we’re going to do,” he vowed as he rose to his full height. “We’re going to dry you off and then go out for dinner.”
She wanted that more than anything. “But I can’t go anywhere! My dress is ruined!”
“Then we’ll order in dinner and wait for your dress to dry. First, you’ll have to take it off.”
Her cheeks went pink. “I can’t. I haven’t anything to put on.”
Raising a promising finger, he left her alone for as long as it took him to fetch a clean shirt from his closet. Back in the bathroom, he dropped it over the towel bar, stood her up, turned her and unwound the towel enough so that he could get at the back fastening of her dress.
“I can do that,” she murmured, embarrassed.
“Indulge me.” Gathering her hair to one side, he carefully released the hooks holding the turtleneck together. Her hair had protected that part of her dress from the rain, so the lime color there was more vivid. Carter wished he’d seen her before the storm, wished it with all his heart. He knew how sensitive Jessica was about her looks, but she’d felt good about herself then. He would have given anything to be able to share that good feeling with her.
Not that he didn’t think she looked good now. He meant it when he said she looked sexy. He was aroused, and being so close to her, gently lowering her zipper, working it more slowly as the silk grew wetter wasn’t doing anything to diminish that arousal. Nor was watching as each successive inch of ivory skin was exposed. He told himself to leave the bathroom, but the heat in his body was making his limbs lethargic. He knew he’d die if he couldn’t touch that smooth soft skin just once.
His fingertips were light, tentative on her spine between the spot where her zipper ended and her bra began. He heard her catch her breath, but the sound was as feminine as the rest of her and couldn’t possibly have stopped him. Leaving his thumb on her spine, he flattened his fingers, moved them back and forth over butter-softness, spread them until they disappeared under the drape of her dress.
“Carter?” she whispered.
He answered by bending forward and putting his mouth where his fingers had been. Eyes closed, he reveled in the sweet smell of her skin and the velvet smoothness beneath his lips. He kissed her at one spot, slid to the next and kissed her again.
Each kiss sent a charge of sexual energy flowing through her. She clutched the towel to her front, but it was a mindless kind of thing, a need to hold tight to something. Carter’s touch sent her soaring. Her embarrassment at his helping her undress was taking a back seat to the pleasure of his caress, which
went on and on. His mouth moved over her skin with slow allure, his breath warming what his tongue moistened, his hand following to soothe it all.
Her knees began to feel weak, but she wasn’t the only one with the problem. Carter lowered himself to the edge of the laundry hamper. Drawing her between his thighs, he slid both hands inside her dress. His fingers spanned her waist, caressing her while his mouth moved higher. His hands followed, skipping over the slim band of her bra to her shoulders, gently nudging the silk folds of her dress forward.
Jessica tried again, though she was unable to produce more than a whisper. “Maybe this isn’t such a good idea.”
His breath came against the back of her neck, his voice as gritty as hers was soft. “It’s the best one I’ve had. Tell me it doesn’t feel good.”
The days when she might have told him that, in pride and self-defense, were gone. “It feels good.”
“Then let me do it. Just a little longer.”
A small sigh slipped from her lips as she tipped her head to the side to make room for his mouth below her ear. What he was doing did feel good. His thighs flanked hers, offering support, and the whispering kisses he was pressing to her skin were seeping deep, soothing away the horror of the rain. The warmth of his hands, his mouth, his breath made her feel soft and cherished. Eyes closed, she savored the feeling as, minute by minute, she floated higher.
With the slightest pressure, Carter turned her to face him. Her eyes opened slowly to focus on his. She didn’t need her glasses to see the heat that simmered amid the darkness there.
He touched her cheek with the side of his thumb, then slid his fingers to the back of her neck and brought her head forward. His mouth was waiting for hers, hot and hungry, and it wasn’t alone in that. Jessica’s met it with an eagerness that might have shocked her once, but seemed the most natural thing now. Because something had happened to her. She would never know whether it was the words of praise and reassurance he’d spoken, or the gentle, adoring way he touched and kissed her. But she was tired of fighting. She was tired of doubting, of taking everything he said and trying to analyze his motives. If she was being shortsighted, she didn’t care. She wanted to feel and enjoy, and if there would be hell to pay in humiliation later, so be it. The risk was worth it. She wanted the pleasure now.
So she followed his lead, opening her mouth wider when he did, varying its pressure from heavy to feather light. There were times when their lips barely touched, when a kiss was little more than the exchange of breath or the touch of tongues, other times when the exchange was a more avid mating. She found one as exciting as the next, as stimulating in a breath-stopping, knee-shaking kind of way. When the knee-shaking worsened, she braced her forearms on his shoulders and anchored her fingers in his hair. She held him closer that way, wanted him closer still. And while the old Jessica was too much with her to say the words, the new Jessica spoke with the inviting arch of her body.
Carter heard her. His hands, which had been playing havoc over the gentle curves of her hips, came forward to frame her face. After giving her a final fierce kiss, he held her back.
For a time, he said nothing, just let himself drown with pleasure in the desire he saw in her eyes. If there’d ever been a different Jessica, he couldn’t remember her. The only reality for him was the exquisitely sensual creature he now held between his legs.
Something else was between his legs, though, and it wasn’t putting up with prolonged silence. Its heat and hardness were sending messages through the rest of his body that couldn’t be ignored. His need to possess Jessica was greater than any need he’d ever known before.
His hands dropped from her face to her shoulders, then lower, to her breasts. He touched them gently, shaping his hand to their curve, brushing their hardened tips. Jessica gave a tiny sound of need and closed her eyes for a minute. When she opened them, Carter was smiling at her. “You’re so beautiful,” he murmured, and rewarded her for that with another kiss. This one was slower and more gentle, and by the time their lips parted, her breathing had quickened even more.
With her forearms on his shoulders and her forehead against his, she whispered, “I didn’t know a kiss could do that.”
“It’s more than the kiss,” Carter said in a low, slightly uneven voice. “It’s my looking at you and touching you. And it’s everything else that we haven’t dared do. We’ve been thinking about it. At least, I have. I want to make love to you so badly, Jessica. Do you want that?”
It was a minute before she whispered, “Yes.”
“Will you let me?”
“I’m frightened.”
“You weren’t frightened when I kissed you or when I touched your breasts.”
“I was carried away.”
His eyes met hers. “I’ll carry you even further, if you let me. I want to do that. Will you let me?”
“I’m not good at lovemaking.”
“Could’ve fooled me just now. I’ve never been kissed like that.”
“You haven’t?”
“You’re a bombshell of innocence and raw desire. Do you have any idea how that combination turns a man on?”
She didn’t, because she wasn’t a man. But she knew that she was turned on herself. She could feel the pulsing deep inside her. “Will you tell me when I do things wrong?”
“You won’t—”
“Will you tell me? I don’t think I could bear it if we go through the whole thing and I think it’s great, and then you tell me it wasn’t so hot after all.”
She’d spoken with neither accusation nor sarcasm, which was why Carter was so struck by what she said. After a moment of intense self-reproach, he murmured, “I wouldn’t do that to you. I know you still don’t trust me, but I swear, I wouldn’t do that.”
“Just tell me. If it’s no good, we can stop.”
He put a finger to her mouth. “I’ll tell you. I promise. But that goes two ways. If I’m doing something you don’t like, or something that hurts, I want you to tell me, too. Will you?” His finger brushed her lips, moving lightly, back and forth. “Will you?” he whispered.
She gave a small nod.
“Then come give me a kiss. One more kiss before we hang this dress up to dry.”
8
Jessica kissed him with every bit of the love that had been building inside her for days. She hadn’t put the correct name to it then, nor did she now, but that didn’t matter. Under desire’s banner, she gave her mouth to him in an offering that was as selfless as the deepest form of love. And when his kiss took her places she’d never been, she gave in to the luxury of it. And the newness. She’d never known such pleasure in a man’s arms. She’d dreamed it, but to live the fantasy was something else.
Her headiness was such at the end of the kiss that she didn’t demur when he drew her dress down. Leaving the damp silk gathered around her waist, he put his mouth to the soft skin that swelled above the cup of her bra. She held tight to his neck as he shifted his attention from one breast to the other, and what his mouth abandoned, his hand discovered. In no time, he had released the catch of her bra and was feasting on her bare flesh.
Jessica tried to swallow the small sounds of satisfaction that surged from inside.
“Say it,” Carter urged against her heated flesh. “How does it feel?”
“Good,” she gasped. She bent her head over his. “So good.”
“I’m not doing it too hard?”
“Oh, no. Not too hard.”
“Do you want it harder?”
“A little.”
Her nipple disappeared into his mouth, drawn in by the force of his sucking, and she couldn’t have swallowed her satisfaction this time if she’d tried. She choked out his name and buried her face in his hair. He was a beautiful man, making her feel beautiful. She was on top of the world.
The feeling stayed with her for a time. Gently, between long, deep kisses that set her heart to reeling, Carter eased the dress over her hips and legs. Then, keeping her mouth occupied
without a break, he lifted her in his arms and carried her into the bedroom. His body followed hers down to the spread, hands gliding over her, learning the shape of her belly, her hips, her thighs. He couldn’t quite believe she was there, couldn’t seem to touch enough of her at once. And everywhere he touched, she responded with a sigh or a cry or the arch of her body, which excited him all the more. His breathing was ragged when he finally pulled away and began to tug at the buttons of his shirt.
Jessica missed the warmth of his touch at once. Opening her eyes to see where he’d gone, she watched him toss the shirt aside and undo his belt. Her insides were at fever pitch, needing him back with her, but her mind, in the short minute that he was gone, started to clear. She couldn’t tear her eyes from him. With his hair ruffled and falling over his forehead, his chest bare and massive, and his clothes following one another to the carpet, he was more man than she had ever seen in her life.
She couldn’t help but be frightened. She was too inexperienced, for one thing, to take watching him in stride. For another, she’d lived too long thinking of herself as a sexless creature to completely escape self-doubt. Inching up against the headboard, she drew in her legs and folded her arms over her breasts.
“Oh, no, you don’t,” Carter said, lunging after her. “No, you don’t.” The mattress bounced beneath his weight, but his fierceness gave way to a gentle grin as he took her wrists and flattened them on the pillow. “Please don’t get cold feet on me now, honey. Not when we’re so close, when I want you so badly.”
“I—”
“No.” His mouth covered hers, kissing her hungrily, but if he meant to drug her, he was the one who got high. His kiss gentled, grew lazier, and, in that, more seductive. With a low groan, he pulled her away from the headboard, up to her knees and against his body. She cried out when her breasts first touched his chest, but he held her there, stroking her back in such a way that not only her breasts, but her belly moved against him.
He groaned again. “That feels … so … nice.”
She thought so, too. The hair on his chest was an abrasive against her sensitive breasts, chafing them in the most stimulating of ways. His stomach was lean, firm against her, and his arousal was marked, a little frightening but very exciting. Coiling her arms around his neck, she held on for dear life as the force of desire spiraled inside her.
The Dream (Crosslyn Rise Trilogy) Page 15