Isn't it Romantic?

by Ronda Thompson

  The slope of his back, the muscled contours of his buttocks, and the flatness of his stomach. When her hand closed around the hard, hot, length of him, he groaned in either agony or ecstasy.

  “Holding back is killing me,” he said hoarsely. “Don’t touch me, Katrine. I want you to want me as much as I want you.”

  “I do,” she whispered, releasing him to press against his throbbing member with urgency. “Please,” Katrine panted, twisting her head from side to side. “Please give yourself to me.”

  She found her face tenderly clasped between his hands. In his eyes, the light of victory shone, frightening in its sureness and compelling in its promise of pleasure. He entered her slowly, stretching the tight confines of her passage. Her body accepted his thickness, welcomed the unfamiliar feel of his generous offering and strained to receive all he had to give.

  His lips fastened on hers, tenderly tasting before the kiss deepened, until his tongue began to thrust and his body took up the rhythm. A tide of pleasure rose in Katrine as Trey labored above her. He held her captive with his eyes, burning coals of desire in the moonlit room, penetrating her soul as deeply as he penetrated her flesh.

  Instinctively, her hips matched his movements. She’d been with John in inexperienced innocence, with Carl in acceptance that a relationship lasting that long would inevitably end with sex, but never had she been so willing to give herself, so desperate to find release.

  Trey pounded her defenses, demanding surrender. When her breath caught, when her back arched and her eyes widened with wonder, he thought her the most beautiful creature God had ever created. Conscious observation ceased as his own release exploded. Pleasure, agonizing in its intensity tore her name from his lips to merge with the sound of his own. He gathered Katrine close, both trembling in the wake of the storm, both awed by a force that tossed them into a sea of wondrous emotion. Gradually, their hearts slowed, their breathing returned to normal.

  “I’ve never felt like that before,” Katrine said. “I never really believed anyone could feel like that. Was it … different for you?”

  Drained of strength and past defense, Trey pulled back to look into her eyes. “Yes,” he answered honestly. “With you, it was special. What you just made me feel was beyond pleasure, beyond expectation or duty. It was beyond passion.”

  Her overexerted heart lurched in her chest, then swelled with love when he kissed her softly. “Mmmm,” she sighed. “Do you think you can make love to me again?”

  “I’ll see what I can do,” he said against her lips. “Once more by the grace of my wallet, greedy wench. Then, if you’re still hungry, I’ll have to go on the hunt.”

  Katrine felt certain two more boxes would meet their doom before morning.

  Chapter 18

  “Mom,” Shelly repeated, sounding annoyed. “I’m talking to you.”

  “Oh.” Katrine shook her head. “Sorry, Honey. What were you saying?”

  “My P.E. coach thinks I should try out for spring soccer. What do you think?”

  Katrine lifted a brow. “Soccer? I didn’t know you were interested in sports. That is, unless Trey happened to be coaching.”

  Shelly distractedly stirred pencils in a cup stationed on Katrine’s desk. “Trey likes sports. He’s very athletic, isn’t he?”

  “Very,” Katrine sighed.

  “You didn’t say much about the hockey game. Did you enjoy it?”

  “Immensely. Trey was wonderful, I mean, it was wonderful.” She straightened in her chair. “Honey, if you want to participate in sports, I think you should. I’ll see that you get to practices and games.”

  “In a cab?” Shelly snorted softly. “I wish we could get a fancy sports car like Trey’s.”

  “You know I don’t drive,” Katrine scolded gently. “Although, it seems silly if you’re going to need to be constantly chauffeured around, not to invest in a car. Tell you what, I’ll think about taking driving lessons and getting my license. But a Jag is out of the question. I read somewhere that a Volvo’s one of the safest cars on the road. Maybe a station wagon.”

  “Yuck.” Shelly curled her lip. “Only old women with a bunch of screaming kids drive station wagons.”

  The phone interrupted Shelly’s discontent. Deeming herself secretary, the child quickly snatched up the receiver. “Trey?” she said with surprise. “Why didn’t you call on my private line? Oh, you want to talk to her? All right, but call me later.” Smiling, Shelly handed the phone to her mother. “Would you like me to leave?”

  “If you’d be so kind.” Katrine’s hand shook when she took the receiver from Shelly. Once her office door closed, she tried to sound calm. “Hello.” The rich texture of his voice rose goose bumps beneath her skin. “I’m fine,” she answered stiffly. “Oh, you’ve been moving the last couple of days?” Is that why you haven’t called? “The phone was disconnected the day after our, ah, date?”

  What about work? Isn’t there a phone in your office? “Jerry gave you a couple of days off to get moved? That was considerate of him. So, did you get settled in? Boxes everywhere, huh?” She fanned her cheeks and squirmed in her chair. “I’ve been thinking about you, too.”

  “What’s wearing your shirt tail out got to do with thinking about me? Oh,” she said when he explained. She dropped the pencil she’d been toying with. “Where are you calling from? The office? I hope you’re alone. Does Jerry know he’s paying you to make obscene phone calls? He’s avoiding you? What’s up? I–I mean, what do you think is going on?” she quickly corrected.

  “Maybe he’s still mad about having to bail us out of jail,” Katrine offered. “Yes, I know how difficult this week’s feature will be, thank you very much. As a matter of fact, that’s what I’ve been working on all morning.” Hurriedly, she shuffled paper around on her desk to make noise.

  “I know, only one more. Why should I let you pick the date? It’s my turn. Your house? What? Will Linda be there measuring for drapes?” She laughed at his answer. “All right, I’m curious. Wednesday? But that’s the day after tomorrow. We’re supposed to wait until the weekend.” She smiled. “No, I can’t wait that long, either. Later.”

  Katrine hung up the phone. She sat quite calmly for a few seconds before reaching for another pencil and a note pad. In big block letters she wrote, YES!

  ———

  “Yes, what?” Jerry Caldwell asked, sticking his head inside Trey’s office.

  Trey felt his face grow warm. He didn’t know Jerry stood outside his door when he’d hung up the phone and said ‘yes’ rather enthusiastically. “Yes, We Have No Bananas,” he quoted dryly.

  Caldwell scratched his head, resembling a monkey. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”

  “Exactly,” Trey agreed. “It’s silly when you think about it. Yes, We Have No Bananas. Why not, no, we don’t have any bananas? Or, bananas? No, we have none.”

  His editor approached him, a frown marring his unappealing features. “Is this what I pay you a salary for? To sit around and rewrite stupid songs?”

  “This is passion-related, ah, I mean, work-related,” Trey corrected, feeling the heat in his face increase. “I thought I might do a feature on grammatically incorrect songs. There’s a ton of them out there, you know?”

  Jerry cast him a dark look. “If you’ll recall. you already have a feature to write, and by the looks of things, it isn’t going too well.”

  After glancing down at his clean desk, Trey shrugged. “What is there to write about? You said I couldn’t mention the fight or getting thrown in jail. That doesn’t leave me much to work with.”

  “Then lie for God’s sake. Kat Summers does!”

  “Katrine doesn’t exactly lie,” Trey defended. “She sugar-coats the truth. It’s called creative writing.”

  “Humph.” Jerry eyed him curiously. “You’ve been charging to her rescue with regularity lately. You got in a fight because some mouthy spectator insulted her. In fact, you’ve been acting irrational since the feature bega
n. Your ex-wife seems to believe you’ve fallen for Kat Summers. Is it true? Has she convinced you that romance still exists in the twentieth century?”

  Uncomfortable with the conversation, Trey made a pretense of scrounging up materials to begin the feature. He wasn’t certain how or when he began to fall in love with Katrine, but he knew their relationship wasn’t anything he wanted to discuss with Jerry. “Speaking of Linda,” he artfully changed the subject. “Has she gone home?”

  It was Jerry’s turn to appear uncomfortable. “Well, ah, no, she hasn’t.” He glanced up sheepishly. “Actually, I asked her to stay a while longer. Linda is a fascinating woman. I hope it won’t cause problems between us if I continue to see her.”

  Linda fascinating? Trey tried not to laugh out loud. “No, it won’t cause problems,” he lied. Only my resignation if the courtship becomes serious. “Linda and I are old news.”

  Caldwell visibly relaxed. “She says her daddy is thinking of retiring soon…” Jerry let the statement trail.

  Sam retire? Maybe when he was six feet under. Trey kept his suspicions to himself. It hadn’t taken Linda long to find Caldwell’s weakness. “That would be a cushy position to walk into.”

  Jerry’s eyes took on a glazed look. He shook his head as if to bring his lust under control. “It wouldn’t hurt my reputation any if you kept me at number one for a while longer, either. After this feature, you can’t simply return to book review. We’ll have to come up with another feature run, and then another, and then another. Play your cards right, and you might be my replacement when, I mean, if, I end up in Philadelphia.”

  The prospect wasn’t appealing to Trey, which was the most irrational thought he’d had to date, or to be more precise, since he and Katrine’s first date. Wasn’t the editorship what he’d been working toward? Stuffy offices, deadlines, headaches, the rating game … suddenly it wasn’t what Trey wanted at all.

  “I’m considering a different field,” he said quietly. “Fiction.”

  His editor laughed, then sobered at Trey’s serious expression. “Novels? Good God Trey. She has turned your brain to mush. You’re a professional, not some novelist spinning yarns. You owe it to me to stay for a while. I gave you this feature knowing full well it would make you a hot commodity!”

  “You didn’t give me the feature. I gave it to you, and then you shoved it down my throat,” Trey reminded in a deadly voice. “You don’t own me, Caldwell. I won’t accept another offer in the journalistic field for a while, but what I do with my future is my business. There’s more to life than busting your butt at a job for the sake of security. I owe you this feature, after that, I’ll decide what I can or can’t do.”

  “You’d starve if you tried to write fiction,” Jerry scoffed. “I doubt that you could handle the rejection. If you feel like creating, create me a feature article for Sunday’s edition, and remember, you’ve got to give the readers a little romance this time.”

  “I’ll deliver,” Trey said. “But for future reference, I just wanted you to know I’m considering a career move.”

  “You’ll talk yourself out of it,” the editor assured him. “You’re a rational man. Once you get Kat Summers out of your life, and your blood, you’ll see the logic in staying right where you are.” Jerry started toward the door. “I want that feature on my desk by tomorrow morning.”

  Trey didn’t like the desperate look in Jerry’s eyes, or the worry lines creasing his forehead. Caldwell made him uneasy. He swiveled his chair and switched on his computer. The feature was the last thing on Trey’s mind. All he could think of was Katrine. Katrine and boxes. Katrine in a pair of red-sequined heels and nothing else, sitting bare-bottomed on his immaculate dresser top.

  Unconsciously, he smiled. Romantic? Insane seemed a more appropriate word. He couldn’t get enough of her. Even after having her four times in his apartment, he’d made love to Katrine in front of her house, in his Jag of all impossible places.

  She made him want her like no other woman. They’d talked between lovemaking sessions—talked about her past and her fears. Trey had confessed his own fear of failure, told her about his huge family and felt his heart break at her envious expression. Katrine, he now realized, enjoyed a fantasy world so much because real life had sorely mistreated her. Trey wanted to show her reality could live up to fantasy. He felt driven to give her candlelight, to let her see a side of himself he didn’t know existed until she brought it forth.

  Resentfully, he opened his word processing program on his computer. What he felt for Katrine wasn’t a game anymore. It wasn’t a story he wanted aired for all the world to read. He was simply a man in love, and scared to death the dreams taking shape in his mind might remain only fantasy. Trey wasn’t sure he believed in happily-ever-after, but then, he was no longer certain he didn’t.

  One thing he knew without question, was that come Wednesday night, Trey Westmoreland planned to do exactly what his editor once suggested. He planned to romance Katrine Summerville right out of her clothes.

  ———

  The house, what Katrine could see of it, was a huge Victorian number with a large front lawn and neatly trimmed hedges. When she’d been in the market for a house five years ago, she remembered the realtor driving around this prestigious subdivision. At the time, she thought the lawns would prove too bothersome, the rooms too numerous for only her and Shelly; and the number of children roaming the neighborhood too staggering to insure she received quiet while she wrote.

  Now, pulling into the drive where a soft glow showed behind the bay window, Katrine felt, strangely, as if she’d come home. The limo’s headlights outlined the red Jag in the drive. Katrine’s pulse quickened. There was something erotic about making love in a cramped space. Especially, if that cramped space wasn’t exactly private. The fear of being caught made the kisses more urgent, the fumbling to remove clothes more frantic, the climax all the more intense.

  “Mr. Westmoreland said he’d be taking you home,” Bob informed her from the front seat. “Would you like me to escort you to the door?”

  “No, if you’d just wait until I get inside the house, I’d appreciate it.”

  Bob climbed from the limo to get the door for her. The scent of wood smoke hung pleasantly in the air as Katrine’s heels, not the sequined ones Trey refused to let her take home, made a soft clicking noise on the cobbled sidewalk.

  ‘A smart man would hold on to these for a while longer,’ Trey had said jokingly. ‘This way, if you want your shoes back, you’ll have to venture into my territory and face ravishment to get them.’

  His remark hadn’t been funny to her. Trey knew too much about pleasing a woman. Not that she minded while he proved himself so adept, but later, after he’d brought her to climax for the third time, she wanted to know how he’d gotten so experienced. He openly discussed his past sex life, much to her annoyance, and assured her he’d abstained more than his body wanted to, but in cases where he hadn’t, had been very careful. Katrine supposed she should be thankful Trey was a rational-thinking man.

  The protection he demanded they use was mostly because she didn’t take birth control pills. Still, he’d warned her never to trust a man’s word when it came to sex. Men would say anything. She smiled unconsciously, recalling that after giving her the advice, he’d acted mad over the possibility she’d need it for future reference, and made love to her again.

  Her smile faded when Trey opened the door. Wanting him became immediate. The clean scent of his cologne engulfed her. The heat in his eyes sent tiny shocks of anticipation racing through her bloodstream. Without a word, he opened the door wider. Step into my parlor, she thought.

  Trey wore a tight-fitting pair of black jeans and a white shirt open at the neck. The sleeves were full and pushed up to mid-forearm. Katrine quirked a brow, thinking it wasn’t the sort of shirt Trey Westmoreland would wear. He looked like a pirate. A very roguish pirate.

  She started to speak, then held her tongue, realizing the silence between
them felt right. It added an allure to seeing him again. When last they met, it had been a night of whispered worship, of labored breaths and skin against skin.

  He took her hand, leading her in silence down the gleaming tile of the entry hall. They stepped into a room, and the breath caught in Katrine’s throat. She’d walked into another era. The vaulted ceiling made the spacious living area appear all the larger. A fire burned cozily in the grate, and the hardwood floors gleamed from the light of what must have been a hundred candles stationed in various places around the room.

  Everywhere she looked, were vases of freshly-cut roses. The room was void of furniture, but a huge Persian rug spread on the floor beckoned her to sit among rose petals and dine from silver covered dishes. A bottle of wine chilled in a cooler nearby, waiting to be poured into gleaming crystal goblets.

  “It’s beautiful,” she whispered.

  “No!” He turned her to face him. “You’re beautiful. Inside and out.”

  Seemingly from mid-air, Trey produced a perfect red rose, although Katrine realized he must have retrieved it while she stood in awe surveying her surroundings. Instead of handing it to her, he ran the smooth petals down the bridge of her nose, chin, throat and into the deep vee of her neckline. It rested there, a sensuous caress as he lowered his lips to hers.

  His kiss bespoke hunger, passion stored, and lust too long denied. She moaned against his mouth, clinging to his strength. When her knees buckled, Trey lifted her into his arms and carried her to the rug.

  Gently, he lowered Katrine to the floor, never releasing her lips. As her arms encircled his neck. she felt a pin prick of pain between the valley of her breasts. Trey released her lips as if he, too, felt the sensation. Glancing down, she noticed a small bubble of blood. The rose had thorns.

  “Look,” he instructed huskily.

  An identical wound marked his chest. A double-sided thorn had pricked them both.

  “Does it symbolize something?” Katrine asked in an over-dramatized whisper.