When she finally made contact with his cock, it wasn’t with her hands. Luke gasped at the exquisite sensation of her lips and tongue encircling him, taking him into her mouth. But it only lasted a few sweet moments, until she withdrew.
“And you love when I do that, don’t you?”
“Of course,” he whispered. “Who wouldn’t?”
“But you like the teasing more.”
Maybe he did. He’d learned over the years that the anticipation was almost always sweeter than the reward—except with Jane. With her, it was impossible to measure or compare the two pleasures. They were equally intoxicating parts of the whole experience of making love to a woman whose sensual side, when unleashed, was wild and insatiable.
Jane took his hand and pulled him up from his seat.
She sat on the kitchen table and brought him between her legs.
“I’ll need your, um, cooperation for this part.”
“Babe, I don’t think you could get anything but cooperation from me now.” His body, tensed with desire, was ready to spring into action at the slightest invitation.
She smiled, eyeing his erection. “Point taken.”
He felt her hands sliding down his back, grasping his hips, and she urged him forward until his cock rested against her hot, wet opening. Luke clenched his jaw, willing himself not to take control of the situation.
And then she whispered, “You have my permission to move things along as you wish.”
That was all the invitation he needed to take her into his arms and kiss her, search her with his tongue. She moaned into his mouth, and he knew it was time.
“Just a second,” he said as he bent down to grab his wallet from his pants.
A few moments later, he’d donned the jimmy cap and was back in position, his pulse racing. Bracing his palms against the table, he pressed himself to Jane, and she snaked her arms around his neck to hold on.
“You love the moment just before you enter—the anticipation, the buildup…”
Maybe so, but he’d had enough anticipation to last him the rest of the damn night. So he tugged her hips a bit more toward the edge of the table, and without another second of anticipation, slid into her.
It felt like coming home. She was so slick, so ready, the only resistance was her body’s natural tightness, the incredible sensation of her stretching to accommodate him. And then she tightened her muscles around him, and he gasped.
“And you love when I do that.”
“There’s not a single thing you do to my body that I don’t love. Understand?”
He withdrew a little, then thrust his full length into her, again and again, to make sure she understood that he’d had enough talk. He was ready for action. Judging by the way she let her head fall back and her lips part as she expelled little gasps of pleasure, he guessed she felt the same way.
Their bodies, molded together, grew toward a strong, hard climax that shook them when it finally came. Luke felt himself spilling inside of her, incredible sensations racing through his body, when Jane locked her legs tight around him and bucked against the strength of her own orgasm. They held each other through the aftershocks, breathless and kissing as if it might be their last chance, until finally, there was calm again.
Luke buried his face in Jane’s hair and savored her scent, let his body relax as they held each other. After a minute, he reluctantly drew away from her to dispose of the condom.
Then he lifted Jane from the table, and with her arms around his neck and her head resting on his shoulder, he carried her down the hallway toward the bedroom. That is, until her reclusive cat Homer darted out of nowhere and tangled himself in Luke’s legs. He cursed as he felt himself losing his balance, and he forced himself backward so that he would take the impact instead of Jane.
They landed in a heap on the hallway rug, and the cat calmly padded toward the kitchen, probably in search of a nighttime snack.
“Are you okay?” Jane asked.
“Yeah, I think so. How about you.”
She stretched herself out on top of him. “I’m fine. You broke my fall. But you must be hurt somewhere,” she insisted as she began kissing his shoulders and neck.
“Mm. You’re right. I’m starting to feel aches all over.”
“Here?” she asked, as she placed a kiss on his chest.
“Yeah.”
“And how about here?” She moved lower, to his navel, where she placed a slow, lingering kiss.
“Oh, yeah.”
“And I’ll bet you’re in terrible pain here,” she said, a little breathless, right before she placed a kiss on the head of his cock.
Luke felt himself grow erect. “I think I’ll need some extra attention there.”
“Mm-hmm,” she murmured as she took him into her mouth, picking up where she’d left off in the kitchen earlier.
And as her tongue and lips worked his cock, Luke tangled his fingers in her hair and closed his eyes, allowing himself to pretend that this never had to end.
Of all the times they’d made love, tonight felt the most urgent, the most necessary, the most inevitable. Jane had somehow, in the past two months, become as vital to his existence as air and water, as essential to his happiness as comfort and rest.
He didn’t know how it had happened, and he didn’t know how to stop feeling the way he did. He only knew one thing—that he had to remember every moment, every touch, and every sensation of this night, because there might not be another night like this. Probably not another night with Jane, ever. She’d made that much clear.
For tonight, he would forget and savor every last moment.
THERE WAS SOMETHING about the light of day that always managed to change Jane’s perspective on the previous day’s—or night’s—events. When she woke up spooned against Luke and heard his slow, heavy breathing, memories of the night before came to her in a mental flood. The kitchen, the hallway, the bed…they’d made love as if it were a matter of life and death, as if their survival depended on it.
But now she remembered why she’d ended their relationship in the first place. Being with Luke made her lose her mind, made her into a bigger and bigger hypocrite every time they fell into bed together. It was best that they make a clean break from each other for good before her career was ruined.
She sat up in bed and squinted at the clock, which told her she had exactly thirty minutes to get herself to the salon where Heather had scheduled herself and all the bridesmaids to have their hair and makeup done before the wedding.
“Damn it!” She nudged Luke, and he groaned and rolled over. “Wake up. I’m going to be late for my hair appointment.”
Luke opened one eye and peered at her. “You told me we’d decide what to do about Heather and Michael this morning.”
Pretending to ignore him, Jane climbed out of bed and hurried to the bathroom, where she took a quick shower. Heather’s two-timing was the last thing she wanted to think about right now. What was the right thing to do? She couldn’t let loyalty to her sister outweigh basic human decency, but she also didn’t want to meddle in a relationship problem that was too intimate for outside intervention.
Then again, considering what an idiot she’d been recently—carrying on a meaningless sexual fling, pining after a guy who’d turned out to be a bigger jerk than she ever could have imagined—Jane wasn’t sure she could trust her own judgment at all anymore.
After she finished her shower, she toweled off and went to the closet. As she tugged on a pair of black pants, she finally responded to Luke. “If Heather hasn’t told Michael, you think we should, right?”
Luke nodded, his expression sober as he sat on the edge of the bed, gloriously naked.
“Then I will. I’m the one who discovered the affair, so it’s my responsibility to talk to him. But first, I’ll talk to Heather.” Jane’s stomach rebelled at the thought, but Luke was an honorable guy. If she couldn’t trust her own judgment, maybe she could trust his.
Luke stood up and went to
her, but she stepped back before he could take her in his arms. “I can go with you.”
“No, that’s not necessary.” She turned back to the closet and grabbed a stretchy T-shirt, then pulled it on. “I hate to rush you out of here, but I have to go.”
His expression darkened. “So this is it?”
“We’ll see each other at the wedding later. We can talk then.” She smiled at him as she slipped on a pair of wedge sandals, but she felt like she’d just stabbed him in the back.
He deserved a lot more than a brusque goodbye as she rushed out the door, but she just wanted to get away before things got any more complicated between them.
Luke was still getting dressed when she tossed him the extra key and asked him to lock up on his way out and give the key back at the wedding. He answered with a silent glare, and she turned and hurried out the door.
Jane sped across town trying to focus on the freshly brewed coffee the salon would surely offer her when she got there, but her thoughts kept volleying between saying goodbye to Luke and having to deal with Heather and Michael. By the time she arrived at the sleek, upscale salon full of stylists dressed in black, she’d decided she would need at least three cups of coffee to survive the morning.
She spotted Jennifer and Lacey undergoing some kind of facial treatment on the spa side of the salon, and as a platinum-blond buzz-cut receptionist led her back to the waiting area, she looked around for Heather, but her sister was nowhere in sight.
“Has Heather Langston arrived yet?” she asked the receptionist.
“No, but she was scheduled for eight o’clock.”
Jane puzzled over her missing sister as she flipped through a Cosmo magazine and pretended to look interested in it. What if Heather had decided to run off with Bradley, or she and Michael had gotten into a big fight, or she had decided to call off the wedding but hadn’t told anyone yet, or—
“Hi, Janie.”
Jane looked up to see Heather standing a few feet away, looking for all the world like a woman who hadn’t slept all night. “Heather, we need to talk.”
Her sister’s expression fell and she nodded as she sat down next to Jane.
“I haven’t tried to stop your wedding yet, but I feel dirty knowing about the affair and saying nothing, when Michael is about to commit his life to you.”
Heather stared at the ground for several moments. When she turned to Jane, she had tears in her eyes. “I love Michael, and I want him to be my husband.”
“You should have realized that before you started screwing his friend.”
Her sister shook her head and buried her face in her hands.
Jane put down the magazine and steeled herself to tell Heather that she was going to talk to Michael unless she did it herself.
But then Heather looked up, tears streaming down her cheeks, and said, “I told Michael about the affair last night, after the rehearsal dinner.”
“How did he react?”
“He’s furious, of course. At first he wanted to break up, but we had a really long talk. Now he’s not sure if he wants to go through with…” Her chin began to quiver and her voice broke. “….the wedding.”
Jane blinked at the news. Heather had just demonstrated a surprising amount of backbone—unless she’d told Michael the truth to ease her own guilty conscience, as was the case with most confessions.
A stylist appeared for one of them, but before she could speak, she spotted Heather’s teary-eyed state, and Jane held up a finger, silently asking for a few more minutes. The stylist nodded and left.
“Michael deserves a lot better than the way you’ve treated him.”
“I know. I’ve ruined everything!” Heather expelled a bitter laugh. “He broke up with me once in college, and he slept with three other people. I never did.”
“That’s not an excuse for betraying him.”
“No, it isn’t. I’ve been a fool, Janie. I was terrified of only making love to one man in my whole life, so I thought I needed to go out and get some experience before I got married.”
“And Bradley was such a good friend, he couldn’t help but oblige you.”
She sighed. “I actually thought I loved him, for a short time. Then I realized last night, after the way he reacted when I told him I was going through with the wedding, he was only using me.”
Jane crossed her arms over her chest, unwilling to feel sorry for Heather’s soap-opera romance problems.
“He laughed. He said he’d never expected me to do otherwise, that he thought we were just having a little prewedding fling.”
“Weren’t you?”
“I guess so, yeah. But I was such a fool I couldn’t keep my heart out of it. Now I realize how stupid I was for wanting to sleep with another man. I could have had something pure and sweet with Michael….”
She looked so miserable then, Jane couldn’t help but throw her a rope. “You still can. You can have a devoted marriage, starting right now on your wedding day. That’s more than a lot of people can say.”
Heather looked up at her then and wiped her cheeks with the back of her hand. “If Michael forgives me, that is. Janie, can you forgive me?”
Could she? Jane sat silent, her gaze focused on a framed poster of a woman with a really bizarre hairdo on the wall.
Heather continued. “I guess I knew about your crush on Bradley, but I thought it was nothing serious, since you’d never pursued him. Or maybe I just told myself I didn’t know, but if I’d been honest, I could have figured out, from the way you looked at him…”
“Stop.” Jane fought to keep her voice even. “I was just as big an idiot as you when it came to Bradley. I was naive enough to believe that pining after a guy for my entire adult life was the same thing as having a relationship with him. I was a coward, and I wasted a lot of energy wanting a guy who wasn’t even worth my attention.”
“You can do so much better than him.”
“I know that now.”
“I’m sorry, Janie. I’m really, really sorry.” Heather scooted over on the couch until she’d closed the distance between them. She encircled Jane in her arms and held her close until Jane finally gave in and hugged her back.
“I forgive you,” Jane whispered. “And I hope today is your wedding day.”
14
How do you know if it’s love and not just lust? Does your soul wake up when she comes into the room? Do you look into her eyes and see the future? Does being in her presence make you want to be a better man?
—Jane Langston, in the May issue of Excess magazine
JANE REMINDED HERSELF to suck in her gut. It was her turn to walk down the aisle. In spite of Heather’s betrayal, Michael had demonstrated a stunning amount of forgiveness in deciding to go forward with the wedding. There was one groomsman conspicuously missing from the wedding party, and rumor had it he’d paid a visit to the emergency room late last night after Michael had knocked out a couple of his teeth.
As she walked slowly down the aisle to Pachelbel’s “Canon in D,” Jane forced herself to smile and look straight ahead, as if she weren’t painfully aware of one particular set of eyes that were watching her from the altar. She met the gazes of family members in the pews, but it wasn’t until she’d made it to the altar and taken her place that she allowed herself to look at Luke.
Just as she’d suspected, his gaze was locked on her. Her palms began to sweat on the bouquet of spring flowers she was clutching, and she forced herself to look away from Luke again. She turned to the back of the church as the bridal march began and Heather started walking down the aisle.
Jane had never paid much attention to weddings. Sure, she’d heard the vows a hundred times, and she knew all the conventions, but all those times she’d played “wedding” with her sisters when they were kids, she’d never really tried to imagine herself getting married. She realized now that even as an adult, she’d never visualized herself walking down the aisle, standing before a minister with a man, exchanging vows.
&nbs
p; And why not? She had no idea. Maybe she’d been too busy trying to succeed, trying to prove to herself and the world that she deserved recognition…trying to keep anyone who might hurt her at arm’s length.
“Do you, Heather, take this man as your lawfully wedded husband, to have and to hold, to love and to cherish, in sickness and in health…”
Jane forced herself to focus on the wedding vows, to pay close attention to the words, and it felt as if a big, gaping hole opened up in her chest. She’d never allowed herself to love anyone enough to say those words. She’d never been so close to a man that she wanted to keep him as her partner for life. And for the first time ever, she realized she was missing out.
Blinking back an unwelcome dampness in her eyes, she watched the rest of the ceremony. When the minister introduced Mr. and Mrs. Michael Bell to the world, Jane saw something she hadn’t expected to see, unabashed happiness on Heather and Michael’s faces, and she was humbled by the truth that two people could love each other enough to put aside something as awful as what had happened last night and still commit their lives to one another. That was a love deeper than she’d ever felt, and she knew in an instant that she wanted to find it.
She’d been paired up with Luke to do the walk back down the aisle. When he offered her his arm, she hesitated for a moment, all too aware that touching Luke inevitably caused sparks. But slipping her arm in his and exiting the church with him felt oddly comfortable, so much so that she allowed herself to put aside all her worries and just enjoy the festivity.
They endured the inevitable wedding photo session, and then Luke invited her to ride with him to the reception hotel. In the passenger seat of his Land Cruiser, Jane settled back and took in the side view of Luke in his tux, his hair pulled back into a sleek ponytail. He looked delicious.
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