by LETO, JULIE
She nodded. “I can’t make any promises, either. I let my love life stand in the way of my dream once. I won’t again. No matter how tempted I might be. But for this week, we can both have it all.”
Max wanted to know more about her past, but now wasn’t the time to ask, especially since he wasn’t sure he was prepared to reciprocate. But they had all week to exchange secrets, to coax out the shadows and triumphs of their lives and loves, to dream and suppose about challenges yet to come. He’d never shared with a woman before—except Maddie. And he had a distinct impression that sharing with Ariana would be vastly different.
His passion for her stirred from a place higher than his groin, and deeper—from his heart. Ariana Karas was a kindred spirit, if one existed for him. How he ever deserved such a twist of fate, he didn’t know. And he didn’t care. He was grabbing this moment, dammit. This whole week. He suspected he’d never come across such an opportunity again.
“So…you still interested in showing me how this tea will cure my headache?”
His headache seemed to have completely disappeared, though he wasn’t about to tell her. Not when showing her would be so much more fun.
Her eyes caught the glimmer of the streaming red curtains billowing from the afternoon breeze. “Oh, yeah. Most definitely.”
In sync, they both took long sips of tea, then leaned forward, meeting halfway, mouth to mouth and heat to heat. Flavors mingled on their tongues. Spice. Sweet. Want. Need.
Max gripped the edge of the table, remembering that Ariana had wanted only his kiss before. He judged, by the tension in her arms as she held tight to the table, that she wanted to go slowly—as slowly as two people could go when they impose a time limit on their affair.
The idea was completely foreign, completely outrageous…completely thrilling. Why not? He had nothing to lose. She had nothing to lose. But they both had a world of experiences to gain.
He focused all his attention on learning her mouth. Her teeth were straight and slick. Her tongue bold yet pliant. Her skin was scented with jasmine, and the floral essence mingled with the spiced tea to create a heady combination that surged through his blood. He couldn’t stand not touching her. Without breaking the kiss, he slid around on the pillows and pushed the table aside, rattling the teacups.
Ariana broke away, panting but smiling. They were on their knees, nearly thigh-to-thigh. She pressed her palms briefly against his chest and closed her eyes, as if willing both their hearts and passions to slow. Max waited. His gaze followed the bright red piping on her blush-pink robe, around her neck, down her chest, where the edging crossed at a shadowed curve of cleavage, rising and falling with each of her deep breaths. He ached to explore her, pleasure her. Know her.
She smoothed her hands down his arms, as if willing him to keep his raging passion checked for just a moment more. Leisurely releasing the remaining buttons on his shirt, top to bottom, she pulled the material toward her so her hands didn’t accidentally brush his chest. She used the sleeve to guide his wrist toward her so she could undo the cuffs—again without allowing even a finger to graze his skin. Once all the closures were undone, she removed his shirt entirely in a quick billow of white. His flesh pulsed with the absence of her touch.
He swallowed. His tongue was thick, his mouth dry. She’d turned to retrieve her teacup, which she cradled with both hands. Swirling the golden liquid, she inhaled the steaming scent, warming her palms on the heated porcelain. After taking a long draught, she set the cup down and shared the heat on her hands with his chest, placing her palms flat so that his nipples touched their hot centers.
The sensation burned like a roaring fire on an icy day. Desire spiked when her lips, equally flamed by the tea, touched the pulse point at the base of his neck. Her tongue flicked a fiery trail across his shoulder, cooling along the way, but stoking his need to touch her, explore her, learn all the things he’d probably learned last night but couldn’t remember.
When she started to nibble his earlobe, he’d had enough of remaining still. One hand was clenching the fringe of the nearest pillow; the other was nearly splintering the wood on her table.
“Can I touch you yet or I am I still limited to just kissing?”
She looked up at him with a flash of obsidian fire.
“I’m tempted to say no limits, but…”
“But what?”
Grinning, she reached down and undid the knot of her robe with one quick tug, then clenched the satin together so the material didn’t spill open.
“We have all week.” She loosened the robe, allowing him a peek of breast, a flash of belly. “And unless you have a condom tucked in your wallet…”
He didn’t. He’d never tucked a condom in his wallet his whole life, though his mother had been known to do so when he’d come home from college on the weekends. If not for the freebies he’d gotten at his bachelor party, he probably wouldn’t have had any in his apartment last night—assuming they’d used one. Wait, hadn’t he gotten nearly half a dozen at the party?
“I have some at my place,” he suggested.
She bit her lip. “Uh, no, you don’t. Not anymore.”
His eyes widened. “We used them all?”
Her laugh, a light sound somewhere between a giggle and a chuckle, inspired the same humor in him. She leaned forward, resting her forehead on his chest and the scent of her hair and the warmth of her skin nearly knocked the hilarity right out of him.
“So we can’t make love,” he concluded. “Not right this minute.” He ran his hands down her satin sleeves. The friction was slick, liquid. Cool, yet hot. He hardened to the point of pain.
She pressed her cheek to his chest, then bestowed a single kiss just above where his heart pounded hard against his ribs. “Like I said, we have all week.”
And there are lots of different ways to make love. She didn’t say the words, but he could see the possibilities dancing in her eyes, tugging her lips into a smile, loosening her grip on that robe. And even if the alternatives hadn’t occurred to her, they did to him. In erotic detail.
She dug into the couch cushions and extracted a wrinkled magazine.
“What’s that?”
“An idea. A fantasy.”
“I have plenty of ideas and fantasies, thanks to you. I’m pretty sure I don’t need pornography to get me hot with you around.”
She laughed as she flipped the pages. “I’m flattered… I think…but this isn’t porno.” She found the page she wanted, but pressed the open magazine against her to hide the pages from him. “How well do you know the city?”
Max closed his eyes, knowing he wouldn’t be able to think very clearly while the only thing separating him from a clear view of her naked body was a scrap of satin and a very tearable magazine.
“I’ve lived in the Bay Area all my life.”
Her eyebrows lifted over disbelieving eyes. She flipped the magazine over so he could see the two-page photo spread. “Have you ever done this?”
Max briefly scanned the photo of a couple making love on the bridge. She flipped a page, then another, then another, flashing images of San Francisco and adventurous lovers at him with rapid speed. She moved to turn the page again, but he stopped her, drawn to a photo in a location he didn’t recognize. The scenery, somewhat blurred by a photo effect, didn’t grasp him as much as the expressions on the faces of the models.
What did he see there? Excitement? Oh, yeah. Daring? Most definitely. But something more. Something elusive.
“What is this?” he asked.
“I found it on the cable car last night.” She tilted the magazine so she could glimpse the picture herself, though he wondered if her wistful expression meant she’d memorized every detail. “It’s called Sexy City Nights and it kind of gave me an idea of all I’ve been missing, all I could discover, if I had the chance. In the city. In my personal life.”
He grinned, wondering what that admission cost her, fascinated by how Ariana spoke as if they’d known each other f
orever—and by how he wanted to return the favor. He wanted to know her. He wanted to live her fantasy. Be her fantasy.
“You’re amazing.” He tossed the magazine aside, then cradled her cheeks with both hands. “I’ve never met anyone who can make pure determination sound like spontaneity.”
Ariana tried to shake her head, but he held her steady with a soft kiss. She’d admitted a great deal to him—told him a secret about herself that she’d never shared with anyone—partly because she hadn’t realized until just last night how much she missed a man’s touch. She’d kept herself so busy, thrown herself into her job and her goal so deeply, she didn’t have to face the emotional and physical emptiness that haunted her heart.
But being with Max, loving Max, even temporarily, forced her to confront her needs.
“I’m not that complicated,” she finally whispered, brushing her lips down the tip of his chin, missing the softness of his mouth at the same time that she relished the roughened feel of his unshaven skin. “I just know what I want. For the first time in years.”
“Want to know what I want?” he asked, unable to swallow the laugh that followed, and moving to slide the robe down her shoulders.
“I know what you want,” she answered, scooting back, not because she didn’t want him just as desperately, but because the front curtain had flown open a little too wide for her comfort. She’d caught her neighbor across the street peering out his window and straight into hers on more than one occasion. Usually, she wasn’t doing anything the least bit titillating. Drying her hair. Watching television. Meditating in a roomful of candles.
But this afternoon? In the daylight? Exhibitionism was just fine and dandy for the magazine and under the cover of fog, but she was going to have to ease into that fetish just a little more slowly.
She pulled the robe around her, not bothering with the sash. She wasn’t going to be gone that long.
“You’re awfully confident,” he teased, leaning back into the couch cushions while she made her way around the table.
“That’s because I want you, too.”
Before tending to the window, she lit another stick of incense and clicked on her CD player. The tune was soft, the volume low and easily drowned out by the sounds emanating from the busy streets below. Holding her robe tightly, she leaned out to catch her wayward curtain and pull it inside so she could shut the old casement windows that opened out over the street.
The minute she grabbed the silk, she felt Max’s hand snake around her ankle. Startled, she spun, landing on the windowsill with her back against the center sash to brace her backward tumble.
“What are you doing?” she asked, breathless.
He adjusted the pillows she’d thrown by the window for the nights she liked to read the newspaper and listen to the crowds below. Holding her foot possessively, he settled in comfortably beneath her, kneeling more than sitting as he caressed her arch.
“You have incredibly small ankles.”
She was tempted to pull her foot away, but he was doing amazing things to her instep with his hands. Incredible things to her toes with his mouth.
She whimpered. “Shouldn’t I come away from the window?”
His green eyes lit with mischief. “No one can see me from outside.”
“They can see me.”
“Just your back and your hair. Not your face.” He kissed a path up her calf, stretching her leg outward so he could suckle the sensitive spot behind her knee—the spot he’d found last night.
She captured her bottom lip with her teeth and bit down, hard, to keep from whimpering again like some forlorn puppy. Like some sex-starved female with a week’s worth of pleasure nibbling her flesh.
Clutching the sill to keep from tumbling back, she closed her eyes and willed herself to enjoy the sensation. Max Forrester might not be aware of his fetish, but he flirted with exhibitionism more dangerously than he flirted with her. Not that anyone could see him tugging her belt until it fell away, or inching his way up until his kisses reached her thighs.
Threading her fingers into his hair, she buried her embarrassment in the soft feel of his mouth on her skin. She wanted this. She wanted to break the mold of a conventional affair, create a new, exciting liaison that would belong only to Max and her. She allowed him to coax her legs apart, to touch her, taste her. He parted her pulsing flesh with his tongue and found the center of her need quickly, but alternated his attentions—higher, lower, side to side—so she could no longer anticipate the thrill.
Each lick was a surprise. Each kiss a revelation of need and want and self. The sensation that she was falling had absolutely nothing to do with her precarious perch on the windowsill or her long-held fear of heights. His mouth, his fingers, his groans of utter delight pushed her toward a precipice she desperately wanted to jump from.
So she did. She pulled him closer, throwing her knees wider, taking what he so willingly gave. Below, on the street, the noise of business and tourism and trade muted her enraptured cries of sweet release.
The moment her passion spiraled, Max guided her to the floor, rolling her beneath him on the pillows where he kissed her climax into submission. She shuddered in his arms, shivering as if cold when all she felt was the most intense heat imaginable.
Once she’d regained her ability to form a coherent thought, she asked, “Making love in public turns you on, doesn’t it?”
“Never thought about it before.” He nuzzled her neck, reminding her that this release had been decidedly one-sided. He was hard against her hip. The thick sign of his desire renewed the pulsing want he’d only just satisfied.
“Well, you need to think about it,” she said.
“I will, after we find a drugstore.”
She rolled away, grasping her robe together at the same time she gasped for air. This man was potent, nearly overwhelming. She needed to replenish her energy before attempting to return his passionate favor.
And she would. Very, very soon.
The Cheshire-cat grin on his face belied his unsatisfied state. By the twinkle in his lethal green eyes, she imagined he’d been the one to experience the glorious orgasm. “Dress comfortably before we go out.”
Walking backward, she disturbed the beaded drape to her bedroom, the musical tinkle adding magic to the sparkle between them. “Comfortably? Do you have a plan, Max Forrester?”
He leaned on one elbow, his cheek cradled in his palm. “Oh, yeah. Thanks to you.” He relaxed into the pillows and folded his hands behind his head. “We’re going to have a sex city night, Ariana. Just like in the magazine. Only with a Forrester spin.”
9
AS ARIANA ACCEPTED HIS hand, Max swallowed a decidedly appreciative, decidedly male sigh. Men didn’t sigh, he reminded himself. They groaned. So he did, loudly, the moment her flesh met his. A breeze from the bay stirred the scents of the Wharf—a pungent mixture of sea, salt and sunbaked sails—then swirled around this alluring woman who wore a crisp perfume that beat the bitter smells into submission. She stepped out of his car, her long bare legs on stiletto heels appearing first, and challenged him a wink.
“I asked you to dress comfortably,” he reminded her, not the least bit disappointed that she’d blatantly disobeyed.
“I’m comfortable. Aren’t you?” She smoothed her hands down her skintight skirt, a long swath of black silk with a slit up the thigh that might have showed her panties had she been wearing any.
Her tone had been innocent. Her glance had been innocent. Even her fluttering eyelashes contrasted with her tight red sweater and come-hither smile.
“You’re going to be cold,” he answered, sure that she knew how…uncomfortable she was making him.
She threaded her arms into his jacket, her hands skimming beneath the hem of his sweatshirt. “You’ll have to warm me up. I told you I needed to know where we were going in order to dress appropriately.”
Max leaned in and grabbed her leather coat, helped her shrug into it, then slammed her door shut and engag
ed the alarm without breaking from her touch. He’d have to let her go in a minute, but right now he was enjoying the sensations entirely too much.
The entire day had been a feast for the senses. First, they’d dressed and toured Chinatown. Ariana introduced him around, showed him the sights few people except those who lived there knew, introduced him to tastes and textures that had nothing to do with sex, but ended up heightening his already charged libido nonetheless. He’d learned a few phrases in Chinese and laughed with the locals at his poor pronunciation. He’d tasted specially prepared squid and sipped the hottest, most potent sake ever distilled. By the time they returned to her room atop Mrs. Li’s shop, they were full and drunk and giddy.
With the box of condoms they’d bought at the first drugstore they found, they’d made love on the throw pillows, then fallen asleep, waking just as the last of the San Francisco fog melted into the night.
Max believed it was his turn to show Ariana something she’d never seen, so after a quick phone call and a stop at his house for a change of clothes, they’d parked near Pier 31 and now strolled up the wooden dock toward slip number 12.
The hushed squawk of night-flying gulls and the gentle clang of halyards and rigging accompanied the splashing ocean to create a musical quiet. Ariana shivered and hugged close to him. She was nowhere near dressed for a night cruise on the bay, but after she learned her lesson in taking his advice, he’d do as she’d asked and warm her.
“You have a boat?” she asked, grabbing his hand as he stepped over a thick rope lying across the walkway.
“Watch your step. Sort of. The boat is in my name.”
She nearly slipped on a wet patch of wood. He was tempted to lift her into his arms and carry her the rest of the way, but was going to have a hard enough time explaining Ariana to his brother who waited for them aboard their yacht, the Oakland Dreamer.
Ford would more than appreciate Ariana’s exotic beauty, enhanced by her clothes and by the glow of having more than one orgasm in the past twenty-four hours. For a moment, Max wondered how many women Ford had carried onto their boat for a midnight liaison. More than likely, his baby brother didn’t even bother to cast off. But Max had more to show Ariana than just the soft bed in the master cabin. He wanted her to see the city, lit up and sparkling against the wind-roughened bay—the image he’d first seen as a child that had contributed to making him the man he had become.