by Day Leclaire
“I’m feeling a bit overdressed,” he murmured against her mouth.
Her laugh escaped sweet and gentle and, for some reason, drove him utterly insane. “I think I can help you with that.”
She made short work of the buttons of his shirt, yanking the edges open and sliding it from his shoulders. He shrugged it the rest of the way off and sucked in his breath when her hands collided with his chest. She had a way of touching him, of stroking her fingers across him. Just. So. This time the strokes took her farther afield, tracing the center line of his abdomen downward until she collided with his belt.
“I can take care of that,” he offered. It might kill him to let go of her even for that brief a time. But considering the rewards of stripping off his trousers, he’d manage it.
“I’d like to do it.” She laughed. “At the risk of totally freaking you, I’ve never stripped a man before.”
It didn’t freak him. In fact, it had the opposite effect. He wanted her to experience it all, anything and everything she wanted. Whatever would please her. He only hoped it didn’t kill him in the process.
“Tell me if I do anything that makes you uncomfortable and I’ll stop.”
“I don’t think that’ll be an issue.”
He captured her hands in his before she could finish removing his clothes. “I’m serious, Larkin. It could happen. I want this to be as perfect as possible for you.”
She paused in her efforts long enough to cup his face. “See, here’s how I figure it. It isn’t the making-love part that needs to be perfect.”
Rafe choked on a laugh. “No? In that case, I’ve been wasting my time all these years.”
“Yes, you have,” she retorted. “What needs to be perfect is who you’re making love with.”
He closed his eyes and swallowed. Hard. “Hell, sweetheart. Don’t say that. I’m not perfect.”
“No, you’re not.” He caught the tart edge underscoring her words and couldn’t help chuckling. “But in this moment, you’re perfect for me. Right man. Right place. Right time.”
“But no pressure.”
Her laughter bubbled up to join his. “None at all.”
She made short work of his remaining clothing, removing the last of the barriers separating them. He gathered her up, spreading her across the bed. Moonlight picked a path into the room through the French doors leading into the yard. It was almost as though she drew the light to her. It seemed to rejoice in her presence, gilding her with its radiance and turning her skin and hair to silver. Only her eyes retained their vibrancy, glittering a glorious turquoise-blue that rivaled the most precious gem in his family’s possession.
He studied her with undisguised curiosity. Had she always been this small? This delicate? How could something so ethereal contain such a huge personality? Slowly he traced her features, finding a whimsical beauty in the arching curve of her cheekbones and straight, pert nose, her wide, sultry mouth and pointed chin. Then there was her body, superbly toned and supple.
“I don’t think I’ve ever seen anyone more beautiful,” he told her.
She shook her head. “Lots of women are more beautiful.”
He stopped her denial with a slow, thorough kiss. “Not to me. Not tonight.” He pulled back a few precious inches, reluctant to separate them by even that much. “Shall I prove it to you?”
Her eyes widened and she nodded, a delighted grin spreading across her mouth. “If you must.”
“Oh, I must.”
He cupped her breasts, their slight weight fitting comfortably in his hands. Then he bent and tasted them, one after the other, scraping his teeth across the rigid tips. Her breath escaped in a gasp and she arched beneath him, offering herself more fully. She shifted beneath him, fluid and flowing, parting her legs to accommodate him. And all the while her hands performed a tantalizing dance, tripping and teasing across him, one minute urging him onward, the next startling him with an unexpected caress.
It became a game, each trying to distract the other, their need and tension escalating with each passing moment. He discovered her legs were incredibly sensitive, and if he traced a line along the very top of her thigh and eased inward to the moist heart of her, she’d quiver like the wings of a newly hatched butterfly.
Their game came to an abrupt end when she darted downward between their bodies and cupped him, delighted by his surging response. “Larkin,” he warned. “I can’t wait much longer.”
She squirmed in anticipation. “I don’t want you to wait.”
He snagged the condom he’d had the foresight to stash in her nightstand table. An instant later, he settled between her thighs. He lifted her knees, opening her for his possession. But he didn’t take her immediately. Instead, he slowed, making sure that the culmination of their lovemaking would be as pleasurable as the dance that had preceded it. Gently he parted her, found the secret heart hidden within and traced the sensitive nubbin.
She shuddered in reaction, lifting herself toward his touch. He slipped a finger inward, then two, and felt the velvety contraction of impending climax. “Rafe, please,” she whispered. “Make love to me.”
He carefully surged forward, claiming her as his own. She reached for him and he laced her hand in his. Their palms joined, melded, just as their bodies joined, melded. Heat flashed between them, sharp and penetrating, building with each thrust of his hips.
Larkin rose to meet him, singing her siren’s song, calling to him in a voice that penetrated straight to his heart, straight to his soul. It lodged there. Her sweet voice. Her heartbreaking gaze. The tempered strength of her body as it surrounded him, held him, clasped him. Refused to let him go.
Never before had he felt anything remotely similar to this. Not with any other woman. It was as though the mating of their bodies had mated every other part of them, forging a connection he’d never known existed. Heat blazed within his palm, while an undeniable knowledge blossomed.
This night had changed him and he’d never be the same again.
Chapter Eight
Larkin stirred, moaning as tender muscles protested the movement.
“You okay?” Rafe asked.
She lifted her head and forced open a single bleary eye, blinking at him. “I think that depends on your definition of ‘okay.’ I’m alive. Does that count?”
“It counts.”
“It’s the strangest sensation.”
“What is?”
“Most of my body is screaming, ‘Don’t move.’ But there are a few regions that are saying, ‘Again. Now.’” She decided to experiment and shift a fraction of an inch. “I’d be an absolute fool to listen to the ‘Again. Now’ crowd.”
“’Kay.”
He started to roll off the bed and she shot out her hand to stop him. “Call me a fool.”
A sleepy grin spread across Rafe’s face. “Call us both fools.”
She went into his arms as though she belonged, which maybe she did, despite all that stood in their way. He’d been so careful with her, so attentive, determined to make certain she enjoyed her first sexual experience. No matter what happened from this point forward, she’d always have the memory of this night to cling to.
“Thank you,” she told him.
He lifted an eyebrow. “For what?”
“For being perfect. Or at least, perfect for me.”
It took him a moment to reply. “You’re welcome.”
She lifted her mouth for his kiss, shivering as it deepened and grew more intense. Kissing she knew about. She’d kissed a fair number of men. But those experiences paled in comparison to what she shared with Rafe. With the merest brush of his lips, Rafe seduced her. That’s all it took for her to want him. To feel the rising tide of desire crash over and through her. One single kiss and she knew she was meant to be his. One single kiss and she knew . . .
She loved him.
The breath caught in her throat. No. That wasn’t possible. She pushed against his shoulders and tumbled away from him, fighting to dra
g air into her lungs. Sex was one thing. But love? No, no, no! How could she have been so foolish?
“Larkin?” He reached for her. “Sweetheart, what’s wrong?”
She evaded his hand. It was that hand. The hand that had started all their trouble. The one that had damned her with a single touch. The touch that had infected her with The Inferno.
She snagged the sheet and wound it tightly around herself, for the first time abruptly and painfully aware of her nudity. “How are we going to get out of this?” she demanded, her voice taking on a sharp edge.
He watched her, a wary glint in his eyes. “Get out of what?”
She shook her hand at him. Sparks from the diamond ring he’d placed there sent jagged shards of fire exploding in all directions. “Get out of this. Get out of our engagement. What’s your exit strategy?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know. Does it matter?” He patted the mattress. “Come on back to bed. It’s not like there’s any hurry.”
She ignored the second part of his suggestion and focused on the first. For some reason, his admission filled her with panic. “What do you mean, you don’t know? You must have a plan. You always have a plan.”
He stilled, his eyes narrowing. “What’s with the sudden urgency, Larkin?”
“I need to know how this is going to end. I need to know when.”
He vaulted from the bed and padded across the room to where his trousers lay in a crumpled heap and snagged them off the floor. “You’re having regrets.”
She thrust her hand through her hair, tumbling the curls into even greater disarray. “I don’t regret making love to you, if that’s what you’re getting at.”
He grunted in disbelief. “Right.”
Kicking the sheet out from beneath her feet, she came after him. “I’m serious. I don’t have any regrets about that. None. Zero.”
“Then what?” He tossed his trousers aside and cupped her shoulders. Dragging her into his arms, he examined her upturned face, his expression hard and remote. “One minute we were kissing and the next you’re freaking out about exit strategies. What the hell happened?”
She clamped her lips shut to hold back the words. That worked for an entire twenty seconds before the truth came spilling out. “I liked it.”
He stared blankly. “Liked what?”
“Making love to you.”
His lips twitched and then he grinned. “That’s good. I liked making love to you, too.”
“No, you don’t understand.” She attempted to tear free of his hold, but he wouldn’t let her. Why in the world had she elected to have this conversation with his stark nakedness hanging out all over the place? It made rational thought beyond impossible. “I liked making love to you. A lot.”
“I’m still right there with you.”
She groaned in frustration. “Do I really have to spell it out for you?”
“Apparently you do.”
“I liked making love with you. I loved making love with you. I want to do it again, as often as possible.”
He reared back. “Well, hell, woman. No wonder you want to end our engagement. Who would want to make love as often as possible?”
“Stop it, Rafe.” To her horror, she could feel the rush of tears. “You’re supposed to be the logical one. You’re supposed to have life all figured out. Hasn’t it occurred to you that if we keep doing—” she shot a look of intense longing over her shoulder toward the bed “—what we’ve been doing, it might be sort of tough to stop?”
“Who said anything about stopping?”
Didn’t he get it? “Don’t you get it? That’s generally what happens when engagements end. The two unengaged people stop making love.” She pouted, something she hadn’t done since she was all of three. “And I don’t want to stop. So what happens when it’s time to stop and we don’t want to?”
“What usually happens is those feelings ease up or wear off.” He said it so gently it made the pain all the worse. “It’s just because you’ve never gotten to that stage of a relationship before. But trust me, I have it on good authority that excellent sex and mounds of bling aren’t enough to make a woman want to stick around once she walks out the bedroom door.”
That didn’t make a bit of sense. “Now I don’t understand.” She waved her hand in a dismissive gesture when he started to explain again. “I get that you think the physical part of things will gradually grow ho-hum.”
“I didn’t say ho-hum,” he retorted, stung.
“But what I don’t get is what that has to do with the rest of it. What’s bling got to do with sex, and what changes between us once we leave the bedroom? Is there a manual somewhere that explains these things? Because I have to tell you, I’m clueless.”
He gave a short, hard laugh. “Are you serious? You don’t know what bling has to do with sex?”
She shot him a knife-sharp look. “No. And if you do, then you’ve been hanging with the wrong sort of women.”
He ran a hand along the nape of his neck. “I have to admit you’ve got me there.”
“Look, I don’t give a damn about bling. If the sex gets ho-hum, bling sure as hell isn’t going to fix the problem, now, is it?” She planted her hands on her hips, only to make a frantic grab for the sheet when it started a southward migration. “What I need you to explain is what’s going to happen after we leave the bedroom that will make our relationship turn sour?”
“I believe it has something to do with my being a loner,” he explained a shade too calmly. “Too independent. Not domesticated. Emotionally distant. Intimidating.”
The rapid-fire litany worried her. It sounded as if he was quoting someone, and she could take a wild stab as to the identity of that someone. “Is that what Leigh told you?” Larkin asked, outraged.
“She wasn’t the only one.” He scrubbed at his face, the rasp of his beard as abrasive as the conversation. “How the hell did we get on this subject anyway?”
“Let me get this straight. You think once I’ve gotten bored with having sex with you, I’ll actually want to leave you?”
“Yes.” Humor turned his eyes a brilliant shade of jade. “Though I’ll do my best not to bore you while we’re in bed.”
“And that’s your exit strategy? One day I’ll be here and the next day I’ll be gone and you’ll tell your relatives I got bored and left.”
His expression iced over. “I don’t explain myself to my relatives.”
She cocked an eyebrow in patent disbelief. “Something tells me you’ll need to do a lot more than explain the situation to them if—when—I leave.” He didn’t argue, which told her that he privately agreed with her assessment. Sorrow filled her when she realized that even if he didn’t have a plan, she did. “I’ll tell you what. I’ll take care of it for you.”
He frowned. “You’ll take care of our breakup?”
“Yes.”
“And how do you intend to accomplish that?”
Stupid. Very stupid of her. She should have anticipated the question. “It’s better if you don’t know.”
He shook his head and folded his arms across his chest. Standing there, nude and intensely male, she could see how some women might find him intimidating. Not her. She swallowed. Probably not her.
“I happen to think it’s better if I do know your plan,” he insisted. “Now, spill.”
“If I explain beforehand, you won’t be in a position to react appropriately.”
“I won’t let you cheat on me.” The fierceness behind his comment had her stumbling back a step. “Nor will they believe you, if that’s what you’re going to try to tell them.”
“It isn’t,” she instantly denied. “That never even occurred to me.”
Her bewildered sincerity must have convinced him, because he nodded. “Okay, then.” He throttled back a notch or two. “Give me some sort of idea so I can decide whether or not it’ll work.”
She didn’t dare tell him, or he’d find out how well it would work right here and now. “Trust me,
it’ll work. Not only will they believe it, but they’ll rally around you. You won’t have to worry about anyone trying to find another Inferno bride for you ever again.”
She looked him straight in the eye as she said it. Could he see the bleakness she felt reflected in her gaze? He must have, because he took a swift step in her direction.
“Larkin? What is it?” Concern colored his voice. “Are you ill? Is something wrong with you?”
“It’s nothing like that,” she assured him. Time to move this in another direction before he broke her down and forced the truth from her. She planted her splayed hands on his chest and maneuvered him backward toward the bed. “Why don’t we table this discussion for now and in the meantime, I suggest you get busy and bore me.”
His legs hit the edge of the mattress and he reached out to snag her around the waist as he toppled backward. She tumbled on top of him, laughing as she fell. It still hurt whenever she thought about the future. Hurt unbearably to realize this couldn’t last. But she’d known it wouldn’t when she’d agreed to an affair. And until the moment came when he found out who she was and what she wanted from him, she’d enjoy every single second of their time together.
Would he consider it a fair bargain? Somehow she doubted it and it distressed her to think she’d make him any more of a loner than he was already. That he’d continue to turn from people because he no longer trusted them. She’d never forgive herself if that happened. But maybe he’d understand. Maybe he’d help her and they could part on good terms.
And maybe baby pigs around the world would sprout gossamer wings and use them to fly straight to the moon.
He tunneled his fingers through her hair and thrust the wayward curls away from her face. “What are you thinking about?”
She forced out a smile. “Nothing important.”
“Whatever it was, it made you look so sad.”
“Then why don’t you give me something else to think about?”