by Jane Graves
“And he lays eyes on the most beautiful creature he’s ever seen.”
“Creature?”
“A forest nymph.”
Heather laughed. “A forest nymph?”
“Yes. She’s lying on the forest floor. Somehow she’s gotten caught in a tangle of vines, and she can’t get loose. No matter how hard she struggles, she isn’t strong enough to free herself. And she isn’t wearing so much as a fig leaf.”
“Okay. I get it. I’m a naked forest nymph in bondage. You got that from a porn flick, didn’t you?”
“No. My stories always have original content.” He kicked off his shoes, then pulled his jeans off, taking his underwear with them, and tossed them aside. “Then the strong, handsome, virile knight—”
“You, of course.”
“Yeah. What gave it away?”
“The grandiose adjectives. That ego thing again.”
“Nah. It’s just typecasting. So . . . the strong, handsome, virile knight puts his weapon away and approaches her.”
As he spoke, he sat on the bed beside Heather. She looked down. “Got news for you, Tony. Your weapon is still drawn.”
“This is a simple story, Heather. Metaphors aren’t allowed. Shall I go on?”
“Please do.”
“The knight has never seen anything quite as beautiful as the forest nymph,” Tony said, dropping his gaze to Heather’s breasts, “and for a long time, all he can do is stare at her.” He paused. “And stare.” A longer pause. “And stare . . .”
“Tony,” she snapped.
“But soon she grows uncomfortable under his blistering gaze. The knight knows he should free her from the tangle of vines. But he also knows that the moment he does, she’ll disappear into the woods and he’ll never see her again.”
“What if she promises not to run away?”
“Forest nymphs may be beautiful, but they’re notorious liars. And he can’t let her go, anyway.”
“Why not?”
Tony leaned in and whispered against her neck, “Because he hasn’t yet satisfied his raging . . . male . . . lust.”
Heather swallowed hard. “Oh, my. I bet the forest nymph is starting to get a little uptight with all that testosterone flying around.”
“At first, she’s terrified. She struggles to free herself, but it’s pointless. The knight can do with her whatever he chooses. But then she realizes it’s not pain he has in mind.” He dropped his voice to a deep whisper. “Only pleasure.”
With that, he cradled Heather’s face in his hands and kissed her, amazed once again at how soft and sweet her lips were. He teased his tongue along her bottom lip, and she opened her mouth beneath his. He threaded his fingers through her hair, angled his mouth, and delved inside with his tongue. When he felt her stroke her tongue tentatively against his, as if she were an innocent girl still learning the wonders of kissing, he felt every contradiction that Heather was. On the outside, she was a tough, no-nonsense woman. Inside, though, she had a sweet naivety that blew him away. Just kissing her made him feel as if this were all brand-new to him, too, as if he’d found a whole new facet of lovemaking to explore.
Without taking his mouth from hers, he slid his hand to the side of her neck, where he felt her pulse pounding like mad. He’d shocked the hell out of her with the handcuffs. It had been a devious move on his part, but it was all going to be good. He wanted to make her feel things she’d never felt before. He knew he had a lot to pick from, considering her two and a half times—three and a half after last night—and the handcuffs ensured that whatever he chose to do, her modesty or apprehension wouldn’t stand in his way.
He moved his hand down to splay against her chest, his fingertips playing across her collarbone; then he passed his hand over the swell of her breast. He grazed his thumb over her nipple—once, twice—and with just that tiny touch, he felt a shudder pass through her and her soft moan hum against his lips. She was so sensitive. So responsive. The way her body reacted to everything he did—her face growing flushed, her breath coming faster, the tiny whimpers in the back of her throat—was genuine. After being with women for whom sex had been reduced to performance art, it aroused him like nothing else.
He kissed his way along her jaw, then moved lower to close his mouth over her neck in a warm, wet kiss, tugging at the flesh with his lips. She shuddered again, twisting her shoulders, but when he pulled his lips away, she tightened her grip on the straps of the handcuffs and tilted her head in a subtle invitation for him to do it again. He smiled and obliged, strumming her nipple at the same time, loving the way her body writhed gently beneath him.
Finally he stretched out beside her. He dropped a kiss against the swell of her breast, then drew her nipple into his mouth with moist suction. She let out a soft gasp and tried to shudder away, but he was relentless, teasing it with his tongue until it grew hard and stiff. Then he moved to the other one and gave it the same treatment, at the same time skimming his hand down her inner thigh to caress the tender skin there.
When he stroked his fingers between her legs, she jumped a little and shifted her hips, but he persisted, astonished to feel how hot and wet and swollen she already was. Before long, she was tightening her fists on the cuff straps and pressing against him, asking for more, but a reprise of last night wasn’t what he had in mind.
He backed away and rose from the bed.
“No!” she said. “Tony! Don’t leave me!”
“Take it easy, sweetheart. I’m not going anywhere.” He moved to the foot of the bed and stared down at her, watching the sharp rise and fall of her chest and the way her whole body seemed to throb with impatience as she waited for him to touch her again.
He leaned over, placed his hands on her thighs, and smoothed his palms all the way down to her ankles. Then he gently pulled her legs apart and sat between them. He dropped his palms to her hips and passed his thumbs along the junction between her hips and pelvis.
Yes, yes, yes. Touch me now.
For as clearly as her body was saying that, she might as well have shouted it. But Tony was in no hurry. He stroked her thighs and hips for what seemed like forever, making her body go rigid with anticipation. Then he dipped his head and kissed her abdomen. Sliding down, he braced himself on one elbow at her right hip and sprawled between her legs. Resting his other hand on her thigh, he kissed her abdomen again, then dragged his lips lower. Kissed her again. Lower. Another kiss.
And lower still.
Heather had never been slow on the uptake, but until he parted her with his thumbs, it didn’t seem to dawn on her what he intended to do. When he flicked his tongue against her, she gasped and twisted hard to one side.
“No. Oh, God, no. It’s too much, Tony. No.”
She was breathing so hard she was on the verge of hyperventilating, but he didn’t say a word. He just held her hips until she stilled. She tilted her head back and drew in sharp little breaths of anticipation. Tony lowered his head again, this time closing his mouth over her with a soft sucking motion of his lips and tongue that made her squirm all over again, but he held her in place, and after a moment, she wasn’t fighting it and was even arching her body up to meet him.
He teased and tormented her, and she shivered beneath him. He could hear her breathing escalate, and when her shivers turned to shudders, he knew she was close. When she finally cried out, he glanced up to see her head thrown back, that wild hair spread across the pillow, her hands straining against the cuffs, and her whole body trembling with release. It was the most blatantly erotic thing he’d ever seen.
He needed to be inside her. Now.
After rolling on a condom faster than he ever had in his life, he pressed her knees apart and plunged inside her. Ah, God, she felt good, still convulsing from her climax, her muscles tightening around him, driving him to thrust with fierce intensity. Seconds later, a climax slammed into him, tearing a deep growl from his throat and battering him with one shattering pulse after another. Finally he fell against her
, his head bowed, trying desperately to drag in a good, solid breath.
“Don’t worry, sweetheart,” he said. “I’ll let you go. It’s just going to be a little bit.”
He lay there for several seconds, his cheek against hers, feeling her heart beating wildly against his chest. Finally he took a big, deep breath and sat up between her legs. He rested his hands on her thighs for a moment, then backed away and stood up.
He unlocked the cuffs, tossed them aside, and lay down beside her, pulling her into his arms. He felt as if he’d been mowed down by a freight train, and it was at least a full minute before his breathing slowed and his heart rate moved into the nonlethal range.
He turned to Heather. “And they both lived happily ever after.”
She sighed with satisfaction. “I just love a good story.”
“So you’re not mad about the cuffs?”
“I was never mad about the cuffs.”
“Just a little scared.”
“A little. Until my strong, handsome, virile knight rode up. Is there a sequel to that story?”
He laughed softly and pulled her closer. “What do you think?”
Tony couldn’t believe how good this was. Unfortunately, it was only for a few more weeks. But just as there was no reason to deprive themselves now, was there any reason they couldn’t still sleep together after they split up?
Then again, that would be weird. They would be divorced, but still having sex?
He decided he wasn’t going to worry about it now. Where Heather was concerned, he was going to live for the moment and think about tomorrow . . . tomorrow.
Chapter 19
During the next week, Heather went to McMillan’s every night after work. First she ensured there were no sudden catastrophes she had to help Tony deal with, and then she went into his office to get some things done, whether it was planning for the grand opening, rearranging his filing system, or checking out his books to look for places where he could possibly save money. After a few hours, she left there and went to the apartment to take a nap before he got home so she’d be rested for whatever nighttime activity he had in store for her.
On the night he’d produced those handcuffs, at first she’d felt a shot of panic, thinking maybe Regina was right. Maybe she had married a sexual deviant. But before the night was over, she realized she’d never felt safer than when she was with Tony. After that experience, if he’d said, Let’s do it in free fall from twenty thousand feet before our chutes open, she’d be scrambling into the airplane.
From that night on, his imagination had known no bounds.
On Tuesday night, even though she told him it was unsanitary to use the kitchen table for anything but eating, he told her he’d throw that one out and buy a new one if he had to, but he was getting his way. By the time they’d finished, they’d emptied half a can of whipped cream and most of a squirt bottle of Hershey’s syrup, after which they moved the party to the shower.
On Wednesday night, Tony asked her if she’d ever made out in the back of a movie theater. When she said she hadn’t, he stuck in a sappy romantic movie he’d brought home, curled up with her on the sofa, and turned out the lights. As he proceeded to give the term heavy petting an entirely new meaning, she began to wonder if what she’d told Regina about his movie theater fantasies hadn’t been so far from the truth.
On Thursday night, she came home to see an old VCR hooked up to the television and a note attached to the remote: A little nostalgia from my one year in a college dorm. Hit play. She did, and she was shocked to catch Debbie right in the middle of doing Dallas. Being a nice girl, Heather flicked it off immediately. Then she thought, Stop with the nice, and hit PLAY again. By the time Tony got home that night, she was ready to implement a few of the strategies Debbie used to satisfy half the male population of Big D.
On Friday morning, she woke up to him sleeping beside her and thought, You can’t do this anymore. He was ruining her for every other man she might possibly want to sleep with in the future. She’d compare every one of them to Tony, and the poor guys would be left in the dust. Stop now, she told herself. Or at least taper off so you start to get him out of your system. Tell him no tonight.
Then, as she was getting out of bed, he happened to wake up. He grabbed her, dragged her back, and she thought, Forget tonight. I can’t even tell him no now, and thoughts of kicking her dangerous new sexual addiction were sidelined. She just had to keep in mind that there was a reason Tony was so good in bed. He’d been with half the women on the planet, and he couldn’t wait for the day he could start going after the other half.
An hour and a half later, Heather was hurrying along the downtown sidewalk toward the building where she worked, her briefcase in one hand and a sack containing the invitations to the grand opening in the other. No doubt about it. Sex in the morning was off-limits from now on. Her legs still felt like wet spaghetti.
She’d printed the invitations in Tony’s office last night. If she mailed them this morning, people would have them in time to plan for the event, but not so early that they’d put it aside and forget about it.
She sidestepped a woman meandering along talking on her cell phone, and then a scroungy, sign-carrying panhandler. She wasn’t hurrying just because she was late. She had the final fitting for her bridesmaid dress that night after work, and she figured moving faster meant burning more calories. Yeah, that was dumb, but she’d had a dream the night before that only fifty calories had meant the difference between being able to zip the dress and not being able to, so she wasn’t taking any chances. Unfortunately, all the weight loss in the world wouldn’t make the dress any less ugly.
She slipped inside the building and went to the mail drop in the lobby. Setting her briefcase down, she fished out handfuls of the envelopes and stuffed them into the slot until she’d emptied the bag. She tossed the bag into a nearby trash can, then reached into a side pocket of her briefcase and took out one more.
The one addressed to Don McCaffrey.
She’d debated long and hard about it all the way to work, finally reaching the conclusion that if the worst happened—if he got the invitation and didn’t come—Tony would never know he had been invited in the first place. If he showed up after three years of not seeing his son, surely it would mean he wanted to reconcile, and eventually Tony would thank her for it. It would be okay either way.
With a deep breath, she stuck the envelope through the slot and let it go, sending it on its way with the others.
On Saturday morning, Tony and Heather got out of his car and walked down the sidewalk toward the formal-wear shop. Tony was more of a jeans-and-T-shirt kind of guy who opted for comfort over style, so the last thing he wanted was to put on a tuxedo. But the prospect of being in the wedding and therefore irritating Jason made it almost worthwhile.
“You’ll be proud of me,” Heather said. “Yesterday when I went to the final fitting for the bridesmaid dress, I could actually breathe in it.”
“You have me to thank for that,” Tony said.
“Excuse me? What did you do?”
“I put you on the sex diet. Works two ways. The activity burns calories, and if I keep your hands busy, you can’t eat.”
Heather stopped and stared at him.
“What?” he said.
“Leave it to you to take credit for me losing weight.” She shook her head and resumed walking.
“So you think it was all that rabbit food you ate?” he said, striding along beside her.
“I know it was all the rabbit food I ate. And Regina was so kind. She told me not to worry about looking fat in the dress, that I still had a week to lose another five pounds.”
“What are the chances she’ll trip on the train of her dress on the way to the altar?”
“A hundred percent if I stick out my foot.”
Tony grabbed the door, and he and Heather went into the shop. The tailor got the tux and sent Tony into a fitting room to try it on. When he emerged a few minutes later, H
eather put her hand to her chest. “Oh, my God. You look gorgeous.”
Tony looked at himself in the three-way mirror. “I don’t know. Wearing a tux makes me feel like kind of a wuss.”
“A wuss? Are you kidding? Is James Bond a wuss? I don’t think so. Look at the girls he gets.”
“Hmm. Maybe you have a point.” Tony stood up straighter, flexing his shoulders and tugging at the lapels. “So you’re telling me that if I put on one of these, I’ll be a real babe magnet?”
Heather screwed up her face. “Babe magnet?”
“You know, I can get all the chicks.”
“Yeah, Tony,” she deadpanned. “You can get all the chicks now that you’re a babe magnet.”
Tony gave her a furtive smile. “I got you, didn’t I? You said I looked gorgeous.”
Heather turned to the tailor. “Give him high-water pants. The Pee Wee Herman look is in this year.”
The tailor, who had zero sense of humor, marked the pants for hemming at the appropriate length, then examined the fit of the jacket, which turned out to be just about perfect. He told Tony it would be ready in time for the wedding and sent him back to the fitting room.
He changed back into his jeans and T-shirt, then started to push the curtain aside to leave the fitting room. As he did, he glanced between the curtain panels to the counter at the front of the shop.
No. It couldn’t be.
His father?
Tony stopped short, clutching the curtain, feeling every nerve in his body go numb. At first he thought he must be imagining it. It had been three years since he’d seen his father. Could this man just resemble him?
Then the man turned to glance out the window, and Tony knew for sure. Don McCaffrey. There was no doubt about it.
Tony watched as his father pulled out his wallet and handed the clerk a credit card. He may have left the Navy, but the Navy had never left him. He looked every bit as staunch and upright as he had for the past thirty years, and he wore the same stoic expression. As a kid, Tony could still remember craning his neck to look up at his father’s unsmiling face, searching for a glimmer of the kindness and understanding that had disappeared from his life on the day his mother died.