Hope unfurled its wings in her heart again, but she ignored it to focus on Gavin. She curled her fingers down around the back of his hand and softened her voice. “I don’t mean to add to your burden, but it’s possible that your mom has passed away. Your father seems to have kept a lot of secrets, or maybe he didn’t even know.”
“Then I would need to confront Odelia.” He turned their hands back and forth, his gaze fixed on them. His voice went as frigid as the ocean outside his window. “And I do not want you to witness that. That will bring out the worst in me, and I’m fine with that.”
“So you’ll try to find your mother.” She took a deep breath. “And I will go with you to meet her if you do.” How could she not, after what he’d said?
He bent to kiss the back of her hand, his lips warm and firm. “I know you will keep your word.”
She looked at their hands interwoven together and imagined them as a symbol of her life becoming more and more entwined with Gavin’s. When he no longer needed her, there would be a lot of ripping and tearing.
Chapter 25
Allie pulled on a green shirt and a pair of jeans after waking up to an empty bed. The night before she and Gavin had gone to bed early, both exhausted by the emotional afternoon. Neither had wanted to eat, so Allie’s stomach felt hollow this morning.
Maybe Gavin and Pie were having breakfast. She just had to figure out which of the mansion’s many rooms they might choose to eat in.
As she headed for the main staircase, she heard the sound of keys clicking and followed it to Gavin’s office. He sat at his desk, his fingers flying across the keyboard. The cat was curled up on a cushion Gavin must have moved onto the desk for her.
Relief coursed through Allie. She’d been afraid that the painful revelations of the day before might have sent Gavin’s muse screaming back into her cave.
Leaning against the doorjamb, she drank in the sight of him. His hair was tousled and caught glints of sunlight in its thick, dark waves, as did the scruff of whiskers he hadn’t yet shaved. He wore his favorite outfit of jeans and a black cashmere sweater, both of which outlined the long, lean muscles of his body in a way that sent desire licking through her like the flames of a bonfire.
Neither Gavin nor Pie was aware that she stood in the same room with them. The cat was lost in her feline dreams, and the writer was building his fictional world out of the bricks of words.
For a long moment, she simply watched, trying to paint this image onto a canvas in her mind. She rejoiced in the return of Gavin’s creativity, but Allie understood that meant her time with him was coming to an end. As loath as she was to disturb his progress, she wanted him to need her just a little longer.
She padded across the floor in her bare feet and pressed a kiss on the exposed skin at the back of Gavin’s neck.
The sound of typing ceased abruptly as he spun his chair around to tumble her onto his lap. He twined his fingers into her hair and pulled her head back so he could take her mouth in a kiss so intense it sucked the breath out of her.
“Never sneak up on a writer when he’s writing,” Gavin said, lifting his head with a hot gleam in his eye. “You could do irreparable damage to his psyche, which then must be soothed by crazed lovemaking.”
“Sneak? I could have set off a bomb, and neither you nor Pie would have twitched.” Allie half lay across his thighs as longing pulsed within her. “However, if your psyche needs healing, I’m willing to sacrifice myself to do it.”
The angles of his face tightened into an almost predatory look. “You are the most selfless human being I’ve ever met.” He skimmed his hand up along the outside of her thigh before sliding it under the hem of her shirt and grazing up her rib cage to palm her breast through her lacy bra.
“It’s pure torment,” Allie said as his thumb drew circles around her breast, making the tip harden and ache deliciously. “But I bear it for your sake.” She gasped as he rolled the nipple between his fingers and sent sparks glittering through her chest before they settled in a glow of heat between her thighs.
Wanting his skin against hers, she yanked the hem of her shirt up over her head and sent it flying. She flicked open the front clasp of her bra and bared her breasts to the stroke of his fingers and the morning sun.
“A wanton virgin sacrifice,” Gavin said, his gaze following the path of his fingers as he traced along the now-heavy curves of her breasts. “My favorite kind.”
She wanted his lips where his fingers were, so she stood and straddled his thighs, weaving her fingers into his hair and pulling him into her. His hands clamped around her waist, the fingers almost digging into her flesh. He lapped at one nipple, flicking it with his tongue, so each touch made her arch backward as a zing of sensation streaked through her. “More,” she rasped, pulling him closer.
He sucked on her with all the hot, moist pressure of his mouth, his hands running up to splay across her back so he could hold her tight against him. He pulled at the sensitive tips, then laved them, then ran his teeth lightly around them. She let her head fall back, feeling the brush of her long hair against her own bare skin like a caress.
She sank her fingers into the cashmere covering the muscles of his shoulders that she knew so intimately, clinging to him while arousal drew her body as taut as a bow.
“Now, Gavin!” she gasped, releasing her grip to fumble the button of her jeans open.
Suddenly he was standing, the chair rolling back to crash into an occasional table, toppling both pieces of furniture. His chest heaved as he glanced around the room wildly. Then he leaned forward and with one sweep of his arm cleared half his desk of papers, pens, stapler, and various knickknacks that rained to the floor with a series of thuds and flutters.
Pie bolted off her cushion.
Gavin lifted Allie onto the desktop. When she tried to wrap her legs around his hips, he bared his teeth in a near snarl and commanded, “Lie back.”
She obeyed, feeling the leather inset against her shoulder blades and the wooden frame beneath her head. She looked up to see Gavin looming over her as he worked her zipper down before yanking her jeans and panties down her legs and off.
He stood staring down at her body, his face painted half in warm, golden light and half in deep, concealing shadow. The light draped itself over the darkness of his sweater, limning his muscles in curves of brightness against the black. She saw again the sorcerer who could call worlds into being with his words.
She lifted her arms over her head and spread her thighs, because she wanted to feel his power inside her.
He ground out her name as he ripped open the fly of his jeans and rolled on a condom. Positioning the head of his cock between her legs, he dug his fingers into the soft flesh of her bottom and pulled her to the edge of the desk.
“Hard,” she said, closing her eyes to focus on the hollow that she needed to have filled.
He drove into her in one stroke, a long groan tearing from his throat. The motion and stretch of him made her back arch up off the desk. “Yes, Gavin!”
He withdrew and thrust in again, pulling her against him as he moved so that there was pressure and friction where she craved it. Electric bolts of pure sensation seared through her, lighting up her nerve endings and making her writhe against his hands. It was delicious and mind-bending and not enough.
“Again!” She rocked against him.
He gave her what she asked for, driving in deep and fast. Her eyelids squeezed shut, and she rode the wave of arousal building higher and higher as every touch, every motion, every sound seemed to slide down into the place where he moved inside her. She fought the breaking of the wave, held back the tide as long as she could until finally she hit the still point where every molecule in her body seemed to hold its breath. Then the orgasm slammed through her so hard and bright that she felt as though her skin went incandescent with the overwhelming pleasure.
As her muscles clenched around Gavin, she felt his grip tighten, and then his climax pulsed inside her. She slitted her eyes op
en enough to see his head thrown back, the tendons in his neck standing out as he gave a long, guttural moan that held her name somewhere in it. The convulsion of her muscles and the pulse of his cock echoed and amplified each other so that his name was dragged from deep in her belly and up her throat.
And then he bent over her, his forearms braced on the desktop, the cashmere of his sweater brushing her hard nipples with exquisite softness that nearly hurt because they were so sensitive. Satisfaction glowed so warm within her that her skin was flushed with heat.
Gavin was softening but still inside her, and she tightened her muscles around him again, wanting to feel that intimacy a little longer. He moaned again, his breath feathering over her shoulder. “Mercy,” he murmured.
She sighed and slipped her hands up under his sweater to savor the bare skin of his back. It held a glaze of perspiration from his exertions. “Mmm,” she said. “You worked up a sweat.”
“Just looking at you stretched out on my desk made me sweat. Being inside you set me on fire. It’s a miracle that I didn’t spontaneously combust.”
Allie chuckled. “I can tell you are no longer in the throes of passion. You’re speaking in complete sentences.”
“Me, Tarzan. You, Jane.” He grunted in imitation of a gorilla and then levered himself up on his hands and slid out of her. “I feel like a brute, indeed, making you lie on this hard desktop.” He took her hands and pulled her up to a sitting position, and then his expression softened into tenderness as he smoothed his hands over her hair. “You’re such a surprising sprite. You astonish me at every turn.”
“Is that a good thing?” Without his body heat, goose bumps began to prickle across her skin, and she shivered.
He whipped his sweater up over his head and wrapped it around her back and shoulders before he brushed his lips against hers. “It’s the best thing that’s ever happened to me.”
She felt words forming in her heart, pushing their way up her throat, and trying to escape her lips. But she gritted her teeth and kept them trapped inside so they echoed in her interior silence.
I feel the same way about you. I love you, Gavin.
What would he say if she spoke them out loud? Would he be shocked by her naïveté? Horrified at her temerity? Amused by her presumption? Was there any chance he’d take her in his arms and say the words back to her?
She swallowed hard, forcing the words down again. It was too big a risk. She had a few more days in this place of sea, sand, and magic, away from the real world. She would savor them to the fullest before they returned to the city. It would be easier to handle her broken heart there amid the grit and grayness of late winter in New York.
Gavin had disposed of the condom and brought back a cream-colored vicuña throw from one of the sofas. He enveloped her in the soft cloud of extravagant fiber, leaving his own sculpted chest bare. She put her palms against the warm, firm hillocks of his muscles.
“You’ve gotten quiet, sprite. What is it?” He gazed down at her, his eyes clouded with concern.
“Just thinking how much I’ll hate to leave the beach.”
The green of his pupils brightened. “Then we’ll stay here.”
Allie shook her head even as temptation beckoned to her. “I don’t want Pie getting used to this. She’ll be cranky when she has to go back to my apartment.”
Gavin laughed, as she had hoped he would, before he looked down at her hands, pale against the olive of his skin. “So small for such power. They heal, they pummel, they arouse, they soothe.”
She let them slide downward, trailing over the bulges and ridges of his musculature, watching the flexing and contraction as he reacted to her touch. But when she reached the half-open fly of his trousers, she stopped and pulled her hands away.
“Does that mean playtime is over?” he asked.
“My original goal was breakfast, but I got sidetracked.” She lifted her eyes to his. “Something about watching a writer in the white heat of creation turns me on.”
He laughed again, and she realized the tension had eased in him now that he was writing once more. All the pent-up frustration that had wound him as tight as a coiled spring had been transformed into focused eagerness. His laughter was natural, without sharp edges. He leaned in closer. “That proves that you are a true muse. And I sure as hell hope you remain in a state of near-constant arousal.”
“I’ll need to keep my strength up, so let’s go eat.” She wanted distraction from the potent twining of pain and pleasure this intimacy with Gavin evoked.
“A woman of strong appetites,” he said, stepping away to scoop up the jeans and panties he had ripped off her earlier.
Dressed, and seated across the breakfast table from him with a pile of pancakes on her plate, Allie touched on a touchy subject. “When are you going to begin the search for your mother?”
Gavin chewed and swallowed a bite of scone. “I already have. Archer has a friend in the security-and-investigation business, so I hired him for the quest. He expects to have results quickly, given that I had an address for her as a starting point.” He locked his gaze on her. “I told him not to call me until Monday, even if he has news sooner, because I didn’t want to impinge on our time here.”
So he felt it, too, the sense that this was a sort of idyll, that it needed to be protected.
He grimaced. “The writing still feels raw and fragile. I’m not sure how much more outside stress it can handle.”
Disappointment slashed through her, like a blade to her gut. His concern wasn’t for them; it was for his writing. Somehow she managed to sound casual as she asked, “How many pages did you add this morning?”
“None. I tossed out the stuff I wrote yesterday because it was too superficial. I was still nursing my newfound creativity, so I was afraid to go too deep.” He slathered spiced pear jam on the scone. “Today, I tortured Julian quite satisfactorily.” He bit into it with gusto.
“Did you use any of what you felt yesterday?”
“I am not Julian. Julian is not me.” He took a swallow of coffee. “But, yes, I made Julian feel my pain.”
Chapter 26
“Your dress is so perfect for a ball on the beach!” Chloe picked up the skirt of Allie’s dress. “I love the sparkly starfish.”
Chloe’s and Miranda’s dresses hung beside it on a display rack in the walk-in closet attached to Chloe and Nathan’s bedroom. Their huge stone beach house was on its own island, reached by a private causeway. Allie had been invited over so they could all get their hair and makeup done before the gala that night. Gavin had driven her over—in a Ferrari, just for fun, he said—and stayed to talk with his friends. She had been nervous about coming until Chloe and Miranda had swept her and her dress upstairs, chattering as though they were teenagers before the prom.
“Gavin has a problem with the neckline,” Miranda said. “It was such fun to see him scowling when Allie modeled it for him.”
“Gavin scowls a lot, so that’s not news,” Chloe said.
“It wasn’t the scowl,” Miranda said. “It was the reason for it. He was feeling possessive.”
Chloe raised her eyebrows.
“He’s just worried that I’ll embarrass him by falling out of the dress,” Allie said. She couldn’t allow herself to think anything more than that. “Your dress is fabulous,” Allie said, admiring Chloe’s sea foam green sheath with a short tulle train and beaded straps. “The color looks like the water out here when the sun shines on it.”
Chloe heaved an exaggerated sigh. “Once Nathan told me I couldn’t wear shoes, I kind of lost interest.”
“Cinderella here has a shoe fetish,” Miranda said. “You should see her closet in New York.”
“Honestly, Nathan bought most of the shoes in it,” Chloe said. “He sees something he thinks I’ll like and brings it home in my size. I don’t have the heart to tell him I don’t need any more Louboutins.”
Allie’s heart twisted at the sweetness of the CEO shoe shopping for his fiancée
.
Miranda turned to Allie. “Did you find the right jewelry for your dress?”
Allie blushed slightly. The night before, Gavin had undressed her slowly and deliberately in front of a full-length mirror. Then he fastened the necklace around her throat and made her come using only his hands as he stood behind her. He said he wanted her to see how beautiful she looked with just his hands and the jewelry on her. It was the most erotic thing she’d ever experienced. “Er, yes. I have it in my purse. What are you wearing?”
Miranda opened a velvet box on Chloe’s bed and showed her a pair of long, dangling ruby-and-diamond earrings. “Luke bought them to go with the red of my dress.”
“You are very lucky, both of you,” Allie said. “You found really good men.”
Chloe and Miranda exchanged a look before Chloe said, “We think you’ve found a good man, too.”
“Me?”
Miranda nodded. “Luke says he’s never seen Gavin so relaxed.”
“He’s still snarky, but it’s funny instead of having a bitter edge,” Chloe chimed in.
Allie shook her head. “He’s relaxed because he’s writ—” Too late, Allie remembered Gavin didn’t want anyone to know that his creativity had returned.
“It’s okay,” Chloe said. “Luke and Nathan know he’s back to Julian again.” She plunked down on a chaise longue and drew Allie down beside her. “Miranda and I both know about the intimidation factor.”
“She’s engaged to a genius, and I’m married to a sports legend,” Miranda said with a crooked smile. “But you have to get past the labels to the living, breathing men. They bleed, they have dysfunctional families, they get lonely. They need love just as much as us average folk. Maybe more so.”
As soon as she heard the word love, Allie held up her hand. “It’s not like that with Gavin and me. He needed help with the physical symptoms of his writer’s block. Now he’s broken through it and . . .” Allie shrugged.
“So you don’t feel anything deeper for him?” Chloe asked.
Allie looked at the woman gazing at her with such concern and realized she couldn’t lie. “What I feel for him is different from what he feels for me.”
The VIP Doubles Down (Wager of Hearts Book 3) Page 28