UNINHIBITED

by Candace Schuller

  "—it feels like there's a marble under my rear end."

  "Which side?"

  "Left."

  He rolled to her right, holding her to him with one hand against her bare back while he reached down with the other, blindly searching through the rumpled fabric of her paisley skirt to find the offending marble.

  "Well, well. Would you look at this." He chuckled softly and held the peppermint swirl where she could see it. "Looks like I win."

  Her lips curved upward in an answering smile. "How do you figure that?"

  "Possession is nine-tenths of the law," he said, casually tossing the marble over his shoulder. "And I've got you—" his eyebrow quirked upward, making him look, she thought, like a very elegant, very satisfied pirate; his hand curved around the swell of her buttock, pulling her flush against him "—don't I?"

  * * *

  12

  « ^ »

  Zoe slipped inside the gate at the bottom of the stairs and closed it oh-so-carefully behind her. Then she took off her boots and, skirt fisted in her hand, tiptoed upstairs in her bare feet, very quietly, hardly breathing, refusing to glance at Gina's door, as if doing so would somehow rouse her sleeping friend.

  She had no desire to answer Gina's questions about where she'd been and what she'd been doing. Not yet, anyway. She needed to think about it by herself for a while and sort things out in her own mind before she'd be ready to talk about it.

  Unfortunately, one of her boots slipped out from under her arm as she was unlocking her apartment door. The stacked heel struck the bare wooden floor with a sharp, clattering sound that seemed to bounce off the walls of the narrow hallway, loud enough, Zoe was sure, to wake the dead and alert the entire building to her predawn return. With a sinking feeling of inevitability, Zoe heard the creaking of the door behind her.

  "So," Gina said. "How was it?"

  Zoe sighed, slumping for a moment, thinking briefly of just going into her apartment and shutting the door behind her, pretending she hadn't heard the question. The only thing that stopped her was the knowledge that Gina would follow her inside and keep asking until she got an answer. Diversion was the only thing that had a chance of working. For a while, anyway. Zoe pursed her mouth into an annoyed pout and turned around to face the music.

  "Jeez, Gina, what were you doing? Lurking at the door, waiting to pounce on me the minute I got home?"

  "Yep. I had my door open a crack so I'd be sure to hear you when you came in." Gina shuffled across the narrow hallway in her fuzzy bunny slippers and bent down to retrieve the fallen boot. "I wanted to be sure to get all the juicy details while they were still fresh in your mind. So…" She offered the boot to Zoe. "How was it?"

  Zoe snatched the boot out of her grinning friend's hand and pushed open the door to her apartment. "How was what?"

  "Oh, please." Gina entered the apartment behind her, just as Zoe had known she would. "You left here yesterday afternoon in that sexy black car of his, all gaga and excited—"

  "About signing the contract." Zoe flipped on the light, set her boots on the floor and slipped the strap of her tapestry bag over one of the curving hooks on the coat rack next to the front door, just as if it were any other homecoming on any other day. "I was excited about finally signing the contract for New Moon," she said as she headed purposefully toward the tiny kitchen.

  Gina snorted inelegantly. "Uh-huh."

  "Okay, maybe not completely about the contract." She turned on the water faucet with one hand, at the same time reaching for the glass coffeepot on the Mr. Coffee with the other. "But mostly."

  "Uh-huh," Gina said again.

  Zoe set the filled pot on the heating element with a sharp little click. "Mostly about the contract," she insisted stubbornly.

  "Oh, please." Gina rolled her eyes again. "No woman in the entire history of the world has ever been that excited about signing a contract." She hoisted herself up onto one of the stools at the kitchen counter to watch as Zoe measured coffee grounds into the cone-shaped filter. "No, indeed. The only thing that puts that look in a woman's eyes is the prospect of finally getting hot and heavy with a new guy. Or in your case, getting hot and heavy with a guy. Period. And besides, signing a contract doesn't take all night, anyway. So—" She leaned across the counter and curled her fingers around Zoe's forearm, claiming her full attention before she repeated her original question. "How was it? As wonderful as you thought it would be?"

  "It was better," Zoe said, and surprised them both by bursting into tears.

  Gina was immediately all solicitude and concern. "Oh, my goodness. Zoe. Honey. What's the matter? What happened?" She let go of Zoe's arm and slipped off of the stool, coming around the counter to gather her weeping friend into her arms. "What did that pervert do to you?"

  "N-n-nothing." Zoe sniffled the words into Gina's flannel-covered shoulder, even though she had to stoop a little to do it. "He's not a pervert. He just … he just…"

  "Come on, sweetie. He just what?" She made small, soothing circles against Zoe's back with the flat of her hand. "You'll feel better if you talk about it. And I'll feel better if I know what I'm cussing him out for."

  "He j-just made me … he made me…"

  "He made you do something?" Gina's hand stilled on Zoe's back. Her arms tightened protectively. "As in forced?" she said, her voice rising in outrage. "Are you saying he forced you to do something you didn't want to do? Forced you sexually?"

  "No. Of course not!" Aghast, Zoe drew back out of her friend's embrace and wiped at her eyes, struggling to pull herself together before Gina's very active imagination took her any further down the wrong road. "He didn't force me to do anything. He wouldn't. He couldn't. Reed's far too much of a gentleman to make a woman do anything she didn't want to do."

  "Well, then … I don't get it. Why are you crying? What did he make you do?"

  "Nothing. He didn't make me do anything." She turned away, wiping surreptitiously at her eyes again, and opened the cupboard where she kept her collection of mismatched china. "Far from it." She got down cups and saucers, fussily placing them just so on the counter, focused intently on her task in an effort to avoid Gina's probing gaze. "He was a perfect gentleman." Until he'd lost control and wasn't, anymore. And then he'd been perfect in another way entirely. She shifted one of the cups a millimeter to the left and refused to think about it. "He's always a perfect gentleman."

  "Then why the waterworks?" Gina demanded.

  "Oh, I don't know. I guess…" Zoe shrugged helplessly. "It's just that there's been so much going on lately, with the worry over whether I was going to get the money to expand New Moon. And then the legal mumbo jumbo I had to go through, and Reed and all his minions looking into every aspect of my life, and having to deal with the new bookkeeping and filing systems and … just everything. I've been on edge for months, really, when you think about it, and … oh, hell!" She smacked her hands down on top of the counter, making the fragile coffee cups rattle in their saucers. "The truth is, I'm an idiot. I knew this might happen if I went to bed with him. I knew it, and I did it anyway, because I wanted—want," she corrected herself, determined to be scrupulously honest "—because I want him so much. I told myself I could handle it. That it was no big deal. I mean, it's just sex, right?" She glared at Gina as if daring to her to deny it.

  "Uh … yeah, right," Gina mumbled. "Just sex."

  "Everybody has sex sooner or later." Zoe yanked opened another cupboard and began rummaging through it. "Almost everybody, anyway." She set a blue soup bowl on the counter and continued rummaging. "I know it was later rather than sooner for me, but I figured that would work in my favor. I mean, I wasn't an impressionable teenager with romantic dreams like so many women are the first time. And that has to be a good thing, right?" She turned from the open cupboard and gestured at Gina with the empty creamer she'd just taken from the shelf. "Right?"

  "Right." Nudging Zoe aside, Gina picked up the soup bowl and returned it to the cupboard. "Not being a teenager your
first time is a very good thing," she said as she lifted the sugar bowl off of the shelf and set it on the counter.

  "I've been out in the world and on my own for years now," Zoe continued, totally unaware of the gently mocking tone of her best friend's voice. "I've seen what sex can do to a woman's emotions. How it can mess up her mind and her life if she lets it. God, I've seen my mother go off the deep end enough times! I've seen you go off the deep end, too." She pointed the creamer at Gina. "Twice. And both times it was because of sex."

  "Well, not entirely because of sex," Gina objected. "I was really in love with Keith. For a while, anyway. And with Bruce, well…" She shrugged. "He was just so gorgeous. And such a great kisser. I got a little carried away."

  "Because of sex," Zoe said, feeling Gina had just made her point for her. "You got carried away because of all those raging female hormones running amok, making you think you were in love and going to live happily ever after behind a white picket fence. Just like my mother's done—" she waved the hand that held the creamer in a vague dismissive gesture "—I don't know how many times."

  "So?"

  "So you'd think I'd know better, wouldn't you?" she said in disgust. "But, nooo, it turns out I'm just as susceptible as the next woman when it comes to romanticizing what's really just a basic biological function."

  "Susceptible how?" Gina murmured encouragingly.

  "I was so sure I wouldn't get all starry-eyed and stupid just because I'd gone to bed with some guy. Only…" she sighed wistfully and ran a fingertip over the curved lip of the creamer "…he's not just some guy. I think, maybe, he's the guy."

  Gina reached out and took the creamer from her. "The guy?" she said casually as she set it on the counter next to the sugar bowl.

  "Oh, no. Not the guy. Jeez, I can't believe I actually said that. It's so stupid and … and … just forget I even said it. I didn't mean it. It's just the sex talking." She turned away from the knowing look in Gina's eyes and opened the refrigerator, pulling out a half-full carton of cream. She lifted it to her nose, absently sniffing at it before she poured it into the creamer. "We both know no rational woman can make a decision about whether or not a man is the guy based on one night of sex, no matter how wonderful it was. Especially if it was wonderful." She sighed again. "And it was wonderful…" Her busy hands stilled, her voice trailing off as she got lost in the memories.

  Gina picked up the little cream jug, sniffed delicately and poured the contents into the sink. "Wonderful how?" she prompted, still casually.

  Zoe shook her head as if trying to banish the mind-drugging memories. "That's not important." She returned the now empty carton of cream to the refrigerator and closed the door. "What's important is that if I don't pull myself together and start acting like a mature, rational adult, I'm going to ruin everything."

  Gina opened the refrigerator, took out the empty carton and tossed it into the trash. "Ruin everything how?"

  "By acting like an idiot, that's how. Do you know I snuck out of his house this morning before he woke up because I was afraid I'd say something that would have embarrassed both of us?" She shuddered at the very thought. "I actually snuck out, like some kind of thief. I tiptoed downstairs in his bathrobe and then scrambled around on the floor of his den in the dark to find my clothes so I could get dressed." She glanced down at her hands. "I couldn't find all my rings. Or my gold hoop earrings." Her cheeks turned pink as she thought of what else she hadn't been able to find in the dark. "His housekeeper will probably find them," she said in a horrified whisper, thinking of the torn, purple-satin panties.

  "Your clothes were all over the floor?" Gina said enviously, diverted by that bit of news. "Wow. That must have been some—"

  "I couldn't take the time to find them. I had to get out of there before he woke up or I would have made a complete fool of myself. I know I would have. And he would have thought I was nuts. He'd be right, too. I am nuts."

  "Nuts about the stuffed shirt," Gina said.

  "No. Oh, no." Zoe shook her head. "I'm not. Definitely not. Not really. It's just … it's…" She spread her hands in front of her, palms up, in a gesture unconsciously copied from Mama. "What I'm feeling right now is a combination of plain old-fashioned lust," she said, remembering what Reed had called it, "and … and…" she groped for a word "…gratitude? Does that make any sense?"

  "I don't know," Gina said. "Does it?"

  "He made it very special," Zoe said. "He was such a gentleman. So sweet and concerned and considerate. He was worried about hurting me or scaring me because it was my first time. And then, after a while, he wasn't anymore—worried, I mean—and it was—" she couldn't stop the small, dreamy, utterly satisfied smile that curved her lips at the memory "—wonderful. Completely, absolutely wonderful. The most wonderful experience of my life."

  "Ohmygod," Gina muttered. "You're in love with him."

  "No." Zoe shook her head again. "It's not love," she said firmly, horrified at the very thought. "If I know anything, I know that. It's definitely not love. It's gratitude and chemistry and … and—"

  "It's love," Gina insisted. "You're head-over-heels, crazy in love with the stuffed shirt."

  "No," Zoe insisted, desperately trying to make herself believe what she was saying. "It's the afterglow of good sex, is what it is. Infatuation. And if I keep my head and don't do or say anything stupid, I'll get through it and over it without embarrassing him or making a fool or myself." She took a deep, fortifying breath. "I hope."

  * * *

  Reed awoke with the morning sun shining on his face. Aroused and wanting, he reached for Zoe before he even opened his eyes, and realized, much to his dismay, that he was all alone in his king-size bed. His first thought was that she'd simply gotten up to use the bathroom, or get a drink of water, or had even wandered downstairs for a cup of the coffee he knew his housekeeper would be brewing about then, but after a moment's reflection, he knew she hadn't. The bedroom was too silent, too empty for her to be in the connecting bathroom. And despite her in-your-face sassiness, he couldn't quite picture her sashaying into the kitchen to beg a cup of coffee from his housekeeper while dressed in his bathrobe, which was what she'd been wearing late last night when they'd crept down to the kitchen for some scrambled eggs and toast to keep their strength up. They'd left her clothes—and his—scattered all over the floor in the den when they'd moved upstairs to his bedroom after that first frenzied encounter, and somehow they hadn't found a moment to go back down and get them.

  No, Zoe had left. Gone. She'd sneaked out while he was sleeping, without even bothering to wake him up and say goodbye. The only thing she'd left behind in her mad dash to be gone before he woke up was the memory of the hottest sex he'd ever experienced and the delicate gold ankle bracelet that had been transferred from her leg to his wrist at some point during the heated activities of the night.

  He lay there for another few moments in the big bed, his eyes still closed, his arm outstretched across the cold, empty space where she'd been, breathing in the faint scent of violets and sex that lingered in the sheets, and told himself it was ridiculous to feel as if he'd been deserted.

  But that was exactly how he felt.

  Deserted.

  Abandoned.

  Used, dammit!

  The previous twelve hours had encompassed some of the most exciting, most frightening, most satisfying experiences of his life. He'd lost track of how many times they'd made love. Four times? Five? Six? He had never been so insatiable before; never felt such a driving need to possess; never experienced such a whirlwind of emotions, one after the other, and all tumbled together. Towering, intemperate, unstoppable passion. Bone-melting tenderness. An uncharacteristic playfulness that was halfway embarrassing and wholly delightful. Each incredible encounter had blended seamlessly into the next, and each time had been better than the time before. More intense. More shattering. More perfect. More satisfying.

  He'd thought she felt the same.

  How could she not?

>   And then she'd gotten up and tiptoed out in the wee, small hours in the middle of the night as if he were some guy she'd picked up in a bar and didn't want to face in the bright light of the morning after. It left him feeling … what, exactly? Insulted? Well, yes, definitely insulted—Reed Sullivan IV was not some cheap one-night stand!—but it was more than that. Much more. There were hurt feelings underneath that injured male pride. And not far underneath, at that. Amazing.

  He'd never had his feelings hurt over a woman, not since his aborted adolescent romance with Janice Hawkins, anyway. Not even when Kate Hightower had left him standing more or less at the altar in front of their families and friends. A few months later, when she'd married her laid-back Southern charmer, Reed had kissed the bride's cheek and shaken the groom's hand without a glimmer of regret or jealousy.

  And yet now, incredibly, just the mere thought of Zoe with another man made him feel … murderous.

  She was his. He'd claimed her, branded her—she wore the crescent shaped mark of his teeth on her luscious fanny, dammit!—made her his own in the most basic way possible between a man and a woman. If she'd bolted at the altar, he'd have chased her down and dragged her back in front of the priest by that glorious red hair, and not turned her loose until she said "I do." And then he'd have hauled her off to bed and loved her so thoroughly that she'd never think about leaving him again.

  He was already up, the covers thrown back, his feet on the floor, about to put thought into action, when he pulled up short and sank back down to sit on the edge of the bed. What in the hell was the matter with him? Where was his legendary savoir faire? His self-control?

  His well-honed ability to stand back and look at things coolly, rationally and logically? He was thinking like a hormone-obsessed adolescent.

  It was just sex, for crying out loud.

  Spectacular, mind-blowing, heart-stopping sex, to be sure. But still, just sex. And she was just another woman. An incredibly exciting, phenomenally sexy woman, who just happened to be incredibly smart, too … and outrageously sassy … and unbelievably sweet … and passionate … and hardworking … and ambitious … and opinionated … and funny … and honest … and giving … and—