Slow Burn: Seducing Mr. RightTake Me

by Cherry Adair

  “I remember.”

  “My legs turned to jelly and my head spun. My heart started pounding and my skin went hot, then cold. I’d never felt anything like it.”

  “You upchucked on my new shoes.”

  “You pushed me away.”

  “No. I felt guilty as hell at taking advantage of an innocent young woman who was smashed. I didn’t want to compound it by taking you on the kitchen floor.”

  “One minute you were kissing me like something out of one of my fantasies, the next you were yelling and screaming, absolutely furious that I was drunk and behaving like my mother. You said some really awful things. Made worse by the fact that most of it was true. I was a pest. I was always underfoot.”

  “I wanted you so badly I was almost willing to risk Dad killing me. But I thought my touch had revolted you. You were so sick, and you looked at me as though I’d killed your best friend. I wanted that look of sisterly adoration back. But I didn’t want you to be my sister.”

  “I didn’t want you to be my brother. I was sick because I’d had too much excitement on top of too much to drink.... Are you going to help me get this stupid dress off my face so I can see you while we have this rather important conversation?”

  “In a while. Now, where was I? Ahhh, your belly button.” His mouth moved across her middle, then his tongue darted out and licked a sensuous path from navel to hip and back again. Goose bumps rose on her skin and her muscles fluttered. Her hips jerked.

  “June 25, your eighteenth birthday party. Fluorescent pink bikini. There were a million nubile young things at that pool party. Nick came with me. I couldn’t take my eyes off you. You were practically naked—”

  She’d waited with breathless anticipation for Luke to show. He’d arrived late, stayed half an hour. “You left early.”

  “Pretty hard to hide an erection wearing a swimsuit.” He moved up her body, skimming along her sensitized skin and making her shiver and twitch restlessly.

  It was with breathless relief that she felt him shift the shroud of fabric covering her head and arms. He found her hand and spread her fingers over his palm. “Now about your hands. Slender, artistic fingers. I love that you never wear polish on your fingernails. I love the way you tap them on the table when you’re pissed off. I love when you run your fingers through my hair. Impossible right now, I know. But later...”

  He could have at least uncovered her face. Catherine wanted him to kiss her. She wanted to kiss him back. “Are we done with seventeen?”

  He flipped the dress back over her tingling hands. “For now. Ah, these shoulders.” He stroked what he could reach. “Poets write sonnets about shoulders like these.”

  “They do support my neck....”

  He ignored her. “Slender, yet strong. You carry the weight of the world on these shoulders. You don’t need to.” He touched two fingers to the base of her throat. “Do you want me, Cat?”

  More than my next breath. “What would I do with you if I had you?” she asked lightly, her heart pounding harder, rougher.

  “Let me count the ways.”

  He cupped her left breast in his palm and flicked his thumb over the engorged nipple. The sweet, sharp sensation shot like a flaming arrow to her groin. She moaned. Luke chuckled, but he sounded choked. Catherine felt giddy with desire. High on love. Delirious with hope.

  “But first...” his breath whispered across her right breast; his hair tickled her chin “...I need to pay homage to the most incredible pair of breasts it’s been my good fortune to meet.”

  “W-way too small.”

  “Are you mad, woman? More than a handful is a waste.” He proved it. For several minutes the only sound in the room was Luke’s mouth against her breasts. The noises alone should be bottled and sold around the world as an aphrodisiac.

  His head shifted lower. And lower. Licking, caressing. Touching. Stroking. Until she couldn’t tell where Luke ended and she began. He slid down her body until his clever mouth touched her intimately.

  “Ah, Cat. The ultimate prize.” His tongue opened her slick folds, delving inside. He nuzzled and licked her like an ice-cream cone. She melted when his breath stroked her thighs as he shifted between her legs.

  “This—” he licked slowly up her furrow “—was—” down again “—my ultimate fantasy.” His tongue darted inside.

  Catherine arched off the bed. He held her cold bottom in his hot hands and kissed her again. Hard. Soft. Deep. Shallow.

  Catherine forgot to breathe.

  “Don’t come,” Luke told her harshly. “Don’t—” he licked her to the edge “—come.” He breathed warm air intimately into her, and his fingers tightened on her behind.

  Oh, like she could help it? Her body tensed as tight as a bowstring. Every nerve ending quivered for his touch. She was hot enough to melt, so aroused that the next touch would send her over the edge.

  Luke shifted across her body. “I’m here. Wait. For. Me.” His penis nudged her opening. A sob burst from her lungs as he slid home to the hilt, smooth, hard, impossibly deep. The pleasure took her breath. Tears ran into her hair. She turned her face against her arm as her heart pounded frantically against her ribs. The tribal beat amplified throughout her body. I love you. I love you. I love you.

  “Wet and wild. But still tight,” he murmured, kissing her throat. “Am I hurting you?”

  “N-no.” She could barely get the word out. Spread wide by his narrow hips, her thighs quivered as he reached between their bodies and rasped his thumb over her sweet spot, circled, pressed.

  “Oh my,” she managed to pant, as her skin prickled and scalding heat poured through her. Her body arched. “Please.”

  “Let go, sweetheart. Let go. I have you.”

  She fell. And Luke was there to catch her.

  Like an approaching storm cloud, filled with heat and energy, she felt her body flex and tighten as the climax thundered closer. And closer. And—

  Her body convulsed. Luke held her tightly, controlling his own finale to slowly, skillfully rebuild her desire, until she climbed again. Another impossible peak.

  “I lo— Yes, sweetheart— Yes—”

  They came together in a burst of light.

  Finally her spasms eased, and she lay sprawled beneath him, their skin bonded and slick with sweat. Luke’s chest heaved against hers as he dragged in great gulps of air. She felt him move inside her, and tightened internal muscles to hold him there.

  “Ah, Cat.” He sighed with satisfaction and stroked a still-shaking hand down the damp skin of her throat and over her sensitized breast.

  “Are you going to help me get this thing off my head, Van Buren?” Catherine murmured.

  “Having your head buried is a perfectly crab thing to do.”

  “That’s a turtle, not a crab. Come on, Luke. My arms are killing me.” Catherine felt as though she were on a high-wire without a net. Either she quickly acknowledged that Luke’s ego as a lover had been sorely compromised by their earlier lovemaking, and he’d done that wonderful seduction to prove he still had it, or she could continue this dream....

  She loved him so much it was a physical ache in her chest, yet she felt shaky inside, terrified that this would once again blow up in her face.

  He lifted his head and she could feel him looking down at her. “Know what I think, my little crab?”

  “I tremble to think, my big turkey.” She wanted to stay this way forever. Drowsily she nuzzled her fabric-covered nose against his chest. There’d be time later to unveil and have a reality check. But not now. Not when she had him here like this.

  “I think you wouldn’t recognize Mr. Right if he bit you on the butt.”

  She yanked the last few remaining strands of hair knotted around the button and freed her face. “You do, do you?”

  His ey
es danced with little green lights the second they met hers. “Hell, yeah.”

  She dragged the dress the rest of the way over her head and tossed it on the floor, then looked him in the eye again. They were only a few inches apart. “Maybe he’s so blind you wouldn’t recognize my butt if it was—was served to y-him on a silver platter!” She finished in a rush.

  Luke rubbed his chin. Blast his hide, now he was grinning. “Maybe he would.”

  “Maybe he hasn’t.”

  He bent his head to kiss her lightly on the mouth. “We’re getting nowhere fast, aren’t we? Boy, I’m going to deserve a medal when this is all over. Cat, Cat. We’re going to have to learn to communicate better than this.”

  She could still feel dried tears on her cheeks. She tried to read his expression, then blinked at what she saw on his face, in his eyes.

  He took her face between his hands. “I love you, Cat.”

  “Love? What about all those emotional eggs in one basket?”

  “You are all my emotional eggs, Catwoman. Every last one. You’re love, and hope, and promise.” His green eyes darkened. “Do you want what’s best for me?”

  “You know I do.”

  “You.”

  “Me what?”

  “You’re what’s best for me, Catherine.”

  “Catherine?”

  “I want you to know how serious I am. You’re my heart.”

  “Obligation. Misguided responsibility. A knight in shining amore complex.”

  “Amore is exactly what I feel for you. Let me spend the rest of my life showing you how much I love you.” He closed his eyes. This was going to kill him if it didn’t work.

  “Okay,” he admitted raggedly before she could interrupt. “I did make you and Dad that promise that I would be your brother and take care of you forever. I made that promise, Cat, with every intention of keeping it. But I haven’t felt remotely brotherly for a long time. I fell in love with you, and now I have to break my word.”

  She smacked him on the arm. “That was when I was a child, you turkey! Why? Why didn’t you tell me?”

  “Because I thought you needed family more than you needed a temporary lover. I was waiting for you to grow up and make a rational decision about us. But it wasn’t you who had to grow up, Cat. It was me.”

  “Do you love me, Luke? Really love me? Not a morning-after-gee-thanks-that-was-great-sex kinda love. Not, oh my God, I just boinked Cat and now what am I going to do. But the genuine thing?”

  “Yeah.” He laughed, a joyful, exuberant sound that traveled through her as hot and pure as sunshine. “Love. As in heart and soul. As in crazy about. As in forever.”

  “You do, huh?” Cat felt a smile blossom from the depth of her being. “What about Mr. Right biting my butt?”

  “He’d be more than happy to.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Oh, yeah.”

  Thrilled at his grumble of protest, she slipped from beneath him and rolled over onto her stomach. She pointed to her bottom, where the word LUKE was tattooed in inch-high red letters.

  Luke stared. “Oh, my God. This must’ve hurt.”

  She tilted her head to see him better. “Not as much as you not knowing I existed.”

  “Aw, Cat.” His voice sounded gravely soft. He ran a tender finger along the cursive script. “When did you have this done?”

  “For my seventeenth birthday. I’ve always known my Mr. Right. Luke?”

  “Yes, my love?” he managed to reply thickly.

  “Bite me!”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  “WE MISSED YOUR mother’s wedding. Do you mind?” Luke asked. He leaned across the armrest between their seats and played with a lock of her hair. The back of his hand kept brushing her breast.

  “Nah. We’ll catch the next one. When you’ve seen one, you’ve seen them all.” Catherine touched him intimately under the in-flight magazine on his lap. “Tit for tat,” she whispered naughtily in his ear. Luke groaned.

  He loves me. Catherine wanted to stand on her seat and yell it to everyone on the plane. She wanted to do cartwheels down the aisle. Lucas Van Buren loves me.

  They’d missed the wedding, the reception and saying goodbye. They’d only managed to drag their exhausted bodies out of bed and off to the airport in time to catch their flight home.

  “What’s in that bag?” she demanded of the small sack he’d raced out of the hotel with this morning. “A present for me?”

  “You bet.” His eyes gleamed and she felt him twitch beneath her hand. He wiggled his eyebrows. “I bought out the hotel’s supply of condoms.”

  She smiled. “How many did you buy?”

  “Thirty-three.”

  Cat almost choked. “Condoms? Thirty-three condoms?”

  “Too few?” Luke asked, straight-faced. “Don’t take offense, Cat. If they’d had more, I would’ve bought them.”

  Laughing, she swatted his arm and shifted in her seat. “Behave yourself. We can’t do anything—oh, no, Luke. No. Absolutely not—” He kissed her silent.

  The captain lit the seat belt sign and announced their imminent arrival in Las Vegas for a brief layover. In a couple of hours they’d be back in San Francisco.

  Home. Was there ever a sweeter sound? Home to their big bed. Home to share that big bed. Together. Home with thirty-three condoms.

  The second the seat belt sign went off, Luke rose and stepped into the aisle. He held out his hand. “Come on.”

  “Huh? We don’t have to get off.”

  “I have to stretch my legs.”

  “And you need me to hold your hand while you do it?” She smiled. “Stay here. I’ll keep you so entertained you won’t worry about being cramped.”

  “Not that I don’t want to jump at that invitation, but I really do need to stretch out for a bit. Come on, Catwoman, you heard the flight attendant. We’ll be sitting in this tin can for another twenty-five minutes.” He tugged her hand until she rose. She gave him a curious look before straightening and stepping into the aisle beside him.

  The flight attendant, brunette, curvy and petite, gave Luke a smile and a wink. Catherine prodded Luke’s back with her elbow and snorted.

  As they passed the cockpit area, the attendant leaned toward Luke. “Your fr—”

  Luke laid a finger across the woman’s mouth. He said something under his breath. She made an expansive gesture with her arm, as if they couldn’t have found the wide-open door on their own.

  Catherine gritted her teeth.

  “Jealous?” he asked, smiling happily as they emerged into the concourse. “Don’t worry, sweetheart. If I ever look at another woman, you can cut off my balls.”

  “Thank you for the offer,” Cat said dryly, her amber eyes bright with laughter. “But it was unnecessary. That’s something you can definitely count on.”

  Luke didn’t let go of her hand as he tugged her in his wake.

  “Hey, look. Slot machines. Got some quarters?” The kirching of falling coins blended with announcements of arrivals and departures. Weird. Ignoring her request, Luke kept walking, tugging her behind him.

  “Aren’t we supposed to stay by the gate?”

  “I want something over there.” He glanced around, then pointed down the concourse to a flower-bedecked white gazebo sitting incongruously in front of one of the departure gates.

  Catherine smiled. “Flowers?”

  “Something like that. Come on.”

  They approached the gazebo, festooned with every kind of flower imaginable and threaded with colorful ribbons. It didn’t look like a shop.... Catherine suddenly spotted a guy standing nearby who looked just like— “Nick! Hey, Luke. Look, it’s Nick.”

  “Hey, gorgeous!” Nick braced himself as Cat flung herself into his a
rms.

  Behind her back, Nick gave Luke a thumbs-up. Luke’s heart, which hadn’t had a normal beat in forty-eight hours, did a somersault. He met the unholy glee in Nick’s eyes over her head. Nick grinned and disengaged.

  “Thank God,” Luke said coolly. “A murder charge would play havoc with business.” His best friend’s smile widened. And he still had his arm around Cat’s shoulders.

  “Having a hard time of it, are you, old son?”

  “One might say so.” Luke scanned the surrounding rows of chairs and the people seated with their backs to them. “Is your assignment complete, good buddy?”

  “With a modification, yeah.”

  “What are you two up to?” Cat demanded, suspicious as hell. She eyed Nick. “Not that it’s not delightful to see you, but what are you doing here?”

  “Catherine!”

  Before he could answer, Cat was swept into the embrace of Molly Cruz, a friend from Beaverton. Behind her stood Sandra Steward, with her husband, Bill, then a dozen old school friends rose from their chairs to converge on her, all talking and laughing at once. Nick had done good.

  For several kaleidoscopic moments Cat hugged and exclaimed with her friends. “This is insane! What on earth—”

  “Okay, Cat. That’s it, time’s up.” Luke’s heart couldn’t take much more of this. “Everyone?” He sounded like a movie director, a nervous movie director, as he instructed everyone where to stand. He’d never been so nervous in his life. Luke snatched the bunch of rather wilted daisies from Nick and thrust them into Cat’s hands. People parted like the Red Sea to allow Luke to drag her inside the gazebo.

  “Luke, what—”

  “I want to be your devil’s food cake, Cat. We’re getting married. Here. Now. Everything else can be ironed out later.”

  Cat blinked up at him. “Married?”

  “Yeah. Got a problem with that?”

  Cat smiled. “No.”

  “Good. Let’s do it. Nick, where’s the min—”

  “Right here.” Nick stepped aside to reveal a miniature Elvis Presley. The top of the man’s black bouffant do came to Luke’s belt buckle. Dressed in a skintight, white sharkskin suit, replete with rhinestones and stand-up collar, the pint-size minister held a black book in his hands and smiled up at them, showing large square teeth.