“There’s no one else around this time,” she said. “No other emotions complicating our feelings. No nostalgia for the past, no sentimental journeys home. Nothing artificial about the circumstances this time. Just you and me. It’s very simple.”
She lifted her hand to his face, taking his hand along as he had hers.
When she cupped her palm to mold it to his cheek, Michael spread his hand atop hers to press it tighter to his face, then turned to touch his lips to the delicate skin at the base of her fingers.
He knew she was wrong. Lord, she was wrong. Simple? When had there ever been anything simple about the two of them? And nothing artificial? What could be more artificial than being insulated by drifts of snow and warmed by a roaring fire and good wine? No other emotions? How about longing and need and passion?
“Michael?” In her voice he felt the remembered vulnerable timbre of her questions five months before. Will you dance with me? May I come up to your room? Will you kiss me?
He looked into her eyes and saw the uncertainty and the desire. And more, he saw the need. Tris needed him, and that, as always, was the temptation he stood no chance of resisting.
“Yes, Tris.”
He freed his hands from hers and set them on her jawline, sweeping his thumbs across the soft sharpness of her cheekbones. He bent to touch her lips, gently, slowly. Then he slid his fingers farther into her hair and curled his hands more securely around her head to pull her tightly against his mouth, so that her lips parted and her tongue met his. He loosened his hold when they were both breathless and lifted his head enough to look into her eyes again. The desire and the need were there, stronger and darker. The uncertainty was gone.
He’d force himself to take it slow this time. Not to let the passion pull them under too quickly. To let it build gradually, so that if the uncertainty returned . . . If the uncertainty returned, he’d go crazy, but he’d stop. God help him, he’d stop.
“Slow,” he murmured against her mouth. “Slow.”
She mumbled something, but slow or not, he was too greedy for her taste to let the words escape her lips.
Still sampling the dark sweetness of her mouth and tongue, he let his hands glide slowly, so slowly, down the length of her neck, feeling the arch of it under his fingers as she bent back to receive his kiss.
His caresses spoke of infinity as he explored her through the medium of her sweater. Under his hands, the knit became an erotic abrasive. She longed to have it gone, to erase all barriers between them, but when at last—at long, lazy last—he languidly removed the sweater, she found no release. Only more need.
She wondered hazily how he could keep his loving so slow on the surface while she could sense—and share—the surging urgency underneath. The passion they had experienced five months ago had been almost alien to their relationship. Tonight, she felt something new. As if elements of their easy friendship overlaid the desire, creating a third stage. A new level, distinct and very potent.
His mouth, long journeying from her chin to her nipple, at last reached its destination, and he opened his mouth to pull on it through the lace of her bra. She arched, in pleasure and frustrated longing to draw him closer still, to draw him into the closest of embraces. Now.
But she couldn’t gather enough wits to express any of that until he broke contact to start another joltingly languorous exploration of her other breast.
“Michael, please.’’
“Slow.”
She took a quick, deep breath, trying to steady herself. She didn’t consider the resulting movement of her breasts until she heard Michael’s rumbled groan, and then she allowed herself a small smile.
“All right, slow. But only after you catch up with me.”
With some regret, but also a dose of self-preservation, she broke away.
He let her go, a horrible doubt slicing into him for the instant before he saw her eyes. Then he relaxed. Momentarily.
She slipped her hands, wide open, under the sweatshirt, managing to caress a couple hundred million nerve-endings while lifting the shirt over his head. She leaned forward to circle him with her arms and stroke her hands over his back.
“I love your back.”
He mimicked her action, sweeping his hands along the delicate indentation of her backbone. “Me, too.”
Encountering the encumbrance of her bra, he quickly unhooked it. The lacy material swung loose between them and he felt it like a teasing feather against his chest. Reflexively, he pulled her to him, relishing the way her soft breasts pressed the lace against his skin. “But I like other parts, too.”
“Me, too.”
She sounded a little breathless, although he knew for a fact that she was breathing, because he could feel the movement of her lungs under his hands and could feel the effects of her breaths against the skin where she was nibbling along the cord of his neck. Could feel it there and in every square inch of his body.
She backed away enough to let him look into her eyes.
The desire and the need shone in her, flaring as brightly as the fire before them.
“Yeah? What else do you like?”
With a motion so slow he could hardly bear it, she pulled the straps of her bra down on her arms. Deliberately, she set the bra aside, then put her hands, warm and soft, on his chest. Their progress down his chest was wickedly languid. A slow-motion torture of pleasure as she tempted his nipples with gentle touches, then too soon deserted them to slide lower and lower over ribs and muscles that battled not to tremble.
At the snap to his jeans, her fingers fumbled long enough for him to wonder if she really was nervous or just prolonging his agony of anticipation. Then the rasp of the zipper came in time to his breathing. He captured her hand and brought it to the waistband of his briefs.
“Touch me, Tris. If you want to, touch me.”
“I want to.”
And from her touch, he knew she did.
He knew it was her hands that freed him, that stoked the fire so hot that he had to still them once, twice. But he wasn’t aware of stripping off the rest of her clothes and the rest of his until he was settled between her legs.
“Oh, God. Tris.”
“It’s okay. Michael.”
“Slow. Going . . . to give you . . . slow.”
The tinge of desperation in her soft laugh did nothing to cool him. “Somehow I’d forgotten you were the one saying slow.”
He eased slightly away from her, bowing his body to open his mouth over her stomach and take a mockingly gentle bite of the soft flesh there. “I meant it. Something must have made me forget that resolve—temporarily.”
He set about proving to her just how firm his resolution could be, determined to stretch their communication, their knowledge of each other. Courting familiarity by listening to her body, tuning himself to what she needed, where a touch would make her tremble, how a kiss could make her sigh. And he knew she was doing the same. She had to be, because she would touch her lips to his collarbone, her fingers to his hip, her breasts to his chest, and only then did he realize he had wanted that touch above all other touches at that instant.
The exertion of patience left its sheen on their bodies when he finally acceded to the pleas of her soft voice and urging fingers and positioned himself above her. He looked into her eyes as he gradually brought himself into her body. She lifted her hips to take him more deeply, and they stilled.
He wanted to hold this moment forever. He wanted to extract every millisecond from it. He wanted the simple rightness of this sensation to last forever. But a movement started in one of them, and echoed to the other, then back, growing stronger and faster with each exchange until there was no knowing where one ended and the next began. The movements became shudders, and then cries, and then boneless, nerveless exhaustion and small sounds of content.
Michael shifted some of his weight off Tris, but did not break their union. Time passed, but the increments weren’t important to him. She was right; what there was betwee
n them was simple, as simple as this. And she was wrong, because what there was between them was also as complex as this.
* * * *
“I’m glad their flight comes in before rush hour. That way I can get off a little early to pick them up at the airport and have Grady settled at your place and Paul and Bette here, before we meet you at the restaurant for dinner. You’re sure you’ll be able to get away in time?”
“I’m sure.” He automatically shifted to one side to give her better access to the mirror as she brushed her hair.
“Did I tell you I invited Leslie?”
“Uh-huh,” he grunted as he lifted his chin to pass one end of his tie over the other.
“Seven-thirty, okay?”
“Okay.”
Tying his tie, he could still watch her, and marvel at how in the seven days since the heavens had dumped a snowstorm on Washington, D.C., they had meshed their daily lives.
In the mornings they equably shared the bathroom as they got ready for work, leaving together to walk—through snow that melted as rapidly as Tris had predicted—to the Metro headed for downtown and their jobs. In the evenings, they put together dinner from the basics Tris had on hand and some specialties one or the other of them happened to pick up during the day. And in the nights. . . ah, the nights.
Tris swung away from the mirror and headed back to the bedroom. Peering at his image as he straightened his tie and shirt collar, Michael caught a glimpse of the sly grin on his face.
The nights were what had him smiling stupidly all through the days, and thinking ahead to the time when he could go home to Tris.
Home .
The word caught him off guard. Was he considering this narrow brick house his home? He had a key, yes. And Tris had certainly made him welcome. He’d hardly been back to the small apartment farther up Connecticut Avenue for more than changes of clothes.
But home. That implied things he wasn’t sure he wanted implied. Things like counting on permanence, like staking your future on the steadfastness of someone else’s heart.
They said the desire for a home was inbred, but he might be better off ignoring that and honing some of his other instincts. Like self-preservation.
“Michael? What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.”
He stood in the doorway and watched Tris smooth a stocking over her leg and felt the clutch of another instinct. The instinct to return her to that warm, mussed bed and use only a small slice of its wide surface.
“I wish you could come with me to the airport to pick them all up this afternoon.”
“It’s an important meeting.”
“Oh, I know. And we’ve been very lucky that you’ve had so much free time this week.” She looked up at him through her lashes as she buttoned her blouse, and he felt his body tightening, despite the shared shower—long and steamy and most satisfying—that had already put them behind this morning.
He talked to divert his mind in hopes his body would take the hint. “It’s the inauguration. Everybody has so many social obligations there’s not much time left for work.”
“I’ve heard that some senator once said it was a lot less work to govern than to inaugurate.” She fastened her skirt and pulled her shoes from the closet.
“I believe it.”
He knew what could happen. How many times had he seen his mother or father go through this euphoria with a new partner? How many times had they told him that this time, this person was really it? How many times had he believed them and gotten involved in their latest loves’ lives? And how many times had those people—nice people, generally, good people—disappeared along with the supposed never-ending love? And there he’d be, turning around to be introduced to someone new.
The only way he’d learned to cope was to not let the changes permeate the fabric of his life, to let them skim over him and to hold on to the certainties he did have with both hands. To cultivate those certainties, like his ability, like his regard for Joan Bradon and a few others, like his friendships with Grady, Paul . . . and Tris.
There was no way to avoid all changes, so he’d felt the pain of some, like having Laura go out of his life last year. But he knew that pain would be nothing compared to what would happen when Tris moved on. He knew—he feared—she would move on, as she had from Terrence and Grady. And he had to make sure he survived it.
“Did I give you the name of the restaurant?” she asked as she put gold hoops in her ears and reached for a gold chain.
“Yes.”
“And the address?”
He had to forcibly restrain himself from giving in to the temptation to take the chain from her hands and fasten it around her neck, knowing full well that that would lead to kissing her vulnerable, velvet nape and that would lead to so much more. “Yes. You wrote it all down, and I have the paper here in my pocket. You’re treating me like a kindergartner. You want to pin it to my coat?”
Her smile was a little quizzical and he knew his rough tone was the cause.
“No. I just want to be sure you’ll be there. I’m sure Paul and Bette and Grady and Leslie will want to see you. And I know that after twelve hours I will be more than eager to see you.” She passed him on her way out the door, pausing to brush a kiss both promising and fleeting across his lips.
“C’mon, I think we have time for one cup of coffee if we hurry.” She made the words sound like an invitation of an entirely different sort.
He clenched his hands at his sides to keep from reaching for her as they headed down the stairs.
Chapter Twelve
“Michael's place is on the sixth floor.” Tris led the way into the small elevator, and caught the look Bette and Paul exchanged as she turned around to press the button. “He told me when he gave me the key,” she added.
That was true. She’d never been to his apartment, because he’d been at her house for all this short, idyllic week. She felt her stomach give a little lurch as the elevator started a sluggish ascent, but she didn’t think her reaction was to the motion.
Was the idyll over? Was that why he’d been acting so odd this morning? He’d seemed both more intense and more removed somehow. There’d been an emotion so strong in him that she’d felt its waves halfway across the bedroom. But she couldn’t define it. Wariness? Uneasiness? Perhaps those could be explained if he still had a lingering doubt about her feelings for Grady and he was keyed up by the prospect of them all being together again.
But what about the other possible labels her mind had come up with for his mood? Like fear. Or distrust.
“C’mon, Tris. We need the key to open the door.”
Shaking her head free of her questions, she followed the rest of them out of the elevator. She unlocked the door to 605 and swung it open wide. “Michael said to leave your stuff anywhere, Grady.”
Grady, followed by Bette and Paul, walked to the center of the room before thunking down his suitcase on the carpeted floor.
“Yeah, anywhere,” he muttered.
“Great decorator,” commented Paul, looking from the uncurtained windows to the bare walls to the small stack of unpacked boxes.
“His furniture hasn’t arrived yet.” Tris bristled on Michael’s behalf at the implied criticism. But a whispered question in her mind about whether the unsettled air had a deeper cause than all the time he’d spent at her house sent a shiver down her back. It almost looked as if he weren’t sure he would like the transition to D.C., and he wanted to be ready to pick up and leave, to return to where he’d been before this change in his life.
“But he did order a bed,” she added for Grady’s benefit, and perhaps, a little, to sidetrack her own thoughts.
She set off purposefully down the short hall that obviously led to the two bedrooms and bath. In the larger bedroom was a sleeping bag on top of a pallet. Tris wondered if it was her imagination that made it seem so obvious that this wrinkled arrangement hadn’t been used in a week. In the other room was the brand-new bed, the box spring and mattress st
ill enclosed in plastic.
“Guess he hasn’t had a chance to settle in much,” commented Grady.
“It does look unlived in,” agreed Bette, innocently—too innocently. “As if he hasn’t spent much time here.”
Paul emitted a sound of choked laughter. Tris lifted her chin as she met grins from Bette and Grady. All right, so they all knew, or had a pretty good idea, where Michael had been spending his time. She wasn’t ashamed of it. Quite the opposite. And she wished like the dickens that he could be spending his time in her bed these next few days instead of returning here to be host to Grady.
“He hasn’t,” she said boldly. “And frankly, you’re all putting a definite cramp in our style.”
The easy laughter that followed her declaration seemed to wash away any traces of awkwardness in adjusting to the newness of her and Michael being more than friends. By the time they’d prepared the bed for use, stowed Grady’s belongings, then done the same with Paul and Bette’s at her house and made their way to the restaurant, Tris felt that she and Michael were accepted as a couple as surely as Paul and Bette were.
At the restaurant, she discovered there might be one exception to that. Michael.
Her heart seemed to take an extra beat when she saw him making his way through the crowd to them. He really was, in a most understated way, a hunk. And that was even with the conservative dark suit and white shirt hiding the attributes she had come to know and enjoy intimately over the past seven days.
The glance he sent her seemed a little constrained. He accepted a kiss and hug from Bette and exchanged warm handshakes with Paul and Grady. But she quickly realized that he was keeping distance—and often a couple other bodies—between the two of them, as if he were afraid that she might grab him and kiss him in front of their friends. Was he uncomfortable about their relationship? Ashamed?
The stab of hurt at that possibility weakened her enough that she’d been maneuvered into a corner seat before she realized exactly what he had in mind.
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