Lotus’s fingers dug into his skull. She couldn’t have suppressed the groan that escaped her if her life had depended on it. She was still holding him that way when he pushed the towels away from both their bodies and then stepped down into the tub and lowered them both into the hot swirling water. Lotus was sure her body was filling with helium as Dash continued to caress her, to love her. Their bodies bent and swayed in the current of water yet their mouths clung, then quested over each other’s form. She wanted him to love her so much all earlier qualms left her.
Finally after an eternity of loving, when Lotus knew that her blood was bubbling faster than the water, Dash lifted her in his arms and stepped out of the tub to rub her body with an exotic emollient, then pat her dry.
"Your skin is delicate. It needs protecting,” he told her as he carried her through to the bedroom. "I will protect you in all ways, my China doll, even from my love.”
That’s good because I didn’t come prepared,” she told him out of breath.
He chuckled into her hair, his hands tightening on her.
She had a moment’s earthbound sanity. How could she be making love with a man who could destroy her uncle and others like him? She hated gambling and gamblers. She stared at the face so dose to her own. Does he know who I am? Would he set a trap for me this way? She clutched at him, her mouth seeking his. Her uncomfortable thoughts melted away and there was only Dash.
Nothing in Lotus’s life had prepared her for the sensual onslaught as Dash loved her body from her ankle to her chin, not missing a pore as his mouth went over her. With mounting impatience she resorted to a similar attack as instinct guided her hands and mouth. When she heard him groan, her blood pressure went through the roof and she wriggled against him with joy.
"Darling! Don’t! Let me love you . . Dash told her thickly.
“I am. And I am loving you.”
“You are indeed,” he murmured.
His tongue explored into her body, surprising her, arching her against him. She called out his name as passion filled her.
When he parted her legs and slid between them, she was ready and eager to be joined with him. She had the feeling of soaring on a meteor as the rhythm of the love took them, propelling them past the sun and the stars. “Dash! Dash!” Lotus called to him
“I’m here with you, darling.”
They spiralled together, poised above Venus, to fall in gentle plummet back to earth and each other.
CHAPTER THREE
“I love you. I love you.” It stunned her when he said that to her.
“I love you too.” That shocked and delighted her too, when she answered him back.
“Marry me,” Dash groaned in her ear.
“Marry me, marry me, marry me, marry me . . .” the jet engines on the plane sang as Lotus flew east from Las Vegas to Rochester, New York, with a stopover at O’Hare in Chicago. The words that Dash had said to her filled her mind. She couldn’t concentrate on anything else. And she had told him she loved him back! He had made love to her all through the night, and she knew before morning that she belonged to him for all time. She groaned in her mind as she stared sightlessly out at the clouds scudding past the wing of the plane. And she did love him! Her eyes were dry but tears coursed through her being as she thought of Dash and all she had given up when she fled from Cicero’s.
Petras had booked her flight and she had taken a taxi from her rooming house after telling Dash she had to change for work and that she would see him later.
It was as though she were with him still on that huge bed of his, lazy eyes alight with fire as he looked down at her.
"Cat got your tongue?” he had whispered as he stared down at her after loving her and making the declaration.
“Marriage is a very serious step,” Lotus had replied from the circle of his arm, her one hand caressing his fresh shaven cheek.
“Very.” Dash’s smile had been white heat. “I heard you say that you loved me.”
“Did you hear that?” Lotus’s voice had tremored. “I heard you say it too.”
“Yes.” His mouth had begun a slow search of her breast. “So when shall we marry?”
“Could I have a little time to think about it?” She wanted to tell him no, that she was going back home, but she couldn’t destroy what was between them with such words. She wanted to hold it, cherish it, keep it . . . forever.
“Five minutes?”
She had smiled up at him and shook her head. “Let me think about it.”
Dash could feel his being stiffen in resistance. He didn’t want her to think. He wanted her to say yes, then they would find someone to marry them at once! He wanted to keep her. “All right.” He expelled a big sigh and nodded. He didn’t think there was a someone like Lotus for him on the planet and now that he had found her, he didn’t want her out of his sight.
When Lotus tried to rise from the bed, he’d urged her back again. “I want to love you,” Dash had told her.
Lotus ran every reason why she should get up from that bed, dress, and leave around her head. They dissipated like smoke in a wind as she lifted her arms to hold him, embrace him, and lock him to her body.
They had made love again. The gentle frenzy generated by Dash had left her gasping with delight and awe, as it would do all through the night.
They were still lying on the bed holding each other the next morning when the phone rang next to the bed.
“Colby,” Dash had barked. “Yes. Damn it, man, you don’t need me for that. All right, all right, I said I’d come and I will.” Dash cradled the phone with barely suppressed violence. “I have an appointment.” He turned to look at her. “Another casino has come on the market. My business adviser assures me it’s a good deal.” Dash grimaced and hugged her close to him. “The last thing I want to think about is business, but I gave my word I would make this meeting. Will you wait for me here?”
Lotus felt shot with lightning. She had to go home today! She couldn’t stay any longer! She had the file. “Dash, take me back to my room, please. I need a change of clothes.” And I need to say good-bye to you, she added silently. She reached out and clung to him, her lips coursing his face and neck.
“Darling,” Dash groaned. “I won’t leave you.”
“Yes. You must. Go to your meeting. I’ll see you later.”
Dash’s face was expressionless as he studied her,
!his eyes seeming to X-ray her being. “I’ll drop back to pick you up.”
Lotus bit her lip, then nodded, her smile feeling painful as she stretched it across her mouth.
They rose and dressed, separating for moments only as each one took turns using the bathroom.
Sometimes Dash would stop and kiss her, startling her out of her painful reverie.
When they were driving back to Las Vegas, Dash kept hold of her hand, often kissing the palm, his teeth nibbling at the sensitive skin on her wrist.
Returning to her rented room, he came around to her side of the car and opened her door, leading her in the house and following her up the four flights of stairs to her tiny attic room, the ceiling slanted over the eaves. The dormer windows provided little sunlight.
“I’ll be glad to get you out of here,” Dash muttered as he ducked to keep from striking his head on the low ceiling.
“You’d better hurry. . .” Lotus felt a sudden surge of tears as she embraced him.
“I’ll see you later, darling.” Dash kissed her long and lingeringly, then let his mouth trace her jaw-line and throat. “Take care,” he told her huskily, then was gone.
Lotus didn’t do anything until she had stood on tiptoe and pressed herself against her one window that would allow her to see the street. Yes, that was Dash’s car pulling away.
In a daze, she phoned Petras and told him what she was doing. “So I can take a flight out today. . . ” “Lotus, my God. We’ve been so worried. When you didn’t come to dinner and didn’t call . . .” Petras’s voice cracked over the phone. “I almost wen
t out of my mind.”
“I’m sorry about the dinner and not calling,” Lotus responded in a reedy voice. “I was detained.” “Martha and I were so worried about you. Are you all right?”
“Yes,” she lied. She was dying, but how could she tell Petras that she was bleeding from a thousand cuts because she wouldn’t be seeing the one love of her life again? She inhaled, trying to smother the groan that rose in her throat at the image of the gray existence she would have for the rest of her life. She would never marry! She could never pretend to feel the explosion of feeling for anyone else.
“Lotus, I never should have let you get involved in this. I can tell, even over the phone, that something is wrong. You have to get home as soon as possible. Lotus, listen to me. You get right to the airport. I’ll get the First flight out for you. I’ll book it under the name of L. Sinclair, I’ll try to get you patched straight though, but I’ll take anything, even a milk flight. You don’t have much packing, do you?”
“No.” Lotus smothered the sob that rose in her throat. She was only leaving behind her whole being. Dash had that and no matter what happened it was his.
“Lotus, are you really all right?” Petras’s voice softened. “Why don’t you come to the store? Martha is here and she can drive you to the airport. You need someone to talk to, I can tell.” Urgency sharpened Petras’s tone. “I’ll send Martha back with you.”
“No!” Lotus almost shouted. “No,” she repeated, her voice lowered. “I’m all right. It’s . . . it’s just been a bit much.”
“You aren’t hurt, are you? Did anyone approach you?” Anxiety threaded his inquiry.
“No, I’m fine, really. I’m sorry I didn’t get to the house to visit with the children again.” Lotus strived to speak normally.
“We’ll be coming east for the holidays. Your mother writes Martha every week describing all the things she has planned for our visit.
Lotus’s voice was shaking but she managed to laugh. “I know. She’s planning a big get-together of all yours and Rob’s friends from the service who are within a fifty-mile radius.
Petras laughed again, relief in his voice that she sounded relaxed. “Yes. And she has also planned a few trips for the children I can't believe how good she is, Lotus.”
“You shouldn’t forget that she considers you and Martha her children, not just friends, ergo your children are her grandchildren.”
“Yes, I know that.”
“I really should go . . . get my things ready.” “Yes. Be careful, little sister.”
“Yes.” She knew she had to get off the line or she’d burst into tears. “I have to pack. Thank you for everything, Petras. I’ll see you and Martha when you come to Rochester at Christmas.”
“Right. Listen, sweetie, take care, will you?” Petras sounded uneasy.
“I will. Thanks. Good-bye. And, Petras, I’m fine, really I am.”
She hung up and began to pack the few things she’d brought with her. Then she paid Mrs. Weltz, the owner of the house, who allowed her to use the house phone to call a taxi.
“It was nice meeting you, dearie. Where should I forward your mail if any comes?”
“Ah ... I don’t think there will be any mail,” Lotus hedged.
“Seems funny you don’t want me to forward things,” Mrs. Weltz probed.
“Well, you see, I didn’t have anyone write to me here,” Lotus turned away from the woman when the taxi service answered their phone. “Yes, I’ll be waiting outside the house,” Lotus told the dispatcher.
Mrs. Weltz followed her out onto the rickety porch. “Won’t some of your friends here want to know where you’ve gone?”
“No.”
"Seems strange to me" Mrs. Weltz muttered walking with Lotus to the curb, her arms folded across her ample breasts. “You ain’t in trouble with the law, are you?”
“I am not.” Lotus frowned at the sharp-eyed Mrs. Weltz.
“You can’t be too careful in my business,” Mrs. Weltz explained. “There are a lot of folks who try to chisel helpless ladies like me.”
Lotus stared at the large woman at her side, who probably weighed on the sunny side of one hundred and ninety pounds, and nodded.
“You run a clean, decent house and there’s them that would spoil it for you,” Mrs. Weltz expounded, in no hurry to leave Lotus.
Lotus glanced quickly at the sagging house behind them, then at Mrs. Weltz.
“Cab won’t be here for a time yet.” Mrs. Weltz glinted at her. “Sure you don’t want to tell me where I can reach you?”
Yes, I’m sure.” Lotus heaved a sigh of relief when she saw the taxi turn the corner and slow down. She waved.
“It seems to me that by the time you get where you’re going on the bus, you might have mail that could be there to meet you if you had a forwarding address,” Mrs. Weltz pursued doggedly. “You are going on the bus, ain’t you?”
“No, I’m taking a plane home—back East.” Lotus scrambled into the taxi and shut the door.
Mrs. Weltz was still talking when the cab pulled away from the curb.
She traveled to the airport in a gray haze, going through the terminal without really being aware of her surroundings. “Do you have a reservation for Sinclair? L. Sinclair?” she asked the ticket agent.
“Yes, but there will be stopovers and you’ll have to change planes in Chicago,” the woman informed her.
“Are you sure there’s nothing else?” Lotus had the feeling she should only take an express to the moon, not just a plane to Rochester, New York.
“I’ll check, miss, but I’m sure that your reservation is the best we can offer.” The woman pressed assorted buttons on her computer, studied the answers, then pushed a few more and studied again. “I’m sorry, miss. You must make a stop at O’Hare.”
Lotus nodded.
“Have you any luggage?”
“Just my duffel bag. I’ll carry it on.”
“Have a good trip, Miss Sinclair.”
“Thanks,” Lotus answered dully.
Clutching her ticket in one hand, her oversized duffel bag over her other shoulder, she looked around the crowded waiting room, and took a corner seat, which was empty.
She read and reread the typewritten instructions on her ticket. Flight 306 would be leaving Las Vegas at ... Not able to cope with arrivals and departures her mind wandered away from the printed page. At the moment it was a monumental undertaking just breathing, in and out, over and over again. She tried telling herself that she hated Dash, the gambler, the unknown embezzler who had damaged her family. She tried dredging up some of the zeal that had her burgling Dash’s safe, coming out to Las Vegas and getting two jobs to do it, but all she felt was a huge loss and a burdensome emptiness that she couldn’t fill.
Lotus was half asleep when a raucous voice announced that passengers on Flight 306 bound for Chicago’s O’Hare Airport could board the plane.
Sighing apathetically, Lotus gripped her ticket and duffel bag and followed after a man whose carry-on luggage banged against his leg at every step. She tried to smile at the flight attendant who tore off part of her ticket.
“I’m afraid you’ll have to put your duffel bag in the overhead or under your seat. The closet is full.” The blond flight attendant smiled at Lotus.
“Fine. I’ll put it in the overhead.” Lotus was wondering how she would swing up the heavy duffel bag as she passed through first class and made her way to the window seat to which she’d been assigned. Out of breath, she managed with the help of an older man across the aisle to get her duffel bag into the overhead.
She scarcely noticed when the powerful machine scampered down the runway, then lifted off in smooth ascent. She closed her eyes, grateful that there were no passengers in the two seats next to her. She didn’t just want to sleep; instead, she wanted to fall down a deep hole and never surface.
Lotus was halfway between sleep and consciousness when she heard the rattle of the drink cart being maneuvered down the aisle of the
airplane. Yawning, she turned to tell the flight attendant that she didn’t want anything to eat or drink. It was then she noticed that the curtain that had been pulled between the first class section and the second class section opened. She blinked her eyes, quite sure that she was sleeping and that she was in the middle of a nightmare. Dash Colby was standing there, his eyes fixed on her as though he had known where she was sitting. She closed her eyes and opened them again. He was still there! And he was coming toward her. She couldn’t seem to take her eyes off him as he waited for the flight attendant who was next to Lotus’s seat now.
“What lunch would you prefer, beef or chicken?” the flight attendant asked Lotus.
“Neither.” Lotus pushed the words through spastic lips. “Not hungry.” Her stomach churned.
“Something to drink then?”
Lotus shook her head, not able to trust her voice to say anymore. She felt herself stiffen as the cart went by and Dash swung into the middle seat close to her. “What are you doing here?” she asked, stunned.
“What are you doing here?” he inquired silkily.
“You can’t threaten me,” Lotus gasped, feeling the menace coming off him choking her like smoke.
“I asked a simple question.” Dash ran one finger up her arm. “I thought we were supposed to meet later at the casino.”
“Things change.” Lotus gulped.
“Don’t they?” The velvet hardness in his voice made every fine hair on her body stand erect. “I thought you acted a little nervous, my dove, so I called when I reached my meeting to see how you were feeling. The good Mrs. Weltz informed me that you had moved out and were flying back East.” He took hold of her hand and put her baby finger into his mouth, his teeth snapping down on it. “Persons at the meeting thought I’d gone crazy when I exploded at the conference table after talking on the phone to your landlady.” His sweet voice was like a fine-honed, double-edged blade. “I called Hans and had him arrange my flight while I drove to the airport, breaking every speeding law.”
Lotus jumped in her seat, trying to jerk her hand free, but he wouldn’t let her. “I told you my home is in the East,” she said.
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