by Nancy Warren
“Nothing special, believe m—” Her word ended on a tiny squeak as he squeezed her nipple again.
“Would you stop that?” she ordered, but her protest was wimpy at best. She found she liked the radiating warmth that followed the quick pinch.
“When you stop putting yourself down.”
Chapter Eight
He kept touching and toying with that one breast, but she didn’t think he was doing it any longer to keep her mind on the proceedings; he was doing it because he was enjoying himself. She didn’t need any more reminders to stay in the moment. She was so far in the moment she might never get out.
“I can’t tell you how much I’ve thought about this one breast. I’ve wanted to touch it, and taste it.”
“I have two breasts, you know,” she informed him, since the other one was starting to act like a jealous sibling and demand attention.
“Do you?” he said, half-laughing, and dropping his hands to the hem of her T-shirt, pulled it slowly up and over her head. When she’d dressed in her sexy dress she’d imagined a seduction scene of whispering silk and perhaps a little champagne, not that she’d be stripping out of T-shirt, shorts, and running shoes. Still, at least her underwear was as sexy as she knew how. With her arms raised above her head for the T-shirt to slide off, her breasts were going to look their best. Perky and uplifted. Of course, since he’d left the left one exposed and the right still covered by her coffee- colored silk bra cup, she was going to look a little odd, but she was in the moment and beyond caring.
And the little growling sound he made when he glanced down at her had her feeling pretty damn good about her less-than-perfect body.
He tossed the T-shirt aside and stood looking at her, then with one quick move, he scooped the second cup beneath her right breast and smiled as though one of the universe’s great secrets had been revealed.
Her breasts felt cantilevered and thrust forward against the underwire that provided most of her cleavage, but it made her feel wanton and daring.
Deciding that fair was fair, she went to work on his shirt, pulling it up and over his head.
Oh, she thought when she saw him naked from the waist up, no personal trainer in the world was that good. He had a long torso, wide at the chest and narrow at the waist, a nice triangle of reddish brown hair at his chest, and just a sprinkle of freckles on his shoulders.
Unable to stop herself, so very in the moment that the idea of holding back was impossible, she put her arms around him, pulled forward, and buried her face in his chest. The hair tickled but the skin beneath was silken leather. He smelled of warmth and sun and maybe a bit like steel.
She put her tongue out and tasted him and just as she was thinking about a nibble or two, she felt big hands cup her butt and she rose into the air. Instinctively she wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck as he carried her into the bedroom and then tossed her backwards onto the bed.
He leaned down and untied each of her shoes and pulled them and the tennis socks off. Then, grasping the waist of her shorts and panties together slid them down and off.
He put his hands to the snap of his jeans and she watched, mesmerized. He slid them and his underwear down with no ceremony and she decided there was definitely something to her theory about the Australian sunshine. Never had she seen a more spectacular male body.
She wasn’t going to think about squeezed-out tubes of toothpaste; she was going to stay in the moment and trust her body. Which was sending urgent messages letting her know it was up for the challenge.
“You’re staring at me like you’ve never seen a naked man before,” he said, half-laughing but she thought a little embarrassed, too.
“I’ve never seen one as gorgeous as you before,” she told him.
“I like the look of you, too.”
He eased down beside her on the bed and kissed her as though he had all the time in the world and there was nothing he’d rather do for all eternity than kiss her.
His fingers traced patterns on her chest and belly, inching slightly lower on each pass. “Do you still want to get this first time over with?” he asked softly.
Had she said that? What had she been thinking? This wasn’t something to be rushed, but to be savored and enjoyed.
“No,” she said. “I don’t want to rush.” She sighed as his fingers brushed just below her belly button. “I don’t have to be anywhere until Monday morning.”
Although, admittedly, there were parts of her body that did want to move right along. Certain anxious parts, too-long denied, were ready to celebrate in full force.
But no. She wanted not only to stay in this moment, but to stretch it out and make it last.
“I don’t have to be anywhere until Monday morning either,” he said and began kissing her breasts. He gave them his full attention for a minute or so and then abruptly reared up to gaze down at her with mild irritation. “Now what?”
“Pardon?”
He held her gaze with eyes that seemed to see right into her. “You’re thinking again.”
Damn, this was getting spooky. “How do you know?”
“I make my living working with my hands. When you start thinking, I dunno, your skin changes, and your muscles start to tense up.” He continued to gaze down at her and then smiled a little. “And you get a furrow right between your eyes,” he said and leaned forward to kiss a spot midway between her eyebrows that she didn’t think had ever been kissed before.
“Sorry.”
“What were you thinking about that made you turn into a plank?”
She threw her arm across her eyes. Now she was a plank. Great. “I’m such an idiot. I wish I hadn’t said I don’t have to be anywhere until Monday. It makes me sound like I have no social life. And maybe you don’t want me hanging around until Monday.” There. He’d asked, and she’d told him the truth. So she was pathetic and had no social life. Now he knew.
“That’s what you were thinking about?”
“Yes.”
“That’s all?”
Pause. “Ye-es . . . mostly.”
From behind her arm she couldn’t see anything, but she felt the shifting and then the lack of warmth and knew he’d moved away. She dropped her arm and found him getting right off the bed. She felt so miserable she wanted to curl into a ball and start wailing.
While she watched, he grabbed one of the matching upholstered armchairs, dragged it to the bedside, and sat down.
“All right,” he said. “Let’s have all of it. What else is going through that maddening head of yours?”
“Nothing. I—I . . .”
“You what?”
“I forgot to ask if you’re married.”
His brows flew up at that. “Do you think I’m the sort of bloke who’d be sitting here naked with you if I had a wife at home?”
She shook her head. “But my judgment isn’t always the best.”
“I’m not married.”
She released the breath she’d been holding, and then wondered how he could possibly be single? A man who looked that incredible in nothing but a hotel armchair had no business being unattached. But then he hadn’t actually said he was single. He’d said he wasn’t married.
“Girlfriend?”
He shook his head. “Broke up three months ago when she started looking at wedding rings.”
“Oh.” So he wasn’t a commitment kind of guy. Fair enough. She wasn’t looking to marry the man. So long as he wasn’t committing adultery in sleeping with her, did she really care that wedding rings freaked him out?
No, she thought, giving him her best shot at a come-back-to-bed smile; wedding rings were the last thing on her mind.
He seemed to get the message pretty loud and clear, tipping forward and out of the chair until he was a heartbeat away, his lips so near to kissing her that her own tingled.
“No more thinking,” he ordered.
“I’m all done.” As she wrapped her arms around him she accepted that he was absolutely, exactly wha
t she needed.
When he kissed her she opened her mouth to him, wanting to give him everything she had. But even with the heat of their fused mouths, she felt the soft touch of his skin against hers, and the sliding of their limbs as they eased against each other, testing and finding the best ways to fit.
She was aware of his strength, of the muscles that had so much in common with the metal he worked with, and beneath that the solid core of integrity she’d sensed. He was a simple working man; nothing fancy or contrived about him. For a woman who made her living creating illusions, it was amazing to find a man who was exactly what he seemed.
He was also frighteningly perceptive, and more sensitive to her body and its nuances than any man had ever been. He didn’t need to worry about her getting carried away with thinking; she was here and this was now and his body felt so very good moving against hers that thinking became impossible. She focused instead on enjoying this amazing night that might never be repeated. His mouth whispered secrets to her when they were kissing that went deeper than words.
For once in her sex life, she didn’t close off, or back off, or turn her mind on to shut her heart off. Instead she opened herself to everything. To the sensations of touch and smell and taste, and behind them the sneaky deeper feelings that filtered through her barriers. If, in the back of everything, she suspected there might be an inevitable hurt, she decided tomorrow’s pain was well worth tonight’s pleasure.
And that was the last thought she allowed herself.
With a sigh of acceptance that any Buddhist would be proud of, she let herself open to the moment and only the moment.
While he kissed her, his chest rubbed hers, sending warm waves of sensation eddying to every part of her. His belly crowding hers added to the warmth, and when his erection nudged at her softness, warmth spiked to heat.
Heat so hot her insides were melting. She found she was moving mindlessly with him and against him in a kind of dance where she seemed to know every move.
She discovered she was on her back with her legs wrapped around his waist and he was nudging her open, and she’d never felt so open or receptive. With lazy assurance, he reached past her head to a canvas zippered pouch she’d noticed on the bedside table. He flipped it open and removed a condom. While continuing to kiss her, he sheathed himself with so little fuss and such easy grace that the moves felt like part of his foreplay. Indeed, just knowing that he was that close to entering her upped her heat quotient.
He entered her with a long, smooth slide that felt so intimate she experienced a moment’s panic, and might have backed off except that he held her gaze, his own open and locked on hers. And because she’d already opened herself up too far to close off now, she left her eyes open and watched his pupils darken, certain her own were doing the same.
He thrust up and back, sliding faster, and she met him thrust for thrust until not only were her eyes open but her mouth as she gasped for breath. Every part of her was open and receiving: her lungs, dragging in the air she needed, her heart, pounding to keep up with her excitement, her legs, widespread to wrap around him snugly, and her very core, open to receive all of him.
What she hadn’t opened, he did, pushing up inside her where she’d never been stretched before, open and opening farther and wider until the center wouldn’t hold and the circle burst upon her as every part of her—heart, lungs, eyes, mouth, vagina—seemed to blow apart. And yet he didn’t stop, but drove still harder and higher, so she was hanging on for dear life, as a cascade of mini-explosions shook her and then with a great roar, she heard and felt his own explosion.
Even as he lay collapsed on top of her, his sweat dampening her body, she knew something momentous had happened.
He lay on top of her, heavy but not, and she traced the muscles of his back, still warm and heaving a little. His hair was damp when she touched it, and when she kissed his neck where it joined his shoulder, his smell was as potent as any aphrodisiac.
She felt him twitch inside her. This amazing, gorgeous, sexy man, come from the other side of the world to pleasure her, was hers until Monday. She smiled and kissed his neck again.
“You’re not thinking are you?” a low voice rumbled into the pillow beside her head.
“Nope,” she assured him. “I am completely in this moment.”
“It’s a bloody good moment.”
She smiled all over her body. “Yes. It is.”
Chapter Nine
“You know,” she said, when her breath was back and she was in her body once more, “that really worked for me. It’s not easy for me to shut off my mind and go with my feelings, but you really helped me do it.”
He started to laugh. A quiet chuckle that built until he had to sit up in bed and bend over.
“My sexual performance renders you helpless with laughter?” she asked tartly, trying to push him away, which was a bit like trying to push a bus over with one hand.
“No. Stop or I’ll go off again.” She waited in annoyed silence until he’d got hold of himself. “You know where I got that from?”
“Some Australian woman named Bridget who’s a champion diver and sex goddess and strips on the side?”
He shook his head, still shaken by silent chuckles. “That bloody stupid magazine I read on the plane. I think it was sex tip number three. Stay in the moment. It seemed so damned silly to me that anyone wouldn’t be in the moment that the notion stuck.”
Somewhat mollified, she made a mental note to start reading more women’s magazine articles—usually she concentrated on the ads. “It’s a pretty good tip,” she admitted. It had certainly worked for her. “Maybe we should write a letter to the magazine.”
“Does everything in your life have to revolve around the media?”
She thought about it, then slanted a look up at him through her lashes. “Well, it is my job. I always think in terms of exposure for my clients.”
There was a more than usual ruddiness about his cheeks. “You may want to expose yourself for a silly women’s magazine, but I’m not going to.”
It was her turn to laugh. “Don’t worry. This will stay our little secret.” Besides, he’d be exposed enough in the ads they’d already booked for a national campaign.
But that was work, and work was banished until Monday. She leaned over and kissed him. “I think I should practice that again,” she told him.
The sexy glint was back in his eyes. “Practice what?”
“Staying in the moment.”
“You expect me to provide you with another ‘moment’?”
She reached behind her to the canvas pouch, which she saw was well-stocked. She handed him a small square pouch. “Yep,” she said.
He laughed. “I was thinking the same thing myself.”
She was still smiling when she awoke the next morning and lazily replayed all the events of the night before. Her body felt pliant, satiated, and earthy. It might be a cliché, but she had to admit she’d never known sex could be like that, so intimate and tender and yet raunchy and fun.
Steve was the kind of man a woman could wait years for, the kind she’d stopped believing existed, the kind who . . . her fantasy dissolved as she recalled one particular detail from the night before.
“You’ve got the furrow back,” said a sleepy voice beside her and she realized he’d woken sometime during her mental reverie and been watching her.
She glanced up at his sleepy, sexy face, the shadow of morning stubble only adding to his appeal. “You don’t want to get married,” she said, voicing the thought that had stopped her foolish fantasies cold.
Now it was his turn to furrow. “Not at the moment, no.”
“Just haven’t found the right girl?” It was strange, to say the least, to have this conversation while naked and still in the blissful morning-after state, but it seemed important to know. Not that she wanted to marry him or anything, but she felt she ought to understand a little more about the man who’d spent a good part of the night inside her body.
He scratched his head using both hands, which made his sun-kissed hair stick out in adorable tufts. “In order to answer that, I have to tell you a bit of my life story. Sure you want to hear it?”
“Yes. I’d love to.” She sensed he was uncomfortable talking about himself, which made her all the more determined to hear the story.
He reached out and idly began to play with the ends of her hair, but she could tell he’d as good as left the room. He was looking inward and it was obvious he didn’t like what he saw.
Even without knowing what he was about to say, she put her arms around him.
“When I was a teenager, my mum got sick.” He paused for a moment. “Cancer.”
“Oh, I’m so sorry.”
“Yeah. Thanks. She died.”
Not knowing what to say, she bit her lip and listened.
“I’ve got younger brothers and sisters that I had to help look after.”
“What about your father?”
His eyes, usually so wonderfully expressive, were blank. “He couldn’t handle it. He left when Mum’s hair all fell out from the chemotherapy.”
She wanted to cry for that poor boy who’d lost so much so young. “How old were you?”
“Sixteen. I was lucky enough to get taken on to apprentice as a steelworker. My uncle helped me get the job, and he and my aunt took us in, but it was a hard go for a bit.”
He’d had to leave school early to help support his family. Now the philosophy book she’d seen on his table made sense. He must be on a path of self-education.
“Anyway. I’m in no hurry to settle down.”
It wasn’t much of an answer, and she found herself sorting through what he’d told her to find the answer to her question. “You mean you don’t want to get married because you feel like you’ve already raised a family and now you want to live your own life?”
He shrugged and looked uncomfortable. “I s’-pose.”
Well, she hadn’t let him pry into her head at uncomfortably intimate moments to let him get away with this kind of evasion. Obviously, it wasn’t fear of family commitments that was stopping him. What then? He wouldn’t meet her gaze, kept glancing off into the corner furtively, almost as if he were guilty of something.