To Trust a Stranger

by Karen Robards

  21

  LIKE THE REST OF THE HOUSE, the bedroom was dark, with the curtains drawn tightly over the windows, and faintly chilly from the air-conditioning. Mac carried her over to the bed, laid her down, and came down with her, his mouth moving from her mouth to her breast even as her back hit the mattress. The bed was unmade and smelled faintly of fabric softener, with what seemed to be a quilt and a single top sheet kicked to the bottom and spilling off one corner. The mattress was firm, and the sheet—she had some hazy awareness that it was dark blue—was cool and smooth against her back. But it was his mouth on her breast that riveted her attention.

  Hot and wet and open, it rested against the tip of her breast, scalding her sensitive skin even through the barely-there layer of her bra. His tongue flicked over her nipple, causing it to instantly pucker into a tiny hard point that cried out for more attention. Then he did it again. Moaning, Julie dug her nails into his nape and arched her back.

  “Mac . . .”

  “Julie.”

  For the moment there seemed to be nothing more to say, for either of them. He shifted his attention to her other breast, kissing and licking her nipple until it, too, was hot and wet and throbbing. His jean-clad thigh slid between hers, pressing against the juncture of her legs, abrading the tender skin of her inner thighs and doing unbelievable things to the part of her that was already damp with readiness for him. The sheer pleasure generated by even that limited contact was unbelievable, and Julie tightened her thighs around his in instinctive response. He pressed harder into the center of her, and a mind-bending jolt of electricity shot through what was suddenly her body’s focal point.

  Julie gasped as a series of tiny, intense contractions followed, then went still in an effort to counteract the effect. It had been way too long since she had done this, she thought frantically as she relaxed her grip on his thigh and concentrated on drawing regular, steady breaths. He didn’t even have her naked yet, and she was on the verge of coming like a house on fire.

  Slow down, she told herself. She wanted to enjoy this. It had been so long—too long.

  He lifted his head and flicked a glance at her. His thigh, solid and warm, shifted, rubbing against her sensuously as he moved. Julie felt her lips part, and, if the way she was feeling was any indication, her eyes glaze over. God, his leg moving against her there felt so-o good. . . .

  “Let’s see, what came next? Oh, yeah, you wanted me to take off all your clothes.” A smile just touched one corner of his mouth; belying it, his voice was husky and his eyes were ablaze.

  Julie took a deep breath, unable to do anything but curl her nails into his shoulders by way of a reply as he propped himself on an elbow and reached behind her. Deftly he unfastened her bra and pulled it off, tossing it to one side. He looked down at the breasts he’d bared while her gaze fastened on his face. His jaw was set and his eyes glittered like jewels.

  He cupped her breast in his hand as if to gauge its size and shape, then ran his thumb over the nipple that was already distended and glistening wetly from his mouth.

  “Oh, God, Mac.” At the exquisite sensation she gritted her teeth and curled her toes and tried to remember to breathe.

  “They’re beautiful,” he said, guttural now, meeting her gaze, then covered her breast with his hand and kissed her mouth.

  Julie wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back as devouringly as he was kissing her, loving the musky taste of his mouth, the unmistakably masculine warmth of his hand caressing her breast, the hard pressure of his thigh pressing between hers, the weight and friction of his still-clothed body lying on top of her nearly naked one. She wanted him naked, wanted to be naked with him, more than she had ever wanted anything in her life. Her hands slid along his broad shoulders, over the slippery rayon covering his back until she reached his waist. Then she burrowed beneath the fabric to touch his skin. It was warm and faintly damp and smooth; the muscles beneath, she discovered as she slid her hands up his back, were tensile and resilient. He shuddered beneath her touch, and lifted his head.

  “Take off your shirt,” she said.

  He met her gaze, then reached down to pull off both shirts in a single supple over-the-head move. Before the garments were even all the way off, Julie stared, entranced, at the magnificent flesh he’d bared. She had forgotten just how breathtaking his naked torso was. His shoulders were bronzed and broad and thickly muscled; his chest was wide and tapered and covered with a thick wedge of ash brown hair through which she could see his flat male nipples. His abdomen was the weight lifter’s six-pack, ridged with muscle, looking impossibly hard and enticing above the waistband of his jeans. The jeans themselves rode low on his hipbones, revealing his navel and a tantalizing arrow of hair that disappeared beneath them.

  Julie realized that she was looking at the human equivalent of Godiva chocolate, the thing she had always lusted after most in all the world.

  Now, the thing she lusted after second most. Mac had just claimed a hard-won first place.

  “God, you’re gorgeous.” She unconsciously put into words what she’d thought since she’d gotten her first look at him sans Debbie gear.

  “I think that’s my line,” he said, and bent his head to kiss her. Even as she kissed him back she ran her hands over his chest, intoxicated by the feel of the crisp hair that covered all his muscles like a particularly erotic frosting. Her nails gently scored his nipples and he groaned and came down on top of her, stretching out at full length. He was heavy, but she barely noticed, and didn’t care. Sliding her hands over his shoulders and around his neck, she absorbed the hard weight of his body pressing hers down into the mattress with a sensation bordering on delight. The feel of his hair-roughened chest, so warm and powerfully muscled, against her breasts was unbelievably erotic. She moved sensuously against him, enjoying the heat and pressure, the delicious friction, of his body on hers.

  When he lifted his head again at last, breathing deeply and looking down into her eyes, she cradled his head in her hands and wordlessly guided his mouth to her nipple, arching her back as she offered herself up to him.

  This time, when his mouth closed on her breast, there wasn’t even a thin layer of cloth between them.

  If she had died in that instant, she would have died happy, Julie thought, closing her eyes and shivering at the sheer pleasure of it. The feel of his hot mouth fastening on her nipple, suckling it, laving it with his tongue, was exquisite. She moaned and moved and pressed his head to her breasts with a complete abandonment of what few inhibitions she had left to her. Her hands were buried in his hair; her legs were wrapped around his like ribbons around a maypole. He was lying between her thighs now, and her knees came up instinctively to accommodate him. This shift in position brought his jean-clad pelvis hard against the part of her that ached and burned and wept for his possession. He rocked against her, the movement deliberate, and she cried out. No longer able to resist what she knew was coming, she began to surge upward in urgent answer to his rhythmic movements.

  “Easy.” His head lifted, and the mind-blowing pressure between her legs disappeared as he eased himself away from Ground Zero just that moment too soon, lifting himself deftly off her. Even as she reached for him, aghast at being abandoned at such a crucial juncture, he caught her hands and pinned them to the mattress beside her head, then knelt over her, his thighs on either side of her legs now, trapping them together.

  “Mac.” Julie wriggled in protest, which, given that he was now touching nothing vital, didn’t do the slightest bit of good. She bit her lower lip in frustration, scowling up at him as he looked her over with obvious appreciation. What he’d just done gave a whole new meaning to the phrase so near, and yet so far.

  “Let’s take this slow.”

  “I don’t want to take it slow.”

  “Yes, you do. You just don’t know it.”

  Against logic like that, what could she say? Anyway, her heart was pounding so hard and she was breathing so fast that any kind of
sustained, sensible talk—much less an argument on the merits of when to actually do the deed—was beyond her. He seemed maddeningly cool until she really looked at him. Then she realized that his eyes were heavy-lidded and burning hot and his lips were clamped into a thin line and his jaw was set as if he was having to work hard to maintain control. She watched him look at her, watched as the flush in his cheekbones spread to suffuse his whole face, and felt the worst of her frustration fade.

  Then he appeased her even more by releasing her wrists to embark on a discovery mission, caressing each breast in turn, stroking over her stomach with an extra, comforting caress for the V-shaped bruise, dipping into her navel, trailing fire wherever he touched. His hands had a fine tremor to them now, she saw, and his muscled torso flexed with his every movement. Both circumstances were almost as potent an aphrodisiac as the way he was touching her.

  “Pretty,” he said softly, his fingers tracing the outline of her panties from hipbone to hipbone and over the filmy triangle between. Julie felt the tantalizing whisper-touch burn like a brand through the cloth to the soft nest of curls, then sucked in her breath as he hooked his fingers over the elastic and tugged her panties down her legs.

  At last, she thought, and felt her body clench. He moved, kneeling beside her as he pulled her panties all the way down to her ankles. Watching dry-mouthed, feeling like her insides had suddenly been reduced to the quivery consistency of a jellyfish, Julie realized with a prickle of surprise that she was still wearing her shoes.

  Mac picked up each foot and carefully eased her panties over the delicate high heels. Then he tossed the wisp of pink gauze in the same general direction as her bra.

  Nails curling into the mattress from the sheer effort of maintaining some semblance of control, Julie looked down at herself, at the brown-tipped globes of her breasts still glistening from the attentions of his mouth, at the delicate curves of her waist and hips, at the satin-smooth plane of her stomach, at the sable triangle between her thighs. Her eyes slid down the long-limbed grace of her own legs, separated now to an indecent degree as he held a slender, daintily shod foot with one supremely masculine looking hand wrapped around her ankle.

  The sight of herself, naked except for a high collar of pearls and strappy purple sandals with delicate high heels, spread out before Mac like a feast, was the most erotic thing she had ever seen in her life.

  “Great shoes.” He still held her right foot in his hand, and as he spoke he turned his head and pressed his open mouth to the delicate bone of her ankle, which was circled by a skinny purple strap. Heart pounding, Julie felt streamers of delight ripple up her leg from the place where his tongue caressed her skin; her breath caught as she watched his fingers working at the tiny buckle. “I especially like ’em when they’re all you’re wearing.”

  Even as he spoke, Mac got the buckle unfastened and slid the shoe from her foot. He picked up the other one, and did the same thing.

  Then he kissed that ankle, and suddenly his mouth was crawling up the inside of her leg.

  As she realized where he was headed, Julie began to shake.

  When he reached the velvety delta between her legs, she closed her eyes. He kissed her there, his mouth scalding. His tongue touched the tiny bud that quivered and ached for attention, and she cried out.

  “You like that?” It was a rough whisper.

  Julie nodded without opening her eyes.

  “Thought you would.”

  Any other time, the smug masculine overtone of that might have caused her to bristle. But the pleasure she was experiencing was too exquisite to allow her to focus on anything else. She felt as if all her bones had turned to water and her insides to fire. Breathing in fast little pants now, clutching the sheet for dear life, she lay supine, her head thrown back, her body pulsing with tremors as he pressed his mouth to her needy flesh. His hands slid beneath her, closing on her firm round cheeks to lift her and hold her in place, and as his mouth worked its magic she thought she had died and gone to some place far more marvelous than heaven.

  Her body burned and clutched and trembled; she bucked and squirmed under his ministrations like a worm on a hook. Her orgasm was there, right there, rising on the horizon like a blazing summer sun, blinding her with its promised brilliance, searing her with its building heat. . . .

  And then he stopped what he was doing, stopped just like that, pulled his mouth back and heaved himself up and away from her and right off the bed.

  “Mac!” Her eyes flew open. He was standing beside the bed, looking down at her, his eyes flaming, his hair mussed, shucking his jeans. She saw what he was doing, knew what was coming, but still felt indignant—and bereft. She lay there naked, watching him, trembling, weak with longing, so hot and hungry for him, her body so burning and empty and needy, that she couldn’t even stay still. Her breasts rose and fell as she drew in quick panting breaths. Her legs and hips moved restlessly. Then his jeans dropped, and his shorts with them. She saw that he was enormous and hung, and she reached out for him because she just couldn’t help herself.

  He was already climbing back onto the bed when her hands found him. His shaft was burning hot velvet over steel and as her fingers closed around him he groaned and seemed at last to lose control. His eyes flashed at her, his jaw hardened, and every mouthwatering muscle she could see seemed to go taut as a bowstring. Then he was moving, pushing her down and coming on top of her, and she wrapped her legs around his waist and clung to his shoulders and arched up to meet him.

  With one quick thrust he was inside her. He felt so unbelievably good, filling her to capacity and then some, that she cried out. Then he was taking her, hard and fast, plunging into her until Julie was so caught up in the pounding rhythm that she lost all sense of time and place in the fiery maelstrom of her response. Only dimly did she register that it was she who cried out again and again and again. When he kissed her, she tasted herself on his lips and shuddered. While she was shuddering he drove inside her with a shattering series of fierce, deep thrusts and she came, just like that, so violently that her body convulsed and she dug into his back with her nails and screamed his name, “Mac, Mac, Mac, Mac, Mac!”

  “Julie,” he groaned in answer, burying his mouth in the tender hollow between her neck and shoulder, and found his own release, grinding himself into her shaking body, then, finally, shuddering and going limp.

  Afterward, she lay there, totally replete. Her eyes were closed and her body was motionless except for the random tremors that still racked it. Mac lay on top of her, sweaty, hot, his deadweight about as heavy as a truckload of wet cement. About as responsive, too. His face was buried in the curve of her neck, and his breathing was stertorous and growing louder.

  She wondered if he had fallen asleep. From the feel of him, and the sound of his breathing, probably.

  God, were all men alike that way?

  For the first time since she had said I do, she had slept with a man besides Sid.

  Could anybody say, adultery?

  Julie opened her eyes. A wide bronzed shoulder blocked her view of most of the room. When she shifted her gaze to the right, a fair-sized section of close-cropped blond hair, an ear, the hard curve of his jaw, part of his cheek, and a glimpse of his parted lips—if the breathing that fluttered them wasn’t snoring, she didn’t know what it was—came into view.

  Looking the other way, she saw a single window with floor-length blue drapes closed over it, an unadorned white wall—and his hand still curved possessively around her breast.

  Julie felt a stab of squirm-inducing guilt. What had she done?

  Her marriage was over, she reminded herself, averting her eyes from the sight of those long bronzed fingers cupping her so intimately, in every way but the legal. She had nothing to feel guilty about. Indeed, she had done just what Oprah had said most women do on the demise of a marriage—fall into bed with the first presentable guy who asks.

  Only Mac hadn’t exactly done the asking.

  And he was a
little bit more than presentable. All right, a lot more.

  And she didn’t regret it. Exactly.

  How could she? The sex had been phenomenal. She’d definitely felt the earth move. She now owned the Big O.

  But lying here with him like this, naked and sweaty and listening to him snore, felt—weird. Like she wasn’t herself any longer. What she really wanted to do was get up and go home and take some time to just sort this whole thing out. But, she remembered forlornly, she had no home to go to. No home that felt like home, anyway. Not anymore.

  First she’d been viciously attacked there. Then Sid had brought a woman—girl—child—Amber—into her house.

  Julie realized that she was feeling sorry for herself, and took a deep breath. Instead of looking back with regret, she was going to look forward with anticipation. She was going to face her problems head-on, and deal with them one at a time. That’s what she had always done, ever since she was a little girl. For too long now, her whole identity had been wrapped up in being Sid’s wife. She was going to reclaim her life.

  Phase One of her recovery was already over: she’d had down-and-dirty sex with a really hot guy.

  Phase Two involved confronting Sid, firing Amber, contacting a lawyer, telling her mother, filing for divorce—in other words, blowing her life as she knew it off the map.

  Okay, so the prospect was enough to give her hives. Get over it, she told herself. Phase One might have been more fun, but she was going to make it through Phase Two as well. The secret was, as she’d learned many times over, to just keeping trudging ahead one step at a time.

  Her life might have been reduced to rubble, but she was going to survive. She was going to leave the shambles behind and move on.

  And the first step in moving on was to get off this bed.