The Misconception

by Gardner, Darlene

  Marietta tried to dismiss the ludicrous compliment, attempted once again to make him see reason. “My stomach isn’t flat. That’s why I never wear a bikini. No matter how thin I get, it poufs out.”

  “Flat stomachs aren’t sexy. Yours is.”

  His big hand covered her stomach, his darker skin providing a stunning contrast to her paleness. Marietta’s pulse fluttered, and she put both hands to her hot cheeks. She wasn’t making much headway in convincing him she’d be more comfortable with the lights out.

  “My breasts,” she choked out. “They’re too small. I barely fit into a B cup.”

  “Too small for what?” he asked and smiled. The hand covering her stomach skimmed over her ribcage and cupped one of her breasts. She gasped at the heated rush of feeling that blasted her. “It fits perfectly, don’t you think?”

  Marietta tried to swallow, but she couldn’t. She couldn’t seem to do anything but feel. Jax’s left hand joined his right until both of them were lightly kneading her breasts, his fingertips circling her nipples until they pebbled.

  “They’re getting bigger,” she informed him.

  “What’s getting bigger?” He moved closer to her on the bed, skimming his lips across her cheek.

  “My. . .” Sensation pooled low in her belly. “. . . breasts.”

  “Your breasts?” His mouth moved down to the body parts in question, and he kissed them, one after the other. She felt her back arch as she tried to get closer to his mouth. He laughed. “What do you mean your breasts are getting bigger? I thought, when a woman reached adulthood, they stopped growing.”

  Her brain was so muddled that it was difficult to think, but she managed to dredge up material from one of her more popular biology lectures.

  “Female breasts enlarge up to twenty-five percent,” she began, gasping as his tongue circled them, “and nipples swell by as much as one centimeter during, uh, you know.”

  “Sex?” He raised his head and smiled, looking straight into her eyes. “That is what you’re trying to say, isn’t it?”

  Marietta was known around campus as one of the more erudite instructors. She was seldom at a loss for words. Now, she said, “Uh, huh.”

  His lips moved to her right earlobe. His teeth tugged on it, then his tongue laved it.

  “Did you know,” she asked, more than slightly breathless, “that the earlobe is an erogenous zone?”

  He chuckled softly near her ear. His warm breath sent shivers through her. All over her body, tiny hairs stood on end.

  “I love it when you talk brainy like that,” he whispered, drawing back to look at her face. “Tell me more.”

  “Nostrils flare and pupils dilate.” She noticed that, despite the light, his pupils were so large she could barely make out the brown rim of color surrounding the black. She breathed deeply, trying to draw in more air. Her breath brought with it the scent of his cologne mixed with an intoxicating something else. “Sweat glands open, releasing a signature scent. Some people call it a pheromone. In the insect kingdom, the female gypsy moth emits a specific kind of pheromone to attract a male.”

  He brought his nose to her neck and breathed deeply. “You smell better than any moth I’ve run across.” He nuzzled the sensitive skin of her neck before trailing kisses over her jaw and across her cheek. He stopped when he reached the side of her mouth. “What happens to the lips?”

  “They get redder.” She licked them, already feeling the physiological changes. “They swell and become sensitive.”

  “I’ve got an idea.” He whispered the rest of the words inches away from her lips. “Let’s try out your sensitive-lip theory.”

  He touched her lips with his. His mouth, which looked so hard, was incredibly soft. He seemed in no hurry to gain entrance to the inside of her mouth, instead running his tongue over her lips and kissing her over and over, on the corners of her mouth, at the center, as though he couldn’t get enough.

  A rush of heat enveloped her, and Marietta recognized what was happening. Her body was readying itself for sex. Marietta was familiar with the tingling that preceded the actual act, although she couldn’t quite remember the sensation being this intense.

  She remembered the disappointment, though. After her partner had his fun, that was always the same.

  She pulled back slightly from his mouth, suddenly wanting to get the disillusionment over with. “We can skip the preliminaries, you know.”

  He ignored her as though he hadn’t heard, and plunged his tongue into her mouth. She moaned as his tongue traced the roof of her mouth and then transferred its attention to the cellar. The tip of it ran over hers, coaxing her into a sensual session of give and take.

  For a moment, she forgot about the impending disappointment and kissed him back.

  He gathered her into his arms, and there was something amazingly erotic about having her bare skin against his clothing. One of his hands tangled in her hair, loosening the knot of her bun so her hair fell long and free, and his other hand cupped her bottom, kneading. She felt herself grow wet, her body readying itself for him.

  He drew back slightly and smiled at her. “Unbutton my shirt,” he invited.

  A smidgen of sense came back to Marietta. That was an action that reeked of intimacy, and this was a business deal. It wasn’t supposed to be sensual, wasn’t intended to be enjoyable.

  “I. . . I couldn’t,” she began, but he silenced her by capturing her hands and bringing them to his shirt front.

  “Go ahead,” he urged. “You’ve probably seen the movie Alien, but I promise there’s nothing under there but a chest. No monster’s going to jump out at you.”

  A smile creased her mouth. This was bad, very bad. Above all, she wasn’t supposed to let herself like him.

  “Do you know,” he said, tipping up her chin, “that’s the first time I’ve seen you smile.” He traced her curving lips with his finger. His eyebrows danced. “The second time is going to be when you get up the courage to unbutton my shirt. I have an amazing, monster-free chest.”

  She’d been clenching her fingers in an effort not to take him up on his invitation, but he’d given her the perfect excuse to do exactly what he wanted her to do. Exactly what she wanted to do.

  “Oh, you do, do you?” she heard herself say. “Let’s just see about that.”

  She reached for his shirt, her fingers fumbling with the buttons. When she finished, he freed the tail of his shirt from his trousers and shrugged out of it. She stared. Bronzed skin and golden-brown chest hair stretched over some of the most impressive pectoral muscles she’d ever seen.

  “I look even better without my trousers,” he prompted.

  She was still too stunned by the glorious sight of his chest to take him up on the hint. He laughed, lifted her easily off his lap and made short work of the rest of his clothes.

  She watched him as he undressed, growing even more amazed. His body was the kind a sculptor would appreciate. Every muscle was defined, every sinew beautifully realized. It looked more like a work of art than a body. Michelangelo’s David wasn’t far off the mark. In fact, Marietta thought Jax had a better body than David.

  The only marks marring his perfection were a large purplish bruise beside his hip and three slashes — from a cat’s claws? — across the middle of his stomach. She started to ask how he’d gotten the injuries, but she forgot the question when he turned back to her fully aroused. She’d been right. He was big. Big and spectacular. His gaze followed hers, and she knew he could hear her breathing become ragged.

  “Did you know,” Marietta rasped, trying to camouflage her nervousness, “that respiration increases to four times its normal level during, uh, you know. . .”

  “Sex?” he supplied again.

  Now that he was naked, she expected him to be concerned with fulfilling his own needs. Instead, when he rejoined her on the bed, he caressed the arch of her foot and planted a soft kiss on her ankle.

  “What. . . what are you doing?”

  �
�What does it feel like I’m doing?” he asked, a chuckle in his voice. He kissed her calf, the underside of her knee, her thigh. “I’m kissing you all over.”

  “But. . . but. . . that wasn’t part. . . oooohh.” He’d reached the juncture of her thighs, and she felt the warm wetness of his tongue invade her. Nobody had ever done that before, and it felt wickedly good. “No. . . ooooohhh.”

  Calling on her willpower, she pulled his head up. His fingers immediately replaced his tongue, taking over where it had left off, and he kissed the soft skin of her stomach. By the time he kissed his way up to her mouth, she was trembling.

  “Touch me,” he commanded, and she was powerless to do anything but obey him. First she smoothed her hands over his glorious chest, reveling in the hard ridges and soft chest hair. Then she moved her attention to his flat, rippled stomach, being careful not to aggravate the scratch marks. Finally, she found the most impressive part of him and encircled him with her fingers.

  “Baby,” he breathed into her mouth, “oh, baby, that feels good.”

  Her vocal chords could only seem to produce moans and murmurs or she might have told him not to call her baby. Then again, maybe she wouldn’t have. As long as he kept doing what he was doing, whatever he called her was just fine.

  He shifted his body slightly and she moved with him. It was the most natural thing in the world when he slid into her. She expected a vaguely pleasant fullness but multiple sensations crackled in the place they were joined and radiated outward. This feeling was like nothing Marietta had ever experienced before. She wrapped her legs around his buttocks as he buried himself deeply inside of her and slowly withdrew.

  “I don’t think I can go this slow,” he said when he’d finished the stroke.

  “I don’t think I want you to,” Marietta said on a gasp.

  He moved, faster and faster, and she kept pace with him until she didn’t think she could stand the sensual assault anymore. This is why some women enjoy having sex, she thought incredulously. This was bliss.

  The scientist in Marietta knew there was some reason sex with this man was immeasurably better than she’d ever imagined sex could be. She didn’t have time to analyze why. The hot gush signaling his release flowed into her, and a soaring storm of unfamiliar, exhilarating tremors turned her body into a human earthquake. Then he collapsed on top of her.

  Neither of them spoke for a few saturated minutes. Marietta couldn’t even think coherently. Finally, he rolled them over on the bed so that she was on top of him. He smiled up at her. “Wow.”

  Feeling suddenly shy, she tried to avert her face. He didn’t let her, putting a hand on the side of her cheek so she had to look at him. His hair was tousled, his eyes were crinkling and he had the most endearing smile lines radiating outward from his mouth.

  “Did you ever hear the one,” he began, “about the little girl who came back from playing with some older neighbor kids and asked her mother what an orgasm was?”

  Marietta shook her head, surprised that she still had the strength to complete the motion, amazed that Jax was telling her a joke while he was still inside her.

  “‘I don’t know,’ the mother answered. ‘Go ask your father.’”

  Marietta smiled, although it really wasn’t funny. Until a few moments ago, when she’d had her very first orgasm, the joke would have rang more true.

  At the thought of Jax with a child, Marietta sobered. Even now, Jax’s baby could be growing inside her. No, she mentally corrected herself. It wouldn’t be his baby. It would be her baby. The baby who was the reason she was here, in this bed, with this man. The baby she’d forgotten all about until this moment.

  “You’ve gone away from me. What are you thinking?”

  “I was thinking,” she said truthfully, “that the woman in your life would never reply that way.”

  “Not if I can help it,” he said, and she felt his body come to life inside hers again. “I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we try to give you another orgasm?”

  Before she could answer, his mouth covered hers in a searing, bone-melting kiss. Since she still didn’t have the answer to why sex with Jax had been so transcendent, she owed it to herself as a scientist to repeat the experience. But, as his body moved inside hers, she forgot all about collecting data. She even forgot about the baby. All over again.

  SOMETIME AFTER MAKING love to Rhea, summoning room service and eating lunch as quickly as he could so he could make love to Rhea again and yet again, Jax must have dozed.

  When his eyes opened, the oversized red numbers on the bedside alarm clock were the first things he saw. When the numbers registered, he squeezed his eyes shut, not wanting them to be true. Slowly, apprehensively, he opened his eyes again and groaned when the numbers still said the same thing.

  Six o’clock. It was six o’clock, an hour past the time he was to have reported for work, and just an hour before things really got started. It would be the height of irresponsibility, and possibly the funereal march of his career, if he wasn’t there when things got started.

  Rhea was snuggled sweetly against his back, her soft curves reminding him of how they’d spent most of the past seven hours and tempting him to relive some of them. She was an incredible lover. Jax was usually nearly as talkative in bed as he was out of it, up front about where he wanted to be touched and when. With Rhea, words hadn’t been necessary. She’d seemed to know what he wanted, sometimes even before he knew himself. His body reacted to his erotic thoughts, and he had to fight himself so he wouldn’t turn to take her into his arms.

  He had to leave her bed. Right now.

  Heaving a frustrated sigh, Jax pushed himself away from her and sat up. He caught a glimpse of his navy jockey shorts, pulled them on, got up and began the hunt for the rest of his clothes.

  He’d just shrugged into his shirt when he realized that she was watching him. The bedside light he’d turned on hours ago was still burning. She made such an appealing picture, even with a thin sheet covering her delectable body, that he wanted to crawl back into bed with her.

  He smiled. She didn’t.

  “Are you going somewhere?” She anchored herself on an elbow and raised slightly from the bed. He noticed she was careful to keep the sheet covering her nakedness in place, and that made him sad.

  “I have a business commitment,” he said while he buttoned his shirt. “Believe me, if I could break it, I would. But I can’t. It’s completely unbreakable.”

  “But I thought. . .” Her voice cracked, and she started again. “I thought you were in town because of me.”

  Jax closed his eyes briefly, because he’d almost forgotten. She still thought he was Harold McGinty, who’d flown to D.C. specifically to see her. For the first time, he wondered why Rhea and Harold had arranged to meet. Had they been set up by mutual friends? Or, perhaps, were they Internet e-mail pals?

  He should tell her about the mix-up right now. Maybe they’d even have a laugh about how anybody who knew both of them would never mistake six-foot-four Jax for five-foot-four Harold.

  The trouble was that he didn’t have time to explain. He’d be back later. Nothing could keep him away. Then he’d explain. But right now, he needed to leave.

  “It’s something that can’t be helped.” He picked his suit jacket up from the floor and tried to shake the wrinkles out of it. “But I’ll be back. You can count on that.”

  “Actually,” Rhea said, sitting up straighter in bed, still clutching the covers to her chest, “that won’t be necessary.”

  For the first time since he’d awakened, Jax went still. “What do you mean?”

  “We’re done here,” she said in the same clipped tones she’d used at the airport, before they’d spent hours tangled in each other’s arms. “I’ll have your bags delivered to another room. You can check which room at the front desk when you return.”

  “What?” Her nonsensical words drew him to the bed. She backed up against the headboard, as though the intimacy they’d shared was a fi
gment of his imagination. “What are you talking about?”

  “You’ve served your purpose.”

  “Am I missing something here? I just had the most incredible sensual experience of my life, and I could have sworn it was you who spent all afternoon in bed with me.”

  “Sex is supposed to be sensual.”

  “What we had was more than sensual. It was special.”

  “What we had is a biological act millions of people engage in daily.”

  What had happened to the woman who’d moaned in his arms? Where had the connection they shared that made words unnecessary gone? “You’re deliberately misunderstanding me,” Jax said.

  “No, you’re misunderstanding me.” She fixed him with a level stare. “I’ll admit the experience was extraordinary, but that’s because you have a talent. Other men have a propensity for mathematics or music. You have a gift for sex.”

  Jax wasn’t sure whether he’d been complimented or insulted. Either way, he figured he should go with the flow. “Then let me keep on giving it to you.”

  “No.” She shook her head decisively. “This is it. I don’t need you anymore.”

  Time was ticking. His career was on the line. And she wasn’t listening to him. In desperation, Jax dropped one knee to the bed and pulled her into his arms. She reacted instantly, as she had all afternoon. Her body went soft, her lips clung to his and she kissed him back as fervently as he was kissing her.

  When he broke off the kiss, he was slightly out of breath and his heart hammered. “You’re attracted to me,” he accused.

  “Of course I am.” She sounded breathless, too. “Your features are perfectly symmetrical.”

  “Huh?”

  “Not to mention, you’re well above average in height, you have clear skin, a square jaw, broad shoulders, a purposeful gait, good muscle tone. And high energy.” She paused. “Let’s not forget high energy. I’d be attracted to anyone with those qualities. It’s simple biology.”

  “There’s nothing simple about it.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Look, I’ve got to go. I’ll be back as soon as I can, but it probably won’t be before midnight. Then we can hash this out.”