by Janet Dailey
“More research,” Kitty guessed.
“Yup. And, in addition to theobromine, chocolate also contains potassium, magnesium, and vitamin A.”
“Stop,” she protested with amusement. “I don’t need an analysis. It’s enough that I feel more content.”
“Content” was the word that perfectly described her mood at the moment. And the quiet setting promoted the feeling with the lights turned down, a fire softly crackling in the corner fireplace, and a beautiful piece of art bathed in light. Background music was the only thing lacking.
“Just a minute.” Sebastian leaned forward and set his empty mug on the mission-style coffee table.
“Where are you going?” For an instant, Kitty thought he had read her mind and intended to put on some music.
“Nowhere.” Sebastian sat back and instructed, “Tilt your head forward a sec.”
“Why?” she asked, but did as he said. She felt his fingers on her hair and the sudden loosening of its smooth French twist as he removed a securing pin.
“What are you doing?” She reached back to stop him.
“Taking your hair down. It can’t be comfortable leaning against the knot it’s in.”
“It isn’t a knot. It’s a twist.” Try as she might, Kitty couldn’t repair the damage as quickly as he could pluck out another pin.
“Look at it this way,” Sebastian reasoned. “You’ll be taking your hair down before the night’s over anyway. Now you won’t have to.”
He didn’t stop until her hair tumbled about her shoulders. “But I didn’t want it down yet.” It made her feel oddly vulnerable to have it falling loose.
“Too bad,” he replied, and ran his fingers through her hair, combing it into a semblance of order. “You have beautiful hair.” He lifted a few strands and let them slide off his fingers. “Sleek and soft, like satin against the skin.”
“Thank you.” But the words came out as stiff and self-conscious as she felt.
“You hardly ever wear your hair down. How come?”
“I prefer it up. It’s much easier to manage that way.” Kitty refused to pull away from his toying fingers. It seemed too much of an admission that she was somehow affected by his touch.
“And you like being in control.”
“As a matter of fact, I do,” Kitty admitted easily. “I couldn’t successfully run my own business otherwise.”
“You know what?”
“What?” She darted him a wary glance as he bent closer to her.
“Your hair smells like strawberries.”
“It’s the shampoo I use.”
“Strawberries and chocolate, now there’s a delicious combination.”
Only inches separated them. Without warning, he closed the distance and claimed her lips in a drugging kiss. The potency of it scrambled her wits and her pulse. She couldn’t think, only feel the persuasive power of it.
Her own response came much too naturally and much too eagerly. Frightened by it, she pressed a hand to his chest, intending to push him away. But the instant she felt the hard muscled wall and the hypnotic beat of his heart beneath her hand, any sense of urgency to break off the kiss faded.
He rolled his mouth around her lips, teasing them apart, then murmured against them, “A kiss like that can become addictive.”
Kitty managed to pull together enough of her scattered wits to turn her face away. “That’s enough, Sebastian.” But her voice was all breathy and shaky, without conviction.
“Why?” Deprived of her lips, he simply began nuzzling her highly sensitive ear, igniting a storm of exquisite shudders.
“Because.” She knew there was a reason; she simply couldn’t think of it, not with Sebastian nibbling at her earlobe like that. It had always been her weakest point, and the surest way to turn her on.
“That’s no reason,” Sebastian replied, and licked at the shell of her ear with the tip of his tongue.
Swallowing back a moan of pure desire, Kitty hunched a shoulder against her neck, trying to block his sensuous invasion. “I’ll . . . I’ll spill my cocoa.”
“That’s easily handled.” Seemingly all in one motion, he planted a firm kiss on her lips, took the cup from her hand, and set it on the low table.
Kitty barely had time to draw a breath before he was back, once more giving her his undivided attention. Too much of it and too thoroughly. Worse, she was enjoying it.
Gathering together the scattered threads of resistance, Kitty managed to push him back and twist her head to the side, creating a small space between them.
“Will you stop trying to seduce me?” she said in quick protest.
“And here I thought I was being so subtle.” He automatically switched his attention to the curve of her throat.
Kitty slid her fingers into his hair, then forgot why. “Sebastian, I’m engaged to Marcel.” She managed to remember that much.
“Maybe you are and maybe you aren’t. It sounded to me like it was all up in the air.”
“I haven’t decided that,” she insisted a bit breathlessly.
“I think you have.” His mouth moved around the edges of her lips, tantalizing them with the promise of his kiss.
“Well, I haven’t.” As if of their own volition, her lips sought contact with his.
As his mouth locked onto them, Kitty recognized the contradiction between her words and action, but she couldn’t seem to do anything about it. It was difficult to care when the heat of his kiss satisfied so many of her building needs.
“Funny you should say that,” he murmured, lifting his head fractionally. “That’s not the message I’m getting.”
“I know, but . . .”
“Sh.” A second after he made the soothing sound, he began a tactile exploration along the bare ridge of her shoulder, nibbling and licking her there.
It was a full second before it hit Kitty that her shoulder shouldn’t be bare. The lace dress should be covering it. Simultaneously with that thought, she felt the looseness of the material along her back and the tight constriction of the sleeves binding her arms against her sides.
“You unfastened my dress,” she accused in shock.
“You didn’t plan on sleeping in it, did you?” When he raised his head to look at her, the firelight’s dim glow kept most of his face in shadow. But there was sufficient light for her to see that his eyes were three-quarter lidded and dark with desire.
It was a sight that took her breath away because Kitty knew her own reflected the same thing.
“Of course I wasn’t going to sleep in it.”
“Then I’m saving you some time.” His fingers inched the sleeves lower on her arms, making it impossible for Kitty to lift her hands high enough to push it back in place.
While she could still muster both the strength and the will, Kitty ducked away from him and scrambled off the sofa. Dangerously weak-kneed, she hurriedly tugged the lacy material higher with fingers that trembled.
“Kitty,” his voice coaxed while his hand slid onto the flat of her stomach, evoking new flutters of desire.
“Stop it, Sebastian. You’re not playing fair.” Kitty weakly pushed at his hand.
“When has love ever been fair?” He rolled to his feet directly beside her, his hands already moving to gather her back into his embrace.
She wedged her arms between them, needing to avoid contact with his hard male length for her own sake.
“This isn’t about love. It’s about sex,” she insisted, half in anger. “You’ve always known which buttons to push.”
“You pushed mine a long time ago,” Sebastian murmured as he nuzzled her neck, “and ruined me for any other woman.”
“Do you honestly expect me to believe that?” Kitty sputtered at the outrageous lie. “I’ve seen the parade of shapely bimbos that have filed past my house to this studio. What about that blonde who was draped all over you at the last showing?”
“Cecilia.” He nipped at her earlobe while the pressure of his hands arched her hips c
loser to him.
“Yes, sexy Cecilia, that’s one,” Kitty recalled even as her pulse skittered in reaction to his evocative nibblings. “What about her?”
“I never said I didn’t try to find someone.” He lazily dragged his mouth across her cheek to the corner of her lips. “But no one did to me what you do.”
“You’re just saying that,” she insisted, needing desperately to convince herself of that.
“Am I?” He tugged his shirt open and flattened her hand against his chest. She felt the furnacelike heat of his skin and the hard thudding of his heart somewhere beneath it, beating in the same rapid rhythm as her own. “What about the men I’ve watched go through your life? All those husbands of yours.”
“Two. There were only two.” Somehow or other, any thought of Marcel had slipped completely from her mind.
“Be honest. Did any of them make you ache like this?” His hands glided over her back and hips, their roaming caress creating more havoc with her senses.
It was becoming more and more difficult to hold on to any rational thought. “You . . . You were always good in bed,” Kitty said in defense of her own weakening resistance to him.
“Good sex requires two participants. What we shared was special. Unique.”
“But it’s over.” She needed to remind herself of that, but saying the words didn’t seem to help.
“Not for me. And not for you either, or you wouldn’t still be standing here.”
“No.” She tried to deny it, but she also knew it was true. “This is wrong, Sebastian.”
“Then why does it feel so right?”
She had no answer for that as he claimed her lips in a hard and all-too-quick kiss. “Do you remember the first time we made love?” He took another moist bite of them.
“Yes.” The word came out on a trembling breath.
“I’d brought you back to my apartment to look at more of my paintings.” His hands, like his mouth, were never still, always moving to provoke and evoke. “It was cold that spring night. I added another log to the fire to take some of the chill off. Remember?”
Unable to find her voice, Kitty simply nodded, her memory of that night and what came next as sharp as his own.
“As I walked back to you, I took off my shirt, wadded it up, and threw it in a corner.”
He stepped back from her long enough to peel off his shirt and give it a toss. But in those few seconds, when she was deprived of the warmth of his body heat and the stimulating touch of his hands, she felt horribly lost.
Then he was close again, his hand cupping the underside of her jaw, tilting her head up, his thumb stroking the high curve of her cheek.
“Do you remember what I said to you?” Sebastian asked.
The words were branded in her memory. Kitty whispered them, “I want to make love with you.”
“ ‘Yes,’ you said,” he recalled, “and the word trembled from you like the aspens in a breeze.” His voice was low and husky with desire, just as it had been that long-ago night. “I took you by the hand.” His fingers closed around hers, their grip warm and firm but without command. “And I led you over by the fire.”
He backed away from the sofa, drawing her with him as he skirted the coffee table and continued to the gray-and-black Navajo rug in front of the kiva. There he halted and kissed her with seductive languor.
When his mouth rolled off hers, his breathing was rough and uneven. “You wore a dress that night, too.”
He took her lips again, devouring them with tonguing insistency. At the same time, his hands went low on her hips and glided upward, pushing the lace of her dress ahead of them until the hem was nearly to her waist.
The past and present merged into one as Kitty automatically raised her arms, allowing him to pull the dress over her head. It flew in a white arc to the floor near a stack of blank canvases propped against the wall. Then the darkening heat of his gaze claimed her as it swept down her body.
“You’re beautiful.” His voice shook, thrilling her anew.
Kitty spread her hands over his naked chest, the golden glow of the firelight revealing each ripple of muscle. “So are you,” she murmured.
In a mirror of the past, her hands moved to unfasten his pants while his fingers deftly unhooked her bra. Both items ended up in a pile on the floor, forgotten as his hands moved onto her breasts, feeling them swell to fill them. Then his hands slid lower to the elastic waist of her pantyhose, leaving his lips to make a more intimate exploration of the peaky nipples he had aroused.
With almost agonizing slowness, he worked her pantyhose down her stomach and hips to her thighs, then lower still to her knees and calves. His mouth followed every inch of the way until Kitty was a quivering mass of need.
First one foot slipped free from the sheer hose, then the other. Without invitation, Kitty sank to the floor, her arms reaching to gather him against her and assuage this physical ache.
They twisted together in a tangle of arms and legs and hot, greedy kisses. She cried with exquisite relief when he finally filled her. After that it was all glorious pleasure as they made love to each other, for each other, and with each other.
All loose and liquid limbed, she lay in his arms, tiny aftershocks still trembling through her, her breathing slowly returning to normal. This feeling of utter completeness was one she had forgotten somehow.
“You are still incredibly beautiful.” Sebastian gently tucked a wayward strand of hair behind her ear.
She made a small sound of acknowledgment, then admitted, “I know I feel beautifully exhausted. I don’t think I could move if I had to.”
“And you don’t have to.” He folded her deeper into the circle of his arms and rubbed his cheek against the side of her head. “As far as I’m concerned, you’re right where you belong.”
“That’s good to know.” She closed her eyes in sublime contentment, without the energy to think past this moment. For now, it was enough.
It was her last conscious thought until a harsh light probed at her closed eyelids. Kitty turned her head away from it and buried her face deeper in a dark, warm corner.
“Sorry, kitten,” Sebastian’s familiar voice vibrated beside her, thick with sleep. “I don’t think that will work. I forgot to pull the shade down when I carried you into bed. That’s the problem with this room. The window faces the east. Every morning the sun plows through it and hits you right between the eyes.”
“Sun?” Groggily, Kitty lifted her head and peered through slitted eyelids toward the offending light. “You mean—it’s morning?” The sun’s in-reaching rays struck the stone in her engagement ring and bounced off it in a shower of sparkling colors.
Two separate things hit Kitty at the same time. She was wearing Marcel’s ring and she was in bed with Sebastian.
How could she have done such a thing?
As much as she wanted to plead ignorance, Kitty remembered much too clearly that little trip down memory lane she’d taken last night—all except the being-carried-to-bed part. A little voice in her head told her that Sebastian had known all along just where that little stroll would lead.
“You dirty rotten sneak.” Kitty scrambled away from him, grabbing at the top sheet to bunch it around her. “You did it on purpose, didn’t you?”
“What are you talking about?” Frowning in confusion, Sebastian threw up a hand to block the glare of the sunlight. “I wouldn’t have left the shade up on purpose. You know I don’t like to get up early. What time is it anyway?”
“Who cares what time it is?” she declared angrily and gave the sheet a hard tug to pull it free from the foot of the bed. “I should never have come here last night,” she muttered, mostly to herself. “I should have known you would pull some cheap, rotten stunt like this.”
“What the hell are you talking about?”
“Don’t give me that innocent look. It may have worked last night, but it won’t work now.” Kitty fought to wrap the loose folds of the sheet around her.
“Talk about getting up on the wrong side of the bed,” Sebastian muttered, eying her with a hopeless shake of his head.
“I shouldn’t even be in this bed and you know it. I’m engaged to Marcel. Remember.” When she tapped her engagement ring, the sheet slipped.
“I didn’t forget.” His frown cleared away, its place taken by the beginnings of a smile and a knowing twinkle in his eyes.
“You knew I had argued with him. You knew it and you deliberately took advantage of it,” Kitty accused.
“I don’t recall hearing any objections.” Sebastian’s smile widened, as if he found the entire conversation amusing.
“I made plenty of objections. You simply ignored them.” Kitty impatiently pushed the hair out of her eyes and looked about the room. “What did you do with my clothes?”
“They’re probably still scattered around the studio.”
“You loved saying that, didn’t you?” The little smirk on his face was almost enough to make her want to walk over there and slap it off him. But Kitty wasn’t about to get within ten feet of him again.
Intent on retrieving her clothes and getting out of there, Kitty set off toward the studio’s main section.
Within two strides, she stepped on a trailing corner of the sheet and had to grab hold of the foot post to keep from falling face first on the floor.
“That robe I borrowed from you is hanging in the closet. It might be safer to put that on to get your clothes,” Sebastian suggested dryly. “Otherwise you’re going to break your nose, and it’s much too pretty.”
“Never you mind about my nose.” Just the same, Kitty wadded up the length of sheet and stalked over to the closet.
After a first glance failed to locate the robe among his other clothes, Sebastian called from across the room, “It’s on the hook behind the door.”
Sure enough, that’s where it was. Kitty snatched it off the hook, slipped her arms through the sleeves, and let the sheet fall to the floor, then stepped free of its surrounding pile. Hastily tying the ends of the terry-cloth sash around her waist, she turned back toward the door. To her irritation, Sebastian was out of bed and zipping up a pair of paint-spattered work chinos.