Below him on the dock, wrapped in a blanket, stood Stacie, looking out over the water. And in spite of his body’s overwhelming desire for her, he felt something other than lust stirring, something that had been easing its way into his brain ever since he’d made such a fool of himself the other night at Ellis’ place. It was respect. This woman was completely at home in New York City. No one could deny Stacie Emerson was polished to a cosmopolitan sheen. And yet the passing of a storm would draw her outside to see the world without city lights, to listen to the quiet, all the layers of quiet that were practically their own symphony outside on Harris’ lake.
Almost before he knew what he was doing, he’d slipped into his jeans and moved quickly on silent feet down the stairs and through the darkened house to where the French doors led to the decked balcony and then down to the dock. But just before he reached her, she dropped the blanket, and he was afforded an exquisite, if all too brief view of Stacie’s long legs, rounded buttocks and the slender curve of her back, rendered porcelain-pale in the diminished light. Then she stepped off the dock into the lapping water.
Once again, he reacted without thinking, quickly stepping out of the jeans and leaping off the end of the dock with a splash, which resulted in a squeal of surprise and a mad swirling of the water from Stacie.
‘It’s me,’ he managed before swallowing a good-sized mouthful of the lake as he lunged to touch her arm reassuringly. But her panicked flailing dragged them both beneath the surface. For a second, he felt his own panic rising as he desperately tread water, one of his shins brushing the mooring of the dock. Then they both surfaced, coughing and sputtering. ‘Stacie! Stacie, it’s me,’ he said. She clung to him, shivering. ‘Are you all right?’ He slipped his arms around her hips for support.
He could feel more than see her nodded response. ‘Sorry,’ she gasped. ‘I didn’t mean to drown you. I woke and the storm was finished and the stars were just so beautiful over the lake. I couldn’t resist. Sorry I disturbed you.’
His embarrassed laugh forced his belly and other parts of him into her delicious, totally naked, personal space. ‘You didn’t disturb me. I think if anything it’s the other way around. I interrupted your communing with nature, which is almost an unforgiveable sin in my world.’
He felt her breasts pressed hard-nippled against his chest in her own little laugh. ‘It isn’t necessarily a given that I wouldn’t welcome your interruption, that I wouldn’t want to share the pleasure with someone who appreciates it as much as I do.’ In her efforts to tread water, she kicked him in the thigh, but before she could apologize, he kissed her and felt her breath catch as he trapped her leg, sliding it around his waist.
‘Harris,’ she breathed his name. ‘We can’t –’ But he stopped her words with another kiss and lifted the other leg so that both her thighs gripped him around his waist, his hands supporting her bottom, his legs treading to keep them both afloat.
‘Sh! Stacie,’ he whispered against her throat. ‘Sh.’
‘We talked about a clean slate. We said we’d –’
‘Maybe I don’t want a clean slate.’ He kissed her harder. To his delight, she responded in kind, curling her fingers in his wet hair and eating at his mouth. ‘Maybe I like our slate just the way it is. What do you think of that?’
And then he heaved her up onto the floating dock, causing her to gasp and mumble a protest that ended in a little whimper as he pulled her close to the edge, shoving her legs open until his mouth could find the warm, wet depth of her, open and inviting. His tongue made an ice-cream-lick of a path up the soft, moist valley of her that yielded and tensed and yielded again to his mouth. The flavor of her was honeyed and dark and better than anything he’d ever tasted. He held her, squirming and writhing, him licking and sucking all the way up to the apex of her where he settled a heavy, hungry kiss that ended in a nip to her clit. She bucked against him and trembled all over as she tugged at his hair.
His senses were filled with Stacie, the taste of her, the scent of her, the overwhelming presence of her. It was the play of a cool breeze goosefleshing his back that made him aware her shivering wasn’t entirely due to his sexual prowess. With some reluctance, he pulled himself away from his explorations and heaved himself onto the dock. She did her part to drag him up next to her, then, with both of them shivering in the cool air, she hauled her blanket over them like a tent, with him still scrambling to get another taste of her. But she wriggled and squirmed and twisted, elbowing him in the tender part of the inside of his arm before she settled and shifted so that he could feel her warm breath against his pubic hair just before she cupped his balls and took his erection deep into her mouth.
‘Oh God, Stacie,’ he managed to gasp before he pillowed his head on her wet thigh and opened her legs to find his way back to her. At his first deep dive into her softness, he felt her moan against his cock, a moan he couldn’t keep from imitating against the open, enticing swell of her. The muscles low in her abdomen tensed and jerked and he could feel his belly doing the same. He could feel his thighs tensing. He could feel his buttocks clenching and relaxing as he rocked and shifted his hips with an in and out motion.
Their chilled shivering and the convulsive arousal they were both experiencing made their lovemaking deliciously awkward and lacking in finesse, but way too intriguing for them to possibly consider stopping. The night sounds were overshadowed by their heavy breathing, by their moans and whimpers. Harris, who was accustomed to being quiet in the great outdoors so that he could hear and not be heard was lost in the exquisite sounds of the woman in his arms, and the way his own sounds harmonized with hers. The feel of her was as exquisite as he remembered, but this time it was skin on skin, all skin on skin, textured with gooseflesh that made him crazy to have her still closer, to be inside her.
With an effort that felt like it ripped some part of him in two, he pulled away enough to speak. ‘Stacie, I don’t have a condom. We need to go inside.’
‘Shut up, Harris,’ she said against his cock. ‘This time we’re not going anywhere.’ She rose to straddle his body without lessening the pressure of her lips, without losing her rhythm, then settled above him, lowering her hips until the splay of her rested just above his face, just in the perfect position for him to guide her down onto his tongue, onto his mouth, onto his hungry lips.
She gasped against him and moaned. ‘Finish me this way, Harris, then we’ll go back to the house.’ She tightened her lips around his cock and found her rhythm. Her mouth was like a velvet sheath, with her tongue doing things he was pretty sure weren’t even anatomically possible.
‘Stacie,’ he groaned, ‘I can’t hold out that long.’
‘Then don’t.’ With that, she gave his balls a firm kneading with her hand, raked her teeth along the full length of him, and took him still deeper and tighter until he could stand it no longer. He tried to pull away when he felt the inevitable happening, but she gripped him harder and took him, all of him, as he exploded into her mouth. The juddering and jerking of his own body drove his face deeper and tighter into the cleft of her, causing her to lose her own control, and she came trembling and shaking against him.
After the tremors of pleasure eased and they could breathe again, they became fully aware of the chill . As she eased herself off him, her teeth chattering, he rose and pulled her to her feet, wrapping the damp blanket around them both. She bent and grabbed up his jeans, nearly losing her balance but for his grip around her waist, and they both dissolved in a wave of giggles as they stumbled off the dock, back up the stairs and into the house. From there, it was a beeline to the warmth of his bed.
As they snuggled deep beneath the comforter, he pulled her so close that she was practically on top of him, and finally found his ability to speak again. ‘I can make us some cocoa if you’d like.’ Immediately he thought how stupid that sounded at a moment like this. ‘You’re freezing.’
She raised her face to his and settled a soft, open-lipped kiss against his mouth.
‘I love cocoa, Harris, but there are better ways for you to warm me up.’ She took his hand and guided it down between her legs, back to the soft, slick warmth of her center. ‘Or do you need a little time?’
He grunted half a laugh and reciprocated, guiding her hand down to where his cock was stiffening with enthusiasm once more. ‘I’ll manage,’ he said.
For a long time, they kissed. In some ways, the exploration with tongue and lips, accompanied by the gropes and darts of hands under the covers, had the wonderfully naughty feel of teenagers exploring for the first time. That was unbelievably arousing in itself. But they weren’t teenagers, and though Harris hadn’t had a lot of sex, he wasn’t totally lacking in experience, and clearly Stacie knew her way around male anatomy. For a very brief, very uncomfortable moment, he wondered if it had been the Thorne brothers she had learned it with. But when she eased a finger down to stroke his anus, he instantly forgot all about Ellis and Garrett. Everyone had a past, and that didn’t interest him right now. What interested him was the woman in his arms, the woman he’d wanted nothing to do with, the woman who was way more of a mystery than he could have ever imagined.
It didn’t take long for him to be fully erect again. It wasn’t just her alternating caresses of his cock and his anus. It was the fact that her full, round breasts were pressed up tight against him, nipples digging at his bare chest, and that his own fingers were scissoring deep into the slippery, soft cleft of her that gripped at him like a hungry mouth.
‘Harris.’ Her voice was a stretched whisper. ‘I need you to fuck me. Now. I need you inside me.’
Her honesty, her ability to ask for what she wanted without mincing words was outrageously arousing, and he certainly wasn’t going to argue with her. He slipped a condom from the drawer of his bedside table, sheathed his cock and slid home. And they both cried out in a sound that was somewhere between pain and pleasure, exquisite and primal. Then there was no more sound other than their ragged breathing, other than the sound of flesh against flesh, straining and pressing, until she convulsed and whimpered beneath him and he emptied himself inside her like he’d not come for ages, even though the taste of him was still fresh on her lips.
Stacie woke up naked with Harris Walker wrapped around her possessively. For a second, she was pretty sure she had to be dreaming. It all felt entirely too good to be true. He held her to him with his face nuzzled at the back of her neck and his hand cupped to her breasts. His breath against her nape was warm and even; the relaxed breathing of sleep. His erection pressed against her bottom, and she felt herself quiver in anticipation of what would happen when he woke up, when they woke up together, him hard with his morning need and her wet and ready for him.
The sky was just greying with dawn as the events of the past evening came rushing back to her. She would have spent the night in the Lexus at the clear-cut if Harris hadn’t come to her aid. And she was pretty sure if that had happened, she wouldn’t have slept at all. She shivered as she recalled her encounter with Harris, before she knew it was him, when all she could think was that it had to be Terrance Jamison. It made no sense, really. The man couldn’t have known she was there.
But the place and the time didn’t really matter. Eventually he would come for her, sooner rather than later, she suspected. And when that happened, he wouldn’t take no for an answer, and she would have to face the music.
Harris moaned in his sleep and loosened his hold on her slightly, giving her space to wriggle out of his arms. She slid quietly from under the comforter and for a long moment sat naked on the edge of the bed watching the man sleep. His face was relaxed, his eyelids fluttered, evidence that he was dreaming . She couldn’t help hoping his dreams were more peaceful than hers had been recently. ‘Stacie,’ he mumbled; she caught her breath for fear that she had awakened him, but he slept on. Only dreaming, she reminded herself, and calling her name as he did. She hoped desperately that it was a good dream, that it was one he would be happy to linger in. She was pretty sure when everything happened as she knew it would, as she knew it would have to, he wouldn’t be having pleasant dreams of her, and as sad as that made her, ultimately she knew there was nothing she could do about it. Things had gone too far now to be undone. There was no way to go but through the thick of it. And she most definitely didn’t want to drag Harris Walker though what was to come.
She let out a low sigh and stood carefully, her eyes still locked on the sleeping man. Then, almost as an afterthought, she bent and brushed a soft kiss across his lips, in spite of everything, half hoping he would wake up and pull her back down into the dream with him, but knowing that couldn’t happen no matter how much she wanted it to.
In the guest room, she slipped into the borrowed sweats, then gathered her muddied clothes from the porch, along with her BlackBerry and her backpack, and left the house. On the way home, she ran the Lexus through a car wash so that it wouldn’t be quite so obvious she’d been using it as an off-road vehicle, then she headed toward her flat just as the sun stained the eastern sky pink.
At home, she showered and dressed for her day at the gallery. She took extra care with her make-up and her choice of clothing. She was pretty sure today was the day she’d have to face Jamison, and she needed to be ready for it. She had deliberately shut off her BlackBerry. She wasn’t ready to talk to the man yet, but that wasn’t the reason. She was sure he’d never let a little thing like her ignoring him stop him from getting what he wanted. Mostly, she didn’t want to talk to Harris just yet. She couldn’t picture him being particularly happy about her leaving without saying goodbye. Plus she didn’t want to face his questions, questions she knew he would have asked last night if she’d given him space, and questions she was certain would have been on the breakfast menu if she had stayed. It was better, at least for the moment, not to have to face Harris’ disappointment. There would be way more than enough disappointment she’d have to face before long. This was just a little reprieve.
Once she was dressed and ready, she hopped in the Lexus and made her way to the gallery, where she’d be meeting with Martin Flannery about installing the security systems. He knew what she wanted, and he was probably one of the few people in the city of Portland who could make it happen, exactly like she wanted it to, before the gallery opened, and certainly he was the only one she trusted with the job. There was plenty to occupy her mind, plenty of things to keep her busy and keep her thoughts from wandering to the man she wished she was still lingering in bed with over a seriously hot morning fuck or the man she knew was about to turn her world upside down again. Yes, she needed to keep her mind occupied.
Chapter Fifteen
Where the hell are you?
Harris punched the message into his BlackBerry, then he deleted it, slammed the device down on the nightstand and headed for the shower. Incredible sex followed by Stacie Emerson doing a runner; this was a habit he didn’t need. How could the woman leave without at least waking him up to tell him to fuck off? He thought they were really connecting. He thought they had something good going. He thought he had really found someone who understood … what? Just because she liked the great outdoors didn’t mean she wanted anything more than for him to exhibit his work at her gallery. He shoved his way into the shower and cranked the hot water; a cold shower was no longer necessary. Waking to find Stacie gone had pretty much taken care of his hard-on and given his ego one helluva bashing.
Best he didn’t dwell on it. Best he just got on with what had to be done. Oh, he’d do her exhibition, just like he said he would. Of course she was right. Of course they should have left things on a nice, friendly, professional level. But then it was already way too late for that, wasn’t it? From the first time he kissed her all he could think about was being with her again. Jesus, could he be more stupid? Kendra would give him a serious talking-to for being such an idiot with his heart. It wasn’t his heart, he told himself, couldn’t possibly be his heart. It was just lust, that was all. Just lust. He’d get over it. Stacie just
wasn’t his type, he reminded himself for the hundredth time – never had been, never would be. And the fact that she had a history with both Thorne brothers – well, that just made the whole situation strange.
Once he was out of the shower and sitting with a much-needed cup of coffee, he pulled up his email. Several messages from Wilderness Vanguard were waiting for him – nothing unexpected in that when they were on a deadline with the latest issue. He could expect a dozen more emails from the assistant editor before the day was over.
In addition, there was a message from the local wildlife photography group he’d agreed to speak to. There was a message from Doug, the naturalist down on the other side of Prineville who had spotted a mountain lion, possibly the same female Harris had photographed two years before along the Crooked River. Doug thought she was nearly ready to mate again. And in spite of Harris’ best efforts to distract himself, he couldn’t keep from thinking how much he would love to take Stacie along on a shoot of that mountain lion.
There was a message from Ellis asking if he was free for lunch one day next week. No doubt he wanted to know all about the meeting with Stacie. Well he’d be happy to know that Harris had told her yes. Damn, he hoped the word hadn’t been passed on via Kendra and Garrett, who were quickly becoming the most efficient grapevine in the Northwest, about what had happened between him and Stacie at the Boiling Point, but no doubt it had. There was no privacy left in the world, he grumbled.
Once he’d had coffee and some toast with peanut butter, he rounded up his new, post-owl backpack, shoved in another peanut butter sandwich, a Thermos of coffee, and headed for a particularly deserted part of the Pacific Crest Trail, which he knew how to access through old logging roads. It was the cure for almost everything that ever ailed him – a good walk and some up close and personal time with wildlife. Surely it would be the cure for Stacie Emerson as well. And now he was committed. He’d have to see her again. Jesus, why did she have to be so intriguing, and why couldn’t he have just left well enough alone and continued to send her his fuck-off, not interested message? God, he hated complications. He slammed the door behind him and hopped into the Jeep. But before he started it, he checked his BlackBerry one more time for a message from Stacie. There wasn’t one. He shut it off and shoved it into his pocket.
The Exhibition (An Executive Decision Trilogy) Page 13