For Now and Forever

by Diana Palmer

  “I’ve lived my life starting things,” he murmured, bending his head. “And I want very much to start something with you. You’re like champagne, and I want the taste of you in my mouth...”

  She felt his hard lips against her own, and involuntarily she jerked her head back. He only smiled. His hands moved up to frame her face and hold it steady.

  “Don’t panic,” he whispered. “Satisfy my curiosity and I’ll let you go.”

  “I... I don’t want...to get involved,” she breathed. It was a lie. Of course she wanted to get involved. He was like heady wine.

  “Baby, you’re already involved,” he whispered back. His mouth touched hers gently, parting her soft lips, and an odd sound rolled up from his throat like thunder. His arms around her tightened, and all at once the kiss became deep and insistent and persuasive.

  Her fingers clenched against his chest, she felt her body going rigid. And then it was like honey, like warm honey, flowing through her body. She let herself rest totally against him, her soft breasts crushing gently against his powerful throbbing chest, as her hands spread and began to explore the heavy, hard muscles. Her breath sighed out wildly, her mouth opened voluntarily, her tongue probed hesitantly at his.

  His hands moved down from her face to cup her high, taut breasts with tender, caressing movements, and he smiled against her mouth.

  “No bra,” he breathed. “I like that, I like feeling you. How the devil does this thing fasten?” he growled softly, searching for fastenings on the blouse she was wearing.

  It was too far, too fast, but she couldn’t resist him. “Here.” She guided one of his hands to the buttons under her arm and stood watching his dark face helplessly while he unfastened them with torturous slowness.

  “Yes,” he breathed. His hand moved under her arm, up and over, stroking, soothing, until he found her breast. She trembled as his fingers moved delicately over its smoothness and touched the hard peak.

  The smile had long since left his face, and there was a wild glitter in his eyes. Under her hands, his chest was shuddering with the force of his heartbeat.

  “What color are you, here?” he whispered huskily. “Are you dark or light?”

  She felt hopelessly naive despite her age. “I... I’m light.”

  His eyes had darkened to coal, and his face was rigid. “Show me.”

  He did something to the blouse and she felt its upward movement with a sense of helplessness, wanting his eyes there, wanting his hands.

  He parted the edges and let his gaze drop to her body, and he caught his breath visibly. “My God,” he breathed.

  Incredibly, his hands were trembling, and a surge of pure pride went through her slender body at that reaction.

  “Baby,” he whispered shakily. With his eyes still locked on her body, he bent and put his mouth slowly, reverently, to her breasts, nibbling at the taut peaks, smoothing them with lips and tongue, until she arched and threaded her fingers into his hair to hold him there, to make him come closer.

  He lifted his head with a sigh. “Just a minute,” he whispered unsteadily. He moved her to one side and went to the door to lock it. Then he picked up the phone and in a deceivingly casual tone told his secretary that he was in conference until further notice and to hold all calls, regardless of their importance.

  Jolana stood watching him without even trying to protest or get away. He was teaching her a pleasure she hadn’t known before, and she wanted more. Much more.

  “Now,” he said with a slow, hot smile, “let’s try that again.”

  He stripped off his jacket and the sweater, baring a hairy, muscular, bronzed chest with muscles that seemed to ripple when he moved. He fascinated her, so unlike the men she saw on the beach or in art classes, who were usually pale and thin or flabby.

  “Like what you see?” he taunted, pausing in front of her. “So did I.” He eased her out of her jacket and the blouse and ran his big, warm hands lightly over her breasts, nudging the hardened peaks gently with his thumbs. “You were eighteen, you said. Has there not been a man since?”

  “No,” she whispered.

  “There’s about to be,” he told her, smiling slowly. “Me. Here. Now. Lie down.”

  “Nick...” she began.

  His hands swallowed her breasts. “Hush,” he whispered, nudging her back against the long leather sofa. “Lie down. I want to touch you all over like this. I want to feel that silky skin against me, under me. I want to bury myself in you...”

  “But we’re strangers...!” she moaned.

  “I knew you a thousand years ago, and you knew me,” he growled. He caught her waist and tossed her down onto the sofa, laughing as he threw himself down on top of her and let her feel the full, delicious weight of his big body. “My God, I want you!”

  “Nick, don’t,” she whispered, trying to sound convincing. “No, not like...this!” Her voice broke as his hands moved under her hips and ground them into his, letting her feel what had happened to him.

  “Like this,” he whispered at her lips, “I’m going to strip you, and touch you, and stroke you, and run my mouth over every inch of you. And then I’m going to invade you like a conquering army—and make you scream my name.”

  “I’m afraid,” she moaned. She was. Not of him, but of the bad experience she’d had so many years ago.

  He nudged her legs apart with his. His mouth opened hers softly. “You want me, too. Let me show you what a delight lovemaking can be. Let me give you the pleasure you don’t think exists.”

  He eased down and the sudden intimate contact brought tears to her eyes. She gripped his arms tightly, her eyes opening, looking straight up into his as her jaw clenched on a rush of pleasure unlike anything she’d ever known.

  “Touch me a little,” he whispered. “Stroke my body.”

  She’d never touched a man before, but there was silk in his deep voice, and she was curious about him. Her hands smoothed over his shoulders, down into the thick hair over his chest and stomach. Her fingers paused at his belt, and his lips brushed tenderly over her closed eyelids.

  “Go ahead,” he whispered gently. “Touch me there.”

  “I...never have.”

  “Don’t you want to?” he chided. “Aren’t you curious?”

  Her eyes opened and searched his, her face flushed, her hair in glorious disarray around her head. “It’s so sudden...” she whispered.

  His chest was rising and falling roughly. He lifted himself just a little and shifted, letting her feel the abrasive touch of his chest against the hard tips of her breasts. He smiled hotly when she gasped and arched up, begging for a closer contact.

  “Think about how it would feel,” he dared. “All of me, against all of you, naked, my body over yours. My lips here...and here...” His mouth opened on her breasts as he slid down against her, and the world seemed to catch fire. She felt his fingers opening her slacks so that he could kiss her flat stomach, her hips, her thighs. He had every stitch of clothing off her before she realized it, and he was doing things to her that she’d never imagined possible.

  Her voice broke and she cried out, muffling the sound by biting her lower lip. The passion was so feverish, so unexpected, that she could hardly bear to be silent.

  “Go ahead,” he whispered roughly. “Scream. No one but me will hear you. Let me hear what I’m making you feel, baby. Scream for me,” he taunted, and put his open mouth against her body in a way that made her arch in a wild, sobbing moan.

  She thought she couldn’t live, would never breathe again. She wanted him with an unexpected passion, wanted to take him, take possession of him. She cried and moaned and twisted under the passionate torment of his mouth and hands until, finally, he eased down on her and took her mouth again. But that was all he did. And he was still wearing everything except his turtleneck sweater.

  Her eyes opened, drowsy with
passion and hunger, black as coals, looking up into his dark ones. “Take me,” she whispered softly.

  He shook his head, smiling down at her with something like tenderness. “Not yet. I want you to think about it first. I won’t offer you commitment, or marriage, or anything except this, until it pleases me to leave you. You understand? I’m offering nothing permanent. Because you are...the way you are, you have to walk into it with both eyes open. This—” he sighed heavily “—is pure seduction, and I’ve long since lost my taste for it. Ten minutes after I finished, you’d hate me.”

  Her head was just beginning to clear. She searched his dark face with a quiet frown.

  “Not all men are out to hurt you,” he whispered, bending to kiss her one last time before he arched himself away and got to his feet. He stood, stretching his powerful body, looking down at her with undisguised desire and appreciation, her slender pink nakedness highlighted by the dark burgundy leather she was lying on. “My God, I could get drunk on just the sight of you!” he said.

  She stretched, too, feeling luxuriously feminine and bristling with the power to make his eyes burn like that.

  “That,” he murmured drily, “will get you in trouble. Here.” He tossed her her clothes and turned his back. “I hate being a gentleman, so hurry up, will you?” He moved away and lit a cigarette. He felt drunk on the feel of her satiny skin; the exquisite contours of her breasts and hips lingered like a beloved memory on his fingertips. It had never been that intense before. The feelings had frightened him, although he wasn’t letting her know that. He’d pulled back because he could feel himself falling into a bottomless abyss with her and it was as unwelcome as it was unexpected. He’d thought he could take her and forget her, but it seemed he couldn’t. Otherwise, how could he have drawn back?

  She was watching him as she dressed, still tingling from the contact with his long, dark fingers and recalling the exquisite pleasure he’d given her. She wanted him desperately. If one night was all she could have, that would be enough to live on. He was a dark sorcerer, and thank God he had scruples, because if he’d insisted, she wouldn’t have been able to stop him. She needed a little time. But she was afraid the outcome was preordained. He appealed to her in impossibly sweet ways, and she’d been alone too long. But she wasn’t sure she could survive an affair with him. He wasn’t the kind of man a woman could easily forget, and he was making the rules.

  When she was dressed she stood up and he turned toward her, his cigarette smoldering as he ran a hand through his thick curly hair. He smiled ruefully as his eyes wandered slowly down her body. “God, you’re sweet to love,” he murmured. “Honey and spice and silk, all woman.”

  She smiled. “You’re not bad, either,” she laughed. “Do you have to shake the women out of your sheets?”

  “Occasionally.” He moved forward, studying her with appreciation. “You look glorious when you’re aroused. All dark eyes and peachy skin and a voice that makes me tremble with hunger. I could make love to you for days on end.”

  “You’d starve,” she reminded him.

  “I wouldn’t care.” He bent and kissed her mouth softly. “Who taught you to kiss?”

  “A boy in my biology class who married my best friend.” She smiled. “I won’t even ask where you learned. That’s ancient history, I’ll bet.”

  “Pretty much.” He lifted his head. “I meant what I said,” he continued after a minute. “I want you. I’ll go slow. You can have all the time you need. But I want a few nights with you like I want water when I’m thirsty.”

  “No bribes?” she asked with a quivering smile.

  “I wouldn’t insult you by offering, Jolana,” he said honestly. “You aren’t mercenary enough to be tempted. You’d have to want me enough to take what I could give you physically. No strings. No offers. Just sex.”

  Her eyes searched his quietly. “What you’d do to me wouldn’t be just sex,” she said.

  He nodded, as if he understood. “Yes, I know. If it had been only a physical thing, I wouldn’t have stopped just now.”

  She studied her shoes with eyes that only half saw them, thinking.

  “Hey,” he said, tilting her face up to his. “Don’t make such heavy weather of it. There’s no hurry. You don’t have to make up your mind in the next five minutes.” He grinned wickedly. “You can have ten, if you want.”

  She burst out laughing, and the tension was broken. “What am I getting myself into?” she asked, shaking her head.

  “Just a little education, that’s all. Anyway, why such soul-searching? I thought all you wild artists were uninhibited.”

  She sighed. “Well, I used to think I was, until you came along. Now all my inhibitions are back full force.”

  He touched her face lightly. “Yes, I know. I like you that way. Come on. We’ll walk for a while. You like to window-shop?”

  “I love it!” she agreed.

  “So do I.” He herded her out of the office, where no one even looked up. Jolana wondered if it was a common occurrence for him to lock himself in with an attractive woman. Probably seducing women was part of his lifestyle. She tried to remind herself that it was going to be suicide, letting herself get mixed up with him. But she wasn’t listening to her own counsel. All she had to do was look at the size and sensuality of that big, dark body and she wanted him to the roots of her nerves.

  He didn’t pressure her. They walked companionably down Fifth Avenue, gazing in shop windows, and she laughed as he seemed as fascinated by jewelry windows as she was.

  “I used to do this when I was a kid,” he told her. “Stand in front of toy stores and jewelry stores, and I always swore when I got grown, I was going to have an electric train set and a diamond ring.”

  She touched his broad, dark hand. “You got the ring, I see,” she stated drily, eying the diamond in the center of a majestic gold ring on his right-hand ring finger. “How about the train set?”

  He shrugged. “I wouldn’t have time to run it,” he said ruefully.

  “Maybe Santa Claus will bring you one next year.”

  “I never believed in him,” he said absently. “Times were so damned hard, and presents were a luxury we couldn’t afford. Mama waited tables, I cleared them. Between us, we managed to keep food on the table and not much more.” His eyes darkened and he jammed his hands deep in his pockets. “Mama saw to it that I graduated from high school. And, honey, you’ll never know how she paid to keep me there. She hasn’t been in good health for a lot of years, so I took over the burden when I got old enough. I got Rick and Marc through school by myself, and I managed college by playing the stock market.” He glanced down at her with a thin smile. “Even then, I had a facility for it. I took advantage of that and bought up stock in a magazine that was about to fold. Where we went today is what I built from the ashes.”

  “My gosh,” she whispered.

  “Money is where it’s at, didn’t you know?” he asked. There was ice in his voice, pure ice. He stared at the diamond in the window, an engagement ring, with eyes just as cold. “Mama remarried, and on the third time she got lucky. This one got rich all by himself, and I respect him, and I call him ‘Papa,’ because it’s what she wants. But if I’d had money, my mother might not be in such bad health today, and I might have married the girl I loved.”

  “Did she marry somebody who did have money?” she asked, curious.

  He took a slow breath. “She married another man because I’d had her, and she thought she was pregnant,” he said bluntly. “I couldn’t handle a wife, with all the burdens I had at the time, and she knew it. So she didn’t tell me, and she married that...” His shoulders hunched and fell. “By the time I found out the real reason, it was far too late. She wasn’t pregnant, but a few months later, she was. She had his baby and gave him a hold on her that she was never able to break. He beats her and abuses her, and there isn’t a damned thing anybod
y can do, because he’s threatened to take the child if she leaves him.”

  “I’m so sorry,” she said gently. “You still love her.”

  “I don’t believe in love,” he said gruffly. He turned away. “Let’s walk some more.”

  By now Jolana knew without having to be told that the woman Nick had loved was Margery. She remembered the longing way Margery had looked at him at the party and sadly realized that their love was still as strong as ever.

  Nick was a strange man, complex, moody. But she felt a kind of kinship with him. Her own life had been a hard one, with a foundation of poverty and hopelessness. Her fingers reached out and touched his as they moved down the windy street to the sound of loud horns and the never-ending stream of yellow taxicabs.

  He stiffened for a minute. Then his fingers wound into hers, linking with them, and tightened, palm to palm. A shiver of remembered passion tingled down her slender body and she felt alive as she never had before.

  They went out that night, to an exclusive restaurant overlooking the city, and she ate prime rib and drank expensive imported wine and enjoyed flaming desserts. Nick laughed at her enthusiasm.

  “Surely you’ve done this before?” he teased.

  “Yes, but it never gets old,” she sighed. She leaned back in her chair, holding the delicate china cup of coffee in her hand, and smiled at him. “I had a hard life myself as a child. No money, no close relatives except an uncle who was good with his fist. I got knocked around a lot.”

  His expression hardened as he studied her face in its frame of wildly beautiful golden hair, her dark eyes, the silky complexion of her skin against her emerald-green dress. “I can’t imagine a man doing that to you,” he said honestly. “You must have been a beautiful child.”

  She sipped her coffee. “I was ragged and dirty and I worked all the time. It would have taken a team of beauticians to make me look human, much less beautiful.”

  “Where were your parents?”

  “My mother died when I was about ten. My father left me with his brother and went off to enjoy himself,” she laughed. “I never saw him again, so I assume he’s still enjoying himself somewhere.”