She twisted a little in his grasp, wanting her hands on him again, but he didn’t let go. She could see him, his eyes on her as her back arched and her breasts pushed up at him, taut nipples visibly peaking against the thin cotton.
She watched him watching her. Knew pleasure at the sight of her own breasts moving toward him on a deep inhale and felt heat bloom between her legs. She wrapped her thighs around his hips and locked her heels behind his back, searching for more pressure and clenching her muscles tightly around him.
He let go of her wrists for an instant, fisting his hand in the hem of her loose tank top and yanking it with one pull up over her head, tangling her too-slow hands in fabric cuffs.
“You can still stop this, even now.” His lake-blue eyes were dark above her, his golden hair bleached pale in the moonlight. He rested his palm on her stomach, his hand spread possessively over her rib cage, the tips of his fingers brushing the undersides of her breasts. “Tell me this isn’t right for you and I’ll stop. But I’m warning you,” he murmured, dipping his head and running the tip of his tongue along her collarbone and then in a straight line down the slope of her breast, stopping a hair’s breadth from her nipple. His warm breath feathered over her skin. She pressed her shoulders into the mattress to make him take her in his mouth. “I’ll probably jump out the window if you do.”
He pulled her nipple into his mouth and curled his tongue around her, sucking lightly. Covered her other breast with his palm, tracing lacelike patterns on her shivering skin. The combined sensations burst in her like sudden white heat after a long, sizzling fuse.
She settled her linked hands behind his neck and pressed him to the heart of her. Freeing herself, she tossed her tank top into the dark room and yanked hard on his hair.
“Ouch. Stop it. Busy here.” He barely lifted his head.
Soft hair waved between her fingers and what felt like the heat of the sun was radiating from his mouth to every cell in her body. But she wanted more. Now.
She yanked again and dragged his face up to hers. Nose to nose in the dark, she made her intentions clear.
“It’s right for me.” She gentled her hands on him, stroking her fingers through the hair she’d abused so roughly. “I want you. Inside me.” She could feel her own wet, melting heat and knew she was ready. “Now.”
“Just one more thing,” he said, and slid down her body, hooking his thumbs in the waistband of her pajama shorts and dragging them down her legs.
“Excellent idea.” She barely got the words out before he slid his palms from her ankles up the length of her legs, pushing her thighs apart, and the heat of his mouth on her had her gasping for air.
“Reed.” His name rode on a low moan pushed out from deep inside her.
“You only call me that when you’re impatient,” he said, and his breath on the most sensitive part of her was pure torture. His thumbs traced lines of fire up and down the inner crease of her thighs. “Just let me do this. I’ve been imagining it forever.”
His low hum of approval was still vibrating on his lips as he bent back to her, and the touch made her cry out. Clenching spasms wracked her body until she couldn’t even feel him touching because she was tight, so tightly spinning, and then melting in sudden release.
The last cry was still on her lips as he moved up her body and eased himself inside her in one smooth motion. The absolute rightness of the feeling, of their two bodies joined in exquisite stillness, made her hand tremble as she lifted it to his face. She stroked his cheek. And then he began to move and she was lost again to pure sensation, his flesh on hers, inside and out.
She barely heard herself whimper as she climaxed. He surged against her one last time and she felt him collapse over her. They were both heaving deep breaths and her muscles were weak and achy. She was warm where he lay on her, but the sheen of sweat on her limbs began to chill. With one tired arm, she reached down, dragged a sheet up over the both of them and fell asleep with Spencer still inside her.
When Addy woke up, the room was still dark. Spencer lay facedown next to her, one arm draped over her waist, his face buried in a pillow. She levered herself up on one elbow and peered over his sleeping form at the digital clock.
Less than three hours had passed since she’d walked into his room. Three hours and a world of difference.
She looked at her lover, her husband, laying next to her and wished she could see his face. Suddenly it seemed to her that he was a stranger. A stranger she was sleeping with, was married to. It was silly, but with only his back visible to her, it worried her that she might not be able to pick him out of a lineup. She tried to grin at the idea, a row of men all stripped to the waist and her behind a two-way mirror, lips pursed, saying, “I’m not sure…could you ask number three to flex?” But the kernel of truth in the idea killed the humor.
Before she could change her mind, before she could lean over and press her mouth to his shoulder and stroke his hair until he awoke, she swung her legs over the edge of the bed, eased his arm off her lap and stood up. She stopped on her way to the door to scoop up her tank top, guessed that her shorts were kicked to the bottom of his bed, under the sheet, and decided to leave them behind.
She eased the door open and left as quietly as she’d entered. Back in her room, the sheets were cold and her body was sore as she crawled into her own bed. She set the alarm and curled up in a tight ball in the center of the bed. Sleep was a long time coming.
In the morning, she felt awkward, wondering if by leaving in the middle of the night she’d made things worse between them than if she’d stayed. She knew she’d been right, but still, regret washed her certainty away.
Suppose she had stayed. She didn’t know what would have been more difficult: to wake up to distance, Spencer gone from the bed before her or emotionally absent, or to wake up to moments of tenderness and gentle touch, like a husband and wife in love and coming to consciousness in each other’s arms, with a long slow morning of making love beckoning.
But it was Monday morning and the real world waited. They were husband and wife, but they weren’t in love.
And if she let herself live a fantasy when she was making love with him, she had to step out of that fantasy once the love-making stopped.
She lingered in the kitchen, eyeing her watch but unwilling to leave the house without seeing Spencer. When she heard his heavy footsteps on the stairs, she turned to the counter and poured him a mug of coffee, needing something to do so that she wasn’t just standing there, waiting for him.
She stepped back from the counter when he entered the room, leaving the full mug and indicating with her chin that it was for him, knowing by now that he wasn’t capable of speech for a minute.
He splashed cream in the mug and then drained it in long swallows. Poured himself another cup and sipped it like a normal human being, eyes opening as the heat jump-started his system even before the caffeine hit him. He looked at her and made a wordless up-and-down gesture at her body with one hand. She read the question with ease.
“I have a zoning meeting tonight in Evanston.” Glancing down at herself, she wondered if it was the first time he’d seen her out of jeans. She imagined that the women he normally dated wore outfits like this all the time. The little black suit had cost her a month’s pay but went over well with aldermen and city council members when she had to make presentations.
Eyeing him, she conceded that he certainly didn’t need a suit to look good. The black sweatpants he wore rode low enough that she could see the wedge of muscle defining his hip bone. She remembered putting her mouth there the night before.
She dragged her eyes back up to his face as he leaned that hip against the counter and crossed his ankles. He cradled the coffee mug in both hands. The power of speech had returned to him.
“I didn’t think you’d leave.”
His voice was calm, measured. She envied him his cool, unemotional mind-set as she struggled to find a way to explain why she had.
�
�I had to,” she began. When he just waited for her, she remembered something he’d said to her last night. “Coming to you last night was right for me. For us, I hope. But staying until morning wouldn’t have been.” She knew that was no explanation but hoped it would be enough for him.
“Can you tell me why?”
Apparently not. Damn. More words.
“Look. If we were dating—” he lifted an eyebrow at her words “—sleeping together, whatever you call it, things would follow a certain course.” She started pacing, needing the outlet for her energy. The unfamiliar sounding of her heels clicking on the slate-tiled floor followed her. “Some days we’d see each other, some days we wouldn’t, right?” He nodded slowly, as if waiting to see where she would take this. “Maybe you’d stay over at my place one night and maybe I’d stay over at yours the next.”
His interruption was quick and to the point. “And I’d want you to stay until the morning every time.”
Clearly she’d chosen the wrong analogy.
She stopped walking and faced him with all she had left. The truth.
“You may have carried me over the threshold, Spencer, but I’m not ready to start acting like your wife, sharing a bed and a bathroom every day, just because I slept with you.”
She was holding her breath as she waited for him to say something. When he put the coffee mug down and walked over to her, Addy didn’t know whether to step back or move toward him. Indecision rooted her on the spot.
Stopping in front of her, Spencer reached out, cradled her face in his hands and kissed her on the mouth. His lips were gentle on hers for a moment. Then he lifted his head and looked in her eyes.
“Okay.”
She could breathe again. Her inhale was shaky as she leaned into him, wrapping her arms around him, hoping he could feel the gratitude in her hug. Once again, he was letting her set the rules.
And if she wondered for a moment why he never seemed to want more than she offered, that was her own damn fault.
Pulling away, he swatted her on the butt and sent her out the door.
“Go, I know you’re late.” She shot a last look of thanks over her shoulder as she scooped the briefcase she’d exchanged for her usual backpack off the floor and left. He winked at her. “Feel free to stop in and say hi when you get home.”
She knew she shouldn’t. She’d managed to get through an entire conversation about how she didn’t want to be with him every night without ruining everything. The smart thing to do would be to hold back, sleep alone and give an example of what she meant. But the house was so quiet when Addy finally got home and her room was so empty. During the entire day, thoughts of him had never been far from her mind.
So she forgave herself when she went back to Spencer’s room, not trying to sneak in without waking him this time. He woke in a moment and reached for her in the dark. She flowed over him, already naked as he was, and covered his mouth with her own, not wanting the risk of words.
Their loving was silent except for the soft cries of pleasure she couldn’t keep from spilling past her lips. She curved over him in the night until he shuddered beneath her, and then found her own climax riding on the wave of his.
When he wrapped an arm around her as she lay next to him, sweat cooling on her skin, she let him. But she didn’t close her eyes, and when she knew that he slept, she left him and went back to her room.
She took the next day off work, thinking she needed the time at home alone to clear her mind. But after an hour of sitting with her thoughts and a cup of tea, on an armchair near a sunny window, she decided that her thoughts were beyond help and got up again.
Spencer found her on her knees in one of the upstairs bathrooms, peeling the last remnants of a puce-green wallpaper from the edge of the floorboards. When she looked up, she saw that he was holding a bottle of Diet Coke and a wax-paper-wrapped sandwich out to her.
“Somehow I knew you’d be home early today.”
“Didn’t go in at all. Personal day.” A stray curl had escaped from the casual braid she’d pulled her hair back in. She brushed it off her forehead with the back of one hand, reached out with the other. He knew her priorities and handed her the cola first. She twisted the lid off and drank as he eyed the walls, then her messy clothes. She shrugged.
“I know. It’s not technically my house yet. But no one should have to live with a color like that.”
He smiled at her. “You’re absolutely right.”
Cans of paint were lined up on the floor like soldiers. He leaned over and looked at the sample splotches of paint on each lid, all shades of blue.
“I thought it should look like the ocean in here,” she said.
“Give me a minute to change and I’ll help you sand it down.”
She’d been enjoying doing the work herself but found that she welcomed the idea of working with Spencer, too. When he came back to the bathroom in old jeans and a T-shirt, she handed him a white face mask, stretched the elastic band of her mask over her hair and set about raising some dust.
Not until they took a break and headed down to the kitchen, careful not to touch anything with their plaster-powder–covered hands, did she find out that he’d had a reason for searching her out so early in the afternoon.
After minimal cleanup—what her mother would call a lick and a polish—they grabbed drinks and stepped out the back door to get some fresh air. Addy stood halfway down the stairs while Spencer walked down to the grass.
“Thanks for the help,” she said, sucking clean, crisp air deep into her lungs. “I’m glad you came home early.”
“Well, I wanted to talk to you.”
She refused to tense up at the thought of another uncomfortable conversation.
“We haven’t exactly been careful, Addy.”
She gave him a blank look, and reached a hand up to feel for the face mask still perched on top of her curls, sure she had made them both follow such a basic safety precaution.
Spencer rolled his eyes at her.
“I’m talking about safety in the bedroom, not the bath.”
Comprehension dawned. She sat down hard on the cement step. Their two nights together rushed through her mind in vivid detail, right down to the sensation of having him inside her.
Bare skin on bare skin.
She didn’t say anything, staring at her hands as they strangled the neck of the cola bottle and trying to figure out how she’d lost her mind so completely that she’d let this happen.
“Are you on anything?” His question lifted her head. She laughed harshly.
“Other than the occasional aspirin?” She shook her head. “No. It’s been so long—Jesus, how could I be so stupid? The last thing I need is to end up an—”
“Unwed mother?” He finished her sentence. The silence between them was its own comment.
“It’d end up being exactly that,” she said finally. When he opened his mouth to speak, she kept talking. She didn’t want to hear his denial or his promises. “Look, let’s not go jumping to any conclusions here.” She did a rapid mental count of days. “I’m probably fine. And if I have a problem, that’s what it is. My problem.”
He came over to the steps and stood between her bent knees. Taking the bottle from her, he set it on the stairs and gathered her hands in his.
“Don’t be ridiculous. If we have a problem, it’s ours, and I want you to tell me immediately.” She set her lips together and eventually nodded. She could agree with his intentions without promising anything. “As far as the rest goes, I’ve taken care of it.”
Statistics about the failure rate of condoms flashed to the front of her mind. “That’s fine, but twice as safe is better. I’ll call my doctor tomorrow.”
But when she spoke to her doctor the next morning, the woman told her that she’d need to wait until they were sure she wasn’t pregnant. She could start the Pill on her next cycle, though.
Stress at the idea of an unwanted pregnancy cooled things between them for a little while
but not during the night. Addy didn’t think anything could keep her from Spencer’s bed in the middle of the night, from the shivering pleasure she found there time after time. But it was harder to look at him in the middle of the afternoon and not wonder if she was making such a mess of her life that she might never be able to repair it.
Try as she might, she couldn’t make herself care about that.
Another weekend rolled around and she’d settled into a state of assumed calm, when Spencer pitched another curve-ball at her.
“You want me to what?”
Her bottle of cola rattled as she slammed it down on the little round-topped wrought-iron table. The weather was warm enough on the first day of May that they’d decided to grill dinner outside and eat in the backyard. It had been a very pleasant meal up until right about now.
Spencer was grinning at her from across the table, the Chinese paper lanterns she’d strung up over the back door making his hair shine red-gold. The smell of hickory smoke and steak, grilled to perfection, still hung in the air.
“It’s not like I’m daring you to strip naked and run around the block.”
“I did that in college,” she retorted. “Won fifty bucks on a bet and enjoyed it a lot more than what you’re proposing.”
He laughed out loud. “Trust me. This is much easier.”
“Says you.”
“It’s just dinner with a colleague and his wife.” He snagged her free hand and pressed a quick kiss to her knuckles. She wasn’t falling for that. “C’mon. Come with me. You can tell ’em you’re my girlfriend,” he offered in persuasion.
She stuck her tongue out at him. “I don’t know if that’s better or worse than the truth.”
“Fine. You can tell them you’re my willing sex slave.”
“Well, that much is true,” she said, frowning, until his sudden hot look and the hand he slid up her arm to stroke at the crook of her elbow reminded her that she wasn’t to be persuaded. “Besides, it’s not just dinner. It’s dinner and the symphony.” She said the last word as if she was scraping something icky off her tongue.
Sleeping Arrangements (Silhouette Desire) Page 14