“What’s so amusing?”
“Lady, when you start kissing, you don’t fool around. You could melt a glacier.” As if fueled by his memories, his voice dropped a full register and his eyes darkened. She reached for the bottle of wine, and her shaking fingers betrayed her reaction to the desire that possessed him.
“Give me that,” he said, taking the bottle from her and pouring them each half a glass. He held a glass to her lips and, after she sipped the wine, he drank from the same glass, never taking his gaze from her face. Then he repeated the ritual with the other glass, taking the first sip himself and giving her the remainder.
He set the glasses on the table in front of them, and she stared into the dark desire of his mesmerizing eyes. Immobile. Transfixed. Never had she seen his need spread so blatantly across his face. Exposed. Nothing hidden. Her nerves tingled with exhilaration, drowning her in a pool of sensuality. She crossed and uncrossed her knees, balled and released her fists until at last her bosom heaved and she had to breathe through her mouth. Still he gazed. She thought she would scream with the need to feel his hands, lips and tongue all over her.
“Nelson,” she said in desperation.
“Come here. I need to taste you.”
For a split second she stared at the impassioned turbulence in his eyes, breathing his breath and smelling his heat, and then, with trembling lips and a thunderous pounding of her heart, she opened her arms to him. He lifted her into his lap, bent to her parted lips and let her know once more the sweet torture of his tongue claiming her. Possessing her. She heard her own moans as she sucked his tongue deeply into her mouth and feasted. More. More. She needed more of him. His lips caressed her eyes, cheeks and the corner of her mouth until she thought she would scream. Jolts of electricity whistled through her veins until, caring for nothing but the way he made her feel, she grabbed his hand and plunged it into the bosom of her strapless dress. And, as if waiting for that move, he freed her breast from the confines of her dress and sucked her areola into his mouth, sending fevered sensations to every nerve in her body.
“Oh, Lord!” she cried aloud from the pleasure of it.
Heat roared arrow-straight to her feminine center, and the tugging of his mouth at her nipple plunged her deeper and deeper into the whirlpool of desire. She squirmed, crossing and uncrossing her knees until the warm liquid of love flowed from her. Beyond control now, she struggled to get to him, to feel him, to get him inside her, and frantically grasped his belt buckle. But he stilled her hand.
“Are you sure?”
“Yes. Yes.”
“If I take you up those stairs, we’ll—”
“It’s what I want. Here. Right now.”
“No,” he whispered, “not here.” He lifted her into his arms and raced up the stairs.
Standing at the edge of her bed, he set her on her feet and stared down at her, his face a question mark, as if waiting for permission.
Without a thought as to what she did or why, she grabbed a handful of his shirt and pulled it. The fire of desire blazed in his eyes, and his breathing quickened. Her fingers worked at his belt buckle, and he allowed it, seemingly passive. Letting her have her way. And as if emboldened by his permissiveness, she threw off his jacket, loosened his tie and began to unbutton his shirt. Suddenly, arms of steel imprisoned her body, and he plunged his tongue into her mouth, stunning her with the force of his passion.
His hot hands on her naked flesh as he sent her zipper downward released a gut-searing sensation in her and, not caring about anything but him and what he had in store for her, she unzipped him. But he stopped her, lifted her, and lay her on the bed. She threw off her bra and let him see her bare of all but the red bikini hiding her treasure.
He stepped out of his pants, tore off his shirt and stood before her, a brown Adonis, muscled, strong and all man. Gazing at the treasure before her, she swallowed the liquid that had accumulated in her mouth, reached out and pulled away the tiny G-string that cupped him and let him spill into her hands. She wanted to kiss him, but he didn’t give her the chance. After protecting her, he covered her with his body and wrapped her in his arms.
With his arms cradling her head, he kissed her eyes, her cheeks, neck, nibbled at her ears and, when she thought she could no longer stand it, his lips covered hers, at last giving her his tongue. He didn’t linger there, but inched downward until his lips fastened on her left nipple and began that rhythmic sucking motion that made her scream for relief.
“You’re nowhere near ready,” he whispered. “Just let me love you.’
He moved to suckle her right breast while his fingers tortured her left one, teasing and tantalizing until she thought her body would incinerate. His lips skimmed the sides of her breasts, and shivers raced through her as he adored her belly. But when his fingers teased the insides of her thighs, barely touching her flesh, she tensed. He looked up at her.
“Relax, love, I’m only going to make you happy. Trust me.”
“I do. I do. But I’m going out of my mind.”
“Good.”
When he lifted her knees over his shoulders and parted her folds, she stopped breathing. Then the tip of his tongue fired the nub of her passion, and, as if of their own volition, her hips swung up to meet him, and he loved her until an unfamiliar throbbing began at the bottom of her feet and an awful fullness gripped her. Nearly mindless, she screamed for relief.
“Nelson, honey, I can’t stand this, I’m so full. I...I need to—”
“Be patient, baby, and I’ll give you what you need,” he said, and sipped the love liquid that flowed from her. Then he kissed his way slowly up her body, torturing her senses. With one hand around her shoulder and the other beneath her hips, he kissed her cheek and pressed against her. Feeling him at her portal, she thought she’d go mad if he didn’t enter, and flung her body up to force his penetration and winced at the pain.
“It’s been a long time for you,” he whispered. “Be patient.”
He entered slowly and, after allowing her to adjust to him, flexed his hips and let her have the powerful thrust of his loins, moving in and out of her, twisting and circling. Loving her. Staking his claim. She caught his rhythm and moved with him as if in a choreographed dance.
“Ooh!” she said as a pumping and squeezing began in the muscles of her vagina. “Honey, I’m so full, and I can’t...I want to burst...please, I—”
“You will. Concentrate on that feeling. We’re going to fly out of here together.”
“But—”
She couldn’t speak. Couldn’t think. He was all around her, over her, on her and in her. Surely she was dying. And then she sank until the bottom fell out of her as he hurtled her into a vortex of ecstasy.
“Nelson!” she cried. “Nelson. Nelson. I love you.”
* * *
It was more than he’d hoped for or ever dreamed could happen to him again. He had a woman beneath him who wanted him, wanted him to know it, didn’t have to fake and wasn’t stingy with her loving. And miracle of miracles, she was the woman he adored. He wanted to give her everything, with no care for his own feelings or needs. He gloried in her hard, driving passion. Fired by her body’s demands as well as his own, he drove into her with every trick at his command, using his strength and skill to please her. He meant to love her until he drained her of desire.
Her moans and pleas threatened to drive him to completion, and he bent to her sweet lips. Her little moves triggered in him a desire for release, but he told himself to think of something else. Anything. As he pictured the battle of Orleans, her muscles clutched at him, squeezing and pinching him and finally erupting in spasms and shaking him to the core of his being. He held fast, until he heard the words “I love you.”
“I’m yours. Yours and nobody else’s!” he shouted, and poured the essence of life into her as he splintered
in her arms. Her own arms tightened around him and he gripped her to him, stunned by the force of his release and of his feeling for her.
He raised up. “Look at me,” he whispered. “I’m in love with you. I didn’t want it to happen, but it has and I’m not sorry. You said you love me. Does that still hold now that you’re back to earth?”
“Yes. It holds. That’s why I’m here with you like this. As you said, I was afraid of this, but I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”
The eyes into which he gazed blessed him with a wordless affirmation of love, holding him transfixed, suspending him in a cloud of joy such as he had never experienced, not even with the woman to whom—in what now seemed the aeonian past—he had pledged his troth. His heart fluttered as he drank in the wonder of Audrey lying beneath him, and he gathered her closer, wanting to shield her from anything and everything that could hurt a single hair on her head or cause her one second of pain.
Frustrated by his inability to express what lodged so deeply and so solidly inside of him, he kissed her nose, and she rewarded him with a softening of her features into a loving smile.
After a long time, he said, “I’d move because I’m probably putting too much weight on you but, silly as it sounds, I can’t bear to stop feeling your skin against mine and your breasts against my chest. Do you mind?”
She raised both arms toward the ceiling, closed her eyes, shifted her hips beneath him and stretched like a sated feline.
“Why should I mind? You’re not putting your weight on me. Besides, you’re right where you belong.”
He wasn’t in the mood for loose talk. He didn’t want to hear nice words that would be forgotten within minutes, words that fell glibly from the tongue and not from the heart.
“I’m still inside of you. Is this where I belong? Is it?”
Her gaze didn’t waver, but fixed on him almost as if in defiance. “So long as you meet the conditions for entrance, yes. But those conditions can change.”
She had never misled him and she was honest with him then. It was a trait that he prized. “I’m aware of that. It goes both ways,” he said, and then repeated it to make certain that she understood him. “Is there another man in your life who is important to you?”
She stirred, either restless or impatient with the question. He wasn’t sure which.
“I’m not involved with anyone else, and you have to know—”
He wouldn’t let her say it. “I knew it had been a really long time for you because you were as tight as a virgin. What I want to know is whether you’re willing for us to try and find out whether what we feel for each other is solid enough to build a life on.”
She dragged her fingers out of his hair, and a pensive expression traveled over her face. “This wasn’t easy for me. Admitting to myself that I wanted this with you, that I needed to...to make love with you, was a big thing for me, and I took an enormous step when I let myself follow through and accept what I yearned for. It isn’t you, my reluctance has always been my problem with me.” She took a deep breath. “I’m scared, Nelson. I don’t doubt that I love you, but—”
“Then can you at least commit to giving us a chance?”
“I want to see what we’ve got going for us, but I can’t bear the thought of ever again going out on a limb only to have it chopped off. What you don’t know is that that man was the first and the only one. What he did nearly made me into a man-hater. I... Sorry I mentioned that. Thoughts of him send my blood pressure up.”
He stroked her forehead and let his fingers caress the silken flesh of her cheek. “Will you tell me about it? Sometimes it helps to talk these things out.”
“Maybe sometime. I don’t want to spoil our time together, and that’s exactly what would happen if I began to relive it.”
“I understand, but I hope someday you’ll be able to talk to me about it. Until you do, it will be a barrier between us, a small one maybe, but an obstacle nonetheless.” He raised himself up on his elbows and pinned his gaze on her eyes. “Give us a chance, Audrey. I need to know. I...if it’s ‘no,’ I can take it, but—”
“All right. If I trusted you enough to lie with you in bed this way, I can take the next step.”
He’d settle for that, he told himself, and he would make certain that her thoughts didn’t stray far from him. “You feel all right?”
She raised an eyebrow. “Who, me?”
He almost laughed. “Yes, you. Did you get straightened out? Did you climax?”
Her eyes widened and her face took on an air of innocence, which he didn’t doubt she feigned. “You mean...gee, was something special supposed to happen?”
“Liar. You’re damned right something was supposed to happen, and it should have been extra-special.”
“Really? Oh.”
He’d teach her a thing or two. Looking into her eyes, he stroked her left nipple until she sucked in her breath and lowered her gaze. He rolled it between his thumb and index finger, and when she swallowed again and again he pulled it into his mouth and sucked on it until her moans filled the room.
Fully erect, he began to move, and she met his thrust with a ravenous body, the body of a woman fully cognizant of the rewards in store for her. When he felt her love tunnel begin to clutch and squeeze him, signaling the advent of her completion, he slowed down, broke the rhythm and looked at her.
“Nothing happened, huh? You practically wrung me out of socket, but you didn’t feel anything special. Right?”
She thrashed her head to the side. “You stop teasing me. You hear?”
He kissed her top lip. “I’m not the one who’s teasing. You’re squeezing me damned near senseless, blowing my mind, and I’m feeling like a king. But if not a damned thing is happening to you, it’s one-sided, and it’s selfish of me to—”
Her fist pounded his back. “If you leave me hanging like this, I’ll...I’ll... Nelson, please!”
“Did you have an orgasm? Was it good for you? Was it?”
“You know it was. I’ve never felt like that before. Never. Oh, Nelson, I’m somewhere between hell and high water. Do something!”
“Then don’t tell me tales. You love me?”
“Yes. Yes, I love you. But I won’t if you’re mean to me.”
“Mean to you? Never, sweetheart. I can’t even imagine it.” He rimmed her lips with his tongue, wrapped his arms around her and took her on a short, sweet ride to paradise.
* * *
Later, driving home, he thought of the commitment he’d just made, not in words but in his actions and in his own heart. And how he’d hated to leave her, to walk away from the sweetest loving he had ever experienced. He didn’t want Ricky to awaken and become anxious when he realized his uncle wasn’t home, but of equal importance to him was the need to shield Audrey from the all-knowing NSS. Whom she made love with was none of the government’s business.
At the Fourteenth Street Bridge leading to Alexandria, he slowed down to a crawl and eased to the shoulder to give an ambulance the right-of-way. Realizing that there had been an accident, he got out of his car.
“Can I help?” he asked a police officer.
The officer shook his head. “Too late. One of these days, teenagers will learn that the automobile is not a toy.”
He got back in his car to wait until the traffic cleared, and his thoughts went to his nephew. He would instill in Ricky a sense of responsibility, a respect for law and the rights of others. Bracing his arms against the steering wheel, he wondered at the level of commitment parenthood entailed. He wanted children of his own, but how could he teach them how to live if he was putting out fires thousands of miles away from them? He wanted action, always had, and he needed it. And he wanted those four silver stars on his collar. But he also needed a family and...and Audrey Powers.
The traffic began to
move, and the policeman waved him on. But he drove slowly, contemplating his life. By the time he walked into his house he had resolved that someone in an official capacity was going to tell him why he was an agent’s target. And soon.
Chapter 8
She had always heard that after lovemaking, a woman should feel warm, cozy and sleepy, a pile of warm mush. And loved. Warm and cozy, yes. Loved, definitely. But after daydreaming and fantasizing about Nelson, counting sheep and even doing imaginary neck massages, she remained wide-awake. She reached inside the drawer of her night table for her copy of Donna Hill’s An Ordinary Woman and read for an hour, but couldn’t get sleepy.
What’s the matter with me? I never have trouble falling asleep. She got up, went downstairs and reclined in the chaise longue on her porch, away from the print of his body on the sheet beside her, away from his special scent, the smell of lovemaking, and the drugging reminders of how she felt when he was inside of her. Away from the scene of her capitulation to the demands of her heart, body, mind and soul. And in the quiet of that moonlit night, she grappled with the conflict between her head and her heart. She had conditioned herself to life without the emotional seesaw that being in love guaranteed. She had learned to walk alone, to chart her own course and to follow it, but that was before she’d loved Nelson Wainwright.
He said he welcomed loving her and all that that implied, but she knew he might find that he cherished his freedom more than he cherished her. As for her, she already knew she’d have trouble living without him. She had experienced the pain and the disappointment that could puncture one’s life when love soured like a jar of overripe fruit. Love him, she did, but she was going to move cautiously. Very cautiously. She had no choice.
A soft breeze and the chirping of robins and sparrows awoke her the next morning as red, gray and blue streaks of color announced the rise of the sun. Groggy from having slept lightly, she found her way up the stairs, showered and dressed. The phone rang as she entered the kitchen to make coffee.
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