by LETO, JULIE
And yet, his need for her spiked so high, he felt dizzy.
He missed her. He missed seeing her. He missed touching her. Hearing her voice stirred him up as if she’d spoken with provocative innuendo instead of strained aggravation. A week away from her had done nothing to counteract their powerful attraction. In fact, the longer he went without her—so keenly aware that she was just a floor above him that he imagined hearing her footsteps— the more he realized how wrong he’d been.
He couldn’t analyze his way out of the inevitable. He wanted Anne Miller in his life—and in his bed. Even with sloppy clothes and a bone-tired expression, she was the most beautiful woman he’d ever seen. She understood him. Connected with him. How could he throw that all away just because he might fall in love with her sooner rather than later?
“I brought you something,” he said, responding to her impatient huff. “You said you liked Mexican food and salsa verde. I made enchiladas for that party up on eight and thought maybe you’d like to try some. Before I go up. Unless you’re going, too?”
To help his case, he unfolded the aluminum foil. The smell was bright with cilantro and smoky with cumin. He’d tossed a generous helping of fresh pico de gallo over the top and the combination of scents and colors seemed to soften her expression.
“Smells good,” she said. “I’m sure everyone will love it.”
“I wasn’t concerned with everyone,” he said, presenting the plate. “This is for you.”
She quirked an eyebrow. “Peace offering?”
“I hope so.”
She shook her head and started to close the door. “I’m not playing this game, Michael.”
“It’s not a game,” he insisted, blocking the door and thrusting the plate into her hands. “It’s a gift. Really. No strings.”
She hesitated, but then gripped the plate so that he could safely let go. Her expression, however, remained resolute.
“I’ll take the enchiladas because they look delicious and I’m starving and because you made them. But I think I was pretty clear last week—”
“Crystal clear,” he assured her. “Now it’s my turn to be just as transparent. Anne, I was wrong. Painfully wrong. I haven’t stopped thinking about you all week. And I hoped that if you liked the enchiladas—and even if you didn’t—that you would give us another chance.”
Her mouth quivered and though it might have been a result of her obvious exhaustion, her eyes glossed, heightening the richness of her deep brown eyes.
“Seriously?” she asked.
“In every sense of the word. I’m sorry, Anne. I miss you. I miss you like crazy.”
She set the plate down on a table just inside the apartment. Before he could take a single step forward on his own steam, she grabbed his shirt at the chest, balled the material in her hands and launched her lips against his.
The explosion of sensations rocked him harder than any music, filled him fuller than any food. He could not get enough of her and was only vaguely aware of leaving the hallway. One of them shut the door, probably with a foot since both arms and hands were engaged in the finest make-up kiss ever shared between a guy who’d temporarily lost his mind and the woman who had the amazing capacity to forgive.
By the time they came up for breath, Mike had to lean on the back of her couch to regain his balance.
“I can’t believe you’re giving me a second chance,” he said.
“Who said I am?” she replied, coyly toying with the top button of his Oxford shirt. “I still haven’t tasted those enchiladas. Maybe my forgiveness will depend on your ratio of cilantro to tomato in the salsa.”
He’d missed her sense of humor—her ability to tease and taunt him about one thing while his mind overloaded with images of something so much more important than food. But before any taste testing commenced, Mike took her hands and reeled her in, pressing full against her, knowing his body was hard and primed and wanting her to know it, too.
“I’d rather taste you.” He dipped his head to nibble on her neck, savoring the flavors of her flesh and the feel of her pulse on his lips.
“I’m a mess,” she said, though her conviction was weakened by the pleasured noises emanating from the back of her throat.
“No,” he insisted, kissing a path from her throat to her earlobe. “You’re delicious.”
She chuckled and the vibration beneath his mouth drove him past caring about anything but savoring the sensation of his mouth on her skin and his hands on her body. Against him, she writhed in maddening rhythms that reminded him of cool jazz. Slow, cadenced, and quivering with barely contained sensuality.
He’d never wanted a woman this intensely. He’d never allowed himself to fall so hard, so fast. Making love to Anne wouldn’t be the next step in a rising flowchart of cause and effect, but an unexpected explosion of irresistible forces.
She untucked his shirt and explored beneath the fabric, sending lightning strikes of sensation through his system as her hands ran up his back and down his obliques. He broke the kiss only long enough to whip off her sweatshirt, only briefly registering the glossy silk of her lingerie before closing his eyes and losing himself in the utter ecstasy of her kiss.
Their tongues clashed, battled and pleasured. Their hands roamed and explored. Though he was mildly aware of television voices chattering in the background, in his mind, the music shifted from jazz to rock ’n’ roll. Hard-driving, guitar-heavy, drum-pounding beats surging from deep within his soul.
Wrangling every ounce of his self-control, he broke away from her. He needed her the same way he needed air, but he had to give her a chance to backdown or at the very least, slow things up.
“The enchiladas are getting cold,” he said, panting.
“What enchiladas?”
Her sassy comeback stoked him to a burning point. When she took his hand and led him to her bedroom, he hardly registered the mounds of clothes on her bed. She swept them onto the floor, clearing the path for their bodies.
Out of sight, out of mind.
The mattress bounced beneath them, making them both laugh. Her drawstring pants proved easy to peel away, but his jeans resisted, giving her time to find a condom in her bedside table while he undressed.
“That’s handy,” he said.
“You’re complaining?” she asked, incredulous.
“Not in the least,” Mike said. He should have thought about protection, but he’d never dreamed he’d end up in bed with her when his first concern was securing her forgiveness.
“Then shut up and kiss me,” she replied.
In his whole life, he couldn’t remember wanting to follow a woman’s command more. She was his to have. His to command. He’d follow her to the ends of the earth if she told him to, so long as she didn’t stop touching him.
Beneath Michael’s clash of a kiss, Anne squealed with happiness. Was this all a dream? For a full week, she tried to get over Michael, but the task proved impossible. Every time she closed her eyes at night, she fantasized about precisely this moment, when he unhooked her bra and chucked it away, then gazed at her breasts with undeniable hunger. She’d tortured herself with imagined sensations of his hands cupping her, his thumbs taunting her nipples, his mouth descending until she spiraled out of control with the sensations of his tongue and teeth against her sensitized skin.
And now she was living the dream.
She scrambled her fingers into his hair, loving the lush, thick feel against her fingers. With each nipple and bite, however, she found herself wanting to explore all of him. She raked her hands down his back and traced his spine even as his own hands roamed and explored, finding the sweet erogenous zones she’d wanted him to discover so badly and for so long.
The rumble of Mike’s desire as he slid her panties down her body was uncomplicated. Honest. He wanted her. She wanted him.
God, how she wanted him.
By the time they’d stripped down to nothing, his kisses left her lips pleasurably bruised. He dusted them with s
weet brushes of his mouth over hers while he took care of protection and moved atop of her so their bodies melded and blended into one glorious amalgamation of man and woman.
“Michael.” Hot pricks of emotion fired behind her eyes, the sharpness smoothed by the sweet rhythm of his body sliding into hers.
“I know,” he said. “We’re perfect. You’re perfect.”
Their trip to the bedroom might have been hurried, but once inside her, Michael took his time. He kissed her and caressed her, sliding her arms over her head so that he could have access to herbreasts and control of the pace. Even when she hooked her ankles behind his and matched his languorous thrusts, he chuckled and slowed her down with a distraction like a hand on her hip or a mind-boggling exploration of her earlobes, throat, and neck. By the time she thought she might go mad, she could see his control slipping.
She ran her hands over his chest, tweaking his nipples as he had hers, arching up to soothe the pleasurable pain with kisses of her own. In the space of a heartbeat, his pace increased and she couldn’t resist collapsing into the softness all around her, even as she touched him, kissed him, coaxed him to take what she knew he desperately wanted since she wanted all of the same—and more.
The sensations swept over her in a wild wave, and at the last possible moment before she crested, he took her hands in his so they could ride the surge together.
In the last second before the delirium of her climax overtook her, she turned her head and spied the empty bedside table.
Only now, nothing about her was empty. Absolutely nothing at all.
Mike kissed Anne lazily. Her mouth had no expression beyond exhaustion, but her eyes lit with a smile.
A smile he’d put there.
“Hungry?”
“Not particularly,” she said, sounding entirely sated.
“Not even for Mexican food?”
She laughed, so he rolled out of bed, shrugged into his jeans, and strolled to the kitchen. He retrieved the enchiladas from the table by the door and popped them in microwave until the cheese bubbled. He snatched two forks from the drawer, found a dish-towel they could use for a table cloth, and brought the feast to Anne’s bed. As he moved into the room, he watched her sit up against the pillows and headboard, wrapping herself in her comforter until she looked even more tasty than the Mexican staple he’d made for the party.
Although now, the only person he wanted to sate with his cooking was Anne.
Scooting in beside her, he cut into the soft corn tortilla, scooped up a balanced serving of salsa verde and pico de gallo, and fed her. Her cheeks flushed and her lips bruised from his kisses, she made his mouth water, reinvigorating his hunger for something so much more than food. When she closed her eyes and made a happy noise from the back of her throat, he nearly lost his mind.
“These are amazing,” she said.
“Not nearly as amazing as you,” he said, surrendering to his need to nibble a bit more on her neck.
She squealed, but didn’t fight him. “I meant the food!”
He supposed he did have to be a little less insatiable. It had been, after all, their first time. “Want more?”
“Yes, please.”
He had no idea if she meant enchiladas or sex, so he gave her a little of both. He fed her a bite, then kissed her temple. He fed her another bite, then shifted the comforter so that he had access to her bare shoulder. After a little while, the sting of the jalapeno became unbearable, so he returned to the kitchen, retrieved two cold bottled waters and a small carton of sour cream.
Anne swirled her fork around the last of the enchiladas, then balanced a serving on her fork and held it to his lips. He took the bite, more entranced by how she fed him than the actual food itself.
“So, you’ve taught me a valuable lesson about myself,” she confessed. “Evidently, enchiladas are the way back into my good graces. Very clever of you to figure that out.”
He chuckled. He’d had no idea just how far into her good graces he’d get when he’d been cooking or he would have whipped up an entire meal from tortilla soup to cinnamon-dusted sopapillas.
“I didn’t think you were going to open the door unless I came bearing gifts.”
“I wasn’t that angry,” she argued.
He stared at her intently. “Yes, you were,” he said. “And you should have been. I was furious at myself, once I finally realized how I’d hurt you. How I’d hurt us.”
“Care to share why you did that?”
He shook his head, still so high on the endorphins of their lovemaking, he could barely tap into the guy he’d been less than an hour before, much less the moron who had invaded his body when Anne left for Egypt. How could he possibly have thought that letting Anne go was the right thing to do?
And yet, there was no denying that he’d believed he and Anne needed to re-examine the nature of their relationship before moving forward. Become friends first and lovers second had been his modus operandi since he’d started dating. He realized now that he tested the women in his life in a series of scenarios, ensuring his safety from hurt before he risked his heart.
But now that he and Anne had dove into the risk-infested waters of true romance, he couldn’t imagine living or loving any other way.
“Trust,” he said simply.
She nodded, as if she knew. As if she understood. He didn’t know if she really did or not, but there would be plenty of time to figure that out.
“So what changed your mind?” she asked.
“I realized that if I didn’t rethink my stance, I was going to lose you. And that outcome wasn’t acceptable.”
“So, in other words, I was right and you were wrong,” she said.
Her grin was pure, unadulterated evil—and he loved it so thoroughly, he couldn’t help pressing his lips to hers. Somewhere deep inside, he wanted to disagree with her, but only because he wasn’t used to losing an argument. Instead, he decided to kiss a path from her shoulder to her ankle, skillfully weaving his hands into the folds of her comforter until he could touch her bare skin.
“I’ve never felt so strongly for any woman before,” he confessed between kisses. “From that first night we met at the concert, I was snagged.”
Her eyes widened in surprise. “At the concert? You certainly didn’t show it!”
“Hey, I hugged you before I left. We’d only known each other for fifteen minutes. That’s a pretty strong signal,” he insisted.
She harrumphed and tucked the comforter tight around her body. He settled for massaging her feet, surprised to find that her toes sparkled with a pale, pink polish that nearly matched her skin tone.
“You didn’t even ask for my number,” she complained.
“That was the allergy meds,” he explained. “Or maybe it was just me, afraid of feeling something so strong for someone I’d just met.”
“And after that?”
She made a show of batting her eyelashes, clearly enjoying his groveling.
He lifted her adorable foot and kissed the sweet curve of her arch. “Do you want me to waste time listing all my lame excuses or would you rather go to a party?”
She eased into the cushy mattress, humming in enjoyment of his attention. “I’m not dressed for a party and you’re out of enchiladas.”
“I have another tray upstairs and as much as it pains me to say this, you could get dressed.”
“Is that what you really want?” She allowed the comforter to fall away just enough to reveal a very luscious swath of skin.
“Just because we go to the party doesn’t mean we have to stay there all night.”
Fifteen
ANNE TYPED THE WORDS “PERU,” “travel,” and “deals” into the search engine and pressed enter. In seconds, her screen was awash in choices. She started to click on the first when Michael scooted beside her on the couch and set a steaming cup of coffee on the table.
Just a week ago, Michael had surprised her with their first trip—a weekend in the Catskills for a music fes
tival, a one-night romantic stay at a charming bed-and-breakfast followed by a second day camping. A consummate planner, Michael left no detail ignored. And yet, when things didn’t quite go their way—like the sudden downpour of rain that flooded their campsite, he proved adaptable and easygoing, setting up a nest for them in the back of his car.
He was, she decided, not only the perfect lover, but the ultimate travel companion.
Of course, a weekend excursion was nothing compared to the vacation they were now planning to South America. On the way back from the festival, they’d talked about all the places she’d visited around the world and he’d explained how part of his obsession with Phish had been not just in the music, but in the travels. They discussed dream destinations for future vacations and Anne learned that like her, Michael had always wanted to go to Peru.
Since the one hiccup, Michael had stopped trying to derail the bullet-train ride that was their relationship. Instead, he’d started looking up tours to Machu Picchu.
“What’s on the itinerary so far?” he asked.
She tiled the browser windows she’d opened so that he could see the puzzle of choices. “There’s a lot of ways to get there,” she said, clicking through some of the main tourist sites to get an overview of the available activities. “The hike to the summit won’t be a cakewalk.”
“We can handle it,” he said, dragging his own laptop from the coffee table and activating the Internet. “Peru is right on the Andes. What about a rafting tour? Do you like rafting?”
His question, so considerate despite the afterthought, made her laugh. They were lovers now, an exclusive couple who, work hours notwithstanding, spent more time together than they did apart. And yet, they still had so much to learn about each other. She didn’t even know if an entire lifetime would be enough.
“Sure,” she said. “I’ve never rafted in Peru, but it sounds like fun. Where’s the tour?”
They coordinated their web searches, finding and bookmarking several sights before Anne broached the topic that neither of them had discussed in much detail. “Are you going to be able to get that much time off work?”