“You don’t,” she said, looking down at her plate. “I don’t know why you keep leading me on, Michael, if you hate it so much.”
He lit the cigar and blew a long cloud of smoke, watching her. “I don’t hate it,” he said finally. “Actually, I’m panting with breathless anticipation waiting to learn about your sister, the first Miss America astronaut.” When he saw her stiffen, he said quickly, “As long as you’re sitting there telling it to me. Is that better?”
“Hmmmph,” Lacy said. But yes, it was better.
After dinner, with brandy glasses in hand, Michael took her for a tour of his English-style Connecticut manor house. Lacy admired the formal dining room, the library and the kitchen downstairs, which had been left shining by the servants. The furnishings in the lovely old mansion were nondescript but rather homey, leftovers from the previous owners. Lacy couldn’t help hoping Michael Echevarria wasn’t going to decorate the house in the blacks, browns and chrome of Sutton Place expensive contemporary, but his next words dashed that hope. The same interior-decorator friend, he told her, was going to go to work on the Connecticut place shortly.
Somehow, Lacy got the strong impression the interior decorator friend was a woman. Time was running out, she told herself. She had to break her good news to Michael, that she loved him, and start planning from there.
Upstairs, in the bedrooms that overlooked the English-style gardens, there seemed to be an excess of faded chintz and colonial reproductions. But then he showed her a series of rooms at the back that were newly painted and quite bare.
“Oh, pretty,” Lacy murmured as she stepped into a big yellow room with a huge Peter Max-type pastel rainbow painted across one entire wall. “What’s this going to be?” The only thing she could think of was a game room.
“Nursery,” he said, closing the door behind them.
In the hallway, Lacy stopped to look at him. Michael had taken off his tuxedo jacket downstairs in the den before the roaring fire. Now the sleeves of his perfect London-made dress shirt were unfastened and rolled up to his elbows, exposing corded, tanned forearms that testified to his days as a dock worker and construction foreman. He looked particularly handsome, Lacy thought dreamily, with his dark hair tightly curled, his gray eyes in his chiseled face.
“Children?” she whispered. It was such a lovely idea; it fit into what she was thinking about, too.
He shrugged. “Planning ahead,” he said in his president and chairman of the board voice.
Marvelous, she noted. Now she was positive she loved Michael Echevarria more than she could love any other man, ever. She would make him happy, too, she thought with a rush of emotion that left her eyes shining like stars. This beautiful house. And now children. He didn’t know it yet, but she could give him everything he’d always wanted.
He took her by the arm and gently steered her down the hall. The next room was a master bedroom with an enormous early-American four-poster bed that had a ruffled tester and a bright heirloom handmade quilt for a spread. The furniture, highboys and spool-backed chairs, were warm waxed pine and walnut, and there was a lovely blazing fire snapping in a small brick fireplace. The covers of the four-poster had been turned back for the night and showed hand-spun linen sheets in their natural color.
She didn’t need to be told that Michael Echevarria had probably designed the master bedroom himself. That he could get away from chrome and black fabrics if given a chance. This room had the mark of someone who had spent too much of his youth without a home, she thought, and now wanted one, and a loving family.
“It’s perfect, it’s fantastic,” Lacy breathed. It was even in good taste.
The room actually revealed a great deal about him, she thought. The bed was expansive, warm, sentimental—and big enough to accommodate a whole crowd of children if they crept into bed with Mommy and Daddy on a Sunday morning. The room, the bed, were made for love.
Why wait any longer? Lacy thought, turning into his waiting arms.
“Lacy,” the black panther growled, gathering her to him, “come to bed.”
Seventeen
Lacy loved Michael more in that moment than she’d thought it was possible to love anyone. Everything she’d found out about him in Connecticut only reinforced the wonderful feeling, and she told herself that somehow she was going to get everything straightened out and make him love her, too. Perhaps he was in love with her now and didn’t know it!
As she lifted her eyes to his in the early-American bedroom, all she wanted to do was revel in the warm, tender, passionate emotion she was feeling. She wanted to make Michael happy as he’d never been before, as a struggling orphan and then as a self-made millionaire. To do generous, creative things for him, like decorate his Connecticut house and perhaps go back over his New York condominium and rearrange it and make it look better. Love him forever. Marry him, and have his children.
“Michael, darling,” Lacy cried in a burst of passionate joy, “I’m going to make love to you if you’ll let me!”
It was a bold step, but she’d been reading Joy of Sex over again, this time with less shock and more care than she’d done several years ago, and she was much more confident. It was the ultimate expression of her love. Besides, she was sure it would blow his mind.
“If I’ll let you?” There was a definite note of caution in his voice.
“Yes, you know what I mean,” Lacy said. She unfastened his black silk cummerbund and dropped it to the floor. “Just relax, darling, and enjoy it.”
He looked wary as she took the bottom of his dress shirt and pulled it up. “Lacy,” he began as she unfastened his tuxedo suspenders and let them fall over his shoulders, “we’ve had discussions before about your sense of—” His words were choked off as her fingers dropped to the zippered front of his fly. “Humor,” he finished in a suddenly hoarse voice.
Lacy gave a small gurgle of laughter. She knew he was remembering that when she’d started this sort of thing once before, he’d ended up with his tuxedo trousers around his knees and his arms immobilized in his white cotton dress shirt.
“Is anything the matter, Michael?” she inquired in a throaty voice.
“It’s all right,” he rasped as the zipper of the fly opened and her light touch explored the silky, taut thrust of his Cardin briefs. “Just go on—yunnhh,” he shuddered, grasping her wrists in an involuntary movement.
“Trust me, my darling,” Lacy crooned. “I won’t hurt you. You’re safe with me.”
“Oh, hell,” he groaned. But his eyes were gleaming, and the corners of his lips quivered uncontrollably. He shuddered again as her hands rose to unbutton the dress shirt and help him out of it.
He had the most fantastic body, Lacy thought, staring at the heavily curving chest muscles. She felt him flinch as she put her moistened lips to the slight hollow of his breastbone between the dusky male nipples. She ran her tongue deliberately along his satiny skin, tasting the slight saltiness, her nostrils filled with his clean, masculine odor, and licked carefully up the base of his throat. She met his eyes, which regarded her with a strange, untypically distracted expression. “You taste so good,” she had to tell him softly.
“Lacy,” he croaked, “what am I supposed to be doing—while you’re doing this?”
“Standing still,” she told him as she sank her teeth lightly into the powerful curve of his tanned shoulder. “Do you like it?”
“I love it,” he managed.
She gave a few lustful nibbles down his arms and then lifted the big, heavy palm of his hand to press her lips to it. Her wet tongue stroked its hollow as the muscles in his forearms and biceps jumped in response.
“But I don’t think I’m going to survive it,” he muttered.
“Is this—ah, anything special, or did you just happen to think of—aaahh,” he breathed as her free hand slid around his waist, and her fingers scooped softly under the waistband of the Cardins to seize the rock-hard planes of his buttocks.
“Actually, just a minu
te ago,” Lacy confessed. “But I’ve been thinking about it for a long time. Well, not a long time.” She used both hands to pull down first the evening trousers and then the feather-soft fabric of his underwear. “Just the past few min—”
“Never mind,” he said quickly. “It’s all right. Oh, God.”
“Oh, Michael, you really are beautiful all over,” Lacy murmured. “Being raised with just three sisters and no brothers and never really seeing a male figure without his clothes except in art books and museums has its disadvantages, you know. I always thought men looked a little ludicrous with everything—hanging out in front,” she explained delicately. She touched him with adoring fingers, careful of the giant spasms that rattled his big frame. “But I could worship you. You look so primeval.”
“Aaagh,” he retorted, trembling. “Ah, Lacy, love—great god!”
“Yes, and godlike, too,” she agreed, getting him to step out of his trousers, his heavy hand pressing into her shoulder. “Actually, more like that statue of Adam by Epstein in Great Art of America. You don’t have to help, darling. Just relax.”
“I never know what in the hell you’re going to do,” he muttered. His face was dark and flushed as he bent his head to her, but he obediently kept his hands at his sides. “Just as long as you don’t tie me up, right?”
“Shoes,” Lacy murmured softly. “We have to get you out of your socks and shoes.”
He allowed her to guide him to the four-poster bed, and she pushed him down on it. His gray eyes were fascinated as she bent over him, her long blond silky hair brushing his face.
“Oh, darling,” Lacy cried feelingly as she stretched the whole length of her body against his. “This is marvelous. Even I didn’t know it was going to be this great!”
She had pulled off her velvet jacket. Now she stroked the hard, bare expanse of his chest with one hand while her other unbuttoned the front of her gold satin shirt and pulled it open. She lowered herself so that she could feel the nakedness of his skin against her own breasts which were cupped in the tiniest of gold satin brassieres. When he moaned, she reached for his mouth with her moistly swollen lips, her long hair drifting over his throat and shoulders. She gnawed teasingly at his firm lower lip, then deepened her kiss into his mouth with slightly awkward but passionate thrusts. His body contracted in a powerful convulsion, and then his big hand went up to grab the back of her head and hold her to him.
“Lacy,” he rasped into her opened lips. “My own angel. My beautiful witch. Sweetheart!”
She kissed him thoroughly, exploring his lips, his teeth, the depths of his mouth with all the zap! bam! powie! that he’d used so well to set her afire, which was hers, now, as much as his, astonishingly. The furnace of heat she was generating rippled through his powerful body and stiffened against her pressing thighs.
Lying on top of him like that, Lacy marveled, was like resting on top of a volcano about to erupt. All the creative things she could think of to do with her hands, and her loving fingers, set him to gasping. He seemed to be barely controlling himself.
“I have to get your shoes and underwear off,” she murmured, looking down into his clear gray eyes. “Michael?”
“Shoes,” he said hoarsely. “Underwear. God, yes.”
“Well, you have to help,” she reminded him, wriggling off the bed and tugging first at his shoes and then at his socks as he stuck his feet out cooperatively. She stood back a minute to peel off her gold satin shirt and her crêpe de Chine evening pants, kicking her backless sandals away but not taking her eyes off his big, sleek body as it lay darkly against the linen sheets.
“You’re so gorgeous,” Lacy murmured as she bent her head to touch her lips to the faint line of hairs that ran downward from his navel to the top of the elastic. As her teeth and tongue enjoyed little bites of the hairy flesh of his upper thighs, his big hands seized her hair blindly and buried his fingers in it.
“Don’t stop,” he croaked.
Quite carefully, Lacy eased the silky, clinging Cardins down his legs, her warm breath close to his swollen flesh.
“You’re so responsive,” she cried, his tormented body bucking under her as her lips caressed his velvety skin. “Oh, darling!”
Actually, responsive was a very weak word for it. His big, virile body was going to explode at any moment. “Unnhh,” he gasped as her fingers tightened around him.
Somehow his shaking hands managed to reach up to strip away her brassiere and then yank feverishly at the bows on each hip holding the silky string of her gold bikini briefs.
“Naked,” he gasped.
“Michael, are you all right?” she asked him, holding his heavy strength cupped in her hand tenderly. He lay quite still, staring up at the ceiling. “Oh, Michael, am I pleasing you? Am I doing this right?”
“Don’t stop,” he said hoarsely. “Beautiful, beautiful Lacy.” He raised his arms, biceps bulging, and reached up to pull her to straddle him. “Incomparable Lacy,” he murmured, “you drive me nuts.”
“Oh, oh,” she breathed softly. “Michael, you’re supposed to be letting me do everything!”
“I am,” he groaned. His hands slid down to the curve of her waist and then to her hips, seizing them. “I am, precious. I’m just trying to help. Oh, beautiful, sweet Lacy—”
“Michael, do you want me?” Lacy cried passionately. “Say that you do, my darling,” she urged him, showering his face with hot, eager kisses. “Say that you’re mine!”
“Are you kidding?” His gray eyes were wild. “I—yaarrghh,” he rasped as her body settled on him fiercely.
“Michael!” Lacy screamed. She tried to fight away his hands that were taking charge, possessing her with seismic surges of gigantic proportions. “You’re supposed to be letting me make love to you!”
“You are,” he ground out, rocking her body against him with growing turbulence. “I am—we are! I’m yours, angel! Take me!”
His hoarse demands pushed her over the lip of the roaring volcano into its flames. His hands clenched rhythmically, dragging her up to take him in an up-reaching thrust that brought a small shriek of excitement to her lips. She was drowning in convulsions—she was enveloped in molten lava as he took her devouringly. The world collapsed around them in the grinding roar of continents moving, seas surging, the blazing fall of comets. The ruffled tester over them trembled, the four-poster rocked with cosmic upheavals, assailed by their perfect wildness.
“Yowrrrmmmh!” Michael roared in loud, luxurious release as he pulled her down against him, his hands tightly tangled in her long hair.
“It was crazy,” Lacy sobbed joyously as she fell against his wet, heaving chest. “Oh, Michael, I did make love to you, didn’t I? Oh, it was marvelous. You’re marvelous!”
“Call a doctor,” he muttered.
“Oh, goodnight,” she cried, raising up on her elbows to look down at him. His face was drenched, eyes tightly closed. “Are you serious?”
“Can’t tell.” His voice was faint.
“Oh, drat—did I really do something?” she panicked. “Michael, oh, good heavens, say something! Tell me quick—was this too much for you?” She quickly dropped her ear to his wet chest to listen to his heart. It sounded like a series of explosions.
“Resting,” he managed huskily.
“What?” she asked, her ear close to his mouth. “Oh, I can’t believe this! Resting what?”
“You’ll find out,” he growled, suddenly snaking his powerful arms around her to hold her close. As she squealed, he told her, “My turn next, beautiful Lacy.”
“You couldn’t,” she breathed, staring down into his eyes.
The gray gaze narrowed. “Are you telling me I can’t?”
“No,” she gasped, giggling.
The enormously powerful body moving under her was already proving it could.
Lacy’s first thought as a beam of sunshine fell across her face was how wonderful it was to wake up in an early-American four-poster bed with Michael’s arms an
d legs wound around her tightly and his big body half-resting on hers. How could it be anyone but Michael? she thought dreamily. He always slept like this, holding her possessively as though she might slip away in the night, crushing her to him so that she could hardly breathe. He smelled marvelous, warm and damply male, his lips burrowed into her throat, his hair carrying the faint aura of Swedish cologne.
Lacy hadn’t had much sleep. One would think that would make for a really haggard look with dark circles under her eyes. But she was finding out she always came awake in the morning with Michael beside her sort of—glowing.
They had talked the night away when they weren’t making love. In the dark it was Michael who talked. Very brilliantly, too, on what had made the Boston bank fail and what made conglomerates work and why buying into publishing houses was mainly an ego trip, since their profits were small and they were riddled with management problems. They discussed the desirability of investing in hotels, Sutton Place condominiums, Connecticut real estate and diamond and gold jewelry. She’d been surprised when he quizzed her almost endlessly about her ideas on how to improve Fad. And because Lacy had good, sound creative ideas, she’d told him at length and with growing authority.
He was brilliant, she thought fondly, looking down at his handsome, sleep-softened face resting in the hollow between her throat and her naked shoulder. Even if his mind did seem to run in the predictable tracks of Wall Street, corporate development and making money. She had a very strong feeling that the president and chairman of the board didn’t open himself up to many people and especially not in bed. He also, she had found out, lifting a dark strand of hair from his eyebrow very carefully so as not to wake him, had decided opinions on raising children. That is, preferably in a stable environment with two loving, devoted parents and material things, such as swimming pools and horses, and with good educations—private schools if necessary. He felt the worst thing that could happen to a child was not to have a home or anyone you loved or who loved you. That is, to be an orphan.
Hustle Sweet Love Page 18