“There’s nothing wrong with me, Cassidy, that you can't fix. I want you in the worst way and have almost from the first moment I saw you. Fix me. Touch me.”
She felt herself soften, heat, weaken. Swallowing, she discovered that her throat had become constricted.
He took this initiative and pulled open his shirt.
“Don’t do this, Zach.” She could barely get her voice to rise above a whisper. “Don’t ask me.”
“I’m afraid I have to.”
“No, wait. There’s something you should know. I - I haven’t made love since I was in college.”
“Cassidy,” he said with the greatest of tenderness, “you’ve never made love.” He took her hands and brought them to his chest.
Fire scorched her fingertips as her hands splayed over his skin, and her breasts began to swell and throb. She gasped with wonder. “What is it you do to me?”
“I hope it’s the same thing you do to me,” he said huskily. “Just being in the same room with you makes me crazy. Just looking at you makes me rearrange all my priorities. And always, no matter what the circumstances, you make me want you like I’ve never wanted anyone or anything.”
A helpless sound escaped from her lips. Beneath her palms, his flesh felt hot, and his heart beat strongly in a rapidly increasing rhythm that matched her own heartbeat. Hesitantly she moved her fingers over his nipples and through the fine matting of hair. Then she was drawn back to the fascinating nubs. They were tiny and hard and astoundingly tempting. Surprising herself, she bent down and lathed her tongue around one nipple, exploring the feel and the taste of him. New sensations rocked through her, and her own nipples tightened in response.
He put up with her attention for a long space of time, but then he groaned roughly. “Lord, sweetheart, we’re going to have to do something else for a while or I’ll have to take you right now. ”
“What?” she asked with soft bewilderment.
“Kiss me.”
His request penetrated the haze of passion slowly closing around her. She knew what happened to her when he kissed her, knew how her control fled and her mind shut down. Some remaining vestige of protective instinct made her shy away from what would surely and ulti- mately lead her to give herself up to the passion. “No. When we kiss - ”
“Exactly. When we kiss the world goes away. ” He reached up and cradled the side of her face. “Let’s make the world go away, Cassidy. We’re all alone tonight. Bobby’s taken care of. You don’t have a worry in the world.”
Her eyes clouded. “Yes I do. You. You worry me a lot.”
“Why?”
“Because I don’t know myself when I’m in your arms.”
He eased his hand around to the back of her neck and gently pulled her down until her breasts rested on his chest and her face was close to his. “I know you. You're a woman who’s capable of great passion and love, and I want all you’ve got to give.”
Her breath caught in her throat. Her lips moved, silently saying his name. Her resistance and control crumbled, piece by piece.
He lifted his head from the pillow and feathered kisses over her face, her cheeks, her throat, and finally her lips. Delicate, light, exquisitely heated kisses. Soon she began moving her head, anticipating the kisses, without words asking for the kisses. And when he slowly lowered his head back to the pillow, she moved with him, not wanting to break the enchanting contact.
“You’re mine,” he whispered with fierce satisfaction, “and I’m never going to let you go.”
She barely heard him. His kisses were stronger now, hotter. And when at last he fully claimed her mouth, she eagerly parted her lips and met his thrusting tongue with hers.
There was heat everywhere. And a driving urgency. In her mind, in her body, even in her soul. When he pulled her over him and onto her back beside him and then began undressing her, she could only rejoice. Their clothes were a hindrance to the total contact she sought.
Suddenly elation rose in her as she realized she wanted so many things: To touch him all over, feel his sleek skin and bunching, rolling muscles. To have him touch every inch of her, exploring, learning, and driving her wild. And most of all, to feel the hard, full length of him inside her.
She was burning with the want, she was choking with it.
Clothes were torn and discarded until they were both naked. He pulled her hard against him, and she gave a cry of ecstasy. In the next moment, his hand took possession of her breast, and his mouth came down hungrily on the nipple. A sweet, beautiful feeling pierced through her, carrying a fever with it. She lifted her back, pressing her breast more fully into his mouth. He made a guttural sound, and his other hand went between her legs to the sweet tenderness there.
Her hips began to undulate, excitement spiraled, and the sensations became astonishing and dizzying. Too much so. Not enough.
Her fingers threaded into his hair, holding his head, as he sucked at her breast, pulling on her nipple. Something was happening to her, she thought dimly, something that had never happened before. Every muscle in her body had tightened, and it felt as if all her nerves had risen to the surface of her skin. And in her stomach and between her legs, a fiery tension coiled and twisted and built and built.
He raised himself away and looked down at her. His face was primitive and hard, his blue eyes brilliantly ablaze. “Tell me you want me. Tell me.”
“Yes,” she whispered. “Yes, Lord, yes. Make love to me.” The things going on inside her wouldn’t let her give any other answer. There was an excitingly savage quality to his voice, a primal fierceness to his need. And in the deepest center of herself, she was being ravaged by the same needs.
He claimed her quickly and with complete domination, burying himself in her with one powerful thrust. Fire scorched through her, leaving her clinging and shaking. But in the next moment, a strength and urgency seized her, and she arched up to him, meeting his strokes, taking him deeper into her.
This joining was different from what she had known before. It was all encompassing, all involving, as if they were becoming part of each other. Tension and fire clawed at her insides. She whispered his name, instinctively knowing he was the answer.
The spasms caught her unaware. They started and didn’t stop, going on and on, hurling her toward a release she wanted, needed desperately, gripping her with a madness and an ecstasy that had no end. She buried her face in his shoulder and cried out his name. He lifted her head and caught the sound with his mouth as he emptied himself into her.
She awoke slowly, feeling a wonderful, floating kind of heaviness. Gathering her strength, she lifted a hand and rubbed at her eyes. Then she opened them.
Black glass eyes stared back at her.
With a gasp, she recoiled, and at the same time came instantly and fully awake. It was the stuffed lion, she realized, and it had apparently been lying eye to eye with her while she slept.
She jerked away, rolled over onto her back, and realized she was holding the giraffe against her. She pushed the long-necked animal away, sat up, and found a cushily fat hippopotamus at her knees.
It was the middle of the night, and she was surrounded by stuffed animals.
And Zach wasn’t anywhere to be seen.
With a groan, she buried her face in her hands. What had she done? What had she gotten herself into?
At first she was too upset to move. The very thing she had fought against had happened, and it had happened with an ease that was frightening. What she and Zach had shown each other in incredible physical ways…
Staring at the stuffed animals, she tried to think of something else - but her mind refused to cooperate. Zach was the only subject she could think about. And in the end she had to admit that she might not be taking the whole situation so hard if she had awakened in his arms. He would have soothed her, she knew. He might even have made love to her again. Her face flamed at the thought.
Where was he?
She scrambled off the bed. Minutes later, she fou
nd a white terry-cloth robe on the back of the bathroom door and wrapped herself in its voluminous warmth. She tied the belt around her waist and folded back the sleeves, then gazed at herself in the mirror. She saw wide, startled gray eyes, tousled blond hair, and a face that had been kissed bare of makeup. And her lips - her lips were swollen from even more kisses, deep, soul-shattering kisses. Amazingly the overall effect was one of softness. She looked relaxed, she thought soberly, and she looked satisfied.
She lifted the robe’s collar to her face and inhaled. The robe smelled of him - male, citrus, musk. She knew the scent intimately now. And him. Heat wound through her and tied her lower body into knots at the thought.
Where was he?
The plush carpet rubbed against her bare feet as she turned and went in search of him. She had been in only a few rooms of the house, and fortunately she found him in one of those rooms, the living room. He was sitting cross-legged on the floor by the fire, dressed in sweat pants and surrounded by red building blocks of some sort.
She paused in the shadows of the doorway.
The glow of the fire bathed over him, adding a golden hue to the dark beige-colored skin of his chest and shoulders. It hadn’t been that long, she remembered, since she had splayed her hands over his chest in wonder and clutched at his shoulders in rapture.
Had that wanton really been she?
He looked up, saw her, and smiled. “Hi. Come join me.”
Feeling awkward and embarrassed, she crossed the room. Going to bed with a man and losing control with said man were not every day occurrences for her. She wasn’t certain how to act. And she didn’t know what to think about finding that said man playing with blocks on the floor in the middle of the night.
She slipped her hands into the pockets of the terry-cloth robe and studied the structure he was building with the blocks. “What are you doing?”
“Nothing much. I couldn’t sleep, and I didn’t want to wake you, so I came down here.”
“And left me with those stuffed animals of yours. They were all cuddled around me. It was sort of weird.”
“They’re nice to sleep with. They don’t snore.”
“You do?”
His smile broadened. “You’ll have plenty of time to find out, I promise.”
Even though she had fallen asleep in his bed, she couldn’t envision actually sleeping with him. To sleep with someone bespoke an intimacy even greater than what they had shared, and she couldn’t imagine it. She sat down on the floor across from him and gazed uncertainly at him from beneath her lashes. “What exactly are you making?”
“It’s a castle.”
She took a harder look at the structure and realized he was right. He was building a castle that was well on its way to being a fit residence and stronghold for a nobleman, complete with battlements, towers, and crenels.
“Do you want to help?” he asked, watching her reaction.
“No.” She wasn’t really sure what she wanted. But it seemed absurd to her that she had just had the most passionate sex of her life with this man, and now he was playing with building blocks. Hadn’t she heard that most men fell asleep after sex?
“Are you sure? I could use some help with that parapet over there.”
“I would get nothing out of building a castle with blocks, I assure you. It looks like a big waste of time to me.”
His eyes twinkled. “Is there something else you’d rather be doing? Would you like me to go back to bed with you?”
“No, of course not.” The idea aroused her. To cover the confusion she felt, she picked up one of the blocks; it was smooth beneath her fingertips. A closer examination of the blocks revealed they were of all different sizes, shapes, and weights. “What kind of blocks are these? I’ve never seen any like them before.”
He grinned. “They’re Bennett Blocks. I de- signed them. They’ve been on the market for a few years now and have been a great success.”
“But you’re just stacking them. I mean, they don’t snap together. What’s holding the castle together?”
“Learning and faith.”
“Excuse me?”
“Children have a lot of limitations in their lives. They're constantly told don’t do this, don’t do that. With my blocks they learn to have faith that they can do anything they want to do with just a little bit of trial and error, or in adult terms, a little bit of learning. As they play with the different sizes, shapes, and weights of the blocks, they learn which go best together so that they ‘hold,’ and which will stack on top of another without falling. In other words they learn what works and doesn’t work. It’s really a lesson in spatial engineering.”
“And you designed them?”
He nodded and casually handed her a curved block. “Try that one over there on the corner tower, will you?”
She added the block to the tower. “It's perfect.”
“That’s good to know.”
She felt duped. “Zach, you designed the stupid things. How could you not know that particular block would work there?”
He grinned. “I’ve never built a castle before. I usually build forts. But tonight I felt the need to build something really elaborate. I had a great deal of thinking to do.”
“Really?” He had just been inside her. She had dug her nails into his back. But she didn't feel confident enough to ask him what he was concerned about.
He looked over at her. “I’ve been thinking about the person who’s trying to steal The Game.”
“Have you had any ideas about who it could be?”
He shook his head. “I haven’t got a clue, and part of the reason may be that it’s incredibly hard for me to consider any one of them capable of betraying me.”
“I’m sorry, Zach.”
His expression turned to one of surprise. “For what?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know really. I guess I feel badly because I’m the one who brought what was happening to your attention. I was the messenger with the bad news.”
“You should feel good about that. By telling me, you’re going to be responsible for saving my company an untold amount of money.”
“I know, but I’m also responsible for your discovery that someone you trusted betrayed you.”
“Tried to betray me. They’re not going to get away with it.”
“I hope not.”
“Hey.” His tone was whisper soft and so was his touch as he reached across the castle and brushed a finger down her cheek. “Everything is going to be fine.”
A sweet, warm feeling crept around her heart. She wished with everything in her that she could believe him. But she still had too many doubts about him and about the two of them together.
“Does this battlement look right to you?” he asked.
She switched her attention back to the castle, reflecting wryly on the difficulty of keeping up with his mind. “It’s crooked,” she said, eyeing it critically, “and one crenel is larger than the others.” She took several blocks from the top of the castle’s battlement and began rebuilding it.
A smile played around his lips as he observed her for a few moments. Then he went back to his own construction. “Whoever it is who's trying to steal the master disk has searched my office once - I’m sure they’ll do it again - and they’ve had me searched - ”
“Brutalized, you mean.”
His mouth twitched. “It really wasn’t that bad, Cassidy. Those two guys were no big deal. They were probably hired from ‘Thugs R Us’.”
She shook her head impatiently. “I don’t understand how you can joke about it.”
“It’s easy for me to joke about it because I wasn’t hurt. And in case you didn’t know, I love the way you’re so fierce about the whole thing. It shows you’re a very passionate woman. Of course, I already knew.”
Embarrassment heated her neck and face. In an odd sort of way, it pleased her that he thought she was passionate, but she still couldn’t seem to come to terms with her wanton behavior with him in bed.
“At any rate,” he said, continuing as though he hadn’t said anything heart-stopping, “I’m sure the next step will be to search the house.”
“The house.” Her eyes widened with realization. Of course. She should have thought of it herself. And she probably would have if she hadn’t just spent several brain-melting hours in bed with the owner of the house. “What are you going to do to stop them?”
“Nothing,” he said, critically eyeing the castle. “I think I should let it happen. Why not? It won’t do any harm. No one will find anything.”
“The master disk isn’t here?”
He shook his head. “Nope. And if I let whoever it is search the house, he or she might slip up in some way and give us a clue. By the way, your battlement is looking pretty darned good. The thief’s time is running short; he or she must be getting desperate.”
She exhaled heavily. “You know what I think?”
“No, but I’d love to.”
“Even though you're hurt that someone you trusted is planning to steal from you, I think you’re enjoying the game of trying to catch them.”
His smile told her she was absolutely right.
“I love games, Cassidy, and this game is more elaborate than I’m used to playing. It has a dangerous edge to it, and to make it even better, it’s thrown me together with a woman I think is quite wonderful.” He paused. “Remember when you came in and I said I was thinking?” She nodded. “It’s true I was thinking about the person who’s trying to steal the game, but I was also thinking about you.” His tone changed, turned lower, huskier, more seductive. “I was thinking of ways I could keep you with me.” Her heart began to pound. “You mean for the rest of the night?”
“For a start.” He shifted around the castle until he was beside her. “I want to make love with you again.”
Heat radiated from his body and infiltrated hers. “B -But what about the castle?”
He glanced at it, then back at her. “It’s finished. We made something beautiful together.” The castle was beautiful, she thought, all red and shining, enchanting by the fire’s light. “I didn’t do much.”
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