“Life is a risk. And love is an adventure. Can you try to believe me, Doc? It’s okay if you sometimes let go and don’t do everything by the rules.”
Considering her palms had ventured inside his pants and were slowly peeling them off, he was a little offended that she seemed to be suggesting he was not one to throw caution to the winds. He’d thrown his entire sanity to the winds. His head was buzzing. “I believe in the rules, Serena. I know being into rules isn’t fun. But I don’t think it’s a loving thing to be careless with someone else’s heart or body or feelings.”
“You are so good.” His pants fell to the floor. Her tongue swirled a sashaying pattern on his throat, hemming the edge of his jaw. Being a doctor, he was conscious of his blood pressure and that his had passed stroke level several minutes back. “But you aren’t careless, Blake. You’d never deliberately hurt anyone. For that matter, you only get obsessed with the rules when they’re about fathers.”
“Oh, yeah?” He decided it was time for some revenge. First to go was the thin linen top she wore. As he skimmed it over her head, the few pins that had been holding her hair up loosened and her hair tumbled down, as lustrous as liquid ebony in the lamplight. He kissed her until he couldn’t breathe. He kissed her until the heat and throbbing below his waist ached in pain. He kissed her until they were both gasping for air, any air. But apparently the kiss didn’t have quite the same effect on her because she started talking again.
“Fathers are a touchy subject for you, love, which is so understandable. You started out with a dad who wouldn’t give you a word of praise for love or money. It had to feel like relief when you first realized there was a reason, that he wasn’t really your father, only then it turned out that your real dad was a philanderer without a conscience in sight. So you were crushed twice by fathers. Terribly.”
“Um, Serena, if you want to talk dirty to me, it’s okay. But I have to tell you honestly that I haven’t heard a word you said since you stripped off my clothes.” And he hers. Not that she was completely naked yet, but she was close. Her linen top had fit so loosely that he hadn’t been sure if she was wearing a bra. Now he knew. She wasn’t. Her nipples were dusky in the lamplight, the top of her breasts golden and smooth and firm, the weight of them a heavy, erotic heartbeat in his palm. A finger grazing the tip made her breath catch and a flush whisper up her throat and darken her eyes.
“I’m going to say this, Blake, and I’m not going to let you distract me. At some level I know you’re listening. You keep trying to make up for that background. Those two less-than-stellar dads. Those dads who hurt you. The thing you don’t see is that you rose above them both eons ago. You’re better than both those men. You were better than them before you were out of diapers.”
Her lecture was very nice. Or he was pretty sure it would be, if he’d been paying attention. What he was paying attention to, with intense concentration, was her skimming off the rest of her clothes and his. Her lifting her arms, coming to him, naked to his naked, her smooth, warm golden skin to his hair-roughened textures, her nurturing lips to his hungry, lonesome ones. That feeling of wicked was coming on him. That same feeling of wicked, wanton immersion he always felt around her. He made one last desperate attempt at sanity.
“Serena, I didn’t bring any protection.”
Her palms framed his face, making her his world, his only world; her eyes were liquid fire the way she looked at him. “You can’t do it, Blake. You can’t close yourself off forever, afraid of making a mistake, worrying that you’re like either of your fathers. You’re not. But you have to want to risk. You and I can never work unless you’re willing to reach out and take that risk. I can’t do it alone, can you understand?”
What he understood was that she could talk all night. He was through talking. He’d had nothing to say from the instant she’d started peeling off clothes and his hormones had shrieked a fire-alarm message that she was willing. More than willing. That she was inviting them to make love. Damn. Mere seconds before, he’d been worried about the ethical reasons why this wasn’t right.
But he touched her and all that went away.
This was a good idea.
A great idea.
This was the best idea he’d had in his entire adult life. No one made him “feel” like Serena. Ever had, ever would, ever could. Any problem or risk was worth it when he was with her. Life was bigger, brighter, bolder, ecstatically worth living. Yes, that familiar wild, wicked feeling made him feel guilty, made him worry, too. But, man—worry had never tasted as much fun as this before.
She gave so willingly, so warmly. The lick of her tongue inspired the sweep of his hand. Her skin heated for him, turned slick for him. Her breasts ignited, tightened, reacting to his hands, his mouth.
He lifted her, not having any clear destination in mind, but knowing they had to move. If Nate woke up, he mustn’t find them running around the living room naked. Serena noosed her arms around his neck, whispering kisses on his throat and ear, providing no help to the navigational crisis in any way. His thigh bumped a corner. He kept moving. Away from lights. Down the hall. Five kisses later, to the end of the hall. Her room.
There were no lights on in her room. It wasn’t midnight-dark yet, but the shadows were as thick as a charcoal fog, so initially he couldn’t make out any shapes. What he could do was slide her down his body so that she was standing on her feet again. Then close the door. Quietly. And latch it. Deliberately. Then lay her up against that door and kiss her good. Kiss her hard. Kiss her senseless.
Kiss her in a way that tactfully communicated that all bets were off. It was too late to climb back into the plane; this sky dive was already in motion. Blood was already soaring through his veins, excitement hustling through his pulse, the rush of needing her pounding in his ears. He remembered being married, remembered loving sex his whole life, but never the way it’d been with her seven years ago…and now. This strange, alien feeling of freedom. A loosening from the inside out, because he didn’t have a choice but to give and give up everything he had. With her. For her.
“Bed,” she whispered. “Hurry.”
“Where?” Even though his pupils had dilated, he saw no mattress.
“Chinese bed. There in the wall.”
He had no clue what a Chinese bed was, but she slipped away from him and lit a candle, a small one, just a pool of vanilla scent in a bowl, but the flame was enough to provide illumination. Even if he hadn’t had the motivation, he could have figured out the Chinese bed thing. The full-size mattress was built into the wall, the bed itself concealed behind draperies, filmy folds of drapery that allowed light, yet still provided complete privacy.
“I’ve never seen a bed like this.” He really wasn’t up for making conversation. The bed was just so unusual, and it was obviously going to be part of their lovemaking. At some instinctive level he just wanted to know why she’d picked it, and what it meant to her.
“You like it?” she asked.
“I’d like any bed with you in it.”
Her smile was a flash of sassy white teeth, and alluring with promise. “The Chinese are like my Cheyenne. The women are modest. They only want to show themselves to the man they love.”
And then she clasped his hand and, pushing aside the filmy draperies, pulled him inside to the concealing feminine nest of a bed. He caught the scents of sandalwood and sage and night-blooming jasmine. None were as exotic or arousing as the scent coming off her skin.
She was so breathtaking. Her flesh was smooth and golden, her body so sleek and supple. Fluid as water, more sensuous than silk, her arms and legs wound around him, pulling him down, pulling him in. He saw her eyes, liquid with emotion, inhaled her lips in a kiss that threatened to drown them both in a deep, dark current. Need bubbled up, turned into a craving that sparked fire deep in his belly.
He had to have her—sexually, but so much more than sexually. At that instant he feared he’d never recover if he didn’t make love to her, right then, that m
oment, no later. A crazy fear rose inside him like a devil fear. Some strange instinct that he could lose her—lose anything that ever mattered to him—if he failed to make her part of his life.
She sucked in a breath, her spine arching, when he filled her, fast, hard, completely. He wanted to woo her, wile and beguile her, yet the urgency gave him no choice. He had to hurry to make sure she didn’t go anywhere, hurry to make sure that nothing could happen before he had her, that nothing could break this priceless magic spell…
And then there was no spell. There was just him and her in the most earthy and natural of ways. The mattress was softer than earth, her pillows softer than sky. The glowing candle barely cut the darkness, yet he could still see the light in her eyes, the light coming off her like rays of emotion into him. Love. For the first time in his life he really felt it. For the first time in his life, he felt as though he belonged somewhere, to someone, and he wasn’t alone.
They came together with the fury of a thunderstorm and the drenching sweetness of a spring rain. Afterward, he sank into her, wanting to stay joined with her through the whole night, but of course, he couldn’t. Eventually he got up, took care of business, and then just eased down beside her again, sharing the same pillow, holding her, wrapped around her, warm and close.
He thought she’d fallen asleep, yet when her eyes finally opened, his were waiting for her. He could have studied her for an eternity, not just her face, but every gorgeous bone, every millimeter of smooth golden skin. Her mouth had a wine blush from his kisses, her hair fell in a tangled waterfall. He thought that in a minute he’d get up and brush it. Just to do something for her that no one else had ever done.
Instead he stroked her back, from her nape down the skimming slope of her spine to her fanny, then over again. He tried to remember the woman he’d married and divorced. Tried to remember his growing-up years, the crushing wait of always trying to please his dad, always failing. Tried to remember medical school. Tried to remember Garrett first telling him that he was a Kincaid. They were all big memories in his life, inexorable parts of who he was, yet nothing would stick in his mind.
Nothing of the past mattered. Only now mattered. Only Serena. And for some reason, the only mirror-clear memory in his mind was making love with her, that one time, seven years ago. He’d been grieving over the loss of his mom, feeling lower than a pit about himself and his life, and when Serena made love with him, it’d been like a dazzling white light at the bleakest hour of his life. At the time he’d thought it’d been some kind of apparition, a fluke, something that just seemed so perfect because the rest of his life had been so dark right then.
He hadn’t realized it was Serena.
That she was the white light. It had never been the incredible sex, or a measure of the good or bad times in his life. It was about her. How wonderful she was. How special. And how differently he felt about himself when he was with her.
From nowhere he felt her fingertips graze his jaw, in the tenderest of caresses. He closed his eyes, inhaling the sensation. “I know, brown eyes. I have to go.”
“No, you don’t.”
“I mean before Nate gets up. I haven’t forgotten that it’s his first day of school tomorrow. And even if the two of you didn’t have an extra-big day, you wouldn’t want him to find me here when he wakes up. It wouldn’t be right. But I really don’t want to leave you right now, Serena.”
“And I don’t want you to get up. To leave at all.” Softly then, “I love you, Blake.”
“I love you, too.” He meant it. But as he cuddled Serena close again, he wasn’t positive what she meant by the same words. People said things in the dark and in the wonder of passion. Hell, he was thirty-two-years old and just figuring out that she was everything.
Later, though, when Blake finally forced himself to get up, he looked around her bedroom as he quietly pulled on his clothes. He’d never been in here before. She had things of all kinds from all over the world, not expensive artsy stuff so much as ideas and textures and colors from all kinds of cultures. Fascinating, just like her. But as he silently dug into his back pocket for keys, he thought of his gray apartment and the place he used to have in L.A. that had a lot of chrome and black—expensive chrome and black, but still, essentially colorless.
As he walked out into the night, qualms started scraping on his nerves. He wasn’t sure if he fit in. She fit for him, but whether Serena needed him for anything, wanted him for anything, was still a huge, troubling question in his mind. If he couldn’t add something to her life—and Nate’s—he had no business being with her.
Serena was nonstop busy the whole next day, but by three-thirty she was more antsy than a wet cat. Her kids had been wonderful. Fourth hour was probably going to be the blinger—there was always one class that caused more trouble than others. And first hour, she had a couple kids that looked over-tired, white-eyed—something in their families wasn’t going right, even if Serena had no idea what it was yet. Fifth hour was a teacher’s dream—the kids all cared, all loved science, actually listened to her. A miracle on the first day of school, as any high school teacher knew.
It wasn’t just her first day of the school year, of course. And even while she was memorizing names and intuiting the personality of each class, all day she found herself meandering to the far windows in her science room.
The Whitehorn grade school and high school were in different buildings, separated by a giant multipurpose sports field. The whole school complex, including the administration center, was smack-dab in the middle of town, but protected from traffic in a cul de sac. From Serena’s classroom windows, she could see the rooftops of the police and fire stations. More relevant, she could look across the soccer field directly over to the first grade classroom—Nate’s classroom.
At lunch, Blake had called and managed to reach her in the teachers’ lounge. “Hey, love.”
The endearment had made her insides feel like a fresh toasted marshmallow. How was she supposed to think after a hello like that? She murmured, “Hi, you,” but she thought, “Hi, lover.”
“Do you have any report on how our son is surviving his first day of school yet?”
“No report, but my free hour is second hour, and I ran over there to spy. He seemed happy.”
“Do you like his teacher?”
“Well, no,” Serena admitted.
“What’s this no? There’s something wrong with her?”
She chuckled. “No, absolutely nothing. Her name is Mrs. Harvey. Parents love her, the kids love her, and, until our son got in that class, I did, too.”
“Ah. You don’t think she’ll appreciate our Nate?”
“Not like I want someone to appreciate our son. You know. I want his teacher to think he’s the most special child she ever had. Heads above every child she’s ever met or taught. Fascinating to her from every aspect. I want her to be tolerant of every slight fault, astounded with his brilliance.”
“Well, yeah. So what’s your point? Even a moron of a teacher could figure that stuff about our son five minutes after meeting him.”
Oh, God. Blake was going to be worse than her.
The memory of his call stayed with her through the rest of the school day. But at the three-thirty bell, she left her purse and papers and chased across the soccer field almost faster than the speed of sound—no different from every other first-grade mom who hovered anxiously at the door for her baby to come out.
And there he was, loping toward her. Shirt untucked, shoes untied, something red on his favorite T-shirt. “Hey, Mom!”
“Hey, slugger.” She’d been a teacher too long. She knew perfectly well that she couldn’t grab him in front of his peers, but her baby already looked three years older in just six short hours. All she really wanted to do was kiss and hug him, and then stuff him back into the womb where he’d be safe from life’s hurts forever. She settled for ruffling his hair and asking casually, “So, how’d it go?”
“Okay. But I’m starving. In f
act I’m so starving that I’m about to die. Can we go home?”
“We sure can. I have to stop by my classroom to get my purse—and I want you to know how to get there, too, sweetie. But that’ll only take a few seconds. How’d you like to stop at the Hip Hop Café for an ice cream before going home?”
Hunched over a booth, lapping up some ungodly-flavored turquoise ice cream, he spilled out the whole story of the day. “Mrs. Harvey likes me. I can read. You wouldn’t believe it, Mom, but most of the kids can’t. And they don’t know how to use a computer, either. So I get to help the other kids sometimes. Scott Middleton took Janey Smith’s pencil off her desk, though. Just took it. Just like that. It wasn’t his.”
“Did Mrs. Harvey see him do it?”
“Yeah, she saw. Only Scott lied and said the pencil was his. And then there’s this girl named Elizabeth who wouldn’t let me alone. I mean, we’re talking major issues there.”
“Major issues, huh? Where on earth did you hear that term?” She reached for a napkin, her son’s fifth. Nate may be precocious enough to pick up terms such as “major issues,” but he was still young enough to make gigantic messes with an ice-cream cone.
“I think this school thing’s gonna be easy. Recess was fun. And if you get your work done, then you can be on the computer more.”
“That sounds cool.”
“Uh-huh. I was afraid the whole deal was gonna be boring, but it’s not so bad. I was gonna tell Dr. Blake about it.”
“Well, something tells me he’ll be anxious to hear what you thought of school, so he’ll probably stop over tonight.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought. Mom?” Nate lifted his face for another napkin wipe. “How come Dr. Blake comes over all the time?”
Serena’s pulse skipped a beat. “Do you have a problem with him coming over so much?”
“No. He’s okay. It’s not that. It’s that I don’t get it.”
“You don’t get what exactly?”
“We have lots of friends over. But it just isn’t the same as when Dr. Blake comes over. For one thing, you’re kissing him all the time. Mom?”
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