by Tory Cates
Words had fled Archer’s dazzled brain. In the only way he thought worthy, he paid homage to the vision stretched before him. Locking Meredith’s gaze with his own, he parted the curling fluff between her legs and bent his head. His tongue found the flowering blossom of her womanhood.
Meredith watched the fair head lower and was electrified by twin bolts of thought and sensation. For the first time, the thought occurred to her that she might be beautiful all over, even in that place she’d always feared her ugliness centered. Then Archer was standing, holding his hand out to her.
“I want to feel you with all of me.”
Wordlessly, trapped in an unthinking sensual haze, Meredith stood. Guided by a newly discovered expertise, her hands undid the buttons and zippers that held the wall of cloth separating her and Archer. The vibrant feel of his skin against hers, the intimate tickle of hair against her bare skin, was excruciating bliss.
“Come,” he said, leading her to the vanity. He opened the mirror and pulled Meredith in front of it.
She shied away from her own reflection, shrinking from it like a superstitious native who had never confronted a mirror before. For not only had Meredith hidden herself from male eyes, she’d shielded her own as much as she could from a sight she was sure was too hideous to behold.
Archer held her firmly by the shoulders, turning her in his grasp until she faced herself. “Don’t look away,” he directed, gently forcing her head forward. “Look at yourself, darling. You were gifted with a magnificent body. Look at it. Really look at it.”
In the tall, oval mirror, Meredith saw a man and a woman dazed with passion. She was surprised at how small she was next to Archer’s leanly muscled bulk. Archer, standing behind her, took her hands in his and placed them on her breasts. Meredith felt the contracted tips beneath her palms.
“You should cherish what you’ve been given,” he murmured in her ear. “Even if you had been far, far less fortunate, you would still have a great deal to be grateful for.” He molded her hands in his so that they could know the swollen contours of her own breasts. Guided by him, her hands slid downward, sloping with the hourglass configuration of her waist. Continuing to introduce Meredith to the glories of her physical being, Archer splayed her fingers out across the firm flatness of her stomach.
She looked into the beveled mirror. The reflection seemed steamed in an erotic haze. Archer watched over her shoulder as he spread two sets of fingers across her waist, then drew them downward. A thrill of daring shivered through Meredith as her palms passed over the tickling fluff crowning her thighs. Archer stopped them there and stroked her fingertips over the folds of her most intimate self.
“You’re a beautiful, desirable woman,” Archer whispered huskily, pressing down on her hand beneath his. The provocative pressure wrapped Meredith tighter in the bonds of pleasurable torment. She couldn’t silence the primitive sound that escaped from between her parted lips. It was the signal that undermined Archer’s teetering restraint. His hand freed hers and took its place. Meredith swayed against his solidness. Her head arched back until his mouth claimed hers. She turned toward his kiss like a flower following sunshine.
Archer’s voracious mouth blazed a heated trail down her neck. He paused to teeth the pointed crowns of her breasts until she was reeling with desire for fulfillment. He continued downward, nibbling at the corrugated swells of her rib cage, the juts of her pelvis, until he was kneeling before her. Meredith gasped as the silken tip of his tongue arrived at its destination.
She tried to jerk away from this ultimate intimacy, an act she had never known but secretly yearned for. Archer’s hands held her fast about her slender hips and drew her back to the source of the dizzying nectar that pumped through her veins. His tongue spilled a fresh draught of the intoxicating potion over her as it skillfully probed. A velvet sliver of flame caressed her into a mindless surrender. Her entire will became bound up in the delirium that was lapping ever-widening waves of pleasure through her. She stopped straining against Archer’s imprisoning hands and reversed the direction and intent of her motions until she was undulating to the insatiable rhythms dictated by Archer’s conquering mouth.
Time, modesty, decency, past, and future all dissolved, erased by the crystal point of sensation gathering within her. Under Archer’s masterful probing, the point focused to an acuteness that straddled the thin high line between agony and bliss. Meredith swayed in his arms, quailing before the magnitude of the sensual onslaught. And still Archer went on.
The crystal point of sensation sharpened to an unbearable peak of intensity. Then, in a moment of rare and blinding ecstasy, she was vaulted beyond that summit into a shuddering fulfillment. The hard focus of sensation softened and broadened. It swelled through her body in billowing waves of release. She gasped out her pleasure and wilted into the unflagging support of Archer’s steely grip.
He rose. His heartbeat thundered against Meredith’s chest, pounding with a barbaric frenzy that could be denied no longer. His breath rasped against her neck in harsh staccato gasps. Hooking a foot under the vanity bench, Archer pulled the large stool toward them. Tangled together in a rhapsody of twining limbs, they sat down. Meredith was astride Archer. The sweetness of their joining filled her as nothing ever had. She gave herself joyously, gave back to Archer what he had reclaimed for them both.
Blinded by radiant pleasure, Archer shut his eyes. They trembled beneath their dark-lashed lids as he gripped Meredith to him, pulling her into another realm of satisfaction. She feathered wild, mindless kisses across those immeasurably dear lids. Archer thrust more deeply, as if his possession of her could never go far enough.
Meredith responded with a bold answering thrust. The erect peaks of her breasts stroked up and down across the wiry silkiness of Archer’s furred chest as she rose and fell with the colossal surges of his passion. Wanting that sensation to deepen even further, Archer captured a tantalizing nipple in his mouth, sending electric shudders raking through Meredith.
Wanting their impassioned duet to go on forever, they both strained against its inevitable end. But the force they generated was not to be denied. The tempo accelerated, hurtling them both to crescendoing fulfillment. In that culminating moment Archer locked Meredith against his heaving chest in an embrace of desperate rigidity, as if the birth pains of his final pleasure were ripping him asunder.
Meredith looked into his face even as she felt his spasms of completion echoing her own and was flooded by the surging tide of his release. She knew his pleasure as her own and was immutably moved by it.
In the mirror she glimpsed a man’s head collapsed against a woman’s full and comforting breast. She saw the woman’s face aglow with the luminescent flush of absolute fulfillment.
She thought the woman beautiful.
Chapter 9
We’re doing an apples/orange number on ourselves with the Chinese.”
Meredith snuggled closer to Archer and readjusted her recorder, balanced on his chest, as he went on.
“Their level of productivity is a function of their culture, just as ours is. Since this country’s inception we’ve operated on a frontier mentality which had as its hero the independent freewheeler. His day is gone. The Chinese are communitarian people. Their culture is based on meshing. Individuals weaving in with the social fabric. America needs to start meshing more. Pulling together for national purposes. One good way for the government to start would be with more tax breaks for research and development . . .”
Meredith was thankful for the recorder, dutifully whirring away and capturing the insights and philosophy she was too exhausted to follow any longer. Night was darkening the windows. They had spent the day in a bliss-filled continuation of Meredith’s initiation into the wonders and delights of her newly discovered body.
She curled against Archer’s hair-matted chest. The bass rumbling of his voice resonated pleasantly through her. With no warning, he stopped. Meredith sat up and clicked off her recorder. “What is it?”<
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Archer leaned forward and nibbled playfully at her nipple. “I’m damned glad Aunt Adrianne’s not here.”
It was a sign of the astonishing progress she had made in one dramatic day, that Meredith could laugh easily at Archer’s good-natured taunt. “Yep, had to put the old girl out to pasture,” she joked. “She just wasn’t needed around here anymore.”
Carefully transferring the recorder to the nightstand, Archer enclosed Meredith within the protective circle of his arms. “And she won’t be needed ever again,” he swore gently into the downy cloud of her hair.
“Archer,” Meredith began falteringly, toying with the dark curls on his chest, “I feel like my life just started over today.” She looked up, her eyes large and searching. “Do you know what I mean?”
“I know, darling.” The unshielded vulnerability in her eyes made him ache with a protective instinct that few in his life had ever elicited. He hugged her closer. “I’ve discovered places in myself with you that I never knew were there before.”
“You have?” Meredith echoed him with astonishment. “With your help, I’ve uncovered lost continents, hidden galaxies within myself.”
“You were a hidden galaxy, my celestial beauty. You were driving me crazy, forbidding me to feast my eyes on you.” He playfully puffed up the sheet and poked his head underneath. With a playful growl of ferocity, he nuzzled her stomach. Scooping her up, he rolled onto his back, pulling her over to rest on his stomach. For a long moment they looked into each other’s faces, memorizing the treasured contours.
“Oh, Meredith,” Archer sighed. “There’s so much I want to tell you, but it seems the only way I can do it is through jokes. That’s a form of hiding too, isn’t it? You were brave today, you truly were. Now, it’s my turn to follow your example.” Archer drew in a steadying breath. “My life changed from the day you strutted into my office in your little dress-for-success outfit with the puffy bow and all.”
Meredith chuckled at the memory. “And I thought you were your own son.”
“Right. Jeez, you made me feel like I was my own son. Even before I actually liked you, though, I was . . .” He paused, then with a wry grin went on. “I guess ‘infatuated’ might be a nice way to put it. ‘Hot for your bod,’ however, might be closer to the truth.”
“Archer!” Meredith cried in joking reprimand.
“There I go, kidding again. The truth of it is, you feed a hunger in me that I didn’t even know existed. It’s never been this way for me with a woman before.”
Meredith was profoundly touched by his admission. She had assumed that Archer was merely the accomplished master, leading her along a path he’d trod many times with many women. “Archer, I didn’t even know enough to dream of what we shared today.”
“I’m glad,” Archer breathed. “I’m glad it was new for you. I almost felt like a virgin today.” He plumbed her eyes for an answering comprehension.
“I did too,” Meredith murmured.
“Oh, we’re a pair,” Archer whooped, exulting in the glorious novelty of a union that went so far beyond the physical. “Two experienced virgins.”
Meredith was saturated with such bone-deep contentment that she couldn’t prevent the beatific smile that wreathed her face in happiness.
“You know what the best part of it will be? What I’m looking forward to the most?” he asked.
“Tell me,” Meredith prompted.
“Spending a whole night with you in my arms. Waking with you in my arms. I’ve wanted that so much.”
Meredith was dumbfounded; Archer was speaking her heart, her dream.
When Meredith didn’t respond, Archer quipped, “But you’d probably rather find out what I want from the Federal Reserve Board, so switch on your recorder and let’s get back to work.”
“Suddenly,” Meredith purred, “I don’t give a damn about the Fed. And I’ve wanted you here, sleeping beside me in this bed, more than I can say. But before we find out how wonderful that will be, let’s make sure we’re both utterly exhausted.”
She slipped a brazen hand downward and was stunned to discover a renewal of Archer’s desire already building. When they made love, it was more a melding of their two spirits than the wild, all-consuming couplings that had gone before in that long day of discovery. To Meredith, it seemed as if she’d learned one more new facet of her body—that it could be an instrument for translating the subtlest emotional nuances. There was no need for words when they’d finished. They had already said it all in the elegant language they’d invented with their loving.
Just before she slid into sleep, Meredith, lying cherished and cradled in Archer’s arms, thought, he was right, this is the best part.
* * *
Morning was a sunlit sonata that gilded Meredith’s fresh, new world in a golden radiance. Not wanting to wake Archer, she made her breathing low and shallow. In sleep he looked like a Viking gently resting after his battles. The fierce glower that often furrowed his face as the day’s demands were piled on him was gone. Meredith marveled, thinking of the sensitivity that lay behind such intimidatingly masculine handsomeness. She marveled again, remembering all that he had unlocked within her yesterday.
A silent prayer of thanksgiving formed itself in her mind. She could be strong enough for him, she concluded fervently. She would be.
As if roused by the force of her conviction, Archer stirred and lazily opened one eye. “Um-m-m-m,” he muttered sleepily. “Just the person I was dreaming of.”
Meredith slid into his arms, a chuckle gurgling in her throat.
“What’s so funny?”
“Everything. Nothing. I’m just happy,” Meredith admitted.
“Happy? Is that all?” Archer teased. “I’ll have to see what I can do to make that ecstatic.”
With a just-waking laziness, they made a kind of morning love that seemed to belong half to dreams. They were both slipping back into real dreams when Archer, suddenly remembering the existence of a larger world, jerked up.
“Dammit all,” he cursed. “I forgot. I’m supposed to be down at the launch site right now being interviewed for Wake Up, America. Come with me?”
Meredith nodded.
After a hurried shower together, they dressed quickly. Somehow, even in his slightly rumpled clothes, Archer looked magnificent. Meredith decided that with his bearing and manner, he could command respect wearing a plastic trash bag. She hastily slipped into a pair of jeans and a wine-colored angora sweater and smoothed her hair down until it was sleek and shiny as a wet seal’s fur.
“How on earth do you do it?” Archer asked as he handed her into the Porsche roadster.
“Do what?”
“Manage to look more scrumptious every time I see you?”
“You’re pretty scrumptious yourself,” Meredith answered, passing off the compliment.
A large crowd was gathered at the launch site. A fair portion of it was clustered around the famous faces visiting from the national TV program.
“For a man who successfully avoided publicity for so many years,” Meredith observed wryly as they approached the tumult, “you certainly dived into the media pool with a big splash.”
“All the better for you. The more media hoopla I generate, the more play your profile in Enterprise will get.”
Before Meredith could parry his accurate remark, a harried-looking man with a badge that identified him as media director for the fiesta approached them.
“Thank God, you’re here, Archer. I’ve been stalling the Wake Up people, but all they really want is the solar balloon man. They saw footage of your crash yesterday and that’s got them all wound up. Come on, Archer, let me feed you to the lions.” He led them through a maze of spectators and technicians scurrying about with lights and sound equipment.
“Here’s Archer Hanson,” he announced to Matthew Lowry.
Meredith watched the face she’d seen on her TV screen every morning for years metamorphose into a live human being. She halted, ready to fad
e into the background as Archer stepped forward. But instead of letting go of her arm, he wrapped it even more securely in his own and pulled her into the limelight with him.
“You’re not planning to abandon me now,” he whispered. “Come with me. You’ll class up my image.”
Lowry was listening intently to his earphone. He nodded and looked up. “You’re Hanson?” he asked Archer bluntly. Without waiting for a reply, his eyes flicked over Meredith. “Who’s this? We just want the solar balloon guy, right?” He broadcast his question, glancing toward a production assistant. “Donna,” he bawled at the assistant, “why do we have the girl up here?”
Meredith was disengaging her arm from Archer’s, ready to leave, but Archer’s hand clamped down on her.
“She’s here,” Archer said in a voice that brooked no argument, “because I want her here. She was on the flight yesterday.”
Lowry was momentarily nonplused by having someone speak so forcefully to him. Meredith had quickly seen that he was not the jovial, easygoing man he pretended to be onscreen. He was an arrogant tyrant who ruled his program like a petty dictator.
“Leave the girl,” Lowry barked. He turned to Archer. “Get ready for a live feed in about one minute. You’ll be on national television.”
Meredith barely had time to gulp away her shock. Archer, however, appeared unfazed as the production assistant positioned them in front of Cloud Waltzer II’s dented basket. The envelope with its fissured coating was draped over the basket. Archer was oblivious to the tumult around him as he examined the cracked covering.
When the assistant shouted, “Places, everyone. Prepare for transmission,” Archer reluctantly turned around. The makeup girl who had been blotting away shiny spots on Lowry’s face scurried away.
In a lightning burst of delayed cognition, Meredith realized that millions of people would be watching her. That thought caused the air in her lungs to clot up. But before she could become any more panicked, the assistant was ticking off a countdown, then swinging a finger toward them. They were on the air.