by Lucy Monroe
“I will do my best to convince you.”
“I thought you weren’t out to seduce me.”
“Reminding you of the pleasure we shared last night is hardly a seduction.”
Right. “And that’s your plan, to remind me?”
“And entice you with thoughts of what tonight could bring.”
Luckily for her already heating libido, the teakettle whistled and she jumped into action, making a pot of herbal tea that would not keep either of them awake. Though she had a feeling Sandor would effectively do so anyway.
They were sitting at her small 1950s restored yellow Formica kitchen table when she broached the subject of his dad. “Have you ever considered finding your father?”
Sandor’s body tensed. “I suppose it was too much to expect that my time on the phone would not provide the opportunity for Mama to open this particular can of worms tonight. What happened, did she drag out the sorry tale of how my grandfather beat James Foster and chased him away?”
“You’re uncannily prescient.” She grinned teasingly, wanting to keep it light, but not sure that was going to be a possibility with the look on his face. “I don’t suppose you were eavesdropping?”
He sighed and drank his tea. “No, but it’s a story she’s tried to feed me more than once.”
“It’s not a story. Your mother wouldn’t make something like that up.”
“I have no doubt my grandfather did as she said, but what does that change? My father was too weak to return for her. That is the bottom line.”
“He tried.”
“She told you about the letter, too?” Sandor sounded pained.
“Yes.”
“Look, I read that letter and it was hardly the missive of a love pining away for her company. He had finished university, he thought they could see each other again…for old time’s sake. He said nothing of the love she insists they both felt so strongly. He said something about thinking she might have married by now because Greek girls married younger than American ones, or some such rot.”
“Did you think he should have poured his heart out in a letter to a woman he couldn’t even be sure wasn’t married?”
“If his love was as great as my mother claimed, he would have.” Sandor’s tone was hard, brooking no argument.
She gave it anyway. “Wouldyou have?”
“I do not believe in that kind of love.”
“Yes, I know, but even if you did, I don’t believe you would put your heart on the line until you knew the lay of the land.”
That seemed to take him back a little. “What is the point of this conversation?”
“I think you should find your father, if not for your sake, then for hers.”
Sandor pushed his tea away and leaned back in his chair, the caged lion coming to mind again. “You think I do not take her feelings into account when I refuse to seek him out?”
“Do you?”
“Yes.” He rubbed his hand over his face as if tired all of a sudden. “Tell me, what do you think it would do to my tenderhearted mother to discover my father married soon after graduation and has other children and a wife he adores?”
“Does he?” Had Sandor had the man investigated?
“I do not know and that is the point. In this instance, ignorance is bliss. At least as far as my mother is concerned.”
“But if he is married, you would not have to tell her about him.”
“I would not…could not lie to Mama.”
“But is a lie of omission always a lie, if you are just protecting her? Wouldn’t it be better for you to know?”
Sandor shrugged. “I love my mother. To withhold that information from her if I had it would be wrong. It would breach the trust we have between us. I won’t risk her being further hurt.”
Wow. How could she help loving this man?
“But what if you are wrong?”
“Then he would have come for her in all this time.”
It was a telling argument. “What about you? Don’t you want to know him?”
“He deserted my mother, he abandoned me though he did not know about me. He is not a man I want in my life.”
“Your grandfather kept them apart.”
“There was only one letter, Ellie, not ten, not five, not even two. Just one. He struck out on the first swing and never picked up the bat again.”
“You can’t imagine doing that, can you?”
“No. Not when it pertains to something important to me.”
“I’m stubborn, too, you know.”
“We have established that, yes.”
“I believe you are wrong.”
“I believe I would rather discuss the way your nipples taste and how they harden and swell against my tongue.”
Shocked, her mouth opened on a gasp, but no other sound came out. Under the bright, fluorescent lights in the kitchen, the look he gave her was hot and wicked. It seemed so out of place in the cheery room and yet…not. This man and his earthy sensuality fit into her life in surprisingly adept ways.
Because as startling as his unrefined words had been, they had also aroused her. She licked her lips, tasting tea and the honey she’d used to sweeten it. “That’s not something a person usually discusses.”
“But I like telling you how sweet you taste, how good you feel inside my mouth.”
Her breath stilled somewhere between inhaling and exhaling. “You can be very…basic.”
He leaned forward and brushed the back of his knuckles over one—yes, very erect—nipple.
She moaned.
He smiled, a man who clearly liked the impact he had on her. “I think despite your prim public image, primitive excites you. You like to hear these words from me.”
He was right, but no other man she’d ever known would have considered saying such a thing, not to make the first comment, much lesstell her that she liked it . For goodness’ sake. Sandor was so different. Was that why she was drawn to him?
He defied the molds life would say he had to fit inside…just as she tried to. Or thought she did.
“You think I’m prim?” She looked down at the simple Albert Nipon suit in oyster shell silk she’d chosen to wear to dinner with his mother. Though its chic styling was form-fitting, it wasn’t exactly sexy. The jacket buttoned up as a top showed nothing of her unimpressive cleavage and the skirt stopped modestly just shy of her knees. “Do you think I dress too conservatively?”
“The way you dress is perfect for you, Ellie. I like knowing that the rest of the world looks at you and sees what appears to be a coolly elegant woman, but I know that under the prim facade is a body made just for mine that responds with an uninhibited passion that delights me.” His knuckles continued to brush up and down over her sensitized nub. “And sometimes you dress more provocatively than I think you intend to.”
“You don’t believe Iintend to provoke you?” She could barely breathe, much less think with the way he touched her and the sensual timber of her voice saying such intensely erotic things just for her.
“I do not believe you have any idea how very sexy I find both the prim little suits or clothing like the dress you had on last night.”
She’d wanted to be sexy the night before. Ithad been on purpose, but he didn’t know that? “Why do you say that?”
“If you did, you would never have questioned the passion between us.”
A man’s brain was certainly a mysterious puzzle, especially Sandor’s. “Was I supposed to read your mind?”
He shrugged. “I hope you now have a better basis to draw your conclusions from.”
“I suppose I do.” She grabbed his wrist, stopping that tantalizing touch that was melting her brain and other body parts. “I felt the passion in you before…leashed,” she got out, “but I doubted my instincts when you did nothing to act on it.”
“And now?”
She took a deep breath, but it didn’t help get her senses under control. Her breasts felt full inside the lacy cups of her bra and
the breath actually made them move against the silky fabric, arousing her further. She bit back a moan and closed her eyes, trying to find her control in blackness behind her lids. “Now I concede that we are very good together that way.”
If only she knew whether, or not, he was that good with every other woman he’d been with. She knew how special it was for her, but what about him?
For her, last night…even right now…was a totally unique experience, but maybe he always found that much satisfaction in the act of lovemaking. She wanted to believe otherwise, but deceiving herself as to the meaning of sex with a man had broken her heart once before. She refused to do that to herself again.
He stood up from the table and came around to lift her to her feet. She was so close to his body, she could feel his heat, but they were not quite touching except where his big hands cupped her elbows. Her eyes opened of their own accord, taking in his heated brown gaze.
He caressed the sensitive area of her inner elbow with both thumbs. “Let us go be good together again, hmm?”
“So we are done talking about your father?”
“Yes.” He cupped her face, tilting her chin with his thumbs. “We are done talking at all, I think.”
“I suppose I can live with that,” she husked. Her body was clamoring for his touch, but she fought the urge to press into him.
She wanted to play it cool, not to give too much of herself away. But that hope disintegrated with the first brush of his lips against hers. The brief contact zinged through her like an overload of electric current, making her body jolt and stiffen and her lips part and beg silently for more.
He gave it to her, covering her mouth with his completely, taking possession and yet inviting her to share in it…to make it mutual. And she wanted that, too. She needed to know that she was branding him as hers as effectively as he had marked her as his. He accepted the tentative slide of her tongue and invited her to go further. It was amazing.
Where had he learned to make love so completely with nothing more than lips against lips? Or had he been born with the ability? Sandor was a special man, part of her insisted it had to be inherent to him. The other part of her tried very hard not to be jealous of the women who had come before.
He kissed down along her neck and she shivered. “Sandor?”
“Hmmm?” He nibbled at a particularly sensitive spot, making her whole body shake with reaction.
“You know the whole don’t have sex with virgins unless you’re married to them or very close to it thing you’ve got going in your brain?” She wasn’t sure where the words came from or the ability to speak coherently enough to voice them, but they came from that part of her brain that was not properly protected when he touched her.
The vulnerable part.
He laughed against her collarbone. “Elliemou, how do you have the wherewithal to ask me questions? I must be doing something wrong.”
“No.” She panted a little as his tongue darted out to taste the hollow of her neck. “That’s the point. You do this so well. I just wondered?”
“What?”
“How did you learn all this stuff? You’re so good at it.”
He groaned and buried his mouth against her. “You taste so good. I cannot believe you asked me that.”
“It’s just…I couldn’t decide if your grandfather and you thought it was okay for you to have sex with women who are experienced. That seems like such a double standard, and then of course, there’syour virginity to consider.”
“I assure you, I am not a virgin.”
“But didn’t it bother you having sex when you were? You know the first time. Or did the woman plan to marry you and something go wrong?” The thought of him engaged to another woman was not a comfortable one.
His body shook with laughter even as his mouth kept doing truly decadent and delicious things to her. “You are right. I am guilty of a double standard.”
“Explain it to me.”
“There are women who are open to sex without commitment.”
“Yes.” That was true.
“You are not one of them.”
“But I’m not a virgin.”
“Yet, you are still very innocent.”
That wasn’t something she wanted to dwell on, but compared to him…maybe. “So, you’ve had sex with lots of women?”
He sighed and straightened so their eyes met. “Not lots. I am no playboy.”
“But you know so much…you like it a lot.” He’d been really attentive the night before. Hungry even. “I can’t see you celibate.”
“Then your imagination has let you down, though mine could not conceive of this conversation. So, perhaps we are even. Only consider that for years I worked twenty-hour workdays and took only the breaks my mother demanded I give her. Neither instance is conducive to ongoing sexual liaisons.”
“But you have had lovers?”
“I have had sex partners. Even when the same woman met that need for more than a few nights, the relationship would never be something I would describe as lovers. Or even a relationship really. We scratched a mutual itch.”
“That sounds so cold.” And crude, but she was getting used to his earthy way of discussing certain things.
He had not been raised in the refined and often stifling atmosphere she had been subjected to.
“It was. I did not realize how cold until I warmed at the fire of your honest passion the first time we kissed.”
CHAPTER SIX
WETNESS BURNED BEHINDher eyes, her emotions choking her. He might not believe in love, but that sounded like she was special to him. She said so.
“Of course you are special. I want to marry you. You are my lover and you will one day be my wife.”
She didn’t have the strength to deny him right then—wasn’t even sure she wanted to, so she avoided answering altogether by kissing him. He growled and yanked her body into his, pressing his hardness against her in a blatant demand and claim at the same time. She had no intention of refusing that demand, no hope to do so even if she’d wanted to.
He swept her into his arms and carried her into the bedroom, laying her down on the bed carefully as if she were both fragile and precious. She looked up at him, her heart in her eyes, her teeth clamped together to bite back the words of love that wanted to tremble from her lips.
He stood and began to undress. “Tonight, I want to take it very slow.”
Her body was already suffused with heat and longing and they’d barely done anything. “I don’t think I’ll survive slow.”
“You will more than survive it, you will enjoy it.” His husky laugh warmed her. “I guarantee it.”
“You’re very confident.”
“According to you, I have reason to be. You like my lovemaking. You think I am so good at it, you wonder how I learned such skill.” Oh, he sounded arrogant, but pleased, too, and she couldn’t help smiling.
“Yes, well…”
He smiled, taking those two words as wholehearted agreement. “There you see?”
But she was beyond answering. He was peeling off his shirt and revealing bronze skin covered with silky black hair over sculpted muscles that tapered to a narrow waist and an intriguing arrow of hair that hinted at more. He was so incredibly gorgeous and overwhelmingly masculine.
He undid the button on his trousers and she sucked in air. It didn’t help her feeling of light-headedness, though.
The man was simply too delicious for words.
He started pushing his trousers down his hips and she thought maybe she should be doing something, too. Though it was hard to move when her body was trembling so hard. She reached for the buttons on the front of her silk jacket.
“Don’t,” he said with a shake of his head. “I want to undress you.”
“You’re going to torture me, aren’t you?”
“With pleasure…. perhaps.”
She quaked inside where he could not see. “I’m not going to survive.”
“I had not pegged you
for such a pessimist.”
She laughed, but the sound choked off as he divested himself of his briefs. His erection sprang out from a nest of curly black hair. Even though they’d made love twice the night before and once again that morning, she still felt a frisson of trepidation skitter up her spine at the prospect of taking the big shaft inside her.