Rose closed her eyes and sighed. Her feelings for Slate sat like a heavy dull pain in her chest, interfering with the anticipation of the future she knew she wanted, that she deserved.
The train came to a halt at the station; passengers scrambled to disembark. Rose picked up her bags and joined the stream of people, trying to blot out memories of the last time she’d been here.
The crowd filed past the glass doors into the station; Rose kept her gaze firmly fixed on the back of the business suit in front of her. She wouldn’t look around. She wouldn’t remember. She wouldn’t hope or expect or dream anything. She’d look straight ahead and think straight ahead and walk straight ahead into the new life she was making.
She crossed the large room, went down the steps into the subway, swiped her monthly pass, lunged at the turnstile with her hip and gave a grunt of pain. Damn thing was stuck. She swiped her card again, pushed harder. It didn’t budge. She sighed, backed up to try another one. The handle of her bag caught on the metal rod and she jerked back clumsily.
“Need help?”
Rose caught her breath. Slate stepped into view and leaned across her to disentangle her bag. The movement brought his body close, close enough that his scent reached her and her skin shivered with the need to touch him.
“No, thanks.” Rose pushed the desire away, her brain a whirl of confusion and uncertainty, and freed her purse herself. “I got it.”
He fixed her with a keen glance, his blue eyes piercing and magnetic despite weary circles and a slightly anxious cast. He gestured her through another turnstile and fell into step beside her. “The Feds weren’t too hard on you, I hope.”
“No, they were fine.” She stopped and turned, desperately glad to see him. “It seems you were rescuing me, after all.”
He put down a small shopping bag he’d been carrying, grinned and raked his hands through his short hair. “So it seems.”
“Well…” She shrugged, helpless to express everything she had to say to this man who had no right to look so solid and male and damned fabulously irresistible just when she’d decided how terrifically her life would go on without him. “Thank you.”
He moved so quickly she didn’t have a chance to protest—pulled her toward him and kissed her, hard and passionately on the mouth, held her tight against him so that her body flashed into flame.
She tried to pull back, but he held her still, kissed her again, over and over, the passion he’d always denied her twice as potent and powerful as she’d imagined it so many times. A train roared into the station, blowing dust and hot air around them, took on and let off passengers, roared away.
Finally he stopped, leaving her limp and breathless, crazed and giddy and barely able to stand on her own feet. God, she’d missed him. And one sight of him was enough to make her little town in New England already feel as lonely as her mom in the nursing home.
“I have something for you, Alice Rose.” He picked up the bag he’d been carrying and handed it to her. She rummaged in the tissue paper with shaky fingers and came up with a slender pottery vase, glazed in earthy blue-and-green tones, with tiny ferns imprinted on the side.
“It’s for the shelves at the cottage. I thought we could start new, start putting a lifetime of our own memories up there.” He crossed his arms over his chest, hands shoved into his armpits. “If that’s what you want.”
She stared at him, aching with love and tenderness, aching to give him the answer he wanted, to take the terrible, uncharacteristic vulnerability away from his eyes. But she couldn’t do this to please him. She had to please herself, too.
“Slate.” She fingered the delicate design on the vase. She wanted him. She wanted to believe she could be with him and retain the sense of self he’d pushed so hard to give her. But she also wanted time to be alone with Alice Rose Katzenbaum, to get to know her again and live life through her. “I need to be independent for a while. Find my way by myself.”
“Of course. I understand.” He glanced at his watch. “Ten or twenty minutes long enough?”
She laughed in spite of herself. “I was thinking in terms of years.”
“Nope.” He shook his head, trying a grin under those serious eyes. “Too long.”
“Months?”
He drew her to him and kissed her again. “I’m not going to crush you, Rose. I want you to be independent, I want you to be free, to choose your own life. I just want to be part of it.”
“I want that, too.” She clutched the vase to her heart, amazed at how easily the words were spoken, how true they were. “But not right away. Please understand.”
He pinned her with a frustrated, sexy blue stare, lips tightened, jaw clenched.
“Okay.” He nodded. “We’ll go slow. I’m patient. We can have dinner tomorrow night. Then you can take a night off. Then the next day we can get married.”
She laughed, then smiled up into his eyes, let him see the love she felt for him. “I’m determined on this one, Slate.”
He groaned and clutched his temples. “Okay, okay. I know when I’m beat. You want to wait, we can wait. Cut me off at the knees, put the chain around my neck. I’m yours, I love you, and I’ll wait as long as it takes.”
Rose flung her arms around him and kissed him with her entire soul. “Six months. Just give me six months to be me, on my own. Then you can have me.”
“Mmm.” He ran his hands up and down her body. “All of you? Forever? Only for me?”
She nodded and drew a slow X across her chest, making the childlike gesture the solemn oath she knew in her heart it was.
“All of me, Slate. Forever. Only for you.”
MELISSA WAVED TO BILL and closed the door with a sigh of relief. She thought he’d never leave. They’d had a nice evening; she’d always love Bill in a friendly, peaceful way. The way she always thought you were supposed to feel toward your husband. The way she’d never in a million years settle for now.
She rushed to the phone and dialed Riley’s number, heart pounding with excitement and a touch of terror. Busy. She made a face and put the phone down. Paced for a minute. Called again.
Busy.
Okay, she could make herself crazy doing this. She popped in the tape of The Philadelphia Story and sank onto the couch, vowing to wait at least ten minutes before she tried again. The movie was one of her all-time romantic favorites. Katherine Hepburn, resisting the fabulous fireworks sparked by her ex-husband, Cary Grant, flirting with the solid, earnest reporter played by Jimmy Stewart, before realizing her one true love, the one she would always belong to, was the thrilling man she’d never stopped loving.
Duh.
Melissa grinned and reached for the phone again in a fit of impatience. How could she ever have thought going back to Bill was a good idea?
She’d given in. Surrendered to the glorious possibility that she’d found a true soul mate, a man she could feel passionately about for the rest of her life. One who would take all sides of her—wild, sedate, ordinary, extraordinary—and cherish every one.
She dialed his number, clutched the phone and closed her eyes. Ringing. Ringing.
Her eyes opened. She frowned. Strange. She could hear a phone ringing through her wall.
“Riley here.” His voice seemed to come from the phone and from her hallway. Someone pounded hard at her door.
Melissa stood, adrenaline pumping, still holding the phone to her ear, and walked toward the knocking.
“Slate? Hello? Who the hell is this?” His voice came through the phone, brusque and hoarse.
She disconnected the line, opened the door and sucked in her breath. He stood there, eyes on fire in the dim hallway. Rain had dampened his T-shirt and hair, left glistening drops on his skin. He smelled of the summer night and every fantasy male she’d ever imagined.
“Riley.” The word emerged charged with love and joy and everything she could possibly feel.
“Where is he?” He spoke with a quiet ferocity that took her completely aback.
&
nbsp; “He?” She stared at him blankly. “You mean Bill? How did you know—”
Riley took two steps into the apartment and closed the door gently behind him, without taking those intense, angry eyes from her face. Every movement showed deliberate control, but the impact of his emotion was like physical violence. Melissa shivered, unabashedly thrilled by his jealousy and power.
“Was he here tonight? With you?”
“We had dinner. He’s a friend. Nothing more.” She almost laughed at how true it was, and held up the phone. “That was me calling you. The second he left. I couldn’t dial fast enough.”
The anger in his eyes began fading, replaced by a guarded look. “What did you have to say to me?”
“That…I want to be with you.”
“Now?”
“Yes.”
“With toys?”
She shook her head.
“An experiment?” He took a step toward her. “For fun?”
“For real.” Her voice shook. “Forever, if that’s how it turns out.”
He held her eyes for a breathless moment, then pushed his phone slowly back into his pocket and pointed to hers, eyes dark and hungry. “Put that down.”
She set it on a nearby end table, barely resisting the urge to fling it over her shoulder. He lunged forward, swept her into his arms and carried her into her bedroom as he had before, except this time she wasn’t fighting herself; this time she was at peace.
If she could call having her body on fire with love and lust being at peace.
He laid her on the bed, pulled his T-shirt over his head and lay next to her, his body warm and solid beside her. He swept his hand over the material across her stomach, pulled it up to expose her skin, slid his hand to her breasts. “I’ve never seen you wear red, except that underwear I brought. Did you buy this for him?”
“I thought so.” Her voice came out a soft gasp; his fingers were warm and sure, caressing her through the thin lace of her bra. “But now I realize it was a warning. One he recognized before I did.”
Riley pulled the blouse up and over her head, tossed it onto the floor behind him, unhooked her bra, slid it off her shoulders and sent it spinning after. “A warning?”
She looped her arms around his neck and pulled him to her. “That I’m not the woman he knew before. That I belong to someone else.”
“Damn right.” He lowered himself onto her and kissed her. “If he’d been here I would have shot first, asked questions later.”
“Romantic, but messy.”
“That’s me.” He grinned, rolled them both to one side and slid her pants down and off, then her panties, taking his time, making her crazy with impatience, with longing for the full lengths of their bodies to come together.
His hand followed the intimate line of her leg from her ankle, up and over to her inner thigh, then pushed between her legs. Desire hit her, hard and wild; she kept her legs closed and rocked against his forearm, slid her hands down and undid his jeans—the button, the zipper. Pushed the material down and away, freeing his erection to her exploring fingers.
He let her touch him briefly, keeping his arm strong between her clenched legs, giving in to sexy sounds of pleasure that echoed hers. Then he took his jeans the rest of the way off and slid on top of her, wrapped his arms around her, holding her to him as if he wanted to bring her inside his own body, making her feel loved and protected and horny as hell all at once.
“Oh, Melissa,” he whispered. “You feel so damn good.”
She swallowed, teary and thick-throated from happiness; stroked up and down his back, savoring the smooth, muscled feel of his skin, the rough brush of chest hair against her breasts. He pushed slowly, rhythmically, his erection hard and teasing against her sex until she thought she’d go crazy wanting him inside her.
“Riley.” She opened her legs eagerly, reached down for him, guided him to her wet center.
“Wait.” He held back.
“Why?” She tried again, panting with frustration.
He resisted. “Melissa.”
“What?”
He lifted up on one elbow. “I just wanted to know if this old-fashioned sex is boring you yet.”
She gaped for a startled second, then burst into laughter at his mischievous grin. “Oh, Riley. I love you.”
The mischief left him; he leaned down and kissed her, lowered his body tightly against hers, pushed inside her and lay still. Melissa closed her eyes, wanting to capture the feeling forever, the thud of their hearts next to each other, the absolute intimacy of their joining, the hot, huge sensation of being filled by him.
Then he began to move and she lost everything. Every thing but Riley, and the spiraling certainty that she was headed to oblivion, that nothing would ever be as good as this, the total connection, the joining, the exchange of their bodies and passion and hearts.
Her climax grew slowly, spread over her, rushed her into a long moment of burning ecstasy. She clasped Riley hard, rocked up against him, felt him come inside her, heard him whisper her name, his body tense and pulsing with hers. Tears mingled with her cries, mingled with the sensations and emotions so far beyond anything she’d ever felt.
Then slowly, inevitably, she came down, not regretting the slide back into consciousness when reality held their future together.
He lifted his head, kissed her sweetly, gently. She responded with her whole self, no longer afraid, no longer holding back.
“I love you, too, Melissa.”
She sighed, a tremendous gooey sigh of happiness that made him smile. He kissed her again, rolled to his back and brought her with him, nestled her tightly against him. “And I think I could stand to do that again sometime.”
She laughed and wrapped her leg over him. “Like when?”
He glanced at his watch. “How about I pencil you in after I save the world from evil?”
“That would be fine. As long as it doesn’t take more than an hour.”
He came up on his side and traced her lips gently with his thumb. “Melissa, I don’t want to give up my job. I love what I do. It fits me.”
“I know. I wish I loved mine half that much.” She gazed up at him earnestly. “I wouldn’t ask you to quit. It will be hard on me at times, I won’t lie about that, but I’m willing to try if it means—”
He held up a finger to stop her. “However. I am prepared to take some time off, on one condition.”
She raised an eyebrow, surprised by his offer. “What’s that?”
“You come on a trip with me around the world.”
“What?” She struggled to sit up. “Are you serious?”
He looked her straight in the eye. “Deadly.”
“You mean quit my job?”
“The one you don’t love.”
“And just…leave?”
“Yup.” He pulled her back down next to him and stroked her breasts, her stomach and down between her legs until she felt herself getting hot all over again. “What do you say?”
She laughed from sheer excitement. What could she say? Why the hell not? Go on an adventure and come home to a new life and a new outlook. With Riley beside her. She locked her arms around his neck and pulled him onto her. “I’d say it sounds a lot like you—too good to resist.”
He grinned and pushed the hair gently off her forehead. “I wanted to make your fantasy come true.”
“Oh, Riley.” She reached up and kissed him, reached down and touched him, felt his body respond, felt her heart swell to bursting with love and happiness. “Believe me, you already did.”
ISBN: 978-1-4592-0020-3
THE WILD SIDE
Copyright © 2001 by Muna Shehadi Sill.
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