He went around to the back porch and tried the back door. Someone had attempted to break in and had failed, but he’d ruined the lock. For once, he appreciated the storm windows and doors that all Biddle residents had installed. But she needed better protection. The next time the crook came, he’d bring the proper tools. He went to his car and got several different screwdrivers, a knife and hammer. The front door wouldn’t yield, but he opened the back one.
“Stay behind the car,” he told Kate, “until I check out the place.” He walked into the house with his revolver ready and gave the place a thorough search. Satisfied that no one had gained entrance, he got a Segal plate lock from the shed on his back porch and put it on Kate’s back door.
He got the impression that she’d rather not go into the place when she hung back, her face the picture of resignation. “No point in being upset about this. The crook couldn’t get in, and before we leave I’ll make sure the place is secure,” he said in an effort to comfort her.
“But they know where my house is.”
“That’s true. Maybe we ought to put metal grills on the doors and windows. That could keep us busy this weekend. But right now, let’s forget about those crooks. I could eat a horse.”
He didn’t want her distracted by that attempted break-in. It wouldn’t take much for her to wrap that shell around her as tight as a ball of wax—the way she’d been when he met her. And if she did that, he didn’t know if he could get her to take a chance on him again.
“How about a quick swim before dinner?”
Her smile signaled her desire to make their weekend a beautiful experience. “Be ready in ten minutes.”
He gently detained her with a hand on her arm. “I put your things in my house. Is…that all right with you?”
He knew he’d surprised her when she gaped at him. “Luke, I bloom best in my own garden.”
He handed her the key to her back door. “Be right over with your bags.”
Her smile of appreciation for his understanding sent fiery ripples of anticipation spiraling through his body. Thinking that he could be in for a hard night, he turned and went to get her bags. She trusted him. There was no way that he’d let her down.
They frolicked on the beach, teasing, testing. With every move she made, her body telegraphed an invitation to lose himself in her entrancing beauty. Not classic beauty in any sense, but flawless, even-toned skin from head to toe, eyes that challenged him to drown in her, an intelligent countenance, a luscious bosom, beautifully rounded hips and a bottom lip that…Hell, he had to straighten out his mind or he’d be sunk before the voyage began. But in that skimpy, one-piece bathing suit, she was woman personified. Hot. Approachable. And his! A handful of sand hit his chest.
“I’ll get you for that,” he said as she headed for the water. She jumped in and swam with a kick the strength of which astonished him, and he raced to catch her.
“Don’t go too far out,” he yelled.
In the next minute he grabbed her, flipped over on his back, and swam beneath her. She raced toward the shore. What a woman! They reached it simultaneously, but she jumped to her feet at once and ran to her house.
He’d never seen the beat of it. She hadn’t said one word. Shaking his head, bemused, he walked slowly to his house, where he showered, dressed, and dragged his electric barbecue station out of the shed. By the time she joined him in a billowing, red, sleeveless dress, the smell of grilling chicken legs and country sausages perfumed the air.
“You’re one heck of a swimmer,” she said.
“Me? You’re the one. Where’d you learn to swim like that?”
“I was intramural swimming champ my senior year at Howard U.”
Seeing her silhouetted against the light of the rising moon, he couldn’t take his gaze from her. “You look lovely. Beautiful.”
He wouldn’t have thought her so modest, but she lowered her head in apparent embarrassment. “I know I’m not beautiful, Luke. But thanks.”
He walked over to where she stood beside the grill, a dream shrouded in moonlight. “You are to me.”
“Luke.”
“And…and precious.” The last word came out in a whisper, as if he’d torn it out of himself, and maybe he had. The fork in his hand clattered against the grill. Steady, man. He wondered if he loved her so much that he wasn’t his normal self. He didn’t wait for her reaction, because he had to control his emotions, to discipline the desire that bellowed for relief, to quiet that horrifying thumping of his heart. Back at the grill, he cut off a piece of grilled sausage and carried it to her in his fingers.
“Open your pretty mouth.”
She did, and fire shot straight to his loins. He pushed the bit of meat between her parted lips and quickly found something that needed tending at the grill. He had to finish that meal and get down to business, or he’d be a basket case.
“I’ll clean up,” he said when they’d finished eating. “Won’t take me but a few minutes. I’ll just dump the leftovers, wash the utensils and clean my grill.” He threw the dish sponge up and caught it. “Can I come over?”
“I’ll be disappointed if you don’t,” she threw over her shoulder as she walked away.
He brushed his teeth, washed up, splashed on aftershave, put on a fresh shirt, locked his door and struck out across the lawn. He stopped as he was about to step onto her porch. Why was he whistling, “Bess, you is my woman now?” If he’d ever whistled it before, he didn’t recall it. He snuffed out a laugh and knocked on the door.
“Hi. Come on in.”
She took his hand and walked with him through the kitchen into the living room. “Would you like some wine?”
She sat on the sofa and he joined her. Wine? He lifted the bottle of Moet et Chandon champagne and filled their glasses.
“What a lovely thought. Champagne becomes you, Kate.”
He couldn’t think of an appropriate toast, and decided to skip it. He wanted to ask her if she loved him. He wasn’t prepared to make a declaration, so he couldn’t ask it. But suddenly he needed to hear her say those words. Slow down, man, he cautioned himself. He slid his arm around her shoulder, and she snuggled up to him. When he kissed her forehead, she raised her face and looked at him.
“Kate, I am not, as Axel would have you believe, the reigning stud of Portsmouth, Virginia. I’m here with you because I care for you…a lot. And I…Kate, do you care for me?”
Her fingers caressed his face. “Yes. Yes. Don’t you know I do?”
Her head lolled on his shoulder, and her left hand caressed his chest. He hadn’t wanted to rush her, had promised himself that he’d let her take the lead, and when her fingers brushed his right pectoral, he grabbed her hand.
“Baby, you’re treading on dangerous territory.”
As if she hadn’t heard him, she repeated the gesture.
“Kate, sweetheart.”
Her hand grasped his nape, and he cradled her body and gazed into her limpid eyes, eyes dreamy with rising passion. When her tongue rimmed her parted lips, a harsh groan sprang out of him, and he took her mouth, at last tasting her sweetness. She opened to him, and he wanted to plunge into her, but he made himself hold back and tested her, letting the tip of his tongue brush her inner lip. As though greedy for more, she tightened her hold on him, pulled his tongue into her mouth and sucked on it, feasted, her motions a promise of things to come. He stopped and looked at her. Was she sophisticated, or innocent? He got his answer when she kissed his cheek, and he locked her to him with his left hand. With the other, he held her head while he gave her his notice of what she could expect, thrusting rhythmically into and out of her mouth. She fought him for his tongue, but he denied her until soft groans escaped her, and he let her have it.
Changing tactics, he kissed her eyes, the tips of her ears and the corners of her lips. Her restlessness excited him, and he kissed the pulse at her throat and let his tongue trail down to her cleavage. She grabbed his hand and placed it on her breast, and he rubbed
its turgid point through the thin fabric that separated it from his bare hand. With his tongue searching every crevice of her sweet mouth, he rolled the tiny bud between the tips of his fingers until she put her hand on his to increase the pressure. When she crossed her knees, he slipped his hand into her dress and freed her breast for his mouth. He bent to it, kissing around the sides until she grabbed his head and forced him to suckle her. He closed his mouth over her nipple and she cried out, gripping his arm as though to steady herself. He circled it with his tongue and began the sucking motion that he knew would bring him her sweet surrender.
“Luke,” she whispered. “Oh, Luke, Can’t you…Honey, please take me to bed. I…I waited so long, so long.”
“Do you want to make love with me?”
“Yes. Oh, I’ll die if you don’t…”
He settled his mouth on hers. Then he picked her up and carried her to her bedroom.
Weak with passion, she clung to him. At her bedside, he set her on her feet, unzipped her dress and let it pool around her feet. He stared at her until she covered her naked breasts with her arms.
“Oh my, you’re exquisite,” he said, lifting her and laying her on the pink satin sheet. She gazed up at him as he quickly disrobed and reached for the G-string that cupped him.
“Let me,” she whispered, stripping it from him, and letting him swell in her hands. Liquid accumulated in her mouth as she caressed him, awed by his magnificence. He placed a knee on the bed, and she lay back and opened her arms to him. He leaned over her, pulled her hands over her head, and held them there, kissing her eyelids, her ears and her neck. Why didn’t he kiss her mouth? She wanted his tongue in her mouth.
“Kiss me. Luke, kiss me.”
His lips brushed the corners of her mouth, and when she opened to him, he plunged his tongue into her, claiming her. She squirmed beneath his onslaught. He freed her hands and she rubbed her right breast until he moved her hand and settled his mouth on her, sucking, teasing. Fire shot to her loins, and she spread her legs. He suckled her other breast while his fingers teased, rubbed and tortured the left one.
“Luke, for God’s sake, what are you doing to me? I’m aching for you.”
“We’ve just started,” he murmured. He flicked his tongue over her nipple, pulled her aureole into his mouth and sucked it. His fingers skimmed the inside of her thighs and his lips caressed her waist, then her belly, while he worried her left breast with his fingers. Her hips began to sway, and his mouth pressed to her belly. Moisture covered her forehead and her arms, and suddenly his fingers touched the folds of her love passage, and she couldn’t hold back the scream that came from her. His bold fingers parted her folds and stroked her until she thought she’d die of pleasure.
“Luke, please. I want you in me.”
“Shh, love. You’re not quite ready.”
He hooked her knees over his shoulders, and his warm tongue stroked her nub of passion.
“Luke!”
“Don’t deny me this, baby. I have to have every last bit of you.” Jolt after jolt of electricity flashed through her, as he loved her, kissing, sucking and stroking. She tensed, as a strange tightening gripped her.
“Honey, something’s happening to me. Something’s—”
“It’s all right, baby. Give yourself to me.”
Then at last, he rose above her and slipped on a condom to protect her. “May I?”
“You want to…Oh, yes.”
“Take me. Take me in.” He took her hand, wrapped it around him, and let her head him to her lover’s gate.
Sensations she’d never experienced swirled in her as he touched her for the first time.
“Look at me, baby. It’s me, nobody else.” His velvet steel lingered there until she raised her hips and he plunged into her. Immediately her body flamed like molten lava as he stroked her.
“Do you feel that? Do you? Am I in the right place?”
“Yes. Yes. Every stroke.” She caught his rhythm and moved with him. Suddenly heat flashed at the bottom of her feet, and a tightening began. She reached for it.
“Relax, baby. We’ll get there. We can’t miss.”
Hard now, and faster, he stroked, until she thought she’d die if she didn’t burst. Then he bent to her breast and sucked it hard, pulling the essence from her. Pulsations started, and she undulated wildly beneath him, the rhythm forgotten. Only the powerful loving, and the hot tremors that shook her were real. The clenching and squeezing possessed her, and she cried out.
“Luke. Luke. I love you. I love you.”
“Sweetheart!”
He gripped her body and stroked furiously. “There’s more, baby. A lot more.”
She thought life had gone out of her. Then he put his fingers between them, circling and teasing while he stroked her. She grabbed his buttocks, raised her body to his, and buckled beneath him as the tension began again, more furiously, faster, dragging her under as the hot fever of climax plowed through her like a cyclone, sucking her into a vortex of ecstasy.
Her screams split the air. “Luke…I…I’m dying.”
She was in him, all around him, a part of him, as he writhed in the clutches of violent tremors and the shudders that possessed him. His moans gripped her like steel bands as he shivered helplessly in her arms.
“Kate. My love. My love.”
Chapter 11
Luke propped himself up on his elbows, gazed down into Kate’s face, and then covered his own face with his hands.
“I don’t know what happened to me. At the end there, I…I was out of it. Are you all right? I mean…Are you…Did I…I want to know if you’re satisfied.”
The brilliance of her smile made it unnecessary for her to speak, but he still welcomed her words.
“Darling, I’ve never been so happy in my life. Now, I know what it’s all about.” Her hands went to the sides of his face, and she released her words haltingly as tears pooled in her eyes. “Thank you for…for this precious gift.”
“Are you telling me—”
She nodded. “Ten years. Nathan was the only man I knew. He boasted about his way with women, and I think he tried, but the love wasn’t there. So he wasn’t as caring or as…as loving as he might have been. I finally gave up, closed off my heart and stopped feeling.”
He squeezed her to him, his heart aching for her, and for the pain of those ten hollow years. And though he battled against his pride, his heart swelled with it, and he gave in and let himself revel in triumph.
“At a point back there,” he said, “I thought as much, but I didn’t want to believe it.”
He rolled over on his back and gathered her to his side. “Kate, this was special for me, too. It was…I can’t think right now. I do know we have to consider where we’re going from here.”
She stretched languorously like a sated feline, and his pride shot up as he watched her. “Wherever I go, honey,” she purred, “I want to find you there.”
He let his fingers skim her thigh. “I’ll do my best to accommodate you, and that won’t be much of a stretch, because I want the same. I can’t go any further than that now. Can you…Will you be patient?”
Her fingers frolicked through his chest hair, teasing in an idle, almost absentminded way. “I know we’re together now against your best judgment, Luke, and I don’t know why you made an exception. But I’m happy that you did.”
She had told him she loved him, and he ached to tell her what he felt, but if he spoke the words, he’d have to go the next step, and he couldn’t do that. If he did, he’d soon be totally enmeshed in the barbed wire of his passion and desire. He’d lose focus, and she’d be exposed, a sitting duck for anybody who cared to take a shot at her.
“I didn’t change my mind, sweetheart. I just couldn’t do without you any longer.”
Her left index finger drew circles in his chest hair, then tripped down to his belly. He stiffened. “What about now?” she asked him. “Can you do without me now?”
He spread his legs an
d lifted her on top of him. “I know the answer to that. It was torment before, but now that I’ll know what I’m missing, what I could have, it’ll be plain torture.”
He jerked upward where the palm of her left hand rolled over his right pectoral. “That’ll get you into trouble.”
She pinched his flat nipple. “Maybe trouble for you, but for me it’ll be a trip to paradise.”
He wrapped one arm around her shoulder, the other around her hips, and pressed her to him as he rose beneath her, ready and eager for what he knew awaited him.
“Paradise, huh?” He gazed at her face, wreathed in smiles above him. “I think I could walk away from you—if I had to. But believe me, baby, I’d be back.”
Her face showed none of the feminine triumph that he’d seen on other women who—aware that he’d found release with them—couldn’t resist gloating. Her demeanor was that of a happy woman, properly loved, who wanted more and didn’t mind asking him for it. Her eyes expressed the vulnerability that he needed to see, that let him know her need for him tied her in knots, just as his need for her did him. Need real and raw. Desire coursed through him, a fever running wild.
He rolled her over. “Kiss me?” His voice, hoarse and shaking, startled him. He was overboard. For the first time in his life, he was up to his neck in a powerful wave that he didn’t control. But right then, he cared only for the woman beneath him. Her lips parted, and he dipped his tongue between them to sip the nectar she kept there for him alone. Her legs sprang up over his buttocks and locked themselves between his thighs. Anxious now to reach his goal, his fingers darted down to the seat of her passion and found her ready for him. He reached to the floor beside the bed, found the protection and shielded himself. Impatiently, her hips bobbed and weaved beneath him until he wrapped himself in her fingers and she guided his silken steel to her love portal. Out of his mind with desire, he drove home and took them on a journey to that place where only they had been. She soon laid claim to him when her rhythmic spasms began to clutch him and, once more, he came apart in her arms as, together, they flew to paradise.
Secret Desire Page 20