Simon Says...

by Donna Kauffman

  Either the hulking security agent on the other side of the door had a remarkably girly voice, or there was no hulking security agent. He did a quick visual scan through the peephole. Short, female, head bowed, hairnet, maid’s uniform. His heart was skipping all kinds of crazy beats, but he schooled himself to remain calm. Despite the fact that there could only be one maid in this entire hotel who would be standing outside his door at 6:00 am.

  “It’s six in the morning,” he said quietly, so his voice would reach just past the door, but no further. “What could I possibly need from housekeeping?”

  “Me.”

  He flipped the locks off the door, pulled it open, tugged the maid in his room, closed the door behind her, then pushed her up against it. “Really? And why is that?”

  He pulled off the dark hairnet and soft strawberry curls came tumbling out. His heart tumbled right along with them.

  Sophie looked up at him. “Tolliver is suddenly using the hotel safe. I tried to keep my distance. I shouldn’t be here. I should steer clear of this whole thing, and most especially you.”

  “But?”

  She searched his face. “But I had to know if you were okay.”

  “Sophie…” It was exactly what he wanted. Her, back in his arms, back in his life. Nothing else seemed more paramount than that. At that moment, he didn’t give a rat’s ass about the job or what she could do to help him.

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  He most definitely wasn’t. “What for?”

  “Walking out, coming back. Being flighty. I’m never flighty. I make a decision, I stick to it. I’m not needy, or clingy, I don’t play games and I don’t walk around with my head in the clouds. Grounded, that’s me. I know my path, my goals, and I set out to achieve them.”

  “Maybe your path leads to me.”

  She softened beneath him then, and her bottom lip trembled slightly. And his heart was no longer simply in danger, it was fully compromised.

  “How can it?” she asked, her voice a tremulous whisper. “This is not real.”

  “You feel very real to me.”

  “Simon—”

  “Sophie.” Then he kissed her, claimed her mouth as his own, wishing he could extend that declaration to the rest of her, but was thankful enough, for now, that she didn’t turn him away. Thankful that, after only a moment, a breath, she kissed him back. Her fingers tunneled through his hair, her nails scraped his scalp as she pulled him closer, took the kiss deeper. As if perhaps she’d been hungering for him, missing him, as much as he had her. Two days. It felt like an eternity. Especially when he hadn’t known he’d ever see her again.

  He left her mouth, dropped kisses along her jaw, nuzzled her neck. She moaned softly, arching away from the door, into him, so she could tip her head back and allow him greater access. His body roared to life, the exhaustion and fatigue temporarily forgotten as desire and adrenaline punched renewed life into him. “I missed you.”

  “I missed you, too,” she said on a sigh. “I didn’t know what to think when Tolliver made his sudden move, and in the middle of the night.”

  He lifted his head so he could see her eyes. He framed her face, pushing his fingers into her soft tumble of curls. “I’m okay,” he told her, answering her initial question. “Tolliver still doesn’t know I’m here, as far as I can tell.”

  “Then why the sudden change? I thought maybe you’d made your move, and—”

  “I did some scouting….” He didn’t elaborate. It was bad enough he’d used her and her key tag. If she didn’t know the particulars of where, how, or what had happened since then, she couldn’t be liable. Well, as liable.

  “I stayed home for two shifts, called in sick,” she told him. “I wanted…to give you time. I had to have my tag replaced when I came back to work.”

  “Did it cause you trouble?”

  She shook her head. “No. They issued me a new one.”

  He didn’t even glance down at it. “I won’t be wanting it, so don’t worry.”

  “I couldn’t risk it again, anyway. They let me off with a shake of the finger, but—”

  He slid his thumbs across her lips. “I won’t ask you to involve yourself further, Sophie.”

  “But what if I want—”

  He stopped her with a kiss. “Just want this.” He kissed her again, then again, until she was kissing him back. Only this time it wasn’t simply the relief and thrill of being in each other’s arms again. This time it flared quickly past that, as if they were both starving and had been presented with a buffet feast. Which was exactly how he felt about meeting Sophie. He hadn’t known how hungry a man could be, how deprived he’d been, until presented with the most tantalizing smorgasbord he’d ever encountered. She swamped all of his senses, engaged him on every level. He’d never been so fully aware, so completely in tune, so insatiably greedy. Want me, he wanted to say. Want me enough to stay, to try.

  He slid his hands down her body, pinning her to the door with his own as he pulled her legs up and urged them around him. “Hold on.”

  She wrapped her arms tightly around him, kissing the side of his neck and sending a whole new host of sensations rocketing through him as he spun her away from the door and staggered blindly toward the bed.

  He found her mouth again, just as they hit the bed. He followed her down, then rolled to his side, pulling her with him, his lips never leaving her. She was undressing him, and he was, once again, fumbling with that damn maid’s uniform. “You really have to stop wearing this thing,” he murmured, as he tugged at the zipper while she popped open the buttons on his shirt.

  “I know,” she said, breathless. She got the last button of his shirt undone just as he tugged the zipper of her dress the last few inches. She shrugged out of her dress while he ripped his shirt off, his pants following.

  He shoved them off the bed, then turned to find her struggling with her bra straps. “Allow me.”

  She smacked his hands away, then smiled when he looked affronted. “Oh no. You’ll get sidetracked. And I’ll let you. This time it’s not going to just be about me.”

  “Well, I’m all for that, but—”

  She slipped her arms from the straps, then pinned him to the bed by the shoulders when he reached for her again. “I’m not kidding. I don’t know if or when I’ll ever have this time with you again, and I’m not going to have any regrets.”

  He certainly didn’t want to stop her from doing whatever the hell it was she wanted to do, but what she’d said, right before leaving him…they were too close now to chance it again. He had to know, had to make sure. “Before, when we were together, you said you didn’t think you could handle taking things further—”

  “That was before I spent two long days without you, wishing I hadn’t been such an idiot.”

  He grinned. “I had a few wishes myself, but—”

  She rolled fully on top of him. “I have no idea how I’ll handle this, but I tried walking away, and that pretty much sucked. So, if it’s going to suck either way, then I say we should at least have what we can have.”

  He rolled her to her back, pinned her wrists to the bed. Her chest was still heaving from the heavy breathing they’d already amped themselves up to. His breathing wasn’t exactly steady either. “At the risk of destroying this not once, but twice, I have to ask you, who says this is all we can have?”

  “Simon—”

  He leaned down, bracing his weight on his elbows, smoothing a few errant curls from her face. He was surprised to feel the slightest tremor in his fingertips. He’d run dozens of jobs where steady fingers under extreme stress were the only thing between success and sometimes deadly failure. So it was disconcerting to say the least. But he knew that what happened here now, between them, was vital, paramount, even, to his future. “What do you want to have?” he asked quietly. “Simon.”

  “I’m serious. If there were no boundaries, no obstacles, what would you want?”

  She held his gaze for the longest
time, and just when he thought she wouldn’t answer, she whispered, “You.”

  He’d had no idea that the heart muscle could actually squeeze so painfully for reasons other than something like a heart attack. “What makes you think you can’t have me?”

  “Those boundaries and obstacles.”

  “Boundaries can be compromised, adapted to new needs. Obstacles can be overcome.”

  “You make it sound simple. It would be anything but. Simon, I…” She closed her eyes briefly, then opened them again and took a steadying breath. “Are you saying you want the same thing? Even if it’s complicated? Really complicated?”

  “I’ve never wanted anything so badly.” And it was the God’s honest truth. “It’s what I was trying to tell you before. I couldn’t leave you thinking it was just a lark. It was already more for me, or I wouldn’t have said what I said.”

  “We don’t really know each other.”

  “We know each other.” He brushed a kiss across her lips. “I’ve never, not once in my life, been so fully engaged in another person. I don’t know how long that’s supposed to take, but with you it was instantaneous. And that fascination, that connection, has only strengthened the more time I spend with you, around you, listening to how your mind works, watching you.” He kissed her again. “Smelling you, tasting you.”

  She moaned a little and arched into him when he took the kiss deeper, invaded her mouth, claimed her in the most basic way a man could claim a woman.

  By the time he lifted his head, her body had grown heated and damp. His had, too. Her eyes were unfocused and dreamy looking, desire for him a naked, open thing.

  “I hunger for you, Sophie. For everything about you. You may be right in that I don’t know a lot about your life, and I have no idea what could become of us, but I do know you. You. And the need to find out the rest, the urge to explore this whatever it leads us to, is the strongest thing I’ve ever felt. When you walked out, it was like a part of me walked out with you. And I told myself how insane that was, but it’s been two days, and it still feels exactly like that. It could be two years, and I don’t think that would change. So it doesn’t really matter how crazy this might be.”

  She slid her hand free and touched his face. Her fingers were shaky.

  “Does that scare you?” he asked.

  She nodded, but continued to stroke his face, his cheeks, his chin, his lips. Her fingertips might have been trembling, but her gaze never wavered from his.

  “Good. Because it scares me, too,” he said. “But it’s also thrilling, and exciting, and fills me with this amazed sense of anticipation. This is too momentous a thing to walk away from just because I fear where it might take me, what it might cost me. That’ll get me nothing.”

  “Chasing it could get you heartbreak,” she said softly.

  “Could. Life can be cruel, Soph. But, like you said, it can also be wondrous. Right now, the only heartbreak I feel is from not trying.”

  Her lips started to tremble again, and her eyes grew glassy.

  “What did I say?” he asked, truly perplexed. “Don’t cry.”

  “You’re amazing, Simon Lassiter. And, I don’t care what you say, you’re rosy, and hopeful, and maybe even more of an optimist than I am. And I think your parents would be intensely proud of you right now.”

  “I want you to be proud. You. Sophie Maplethorpe. Of the soft curls, innocent freckles.” He kissed one, then another. “Sharp mind, devilish wit.” He kissed her forehead, the tip of her nose, the corner of her mouth. “And just a twisted enough view of how the world works to appeal to my rather eccentric views on the matter.”

  “Ditto,” she said, then smiled through the sheen in her eyes. “Minus the freckles part.”

  “So, you’ll have me, then, will you?”

  She moved beneath him and this time he was the one who groaned. “I believe I will.”

  “Did I mention the wicked minx part?”

  “Minx?” Laughter spurted from her. “Who uses that word?”

  He moved between her legs and she gasped. “When it fits…”

  He pushed into her, and she lifted her hips, wrapped her legs higher and took him fully. “Oh. My.” She moved, gasped, then moved again. “It fits quite perfectly,” she said, on a long, groaning sigh of satisfaction. “I thought, these past two days, I’d exaggerated how much.” She moved beneath him. “If anything…I underestimated.”

  Simon knew exactly what she meant. He groaned and fought against the urge to pull out and plunge deeper, faster. To take her with the furious need and heat that was a constant live thing inside him now. She was female in every single wonderful sense of the word. Delightfully soft beneath him, ample and strong, and so damn tight around him it was a miracle he could be still even a second.

  “Have me, Simon,” she whispered, then lifted her head and kissed him.

  And he was well and truly lost to it, then. To her. Completely, utterly, and without a single reservation. It went against everything he’d ever been before. Every precaution he’d taken with his life, and more to the point, his heart. Gone as if they never existed. He’d seen what his parents had, and he’d never thought to be that lucky himself. Maybe that was why he’d never reached for it, never tried. They’d set the bar too high. Anything less would have been settling. Like Sophie, he knew what he wanted, and he went about getting it. But how did a person get that?

  And yet, here it was. Right here. Finally. All he had to do was not screw it up. Find a way to keep it, keep her, and nourish and grow it, so it would be that powerful, amazing thing he’d witnessed firsthand.

  And even that revelation didn’t terrify him like it should.

  The only thing that could terrify him now would be discovering her heart wasn’t capable of making the same leap his was.

  But, in that moment, his was pounding too hard and fast for him to pay any attention to what might come next. The only thing in his mind at this second was who was going to come right now.

  13

  A MILLION THOUGHTS RACED through her mind, but the sensations of Simon filling her, moving inside her, kissing her, swamped all of her senses and the jumble in her brain simply couldn’t compete. So Sophie shoved the rest aside and gave herself over to the moment. And a more blissful, intense, deeply satisfying moment she’d never had.

  He felt good on top of her, his weight, his body, covering hers. He was strong, and lean, and he was making love to her like she was the last woman on earth. It made her feel powerful, bold, intensely female. She lifted to meet each stroke, wanting more, faster, deeper. It was like she couldn’t get enough, and she already knew that when it was over, she’d want him again. And again.

  And the want, the need, wouldn’t just be her body craving his. She wanted him around, in her life, in her bed, in her head, her heart, all of it.

  She moved with him, and they quickly established a rhythm together, as he pushed deeper, making her cry out, wondering where this had been all her life. She felt such an intense satisfaction hearing him groan, then move faster still. She clutched at him, holding on as he started the climb, wanting nothing more than to drive him over the edge. Then he was lifting his face from the crook of her neck, weaving his fingers into her hair, turning her face to his. She lifted, expecting the kiss that would take them both there, but instead he just held her face until she opened her eyes, looking at him, while feeling him push harder, and tighten inside her.

  “Sophie,” he said, his voice ragged, his eyes so dark now.

  “Yes,” she said, not sure to what she was agreeing, but fairly certain she would to anything he asked of her in that moment.

  “Don’t run from this,” he said, slowing just enough so that their gazes could remain locked. “After. Don’t run.”

  It wasn’t what she expected. To see that naked vulnerability in his eyes, hear it in his tone. Not begging, not demanding, just asking, in the most basic, elemental way a man could ask a woman. To stay. To try. “I won’t,” she whi
spered. “Promise.”

  The light that entered his eyes then was as fierce as it was triumphant, and her body, her mind, maybe even her soul, reacted to that moment in a way that scared and thrilled her…and had her moving with a whole new urgency, reaching for her own pinnacle, matching him, knowing she’d go over the edge when he did. It was wild, it was wonderful, and she didn’t question it.

  When he claimed her mouth as he let the moment take him, she tightened…and went with him.

  It was stunning, like fireworks exploding, but all contained inside her body, as she was thrust into an oblivion of pleasure.

  But it was the moments after, as their bodies slowed, and her heart didn’t, that suddenly became the most powerful…and the most terrifying.

  She’d promised him she wouldn’t run. Wouldn’t hide from this. Or shy away from the obstacles they’d encounter. At the moment, it was simply all too much to even contemplate. But the world wasn’t going to stand still while she gathered her thoughts. The reality was, things were going to happen, events were scheduled that had to be considered, dealt with…and somehow, some way, she had to come to terms with all of that, and very quickly, if this was going to have even a prayer of moving forward past this moment. “Simon—”

  He rolled to his side, then pulled her into the shelter of his body and simply wrapped her up. “Not yet.”

  She’d never wanted shelter, needed to be held or coddled in any way. It usually made her a great partner, as the men of her previous acquaintance were more than happy to drift off into mindless sleep. Simon, on the other hand, didn’t seem to be done communicating, his body to hers, just because the sex was over and the orgasms had been experienced. She thought it would feel suffocating, possessive. Instead, it felt…loving, and secure. An unspoken commitment.

  She wasn’t sure what her body was saying to him, but she’d never felt so at peace, and so…connected. Willingly and—shockingly—quite easily. This wasn’t hard. In fact, it was wonderful, actually. So she gave in to the moment, savoring the newness of it, the profoundness of learning something about herself. And maybe something about the man Simon truly was, at the same time. She snuggled closer, slid her hand up to cover his heart, and let her eyes drift shut.