by Hailey North
Penelope wasn’t sure she’d heard that right. She shot a glance at Tony, who did look embarrassed now.
Four businessmen came in and Lucien waved and led them to their seats.
“I. . . uh . . . I thought we’d have lunch in a private room,” Tony said.
“That would be an adventure,” Penelope said, wondering if this was another New Orleans custom or if what Tony had actually booked was a hotel room.
He held out his hand and Penelope sighed as he closed his strong fingers around hers. They strolled from the dining area down a hallway that opened to a courtyard in the center of the building.
A fountain splashed amid a jungle of leafy plants, most of them tropical ones Penelope didn’t recognize. Tony paused under the archway. “You know, I didn’t really ask you to lunch,” he said.
Penelope’s heart leaped. Gazing into his eyes, she said, “I would have been disappointed if you had.”
He laughed and pulled her to him. Tipping her chin up, he kissed her lightly on the lips. Then, with a noise like a growl, he deepened the kiss.
Penelope pressed against him, willing her body to merge with his. Breathless, she answered the demands of his lips, his questing tongue. When he broke away, she cried out softly.
“Don’t worry, darling,” he said, leading across the courtyard to a stairway almost hidden by a banana tree, “that was only an appetizer.”
With those tantalizing words, Tony ushered her up the stairs, produced a key, and swung open the door at the top of the stairs.
Feeling incredibly daring, Penelope crossed the threshold. “What a lovely room,” she said, taking in the sitting room done in rosewood and chintz. A love seat faced a fireplace and a table for two sat by a window that opened out onto the balcony at the top of the stairs.
Tony walked in behind her and shut the door. “I’m glad you like it,” he said, and held out his arms.
She stepped into his embrace and lifted her lips for his kiss. Snuggling against him, she slipped her hands around the back of his neck and curled her fingers into his hair.
He pulled her more closely against him and Penelope felt a rush of power as she felt the proof of how excited Tony was. Arching her body, she offered herself to him, an offer he clearly accepted, as, still kissing her, he led them in dancelike steps across the sitting room and down a hallway.
Sanity returned slowly to Penelope as she realized they were only steps from the bedroom. Tony must have sensed that she was beginning to hesitate. Lifting his lips from hers, he said, “You know you can tell me to stop at any time.” His voice husky, he said, “Though you know I don’t want to. And this time I won’t, unless you request it.”
Her breath came faster. His eyes were dark pools she would gladly throw herself into, even if it meant drowning. She touched her tongue to her lips, tender from his kisses. “I want you, Tony Olano. Today. Now.” To herself, she added, And forever.
He answered her by picking her up and cradling her in his arms, the way he’d done the day she fainted. She kept her eyes fixed on his face, watching the emotions playing there. She saw passion, she recognized desire, and though it might be her own foolish imagination taking over, she thought she detected something stronger, something closer to caring and affection, evidence that to Tony she meant more than just a one-night stand.
The bedroom of the suite was even more impressive than the sitting room. Tony set her down beside a second fireplace next to a four-poster bed. He pointed to the opposite side of the room and Penelope saw why. A huge square spa-type tub occupied the space between the bedroom and the bathroom, designed to encourage indulgence and intimacy.
“Oh, my,” Penelope whispered.
Tony encircled her waist and pulled her back against him. “What do you say,” he said, nibbling on her ear and working the buttons on her blouse at the same time, “we feast on one another, then play in the tub?”
Penelope swallowed. There was no point in losing her sense of adventure now. Tony kissed the back of her neck and freed her hair.
The expression carpe diem flitted across her mind. Seize the day, indeed! Slowly she turned so they were standing face-to-face. She traced the path of his mouth with her little finger, then, in slow motion, unfastened the rest of the buttons of her blouse as Tony watched appreciatively. In a sultry voice she never imagined she’d hear from her own mouth, she said, “What do you say we play in the tub first?”
“Whatever you say.” Tony slipped her jacket from her arms and her blouse came off with it. She kicked off her sensible pumps then worked off his shirt and jacket as they moved together toward the tub. He turned the faucets on, then shimmied her free of her skirt and pantyhose.
Wearing only her underwear, Penelope stood shyly in front of Tony. Still half-dressed, Tony scooped her up in his arms and sat on the edge of the bed, holding her. “Repeat after me,” he whispered. “I, Penelope . . .”
“What are we doing?”
“Shh, trust me,” Tony said. “I, Penelope . . .”
With a smile, she said, “I, Penelope . . .”
“. . . am the most beautiful woman . . .”
“. . . am the most beautiful—stop, Tony! Mrs. Merlin is already lecturing me over my ego.”
“You have a talking cat? Never mind. Just try the words and see how they feel.” He freed the catch of her bra and nuzzled his lips to her breasts.
“. . . I am the most beautiful woman . . .” Penelope caught her breath as Tony suckled her nipple. She parted her lips, and her breath finally released itself in a gaspy moan.
“Oh, yeah,” Tony whispered, “the most beautiful woman in the world.”
“. . . in the world,” Penelope repeated as Tony lowered her to the bed, stripped off the rest of his clothing, and managed to make her panties disappear all in what seemed like one smooth motion.
The water spilling into the tub nearby provided accompaniment as Tony’s kisses made her body sing. Penelope gasped and flung her hands above her head as Tony stoked a path of fire in her body with his kisses. His tongue, warm and wet and greedy, was everywhere. On her breasts, her nipples, her throat, her eyelids. Then, as the passion built within her, he moved lower, to the heat between her legs.
“Tony!” she cried out as he kissed the inside of her thighs, then traced a path closer and closer to the most intimate spot of her body.
“Yes, my lucky penny?” He lifted his head and gazed at her with eyes dark and stormy with desire. With the palm of his hand, he covered her mound and trailed a gentle finger beneath the curly hair to part her inner lips. Teasing, probing, stroking, he created the sweetest and yet in some ways the most frightening sensations she’d ever experienced.
She called his name again. He paused. In a serious voice, he said, “If you change your mind, you only have to tell me.”
“Oh, no,” she said in a breathless voice. “Don’t stop. Not now! I feel as if I’m about to lose total control of my senses and you know”—she heard the wonder in her own voice—“that’s truly a beautiful thing.”
He smiled and lowered his mouth to where his hand had been. She trembled with desire as his mouth imitated his fingers.
Tony slowly trailed off his kisses, then slid onto the bed alongside her and took her in his arms. “Perhaps we’ll leave that adventure for another day,” he murmured.
“Whatever you say,” she said, caught between a desire for him to continue kissing her in exactly the way he had been, and the need to answer the insistent hunger claiming her body.
“I don’t usually carry condoms to lunch,” Tony said, nibbling on her ear, then reaching down to the floor where he’d dropped his trousers, “but I knew today we had to be together.” He laid a packet on the bed beside them. Lifting up on one arm, he said, “Something came over me today, Penelope, and no matter what, I had to be with you. God forgive me if I’m doing the wrong thing.”
She smiled up at him, reveling in being wanted by the man she craved. “It’s the right thing,” she
said softly.
“Yes!” Tony ripped open the condom packet and worked it on himself. Penelope must have stared, because Tony grinned and lifted her hand to assist him. Feeling very bold, she watched their joined hands, trying not to think how he would ever fit inside her.
The protection in place, Tony eased over her. “You know it can hurt a little at first, but I promise you I’ll make that up to you. In a hundred ways, a thousand ways.”
She nodded and wrapped her arms around him.
He moved slowly, entering her only enough that she felt the size of him.
She widened her eyes. “Oh, my,” she said.
Tony lowered his head, captured her lips, and began to move in a slow and sensuous dance in, then out a bit, then more deeply into her body.
Penelope cried out against his lips and arched her back, urging him inward. He accepted the invitation, entering her in a swift movement that registered momentarily as pain, then quickly transformed to more marvelous sensations as he thrust in and out, creating spirals of pleasure that she gave herself up to.
As their joined bodies moved as one, Penelope lost all sense of time and place. She knew only Tony, his mouth on hers, his hands caressing her face, her hair, her breasts as he brought her ever so slowly but surely to a peak of passion.
“Tony,” she cried out, amazed at the shimmering waves overtaking her body and seeming to flow out from some magical place within her.
He thrust more quickly, his eyes closed now, his hands around her shoulders in a fierce grip. Faster and faster he moved, and then as his body shuddered, he called out her name and dropped to the bed beside her.
“Sweet, sweet, Penelope,” he murmured, cradling her against his chest. “Did I hurt you?”
She smiled and snuggled more closely. “You gave me only pleasure,” she said.
Her senses returning somewhat to normal, Penelope realized the water still gushed into the tub. She turned her head lazily to look, just in time to see the water lapping at the edge of the huge tub. “Tony, the water!”
He dashed for the spigots and stopped the water before it spilled over the sides. Then he walked back to the bed, gazed down at her, and said, “How about a bubble bath?”
An hour later, Penelope lay on her side on the bed, sated from their second lovemaking. Tony had just slipped off the bed and was collecting their clothing. Turning to him, she smiled and said, “Thank you for the most wonderful lunch I’ve ever had.”
He winked, and started pulling on his clothes. “Sorry to eat and run, but duty calls.”
“Oh,” Penelope said, sitting up. Something about the abrupt way he was dressing made her nervous. “We haven’t eaten yet.”
“No time. I’ll tell Lucien to send something up for you.”
“I don’t want to eat by myself.” Penelope rose from the bed, feeling very naked. She found her underwear and she, too, began dressing. “Not in a room this romantic.”
“Romantic?” Tony shrugged into his jacket. “Hey, babe, it was a nooner. That’s all. Nothing more. Nothing less.”
He couldn’t have wounded her more harshly had he tried. Penelope jerked her head as if she’d been slapped. Not even a one-night stand, simply a nooner. She turned her back on him and struggled into her clothing, tears welling in her eyes, tears she refused to let him see.
“Penelope—”
“Don’t say another word. Not one word!” Penelope grabbed her jacket and her purse and, without looking at Tony, stormed to the sitting room, out the door, and down the steps.
Halfway to the front entrance, she heard Tony behind her. Lucien stopped him and she heard the older man say, “Tony-O, tell me you didn’t mess this one up.”
She didn’t wait to hear his response. Instead, she hurried back to the office and threw herself into work, unable to meet the questions and concern she saw in Jewel’s eyes.
Precisely at eleven minutes after eleven, Penelope rose from the rug on her living room floor, stretched, then crossed to the table where the altar lay waiting. She’d informed Mrs. Merlin earlier that she was taking no chances and had allowed almost an hour to find her place of peace.
After the day’s roller-coaster ride in which she’d gone from the heights of passion to the depths of rejection, Penelope didn’t trust the spell to work without extra time to cleanse the hurt from her mind.
Mrs. Merlin studied her from her post on the altar. “You’ve been awfully quiet tonight. Before I go, I want you to know that if you want something badly enough, you can usually get it.”
Penelope gazed into the eyes of the woman who’d become her friend, seeking wisdom she knew she herself lacked. With a faint shrug, she took the incense stick, lit it at the stove, and hesitated before touching it to the wick.
“When it comes to love, don’t both people have to want the same thing?”
“What makes you think that’s not the case?” Penelope tossed her head back. “I don’t have to look up rejection in the dictionary in order to define it.”
“Don’t go all egotistical on me before you do this spell.” Mrs. Merlin sighed. “I’m too hungry to remain a bookmark any longer.”
“I’m so sorry,” Penelope said. “It’s selfish of me to be thinking of my problems when you’re in this condition. And you said it’s only okay to be selfish if it doesn’t harm anyone else.”
“True.”
Penelope let her hand hover between the dancing flame of the white candle and the silent wick of the cherry-red candle. She took a deep breath, then lit it, too. She wanted Tony, and she knew in her heart he wanted her, too. She might be an innocent, but she didn’t believe he’d only been toying with her affections when they’d made love. Perhaps he was afraid. Whatever his reasons, she’d win him back.
“You’re doing better,” Mrs. Merlin said. “Your aura just sparked with white energy.”
Penelope smiled. “Good. Let’s do this spell.”
They repeated the words they had uttered to no effect the evening before. Mrs. Merlin swayed, almost in time to the dancing of the white candle’s flame.
Without warning, the bookmark shape of her new friend burst into flames. The last sight Penelope had of Mrs. Merlin and her altar of candles was fire arcing from the figure of Mrs. Merlin to the white candle, then burning down the wick of the cherry-red candle.
Then Penelope felt herself hurtled back, back, back through darkness, a darkness ever so gradually illuminated by pinpricks of distant stars and the faint glow of a moon on the rise.
“Well, thank the stars,” Mrs. Merlin said, opening her eyes to find herself standing in her very own kitchen in her very own house in her very own corner of the city.
She moved her arms, her legs, swiveled her neck, checked her height against the edge of her kitchen sink. Her hip came right to where it should and she smiled in relief. She had to hand it to Penelope. For all her desire to stick to the rational and logical, the lady lawyer had come through on the all-important spell necessary to give Mrs. Merlin back her shape.
“Not only my pudgy body,” Mrs. Merlin murmured, “my life!”
Glancing around the room, she saw that most everything remained exactly as she’d left it. Her neighbor Ramona knew better than to disturb an altar with a spell in progress, but she had kindly washed up the cups they’d used for tea before Mrs. Merlin had undertaken her well-intentioned magick to rid her neighbor of that pesky tax collector.
Her cat’s food and water bowl had been filled, fairly recently, too, Mrs. Merlin concluded, judging by the untouched state of the dry food favored by her orange tom. She bustled out of the kitchen toward the front of the house, calling his name.
Having outlived three husbands, Mrs. Merlin got quite a kick out of having added the “Mr.” to her cat’s name, whom she’d named “M” due to the pronounced white M shape defining the area above and between his golden yellow eyes.
Her neighbors thought her daft, but then, they always had.
“Here, Mr. M,” she called, �
�be a good kitty and welcome me home. My, but I’ve had such adventures. And made a new friend, too.” She’d have to call Penelope up and invite her over for a cup of tea.
That reminded Mrs. Merlin of the grumblings of her empty tummy and she forgot all about finding Mr. M as she hustled back to the kitchen and foraged in the freezer for some jambalaya she’d put up only last week.
She set it to thaw in the microwave, then went to change her dress. She’d worn the same caftan for more days than she cared to count. Tossing it to the floor of her bedroom, Mrs. Merlin stretched her arms over her head, slipped into fresh underthings, and selected her very favorite caftan from her closet.
Purple, she thought, suited her best. She ran a brush over her bright hair, thinking it was about time to try another one of those rinses. She might be a grandmother, but she didn’t have to look like one.
Pleased with herself, happy to be home, she called again for Mr. M. When she still got no response, she figured he was sulking. He did that when she left him alone in the house for more than a day. Mr. M liked nothing better than to be the center of her world; second to that, he used to love to do battle with every cat in the neighborhood, but once he’d come to live with her, she’d put an end to that.
He lived inside, safe from the dangers of the streets.
She heard the microwave beep and headed back to the kitchen. As she passed by the table where she’d erected the altar for her neighbor, a silvery glint caught her eye.
She paused, struck by something she’d never considered during her stay at Penelope’s. Mrs. Merlin rarely used the kitchen table for the practice of candle magick. She’d done so that ill-fated morning partly out of laziness, as she was so comfortable drinking tea and chatting.
Then, at Penelope’s, she’d again used what Penelope called her dining table—the only table in the apartment. Mrs. Merlin frowned and bent for a closer look at the metallic reflection that had caught her eye.
What she saw caused her to clasp her hand to her throat.
“Poor Mr. M,” she said, staring at the silver ID tag attached to the purple collar he always wore. The collar lay wound around the base of the candle she’d used for Ramona’s spell. Stuck to the collar was the thick black hair belonging to Tony Olano she’d added to the altar back at Penelope’s apartment in an effort to help the woman who’d assisted her. And even more ominous, Penelope’s shoes sat next to the hair. Mrs. Merlin stared at that and nervously licked her lips. That hair had followed her home, her cat was missing, and the goddess only knew what might have happened to Penelope.