Bette mentally checked the contents of the shopping bags she’d accumulated, then looked at her watch. Nine minutes left before she was to meet Paul. Unexpectedly, a bubble of laughter rose in her. Who would have guessed how much fun this would be, this rather sexy kind of scavenger hunt?
They’d started off together, buying tote bags after a long, intricate discussion of exactly which ones they should get. Paul had wanted to buy matching ones because, he said, it was a visual symbol to any astute bellboy that this was an established couple. She had opted for different ones because it might look less like just-bought goods. Paul had prevailed, and for a moment as the clerk rang up the purchase, she’d considered how odd it was for Mr. For the Moment Only to be the one to want them to appear as a couple. But then there’d been no time to give the matter further thought. She had shopping to do.
They’d agreed to meet in forty-five minutes at the front entrance to Water Tower Place. She’d gone directly to a drugstore, tossing into the mesh basket a toothbrush and toothpaste, a disposable razor for her legs, deodorant and a small perfume vial, plus trial-size shampoo and moisturizer in case the hotel didn’t provide them. Then, trying to tell herself not to blush like an idiot, she added a foil packet to her collection.
She’d spent most of her time in Marshall Field’s, buying a change of clothing for the morning: jeans and a white oxford-cloth shirt, which weren’t extravagant since she could always use spares. With her tweed suit jacket and flat pumps, she at least wouldn’t look blatantly like a woman wearing her Friday night clothes on Saturday morning.
Her last stop was lingerie, for a change of underwear. Now, with nine minutes left, she glanced across the aisle that separated the lingerie basics from the frivolous and saw a royal-blue froth of lace and sheerness. She knew she had to have it. She was woman enough to know it would draw lights to her eyes, and practical enough never to have owned anything like it.
Stifling the habit of checking the price first, she found the right size and headed for the counter.
Oh, she’d been with men before. A couple. But she couldn’t imagine having had the nerve to wear something like this for them. This was a gown to wear for a man who could make her laugh, but never laughed at her. She felt a swelling in her heart as she accepted the bag with the gown. She’d wear this for Paul, and she’d have no shyness about it. He would see her vulnerability, and he would honor it.
With her final few minutes, she found a rest room and transferred the contents of her shopping bags to the tote.
As she hurried through the heavy glass doors, she caught sight of Paul immediately. Grinning, he held up his bag to show off its packed state. She thought his looked lumpier than hers, and there was definitely a sharp edge poking against the soft fabric. She felt it against her calf as it dangled from his hand when he wrapped her into a tight embrace and kissed her hungrily, right there on Michigan Avenue.
“C’mon, let’s get a cab,” he said a little huskily.
She’d have been lucky to achieve even husky if she tried to talk, so she settled for nodding. She didn’t care that it was impractical to take a cab the few blocks to the hotel. It was faster, and it gave them an excuse to sit cuddled together in one corner and share another, long, lingering kiss. He seduced her mouth, luring her upper lip between his, tempting her with forays of his tongue and teeth. Kissing her in a way that left her feeling a little vague all through the process of paying off the driver, checking in and finding their room.
If Paul had kissed her like that earlier, she might never have noticed that they didn’t have luggage. And then she wouldn’t have had any excuse to funnel this shivery feeling of anticipation and trepidation into a show of great curiosity about what he’d bought.
They stood side by side just inside the door, before slowly moving in. Thick carpeting and drapes shut out the city’s noise, making the drumming of her blood louder in Bette’s ears. Soft lights she knew wouldn’t hide the flush heating her cheeks, a flush of awareness. Before them the room stood, plush and cozy. All it needed to complete the country-house look was a fireplace.
But no fire was needed to provide heat. Her imagination was taking care of that. From where she stood at the foot of the bed, her eyes traveled up the wide and generously pillowed expanse. Oh, Lord, the bed . . .
“So what do you have in your bag?” she asked in a brightly forced voice. She gave his tote’s strap a tug, but he held tight.
“Uh-unh. Let’s see yours, too.” His voice sounded huskier than before.
“Okay. We’ll take turns. But you go first.”
He gave her a sideways glance, then rested his tote on the edge of the bed and unzipped it. “Okay, first item.” Humor overlaid the deeper note in his voice. He produced a chrysanthemum stem with three perfect yellow blooms on it and held it out to her.
“Flowers! Where in the world did you find flowers?”
“That wasn’t so hard. The hard part was packing it.”
She giggled a little, and inexplicably, her nervousness eased.
“I tried for roses, but there must have been a run on them. Some sort of romantic epidemic hitting the city.”
“This is lovely. I love yellow chrysanthemums.”
“I know. I remember the flowers by your front walk.”
She couldn’t say anything to that, so she leaned across the corner of the bed and kissed him lightly. She heard his quick intake of breath, and backed up hastily.
“Your turn,” he ordered.
Opening the bag, she gave a quick laugh. “Nothing so frivolous as flowers.”
“Jeans? Is this something kinky I should know about?”
Despite his teasing note, she felt her cheeks warming. “They’re for tomorrow.”
“Tomorrow. Ah, I see.” He said that as if thinking of tomorrow somehow betrayed today—or tonight. “I suppose you’re planning to be incognito when we leave in the morning.”
“At least inconspicuous,” she said more sharply than she’d intended.
He gave her an unreadable look, then reached into his bag. It was a clear nonverbal change of subject.
“Next, we have one bottle of white wine. Chilled to perfection, thanks to its recent sojourn in the Chicago night air.”
Back to teasing. She was glad. Tonight she wanted to forget the differences between them. Tonight, at least this one night, was to explore this other thing between them.
“One blouse, to match the jeans,” she responded, keeping her voice light. She caught an expression in his eyes she couldn’t interpret, then it was gone and he was pulling out his next item.
As their respective piles of purchases grew on the bed, a trend developed. To her deodorant, toothbrush and toothpaste, new underwear and socks, he answered with a pair of wineglasses, a pillar candle, a CD player and two moody instrumental CDs, a box of chocolates and a fluffy bath sheet she could easily imagine would accommodate two. It was almost as if he’d read her mind back on that sidewalk when she’d imagined a winter’s night with him.
“Geez, aren’t you ever romantic, Bette?”
Even with his eyes glinting at her and his voice rough with the combination of laughter and desire, she found herself chafing at the comment. So she’d considered tomorrow morning. So she’d given some forethought to the practicalities of staying overnight in a hotel. So she wasn’t the kind who thought only of the moment... So she wasn’t what Paul, with his music and wine and flowers, considered romantic.
Unthinkingly, she reached into her nearly empty bag and yanked out the small foil package.
Even before Paul’s eyes went to what was in her hand, then came back to meet hers, she knew what she held. Everything else between them, the humor, the irritation and the tension, flowed away in a wash of awareness. The need that had brought them to this place surged through her, and, she knew from the sudden tautness of his stance, through him, also.
“On second thought, I withdraw that question.” She couldn’t help but react to the low note in his voice.
/> Hers shook a little, but she got the words out. “I believe in being prepared.”
She couldn’t believe that with all the heat of desire flaring between them, amusement still lingered in his eyes.
Without a word, he reached into his bag and withdrew something, which he then held out for her inspection. Four packets just like hers.
“Four? Four!” And she understood now how he mixed the humor and the desire, because she simultaneously wanted the release of laughter and craved the tormenting pleasure of his hands.
“I believe in being prepared, too.”
“For what, a harem?”
He made a sound deep in his throat, only half a chuckle. The other half was declaration and question, rolled into one. One corner of her mouth lifted, as she let her eyes answer the rest.
Tossing the packets haphazardly toward the nightstand behind him, he reached across the corner of the bed for her, pulling her to him.
They’d been so careful not to touch, and now, in kiss after kiss, she knew why. The lightning she’d imagined in his eyes earlier was in their bodies, jolting from one to the other at each point of contact, Intensifying each time their lips came together, drawing power when his mouth roamed across her throat, her shoulders, her abdomen. Releasing energy in a line of fire through her when his tongue plunged into her mouth with deep, instinctive significance. She arched beneath him, hardly knowing how they’d come to be on the bed instead of beside it.
Fingers fretted with buttons. His shirt was jerked off and tossed aside. Her blouse was opened and skimmed away by urgent hands. He cupped her breasts, his gentleness straining against ungentle desires. She felt the delicious rasp of lace and his hand against her flesh, and knew how right this was.
She wanted more. She wanted his mouth on her, as it had been that moonlit night in her garage. It was almost as if the weeks between had disappeared, and this was a simple, natural continuation of the desire they’d felt then. Or maybe it was an unending desire, always there, a lightning waiting only to be tapped.
Then his mouth was around her, open, wetting the lace and hardening her nipple to an exquisite ache, and she had no mind for thought, no room for remembered sensation because there was only now. This moment.
She stroked his shoulders, wanting to imprint the smooth, strong feel of them into her hands. He suckled, and she gasped with the pleasure. Then he added to it with fingers that stroked and circled her other breast.
Air came in gasps for both of them when he trailed his mouth lower, tracing the curve of her ribs, taking a nibbling bite at the side of her waist.
The tickling made her want to laugh, but she didn’t have the breath for it. She’d never realized laughter and lust could be so closely allied; they certainly never had been for her before. No, it took Paul to show her this, to show her that the lightness of laughter didn’t have to be eclipsed by the dark passion pulling at them. Not when the laughter was such an integral part of what they had together, not when the passion was strong enough.
Oh, Lord, it was strong enough. He flicked open the waist of her skirt, and hauled down the zipper so the material rode over her hips. Not satisfied, he slid one hand lower, under the hem, and skimmed up her thigh and beyond to the top of her pantyhose, then immediately started back, dragging the hosiery along. She’d barely helped free her legs from the encumbrance when he was tugging at her panties and slip all at once. He clearly intended her to be naked as quickly as possible.
Naked. The word sparked an image of blue froth, carefully saved for last in their game of show-and-tell.
“Wait.” She gasped the demand, so it sounded more of a plea. Only a small part of her recognized the way he froze.
“Wait?”
Fighting the weight of desire, her eyes opened wide as she understood he was questioning more than the word. As he had in her garage, he let her see the desire and longing in his eyes, but also the question. He was leaving it up to her. She could stop this.
“No.” She shook her head quickly, hoping to make him see he’d misunderstood. “I have one more thing to show you.”
“To show me?” His question was followed by a grumbling curse that didn’t entirely mask his relief. But he let her remove herself from his hold, and she dived for the tote at the end of the bed, extracting the negligee. As she stood, her loosened skirt slid lower on her hips and with an impatient twist, she sent it to the floor. Feeling a little shy, yet not really self-conscious, she held the floating material up to her, resting the straps at her shoulders.
“See?”
Oh, yes, he saw. Oh, God, yes, he saw. He swore to himself that he would never again make the mistake of thinking Bette was not romantic. She was romantic enough to just about kill him, and all she had to do was stand two feet in front of him holding up a bit of filmy material.
Through the sheer fabric he saw the lace of her bra, he saw the wetness he’d added to it, he saw the straining points he’d felt against his hands and mouth. And he could see her, smooth and pale beneath it. Lower, the draping skirt of the gown revealed the paleness of her simple, straight slip. Beneath the layers of material he knew what he would find there, too: heated silk. If she put on that blue torment now, so that he caught glimpses of her with more than his imagination, he’d want to rip it off her. But he also saw her eyes. The gown meant something to her.
“I, uh, I could put it on.”
He swallowed hard. “I’d like to see it.”
“Now?”
He knew damn well he wanted to delay seeing her in that material seduction, at least delay to some moment when he might stand half a chance of appreciating it. But what did she want? He’d thought he knew, and he’d been prepared to give it to her, no matter what it cost him. But from that last question and from the heated look in her eyes, he wasn’t so sure.
“What?”
She glanced down at the blue sheerness she held then back at him. “Do you have to see it right now or could it maybe wait until...uh...later? I mean, if you really want to see it now of course I could put it on, but—”
He ground out something he wasn’t sure made any sense and yanked down the rumpled bedspread, far enough that it slid slowly off the foot of the bed along with most of their purchases.
“Later’s good,” he got out as he reached for her. With a smile that managed to melt his bones and harden his muscles, she sent the gown spinning in the same general direction.
“Later,” she agreed on a breath shivered against his neck.
They stripped each other of their remaining clothes with fervent, unsubtle movements.
Her hands were cold at first, with the lingering chill of outdoors and perhaps nerves. Don’t rush her, he reminded himself. Then gasped at her fingers’ contact against his stomach, his abdomen, his hips. But it was a gasp of pleasured torture. Who was rushing whom? He figured it was only fair her hands and her feet were cold, because the rest of her was burning up. He could feel the heat of her under his hands, like waves off a sunstruck sidewalk in July. And he craved it, absorbed it, matched it with his own.
With her hands and feet like small, smooth slips of ice being dragged along his skin, he relished the contrast to his own temperature. Told himself that maybe this way he’d slow down enough to have some control. And when her hands and feet passed the comfortable stage and became coals, stoking the fire that already raged in his flesh, he knew he’d never needed anything the way he needed that stoking.
Still, he wasn’t fool enough to have her help with the contents of the packets spilled on the nightstand. A fire stoked too high could burn itself out.
They tumbled across the bed, a tangle of arms and legs that drew a dual chuckle reverberating into a groan of need. A hip grinding into a hip, an elbow catching across a shoulder, a knee digging into a thigh. But then, somehow, amid the sounds of frustration, amusement and passion, the parts came into alignment. It wasn’t the slow, tender introduction he’d envisioned in aching detail for days, weeks on end. But it was
right. Utterly, undeniably right.
He thrust into her welcoming warmth, faster than he’d intended, slower than he wanted. He went still, his eyes squeezing tight in an exultation he’d never known. Then the pressure inside forced him to move. He felt her body adjust, accept, and another wave of sensation struck him. It flashed across his mind that this sensation flowed not from his nerve endings to his brain, but from somewhere deep inside him to where his skin met hers. He opened his eyes and locked with hers.
They were deep, deep blue. Bottomless and soft. The way they tugged at him took him off balance. No way to hold back against them...no way. He could fall into those eyes and keep falling. He was falling.
“Bette.” He whispered the name as his hips surged against hers, the pull of the rhythm too strong to resist, the beat that guided than too insistent to ignore. It rocked them when they strained together, it echoed through them as they slipped away from each other, it amplified as they rushed together once more, closer, ever closer. They pulsed with it. It might have been a heartbeat of something alive, magnified to roar in their ears.
He heard other sounds added to it. Her voice, stripped of the crisp coolness, only the spice and fire remaining. Cries to him, for him. His own call of her name, encouraging, invoking. He cupped her buttocks, drawing her closer, straining to have her take all he had, to fill her ever more completely. Her cry turned sharp and triumphant. The thundering beat shuddered again through his taut-strung muscles one last, frenzied time.