Nancy Herkness (18 page)

They were so closely locked together she felt Jack’s sigh more strongly than if it had been her own. He let his arms drop and stepped back from her.

“When did you become my conscience?” he asked his friend.

Charlie turned and put one hand behind her husband’s head, pulling his lips down to hers for a quick kiss of sympathy. “Let’s go be good hosts,” she said, lacing her fingers in his and leading him up the stairs.

“If you could see the way Jack’s looking at your fondillos,” Miguel said, “you’d know his mind is not on the welfare of his guests.”

Eighteen

“There’s something I want to show you that’s a long way away. Come with me.”

Charlie objected, “But there are at least fifty people still here!”

“Miguel will take care of them,” Jack said, grabbing her wrist and pulling her firmly away from the Rose Center entrance, where people were saying their good-byes, toward the opposite side of the hall. Miguel was deep in conversation with a group of men, but at Jack’s signal, he nodded and headed for the entrance.

Jack smiled at the people who tried to catch his attention, but his stride never shortened. Charlie was struggling to keep up in her elegant but impractical Lucite mules. When they emerged into the hall that connected with the main building of the Museum of Natural History, she braced herself against his forward momentum. “If we’re going sightseeing, I’ve got to get out of these heels.” She toed the shoes off and bent down to pick them up.

“Leave ‘em here,” Jack commanded.

“I don’t think so.” She held one up and rotated it so he could see the embedded stones as they caught the light. “For all I know, these are real diamonds like that ridiculous evening purse I hope Alina is guarding with her life.”

“Here.” Jack held out his hand for the offending slippers. Then he was off again, leading them past cases of stuffed mammals, through dark, narrow hallways and around Indian dioramas. “Did you know Admiral Peary financed his expedition to the North Pole by selling a meteorite?” he asked.

“No,” Charlie said, wondering what on earth that had to do with this mad dash.

“It’s one of the ‘great irons’ from Greenland. It took three trips to get it to the United States. For seven years, it sat on a pier at the Brooklyn Naval Shipyard. No one wanted a 34-ton iron meteorite. Finally the president of this museum paid a paltry $40,000 and hauled it through the streets of New York with a team of eighty horses.”

They passed by an enormously long canoe peopled with slightly dusty plaster figures in colorful costumes. Charlie recognized their direction now: they were headed for the Hall of Meteorites. It seemed like years ago she had come here to start her research for the article about Jack. “Are you talking about the huge meteorite in the middle of the exhibit here? Ahnighito?” she asked.

“That’s right. It’s one of my personal favorites.”

They had entered the dimly lit space devoted to rocks from the sky.

A huge photograph of the moon’s surface illuminated the wall in front of them, and hexagonal glass cases lit from within seemed to hover at waist level. At the center of the room, an enormous mass of iron crouched on short concrete piers like a giant prehistoric beast. It hulked above Charlie’s head as Jack led her around to the opposite side so they stood between Ahnighito and another display of large iron meteorites. The lighting there was even murkier; Charlie could barely make out the labels on the huge stones.

“The natives named it The Tent,” Jack said. “And these two, the Woman and the Dog, were part of the same meteor. Peary talked the natives into letting him take them away. The task proved to be so difficult he referred to Ahnighito as the ‘demonic iron from heaven’.” He scanned the cratered giant, and turned to Charlie. “Right where we’re standing, there’s a blind spot in the security system.”

Then he reached out and flicked one of her earrings with his finger. “Too bad falling stars aren’t really diamonds.”

Charlie caught her breath as he trailed his fingers down her neck.

“It seems your designer studied his constellations,” he said, tracing a pattern between the crystals sewn on the shoulder of her dress. “That’s Cygnus.”

His finger moved slowly downward to the swell of her breast. “That’s Ursa Minor.” She felt her nipples harden. Jack’s smile gleamed in the half-light as he noticed. The crystals threw off sparks in rhythm with Charlie’s quickened breathing.

“How intriguing. He’s put Orion just below this spiral galaxy.” His fingertip followed the spirals swirling over her breast.

As he reached the shower of stars over her nipple, Charlie inhaled sharply. “Are you seducing me in the middle of the Museum of Natural History?” she asked, locking her fingers around his wrist.

“No, sugar, I’m seducing you in a dark corner of the Museum of Natural History,” he said, his voice falling into a slow southern cadence. He flattened his palm over her breast. “Any objections?”

She hesitated.

He put his other hand on her backside and moved her against him so she could feel his erection between her thighs. “You wear a dress like this, and you’ve got to expect to get seduced,” he whispered against her neck as he feathered kisses down to her shoulder. His teeth and tongue grazed her skin, and she hissed out a moan.

“Any objections?” he repeated.

“I’m sure I have some, but they don’t readily come to mind.” She let go of his wrist.

He shifted his hand from her breast to the length of thigh bared by the dress’s slit, sliding his palm upward along her skin until he cupped her bare buttock beneath the clinging velvet. His fingers brushing against her from behind and his erection pushing against her in front tightened the tension coiling deep inside her. Eyes closed to savor the sensations, she arched hard against him, even as he slid one finger inside her. “Oh God, Jack.”

“Look at me.”

She opened her eyes. His face was in shadow; she could see only the white of his eyes and teeth, as he said again, “Any objections?”

“None at all,” she said.

He groaned in relief and brought his lips down lightly against hers. “You won’t regret it,” he promised. She felt his finger slide out of her, and she nipped his lower lip in complaint. He drove two fingers back into her. She felt a ripple of orgasm.

“Stop,” she gasped. “I want you coming with me.”

He slowly withdrew his hand. Her inner muscles tightened again. “Ahhhhhhh,” she breathed, unable to forestall the delicious spread of heat.

“Patience, sweetheart,” he commanded, taking her head between his hands and planting teasing little kisses everywhere but on her lips. “You don’t want to rush a good thing.”

“Yes, I do,” she said, as she wrapped one arm around his neck and levered herself up close along the length of his body. She rotated her hips hard against him, gasping as the warm steel of male thigh and chest increased her own urgency.

“Mercy!” he moaned. “I give up.” His fingers bit into her buttocks as he rocked against the vee of her legs.

Bending her knee, she rubbed it up the outside of his thigh. The velvet caught on the inside of his trouser so she felt nothing but the press of wool and muscle between her legs.

“Jack, I can’t wait any longer.”

“Then turn around,” he rasped.

She obeyed without question. He came up behind her, cupping her breasts as he used his weight to bend her over the shelf supporting the iron meteorites. Hearing the whine of his zipper, she braced her forearms on the cool dark surface. Then his hands were brushing up her thighs, pushing aside the velvet skirt and caressing her bare skin, the clever fingers seeking and sliding into her.

His hands swept down to the crease where thigh met hip and held her. She felt him position himself; then in one smooth stroke, he was inside her. Her orgasm crested instantly. “Oh god,” she said on each pulse of her release. “Oh god, oh god, oh god, oh god.” His rhythm quickened. His motion pushing through the clench of her muscles propelled her beyond the bounds of thought. He drove deep. She felt the pounding of his own climax match hers as he groaned her name, “Charlie, ahhhh, Charlie!”

He slid out of her, and Charlie’s elbows and knees buckled.

She collapsed face down on the hard melamine shelf.

She felt Jack smooth her dress down over her backside but she was far past any sense of modesty. Then he gathered up her boneless body and carried her over to Ahnighito. Bracing his back against the mighty iron, he slid to the floor, cradling Charlie on his lap, his long legs stretched out in front of him. He tucked her head under his chin and held her there. She could feel his heart pounding against her ear, and the rise and fall of his chest gave evidence of his exertions. Tiny aftershocks continued to shiver through her own body, especially when he lifted his hand to idly stroke a wisp of hair back from her face.

“We-e-e-ll,” he said, making it last about three syllables.

Somewhere she found the strength to chuckle, albeit weakly. “That’s a major understatement,” she said.

An answering chuckle rumbled in her ear. “That wasn’t meant as an evaluation,” he said, flicking her cheek with his finger before letting his hand drop heavily onto her shoulder. “We may have to spend the night here.”

“Why? Because they’ll lock us in?” Charlie asked, starting to sit upright.

“No. Because I can’t move.”

She subsided against his chest with a sigh.

He laughed, raising their joined hands to kiss the inside of her wrist.

One little brush of his lips, and every nerve ending in her body paid attention. “I forgot to give you a message from Curt Vandermade,” she said to distract herself. “He asked me to tell you, you have a buyer for Sahara-Mars. He doesn’t give a damn about Mauritania.”

Jack’s tone was unpleasant. “That’s because he has more money than Mauritania’s entire annual gross product. He can buy the country if they won’t give up their claim.”

“Aren’t you glad he’s hooked? You’ll be able to squeeze maximum cash out of your space rock.”

“That’s what you think I want?”

“That’s what you’ve told me you want.”

“What I want is to hand this rock over to Peter Burke free of charge. He may be obnoxious as hell, but he wants Sahara-Mars so he can add to our knowledge of the universe. What I really want is to join him in that quest. But I’m not welcome. So I have to give someone like Curt Vandermade the chance to expropriate a valuable scientific discovery so he can fondle it to inflate his own ego.”

“I wasn’t judging you,” Charlie said quietly. “You have a right to realize your dream.”

“Dream?” He sounded surprised. “I think of it as a long-term goal.”

“Call it what you want,” she shrugged. “You’re about to achieve it, and I’m impressed.”

“Thanks, sugar.” He wrapped his arms around her, crushing her against him.

“Mmmmm,” she said, as delicious tremors began to take hold of her again. She both felt and heard his voice as he said, “I don’t know what the hell is going on here, but I like it.”

The tremors evaporated, and her mood took a U-turn.

She knew exactly what was going on here: she was becoming involved. She wasn’t willing to use a stronger word, involved was bad enough. Cradled in his lap in this dusky comer of an enormous empty museum, she felt safe, she felt comfortable, she felt, almost, cherished. Even worse, she wanted to cherish him right back.

She pushed away from his chest.

“Miguel’s going to wonder what happened to us,” she said.

“Miguel would completely approve of our activities,” he replied, running a finger along her bare shoulder. “But I shouldn’t leave him to do all the cleaning up.”

He boosted her to her feet, and hoisted himself up beside her.

“Where are your glass slippers?” he asked, scanning the floor around them. He spotted them under the display shelf and scooped them up. Holding out his other hand to her, he said, “Back to the ball, Cinderella.”

As Jack checked in with Miguel, Charlie gladly handed over her earrings and bracelet to Alina who was waiting in the nearly deserted hall with purse in hand. Tomorrow she would have the dress and shoes delivered back to Stephen Askegaard.

Jack escorted her to the waiting limousine, helping her into the back seat and ducking in to sit across from her.

“Bellefont first,” he said over his shoulder to the driver. “Then back to Manhattan.”

Charlie bent her head to hide her pleased smile.

“You were incredible tonight,” he said, pushing a button to raise the privacy screen.

“Wow. My lovers usually only call me great or fantastic,” she teased.

“No, I meant at the party. You handled it like a pro.”

“Even in my costume?”

He grimaced.

“I was being an idiot. When you got out of the car looking like a movie goddess, I felt like I’d been kneed in the gut.” He gave her a look. “You know damn well you’re stunningly beautiful.”

“You’re too kind.”

“There’s one thing I didn’t get to do tonight.” He shifted onto the seat beside her.

“Just one?” She arched an eyebrow.

He chuckled and twisted sideways, then grasped her hips and slid her back toward him. He sank his fingers into her hair and suddenly the hairdresser’s work of art began to uncoil. He took his time, pulling out the pins one by one and tossing them on the carpeted floor.

Charlie sat with her eyes closed and her head thrown back, lost in the exquisite pleasure of his slow release of the tight chignon. The memory of their first night under the stars surged through her, merging past with present sensation until she couldn’t remember exactly where she was. When he had removed every hairpin, he draped her hair across her shoulders and back, combing his fingers gently through the twisted strands to untangle and smooth them.