Dead End (22 page)

Reb knelt beside him and pushed him until he lay flat. The pillows weren’t needed, at least not in the immediate future.

She straddled his belly and sat there, staring at him as if she were trying to read his mind.

Reb stretched out on top of him, and put her hand under his head. The sensation of having her breasts pressed to his naked chest obliterated any thoughts he might have had. She looked into his face and he looked back.

“Are you here for the company, or did you have something else in mind?”

“I can’t do it, Marc.”

His heart plummeted into his loafers, only he wasn’t wearing shoes.

Reb said, “I can’t keep up an act and pretend I’m too cool to be turned on. I am turned on. But don’t humor me. If you don’t want to have sex with me now, I’ll understand.”

“I’m confused,” Marc said. “Didn’t you just say we had to take things slower?”

“I changed my mind. Women do that. Men don’t because the possibility of rejection frightens the pants off them. But I’m being rash, throwing myself at you like this—although, well, I’ve never done anything like this before—nothing exactly like it—and it excites me. I enjoy a little danger now and again.”

She sat on his…She sat on a part of him that was now crying “foul,” but his head was rejoicing. She would get to make the first moves—most of the time.

“I hope I haven’t ruined any chance of a friendship with you. I like you so much.” She smiled, but it didn’t come from the heart.

She made to leave him, but he caught her by the waist and plopped her down again.

“You grew into such a gracious woman,” he said, swallowing his laughter.

She kissed his mouth so abruptly, so hard, he expected to see blood when next he saw himself in a mirror.

Her tongue was inside his mouth. She ran her hands over him. When she planted her elbows near his ears and started to play with his hair, he knew the slowing-down proposition wasn’t going to work.

She rocked back and forth, planting kisses at will, and her breasts swayed close enough to his mouth that he fought with himself against holding her still while he availed himself of a heaven-sent opportunity.

His patience ran out, just like that—gone. He flicked his tongue across a nipple as she swayed forward, and repeated the process when she returned to her haunches.

There she sat for an interminable pause. Reb stared at his eyes, and he almost lost his battle for dominance—equality would be good enough—by looking away.

As abruptly as she’d stopped moving, she started again. This time he realized her face was very pink and there was a feverish light in her green eyes.

She positioned her breasts no more than an inch away from Marc’s face. He had only to raise his chin and he’d score a hit with his tongue every time.

Reb was on all fours, her lace-clad bottom thrust into the air—waiting. She reared back, shaking her head. “You’re driving me crazy,” she said. “I can’t keep on like this. May I?” She pointed to his belt and Marc nodded while he set up an incantation inside his mind:
Take sex or leave it. No big deal. I don
’
t even like it, but I
’
ll humor the woman. Shit, protection. How long have I been carrying the same rubber in my wallet? Does latex perish? Nah, of course it doesn
’
t.

Reb had pushed her bottom low on his thighs. She was hard at work, and any second now Marc’s readiness for an upcoming engagement would be standing to attention and demanding satisfaction.

“Lift your hips,” Reb said, and when he did so, she shimmied his pants and underwear down to his knees.

At first Reb just stared, her lips pushed out as if she’d like to whistle. She bent over him to get a closer look, and said, “Oh my” in a tone guaranteed to make a man question the adequacy of his utensils.

Reb leaned forward until her breasts actually clothed his most tender parts.

Gosh darn it, she couldn’t be heaping adoration on him, or doing some of the other noble rituals intended as tributes to a man’s virility. Hell no, she probably thought that if she warmed him up he might grow.

Contorting her body, Reb contrived to remove her panties. “Don’t let me fall over,” she said.

Nonchalance was the only way to save one’s ego in these situations. He pulled her down beside him and started kissing every inch of naked skin he could reach, which was a lot of skin at the moment.

When he reached the apex of her legs, he pulled her legs apart, to make room for his face and tongue. He hesitated and said, “Sorry. I’m getting carried away, and you don’t like it when I do that.”

“If I ever said that, I was lying,” Reb said, with no sign of discomfort. “You said I get to call the shots. I don’t want you to feel emasculated, so you go first.”

“You’re beautiful,” he said, surprising himself. “By the time you started at Tulane, you’d grown into the prettiest thing I’d ever seen. But you, cher, have become a woman no man could fail to stare at.”

She pulled her hair to the top of her head, with interesting results. He tried not to ogle, but he was only human.

“Reb, your breasts are the stuff of wet dreams.”
Oh, god!
“I mean they’re fabulous, and I could be a happy man just looking at you the way you are right now.”

Promptly, she pulled her arms down and crossed them over her chest. “You’re beautiful, Marc Girard, the most handsome man I’ve ever seen. And you’re pretty good on the inside, too, from what I hear. Is the floor too hard? We can continue this conversation in my bed if you like.”

Time to really take command, Marc thought. He lifted and swung her to lie on her side, facing him, with the firelight playing over her face and body.

“I get the first move?” He knew how he could break down any remaining inhibitions.

Reb had nodded. He rose to one elbow and looked her over, took great pleasure in observing the little signs that she was learning to enjoy herself with him, but she wasn’t as uninhibited as she’d like him to believe.

“Got it,” he said softly before kissing her full on the lips. She kissed him back, her naked breasts forgotten while she held his shoulders, and she seemed determined to crawl right inside his skin.

They were both breathing hard when Marc took his kisses on the road. He pressed his mouth to her jaw, her neck and arms, stomach and thighs. And all the time she reached for him—to no avail, because he might be a big man but he was also swift, and determined. He was a man who didn’t have to have a woman in his life all the time. The hunt was the biggie, especially when he got close to running his quarry to earth. He could wait as long as it took to see Reb across the breakfast table—his table.

For a man who prided himself on dealing in absolutes, he must have had a frontal lobotomy in his sleep, and he’d lost control over speech.

The first round was his? Great, this should take the frost off the pumpkin.

Holding her carefully, he maneuvered her to sit astride his chest and then the guiding was gentle, but guaranteed to take him where he wanted to be.

“Marc?” The uncertainty in her voice was no put-on.

A little tug and she was kneeling. Marc rocked her forward and she stopped herself from falling on him by planting her hands, one on either side of his head.

Her breasts swayed a little and he took pleasure—a whole lot of pleasure—in watching them. He couldn’t make out what she crooned to him, but figured if he gave his all to whatever he did, then they should both be in heaven. Marc was ready for that kind of heaven.

Marc smiled inside. Reb wasn’t talking anymore, and he was sure she held her breath. “Relax,” he told her and clasped her hips. He pulled her just close enough to make it easy for him to reach between her legs with his tongue.

First Reb stiffened, but then she leaned backward to give him all the help she could.

She climaxed almost instantly. With her eyes closed, she trembled, and tears coursed her cheeks.

“I’ve upset you,” he told her, but Reb shook her head and smiled through the tears. She said, “You’ve made me feel wonderful,” and showed him just how wonderful by kissing him until he felt suffocation was a possibility. And what a way to go. He’d make sure he came back from the dead to do it all over again.

“Reb,” he said when she took a breath break.

“Oh, of course,” she said, not allowing him to finish his thought. “What am I thinkin’ about? Just me, I guess. That’s not like me. I want to give you as much pleasure as you’ve given me.”

Crawling backward rapidly, she reached her target. Marc propped himself on his elbows and watched her. At least, he watched her red hair drape his belly, the movement of her head, and he felt too much. Too much, but he wouldn’t change a thing.

“Reb,” he said before decision-making time ran out. “You must be getting rug burns on your knees, cher.”

She paused and mumbled, “And you’re gettin’ them on your tush.” She laughed, actually laughed, and went back to her task.

“I want to make love to you for what’s left of the night,” he told her. “And do it in a place where we can pass out between sessions.”

She let him slip free of her lips again and said, “Sounds clinical.” The tips of her breasts, being deliberately drawn back and forth over his engorged penis, undid him—if there’d been anything still done up before.

“Maybe we should go to bed after all.”

“As soon as I’ve finished here,” Reb told him, and he had to laugh at her less than romantic turn of phrase.

He stopped laughing and fell back onto the floor. Faster and faster she moved over him. Pressure built, a pressure that constricted his belly and butt, and tightened him into rocks elsewhere. His head ached, the best headache he’d ever had. His hips refused to quit chasing her lips each time she withdrew a little.

“Go with it,” she told him when she stopped to breathe.

He heard the noise he made, but it came from a distance, as if it wasn’t connected to him. He clawed the rug with his fingertips, and he reached for Reb.

She stopped moving. Just stopped!

“Reb, you can’t do this to me. Please.”

“Come on,” she told him, and he’d never heard her sound desperate before, not this desperate. She leaped to her feet and tried to haul him up, but he ignored the hand she offered and got up on his own.

Gaston had started barking.

“Grab your clothes,” Reb said, while gathering her own.

The front door slammed. “Someone just left,” Marc whispered. “God, has he or she been here the whole time?”

“In here,” Reb ordered, swinging open a bookshelf that worked like a revolving door. There was a dark space beyond. “Quickly. We’ve got to get dressed and try to look normal.”

“For someone who just left—”

“For someone who just used a key to open the front door and came in.”

“Hi, Reb, where are you? I’ve been sent—”

The bookshelf slid silently back into place.

“Now dress,” Reb whispered. “Fast.”

Stale air with a hint of mold thrown in turned Marc’s stomach. “Who is it?”

“Cyrus. He keeps a key to the house. We have to be out of here, fully dressed, and with some great excuse, by the time he checks my study. Otherwise he’ll call in Spike and go over every inch of the house. In the end Cyrus would remember me showing him this space and open it. If he does, and we’re still in it…If it happens, I’ll close my eyes and play dead. And if you say I’m alive, I’ll deny it.”

Cyrus went into Reb’s reception room and stood in the dark—and felt like a complete fool. Holy…Toledo, he was long past old enough to figure out what he’d walked into.

The house was pretty dark, but a line of light shone beneath the closed door to Reb’s study. She hadn’t responded to his knock. And she wasn’t answering his shouts, although Gaston was coming through loud and clear.

And Marc Girard’s vehicle was parked out front.

Why hadn’t he taken one look at the Range Rover and rung the doorbell. A knock on a door, made out of so-called consideration, wasn’t necessarily heard, not everywhere in a house, not if there was a lot going on in there.

Television could cover ordinary sounds.

Pursing his lips, he managed a loud, but tuneless whistle. He used to be an accomplished whistler but hadn’t had much reason to practice for years. “I’ll wait in the kitchen,” he announced loudly. A click came from somewhere close. Cyrus peered toward Reb’s consulting room. The door was open, but it was dark inside. Old houses were creaky places, and people blessed with excellent hearing didn’t miss a pop or scritch.

He thought he heard another sound, a thud this time, and inside Reb’s study. What if she was in trouble? Gaston’s bark had subsided to an intermittent grumble. The dog wouldn’t settle down if something had happened to his boss.

There wasn’t a television in Reb’s study. If a television was playing at 4 Conch Street, the sound was off.

Thuds didn’t always mean trouble…depending on the situation in progress. He’d been around Spike too much lately. Activity would be a better word.

Damn it all, why had he let himself into Reb
’
s house at this time of night—morning?

Cyrus wanted out. But he couldn’t just go away—he’d really embarrass her then.

“Yes, I’ll do that,” he all but yelled. “Wait in the kitchen, that’s what I’ll do. No, I’ll sit on the stairs; that way I can say ‘hi’ the minute she comes in and I won’t shock her.”

Another subtle click.

If he was into being nervous, he’d be one jumpy man now. A swift trip into the consulting room, where he turned on the lights, showed nothing unusual.

Sitting on the stairs was a dumb idea. They—or Reb—would never come out if he was there. He closed his eyes and flirted with the idea of pretending to fall asleep in a chair right here in the waiting room. They’d find him and he’d “wake up,” apparently groggy. They could use that as a cover…

They were all going to be humiliated, and they might as well get it over with. It wasn’t as if they weren’t adults, or as if anything new to him was in progress—was
happening—on
the other side of the study door.