In Bed with Beauty (7 page)

“Is that really necessary?”

She thought about it. To Harris life was an endless cycle of affairs. The whole evening had the feeling of ritual. Seductive though it was to think that Harris had pulled out all the romantic stops for her tonight, his posture said otherwise. He’d done this before and she needed to feel like she wasn’t one of the many with Harris. Because he wasn’t one of many to her. “To me it is.”

He sighed and ran his fingers through his blond hair. She wished she’d had the guts to run her fingers through it. She wished she’d held his head in her hands and plundered his mouth instead of being a slave to his embrace. She wished, just once, she’d have the courage to be the woman she’d always dreamed of.

Maybe tonight.

“You said something about our meeting being bad luck.”

He poured himself another splash of whiskey and knocked it back like medicine. Cursing again he paced to the wall of windows just as the fireworks started lighting up the sky. How would seeing relationships as obsessions affect a man?

It was odd to see Harris illuminated by the fireworks. He was too grounded. To nose-to-the-grindstone. Maybe that’s why their paths crossed, she thought. Maybe she was meant to show him the lighter side of life.

“I’m not sure you want to hear my thoughts on luck,” he said after a few minutes.

“But I do.”

He pivoted to face her and she couldn’t make out his features in the shadows of the candlelight room. But she knew he was sincere. When had he ever not been?

“Relationships—and I’m speaking strictly of business ones here—are hard to maintain. And then you have a common goal.”

“Men and women don’t?”

“Not in my experience.”

“You keep saying that. But Harris, you aren’t your father.”

“I know that,” he said.

She wanted to probe deeper but suddenly was afraid to. “I think we can be different.”

“Why do you think that? Is it a sop for your conscience to justify sleeping with me?” he asked. Sarcasm was his defense mechanism, she noticed.

She was willing to cut him some slack but she didn’t want to be a doormat. “That was low, even for you.”

He paced back to the liquor cabinet but didn’t pour anything, just toyed with his empty glass.

“I’m sorry,” he said, at last.

“Do you really feel that way?” she asked.

“God, no. I don’t want to talk about this any more tonight. I’m not sure any kind of luck exists. But if it does…”

She left the couch and went to his side. “If it does?”

“Then I’m hoping we’ve got some kind of good karma working for us. The last thing I want to do is hurt you.”

“Oh, Harris.”

He didn’t say anything else, just pulled her into his arms and kissed her with a desperation she sensed he’d deny.

His mouth moved over hers with surety and purpose and she knew that he was intent tonight on…what? Seduction seemed the most likely course. The evening was a prelude to it. A perfect dinner with soft candlelight and romantic music.

But she knew that there was more at work here than seduction. His words echoed in her mind…I don’t want to hurt you. It scared her that he already knew he could hurt her. The only consolation she took was that there was genuine longing in his eyes that made her glow with all her femininity. Made her feel like the only woman on earth who could tame the wildness in his soul.

Reaching up, she cupped his face. She ran her fingers along his jaw and then to the back of his neck and over his shoulders. They were strong and capable. Everything about him was. And she flexed her fingers, testing the resiliency of those muscles.

His mouth left her, tracking a wet path down her neck, stopping to suck the pulse point at the base of her neck. His touch shot sensations straight to her groin and she shifted against him. Needing him in ways and in places she hadn’t just a moment before.

“Harris,” she said, softly clasping his face in both her hands.

He glanced up at her. She saw in his eyes too many emotions to identify and she felt in the pit of her stomach a feeling of nervous excitement.

“No more talking tonight,” he said, covering her lips with one finger.

He rubbed his forefinger over her lips. Teasing her until she opened them and tasted him with the tip of her tongue. She bit lightly on his finger. His eyes darkened. Emotion was shunted aside by a more primal response. He grabbed her hips and tugged her body closer to his until not even an inch of space remained between them.

She took his jaw in her hands and pulled his face down to hers. His pupils were dilated and between her legs she felt him hot and hard. She’d never experienced a tenth of this passion with other men.

His growled deep in his throat and lowered his head to hers again. This time there was no gentle seduction but a full out taking of her mouth. He didn’t mask what he wanted—he took. And she let him.

One of his hands left her waist and cupped her butt, pulling her closer until her mound rested against his hardness. She ceased thinking.

His mouth slid down her neck, suckling at the base. Her breasts felt so full and achingly tight. She leaned into his chest, trying to alleviate the pressure, which only heightened with each pull of his mouth on her neck.

He moaned and she felt the sound throughout her body. His other hand left her back and found her aching nipple. Rubbing through the thin layers of dress and bra, he brought relief to the aching flesh.

Sarah threw her head back. His other hand slid under her skirt, up her leg. Not stopping until he reached the center of her. She moaned again as his fingers skimmed the edge of her panties and slid underneath.

Circling the slick flesh between her legs, he teased her with the promise of more. She shifted herself against his touch and finally felt him at the entrance of her body. He thrust two fingers deep inside her and she clutched at his shoulders.

His thumb rubbed at the center of her pleasure and fire stormed through her. Throwing her closer and closer to the pinnacle. Her breathing increased, she could scarcely catch her breath. His hand on her bottom held her hips steady as he rocked against her.

Her nerves all tightened. Everything inside her clenched and then there was the release she’d been driving toward. She shivered in the aftermath. Harris was still rock-hard between her legs. But he wrapped his arms around her and lowered his leg from between her own.

His hands rubbed slowly up and down her back. She looked up at him. His face was flushed, his breathing still too rapid.

She reached between their bodies, wanting to share the same release he’d given her with him. But he stopped her.

“Why?”

“Because we need the bed for what I have in mind,” he said, scooping her up and carrying her down the short hall into the darkened bedroom. He set her on her feet.

“Don’t move.”

“Yes, sir,” she said.

“I like the sound of respect in the bedroom,” he said. He switched on the light on the nightstand. The room was still mostly shadows with a great cone of light in the center. Sarah hovered on the edge of the darkness. Feeling too exposed in this room. It seemed all her dreams and desires were bared to him.

“Into domination?” she asked, lightly. Trying to mask her own deepest needs. She didn’t want him to know that she needed him with a desperation she’d never felt before. She wasn’t sure of herself at all with Harris.

“No. But lately I’ve been obsessed with getting into you.” His words were a rasp in the shadowy room. They brushed over her aroused senses like a mink glove and she shivered, needing to be in his arms again.

“Really?” she asked, giving up the pretense that she wanted to be anywhere but here with him. She couldn’t believe that this worldly man needed anything from her—Sarah Malcolm and not just any woman. She remembered what Ray had said earlier that maybe part of her appeal to Harris was that she wasn’t like the women he was used to. Suddenly she very glad for that.

He took her hand and carried it to his crotch. All thoughts other than ones about primal mating left her mind. He pulsed against her. She slid her fingers along his zipper caressing him. He moaned deep in his throat.

“Don’t doubt that this is real,” he said.

She measured him with her hand. His hips rocked against her and she tightened her grip. She couldn’t wait to touch his naked flesh. “I’m not.”

“This might be all I have to give you,” he said.

“I’m betting that I can make you believe in something more.”

“I can’t make any promises,” he said.

The fireworks continued to echo in the night and she stared up at his dear face in the dark room. “I’m only asking for one tonight.”

He watched her. “What’s that?”

“Make me yours,” she said, standing on tiptoe and wrapping her arms around his neck.

Harris had glimpsed the dark underbelly of his soul only twice in his life. The first time he’d been six and clinging desperately to his mother’s legs as she’d walked out of the Connecticut mansion they’d called home. The second time he’d been a young man of twenty-one and he’d pleaded with Mona to give them one more chance. Tonight as he held Sarah in his arms he realized that he was tempted to make her say she’d never leave him.

Damn it.
She didn’t mean anything to him. He wouldn’t let her. This was an affair nothing more.
Nothing less.
He should have offered to make her his mistress. He’d have felt better about their affair knowing all his cards were on the table.

They’d talked too much already tonight. In the morning he’d make sure she understood everything. Her soft breath brushed against his neck. He didn’t want to believe what he saw in Sarah’s eyes—the knowledge that she thought this was more than an affair.

He was the master of illusion and tonight he was the embodiment of his training. Suave, sophisticated—an experienced man who wanted only to share a night filled with pleasure with the woman in his arms.

He’d meant for this to be sweet seduction but he had needed her too badly. Needed to brand her as his if only for this short time. She felt fragile and very feminine in his hands. Though he refused to acknowledge that he might have the power to hurt her. Instead he swept his hands over her body, removing her clothing as he went.

“No,” she said, her small hands captured his wrists.

Startled, he stopped. He was surprised she was stopping now but he’d always bent to a lady’s wishes. If Sarah wanted to call a halt now—he’d acquiesce.

Leaning up on tiptoe, she brushed the softest kiss against his jaw. His life had been hard by nature and experience. Even his sexual encounters had owed more to physical desire than to any longing for physical touching. But her kiss was different.

“This time I want you with me,” she said.

“I will be, baby.” No doubt about it. He might even be before her if they didn’t stop talking and get into bed.

“I’m not taking any chances.”

She unbuttoned his shirt and pushed it to the floor. “That first day we met…in the limo…I had a fantasy of you without your shirt in bed.”

“Really? I only had my shirt off?”

“Hmm-mmm. At least in the beginning. I don’t want to rush things between us. Not this first time.”

“I’m all about indulging fantasies,” he said, knowing he wasn’t. But tonight he wanted to be her white knight. Tonight he wanted to pretend his armor hadn’t been tarnished. Tonight was all for Sarah. He walked over to the bed and sprawled on his back arms out to his sides.

“How’s this?”

“Just about perfect,” she said. She sat next to him on the bed, tracing her fingers over the muscles of his chest.

Her touch burned through the layers of skin and he felt it bone deep. Sensation spread throughout his body and his nipples tightened and his groin was so full and heavy he felt his pulse down there. He needed to be inside her now. No more playing. No more waiting.

He captured her in his arms and took her mouth. Tasted her deeply while he removed her clothing with more efficiency than skill. Only when her clothes were in a pile at their feet at the bottom of the bed and they were laying naked chest to breasts did he stop. He felt the humid warmth of her center through the fabric of his trousers. He had to stop and breathe deeply to keep from spilling himself in his pants.

He opened his eyes and looked up at her dark chocolate gaze. Watched the passion on her face as she undulated against him. She was so responsive, she went to his head like his first sip of liquor. She made him feel like the first man to ever awaken a woman to her sensuality and the experience was a heady one.

He slid his hands over her back, following the line of her spine. He cupped her butt and held her hips still while he thrust up against her. He wished he’d taken the time to open his fly so he could feel her wetness against his skin.

She moaned deep in her throat and he felt his grip on his control slip. Leaning up, he captured her nipple in his mouth and suckled her. He shifted them on the bed so they were both on their sides. Her fingers tunneled through his hair holding him closer to her. He massaged her other breast, plucking at the hardened nipple before switching to it and taking it in his mouth as well.

Her nails scraped lightly down his back and she worked her hands between them. Opening his pants and shoving them down his legs with his boxers, he kicked free of the fabric and the first touch of Sarah’s hands on his penis was like fire. He shuddered under her touch. She cupped him with one hand and stroked the length of his erection with the other.

He lifted his head from her breast and sprawled on his back, widening his legs to give her more room to explore him.

“Was this part of your fantasy?” he asked, desperately trying to hold on and give her the time she’d asked for to explore him.

“Not until much later that night,” she said.

She bent and nibbled at his chest, tracing the line of hair with her tongue until she reached the part of him she still cupped in her hands. He was so hard, so ready that her touch was torture yet he made no move to stop her as she sampled him with her mouth.

His hips jerked at her touch against his will. “I can’t wait any longer.”