Just Like a Man (41 page)

And then she was falling, onto a bed, and Thomas was falling down beside her. He helped her shed her T-shirt and bra, then Selby lifted a hand to his belt, touching it first only with the tip of her index finger, tracing the buckle. Then, slowly, methodically, she moved her hand to the leather, tugging on the length to free it from the metal ring.

"Selby," he whispered as she dragged it slowly through the loops of his jeans. But her name got lost when he covered her mouth with his once again.

Carefully, she lowered his zipper, then, without hesitation, tucked her hand inside. She located him at once, marveling at how rock-hard and ready he was for her, then moved her hand away, bashful about the discovery. She'd never touched a man like that before, and only then did she realize just how terribly inexperienced she was. She honestly wasn't sure what to do, hoped Thomas wouldn't be disappointed by her lack of knowledge. But he circled her wrist with firm fingers and urged her hand back into his jeans where it had been before. So with tentative, featherlike touches, Selby ran her fingers over him. Thomas pulled his mouth from hers and grew still at her caresses, bending his head to watch the motion of her hand between their bodies as it moved against him, and shuddering when she dared to make her movements bolder.

She loved the way he responded under her touch, was fascinated by that part of him and wanted to explore more. She brought her hand up over the top of him, palming the full head of his member, the slickness of his response aiding the rotating motion of her hand. Then she moved her fingers lower again, curving them around his thick, heavy shaft, and began to rub him harder.

"That's it," he ground out hoarsely, grabbing her wrist again. Together they stroked him, Selby's hand curling around his flesh, Thomas setting the pace with his fingers wrapped around her wrist, slow at first, then faster, rougher, until he felt beneath her fingertips as if he were ready to burst. Then, abruptly, he stopped and withdrew both their hands, lifting Selby's to his mouth to press a hard kiss into her palm.

"But—" she began. She didn't understand why he had stopped when he'd seemed to be enjoying himself so much.

But Thomas halted her objection by kissing her again, teasing the corners of her mouth with his tongue. Then he covered both of her naked breasts with sure fingers, squeezing gently, flicking the pads of his thumbs over the stiff peaks. After that, Selby didn't want to think anymore. She only wanted to feel what was happening to her. A hot, heavy river had begun to flow through her veins, and a hungry fire had flickered to life in her belly. Every nerve she possessed seemed to burst into flame as Thomas opened his mouth over her breast and sucked her inside. She wove her fingers through his silky hair and held his head in place, murmuring alternately that he should halt his eager onslaught and urging him to never, ever let it end.

Then she felt Thomas's lips move lower, to the underside of her breasts and then to her belly. She sighed when he dipped his tongue into her navel for a taste, then wriggled her hips as he tugged at her blue jeans. He dragged them down over thighs and knees, but she was still wearing her sneakers, so, with a growl of impatience, he took a moment to remove those and cast them aside, too. Then he parted her legs for a more intimate exploration, dipping his head between her thighs. When she realized his intention, when she understood that he meant to… to… to
taste
her, Selby opened her mouth to tell him to stop, because she'd never—

Oh. Oh, my. Oh
, Thomas.

Any objection she might have uttered got caught in her throat when she felt the tip of his tongue flicker against her as softly as a butterfly's kiss. Never had she felt such exquisite pleasure, such a rush of staggering joy. Relentlessly, he savored her, and Selby could only lie motionless, her fingers knotting in the coverlet, her head turned into the pillow. But as the push of his mouth and tongue grew more insistent, ripples of delight began to unravel inside her, swelling one by one into eruptions of heat. Finally, an explosive orgasm rocked her, and she cried out at the intoxicating newness of the experience.

"Oh," she groaned as he dragged his mouth up the length of her torso again. "Oh, Thomas…"

Her eyes had fluttered closed, and in her pleasure-weakened state, she didn't have the fortitude to open them. But she felt the bed shift as Thomas moved upon it, heard the scrape of a drawer and then the unmistakable whisper of plastic. Later, she thought, she'd have to ask him how he knew he would find one of those in there. But when he returned to her and buried his head against her breast, sucking her again and launching an eager assault on her senses, she got lost in all the wonderful sensations he aroused in her. He seemed to surround and invade her, filled all the empty places inside her that had been cold and lonely for too long.

Selby helped Thomas shed the remainder of his clothing, then lay back down, allowing him to part her legs to kneel between them. She knew what was coming next, even if she had no experience with the act itself. She was about to find out, she thought. After having read about it, and fantasized about it, and wondered about it, now she was going to find out what it was really like. She readied herself for the pain—because she'd heard there was always pain the first time—but knew Thomas was a gentle enough man that he would do his best to make this easy for her. She started to tell him it was her first time, wanted to ready him, too, but he touched her again, running the pad of his thumb over the bead of her clitoris, and she gasped before any words could get out.

And then he was pushing himself inside her, deep,
deep
inside her, and her gasp became a small choke of panic.

"My God, you're so tight," he said, sounding delighted by the discovery.

And when she started to tell him again the reason for that, he pushed harder, and Selby gasped again, only this time it was because of the pain. And then he surged forward, and the pain became so great that instead of gasping, she could only cry out, and what she cried out was,
"Thomas!"

Immediately, he withdrew from her, and she saw by his expression that she didn't need to tell him why she had yelled the way she had.

"This is your first time?" he asked. And now he was the one who sounded panicked. "You've never done this before?"

She shook her head slowly, weakly.

"Selby, why didn't you tell me?"

"I was going to," she said. "But it felt so good, I didn't want to…"

"To what?"

"To ruin it."

His expression crumpled then, and he closed his eyes. "Oh, God, Selby, this doesn't ruin it. It just makes it that much better. For me, at least," he added, and she figured that must have something to do with the tightness he mentioned. "But it's got to hurt like hell for you."

"It's okay," she said. And she was surprised to realize she meant it. It really was okay. Or, at least, it would be. "Just… go slow, okay?" she said.

He nodded. "And you tell me if I'm hurting you."

She smiled. As if he could ever do that. "Okay."

He moved between her legs again, holding his body over hers by bracing his forearms on either side of her. "Bend your legs," he said. "It will help."

She did as he asked, digging her heels into the mattress up near her bottom, spreading her legs open wider. He entered her again, more slowly this time, giving her a moment with each new foray to let her body grow more accustomed to the invasion. Little by little, he entered her more deeply, until finally their bodies were completely joined.

"You okay?" he panted then.

She nodded. There was still pain, but it wasn't like it had been before. And there was something else mixed with it now, something urgent and fierce and intense, something she wanted to learn more about. "I'm okay," she whispered. And she knew that, as long as she was doing this with Thomas, she was.

He pushed himself up on his knees then, circling his hands around her ankles and wrapping her legs around his waist. That position, too, eased some of the stress on her body, opened her wider, made it a little easier for her to accommodate him. Buried inside her as he was, Thomas reached and touched and heated parts of Selby she hadn't even known could feel. She reveled in the depth of his pos-session, clasping her hands tightly around the forearms he anchored on either side of her. And then, with a trust and a passion unlike anything she'd felt before, she let him sweep her away.

And sweep her away he did. Slowly, he began to withdraw from inside her, then slowly, he pushed himself back in again. Little by little, he increased his movements, each time stoking the fire inside Selby a little higher, until it eventually built into a white-hot conflagration. And just when she thought she would go up in flames with it, Thomas turned their bodies so that he was on his back with Selby sitting astride him. He gripped her hips and bucked against her, eliciting another cry from deep within her. Then he, too, cried out as he vaulted wildly against her one last time. Their climax came as one, both of them going still for one brief, scintillating moment, and then their bodies relaxed with their release.

Not sure what to do after that, Selby moved off of Thomas to lie beside him, facing him. She trailed her index finger along the length of his slick torso, his chest rising and falling in a deep, irregular rhythm. He caught her hand in his, holding it over his heart, his pulse leaping like a feral animal.

"Feel that?" he said. "That's what you've done to me. My heart will never be the same after this."

Selby smiled. "That's only fair. You've messed with mine, too, you know."

"Have I?"

She nodded, but couldn't quite bring herself to speak.

"I can't believe that was your first time," he said softly.

She touched her index finger lightly to his lip. "I'm glad it was you. I'm glad you're my first."

He said nothing for a moment after that, then, quietly, "Will you stay for a little longer?" he asked. "I mean, I know you have to go home—"

And Mr. Rutherford will be back soon.

"Yeah, that, too," he said. But something in his voice when he said it felt wrong somehow. Before Selby could think about it, though, he hurried on, "Will you stay for a little while?" he asked again. "I just don't want you to leave yet."

She smiled. "For a little while," she said. "But then I have to go."

He smiled back and kissed her hand. Then, "I'll be right back," he told her, and rolled away.

The condom, Selby thought, grateful that he'd been coherent enough to think about that. She heard the bathroom door off the guest room click closed, then the sound of rushing water. She sat up in bed, wrapping the sheet around herself, unable to remember when they'd even turned it down. For the first time, she took in her surroundings. This room, like all the others, was sparsely furnished, but there was still something about the clean lines and muted colors of the decor that reeked of wealth. The clock on the nightstand told her she was going to be working late tonight, since she'd taken a lot more than an hour for dinner. But it was the assortment of other things on the nightstand that caught her attention even more. Because they were things that looked personal, things that suggested maybe Thomas's wild guess had landed them not in a guest room, but right smack dab in the master's chambers.

Uh-oh…

Beside the clock was a book with a bookmark tucked midway through it, Herman Hesse's
Steppenwolf.
Atop that lay a pair of reading glasses, and beside them was a single stray cufflink that—just a shot in the dark here—looked to be solid gold.

Oh, this was
not
good.
They had just made love in Mr. Rutherford's room.

"Thomas?" she called out weakly, swinging her legs over the side of the bed and reaching for her discarded clothing. What there was of it anyway. Where had she left the rest of it? "We have to get out of here," she added. But the water was still running in the bathroom, so she wasn't sure if he heard her. "I think you picked the wrong room."

The nightstand was constructed in such a way that it had a small shelf beneath the top surface, and as Selby bent to retrieve a sock, she saw lying on that shelf what looked like a leather-bound date book of some kind. She was about to look away when she noticed three letters embossed on the leather, and even though she hadn't been trying to snoop, she couldn't help seeing what they were. TPB. For a minute, the significance of that didn't deter her from her task, and she slipped on her blue jeans and bra without thinking. But then—

TPB?
Thomas had introduced the owner of CompuPax as Harry Rutherford. Tand
B
did not stand for Harry or Rutherford. But they did stand for—

The bathroom door opened then, just as Selby was pulling the date book out from its shelf. And if she hadn't already been worried about the discovery, Thomas's panicked cry of "Selby, don't!" would have finished the job for her.

Before she could open it, Thomas was in front of her, jerking it out of her hands. "That's private property," he said. "We should leave it alone."

She looked up at him then, still feeling a little woozy, though whether that was a result of their lovemaking or this new discovery—whatever it was—she wasn't sure. He'd slipped on a bathrobe and loosely belted it, a beautifully tailored garment that shimmered softly in the afternoon sunlight like silk. No, not
like
silk, Selby thought. It was silk. Because the owner of CompuPax could afford it and would demand the best.

"TPB," she said softly.

"What?" Thomas asked. But she could tell by his expres-sion that not only did he know what she had just said, he understood what she was talking about.

"What does the
P
stand for?" she asked. "You never told me your middle name."

"My name?" he echoed.

She nodded. "Yeah. Your name. Your initials. Your date book. Your room. Your place. I'm right, aren't I? Harry Rutherford isn't the owner of the company. You are."

He said nothing in response to her charge, but a muscle in his jaw twitched once, and his cheeks gTew ruddy.