License to Love (16 page)

“Never mind, I’ll do it.”

But instead of calling his partners, Michelle called their girlfriends, Julia and Stacey, whom she’d gotten to know well since dating Steve.

“He didn’t even invite you to have dinner with than?” Julia exclaimed after Michelle told her that the dinner was off and why. “That jerk! ”

“I can’t believe he didn’t suggest that you join him and his family for the birthday dinner!” Stacey was equally irate on Michelle’s behalf. “What a thoughtless creep!” Michelle had to agree. She’d needed to vent some steam over Steve’s cavalier dismissal and it was something of a soothing balm to hear her own thoughts verified. But following her bout of self-righteous anger, there came a deep and searing hurt. How could she delude herself into believing that he cared about her when he wouldn’t even invite her to his birthday dinner?

Well,
thought Michelle,
I can sit around here and mope like a pitiful creature who’s been
Hooked!
or I can take my life into my own hands.
She opted for the latter. It was April, she’d recently read an article about the cherry blossoms being in gorgeous full bloom in the nation’s capital where her stepsister Courtney happened to live. She hadn’t seen Courtney for a while and, suddenly, it seemed an ideal time to visit her.

Several phone calls later, Michelle’s plans were in gear. She arranged for a few vacation days from work and her neighbor agreed to keep Squeaky whom Michelle deemed too young to travel. Besides, springing a lively kitten, plus Burton, on Courtney who was politely indifferent to cats at best, didn’t seem quite fair.

Within an hour of Steve’s cancellation, the food for his birthday dinner was in the freezer and Michelle and Burton were on the interstate highway heading toward Washington.

“And how was your day, Burtie?” Michelle asked the cat upon entering Courtney’s apartment. Burton meowed a greeting and followed her into the bedroom.

“I think that a full day of sightseeing is more exhausting than a forty hour work week.” She kicked off her shoes as she spoke, then peeled off her pantyhose. It felt good to flex her cramped, bare toes in the soft pile of the carpet.

“Before I fix myself a cup of tea and get you a kitty treat, I want to show you the prints I bought for my bedroom.” Michelle removed the reproduction prints of the original masterpieces from the paper bag marked National Gallery of Art. She’d made her purchases in the gift shop after viewing the paintings in the cavernous art museum, her sixth and final tourist stop of the day. She’d ended with dinner in a small restaurant near the White House, then caught the Metro back to Courtney’s apartment.

Burton was unimpressed with the art. His attention was focused on a furry gray toy mouse that he hunted with the same tactical concentration as a big cat in the wilds. Both were so engrossed—Michelle with her prints and Burton with his mouse—that neither made any response the first time the doorbell rang.

When the ringing persisted, Burton froze and tilted his head, cocking his ears. Michelle looked equally quizzical. “Who could that be?” she wondered aloud. “Courtney couldn’t be expecting anyone, she’s out of town. And couriers don’t make evening deliveries, do they?”

Tentatively, she went to the front door and reached to open the small metal door that covered the square metal-barred peephole. Michelle uttered a small gasp. Were her eyes playing tricks on her?

“Steve?” Her voice rose to an incredulous squeak.

Steve’s eyes flew to the small opening in the door where he saw and heard Michelle through the crossed metal bars. “Of course it’s me. Who were you expecting, the Easter Bunny?”

Michelle was operating on pure astonishment as she automatically opened the door. “But how—” she began.

He gave her no chance to finish. He pushed his way inside, pulled her roughly into his arms and bent his head to hers, capturing her mouth with one fell swoop. The door slammed behind them. For one startled moment, Michelle stood rigid and still in his arms as her spinning mind attempted to assimilate his presence.

Steve wasn’t waiting for her to come to grips with his sudden appearance. His mouth was open and hard on hers, his kiss angry and punishing, a primitive display of possessive male dominance, and the effect on Michelle was oddly paradoxical. She wanted both to rebel and to submit.

And then her most primal feminine instincts took over, responding to the hard strength of his arms and the warm pressure of his body against hers. Her lips parted on a small sigh and the hot taste of his mouth filled her. Michelle thrust her fingers into the dark thickness of his hair and fervendy kissed him back.

As soon as Steve felt the melting warmth of her response, the whole nature of the kiss changed. Anger gave way to pure passion and he kissed her with a hungry urgency that revealed a desperate desire.

His hands gathered her skirt and lifted it. His big, warm palm glided up her bare thigh. When he encountered the lacy edges of her panties, he shuddered with arousal, then cupped her bottom with both hands, kneading and caressing the firm, silk-covered softness.

Michelle’s breath caught on a moan and her back arched. She moved against his hands as a river of sensual pleasure eddied through her. She wrapped her arms around his muscled shoulders and hugged him tighter to her, wanting to be as close as she could. Part of her wondered if she were dreaming a very erotic dream. His sudden appearance seemed like an awesome combination of fantasy and wish fulfillment.

But her swimming senses validated the reality of his presence. She could feel the heat of his body and smell the male muskiness of his skin. His body was hard and taut under her hands, and the sound of his deep, rasping breaths filled her ears.

His mouth left hers to gently suck the sensitive cord of her neck, and Michelle whimpered as the sensation evoked a corresponding tingling heat in her breasts and deep in her belly. Her nipples beaded and throbbed, a syrupy warmth pooled between her thighs.

“I can’t believe you’re really here,” she whispered feverishly, clinging to him as if he might disappear if she let him go.

“I’m here.” His voice was deep and low and husky, and the very sound of it excited her. “Don’t tell me to leave, Michelle.”

It was debatable as to whether his impassioned reply was an order or a plea. Michelle didn’t care either way. Sending him away was unthinkable. When he lifted her slightly, to settle her harder and higher against him, graphically demonstrating her effect on him, she undulated her hips in response to the carnal pressure.

“I want you to stay,” she said softly. Once she said the words, she knew there was no turning back. And she didn’t want to. It was time. She was in love and she’d missed him, even though he’d hurt her with his cavalier treatment the night of his birthday.

But that was in the past, and her nature was too generous and giving to nurture a grudge. She gazed into his burning black gaze. Her heart was pounding and her body pulsated with an aching sexual tension that throbbed just as wildly in him.

Steve’s chest rose with a swift, deep intake of breath and he picked her up in his arms. The apartment was small and he carried her to the bedroom, finding it easily.

A dark flash of fur brushed his legs as he laid her down on the bed, and he jerked upright, startled. “What the—”

“It’s Burton playing with his mouse,” Michelle explained. “I guess we intruded on his game and he left in a huff.”

Steve managed a shaky laugh. “You and your crazy cats and your crazy trips and your crazy — ”

“I get the point,” Michelle interrupted huskily, reaching for him. “You think I’m crazy.”

He came down beside her with a rough groan. “You make
me
crazy.” His mouth covered hers with breathtaking impact.

The taste of him went straight to her head, and Michelle welcomed the bold penetration of his tongue, needing him in the most elemental way, craving union with him, body, heart and soul.

He unbuttoned her blouse and unclipped her bra with ardent, arousing hands. She lay trembling and vulnerable, her breasts bared to him, watching his dark eyes study her with blazing intensity. Her body was on fire, empty and aching, wanting something she had never known but instinctively hungered for.

Steve gazed at the flawless ivory smoothness of her full breasts, her taut raspberry nipples. His mind was rioting, his body rigid with a pleasure so fierce it bordered on pain. He’d waited longer for Michelle than he had ever had to wait for anything or anyone. He was used to things coming easily to him, to people doing what he wanted and when.

Waiting for Michelle’s capitulation these past months had certainly not been easy. She was a challenge that he rarely faced. But the sight of her lying there, her blue eyes filled with passion and yearning, her pretty breasts rising and falling softly under his gaze, more than fulfilled the torturous anticipation of waiting.

“You’re so beautiful,” he said hoarsely. “So sexy. And I want you so much that I—I—” His mind went blank, hot licks of passion erasing his usual ready supply of stock lines.

Steve bent his head and took the tight rosy peak in his mouth, gently laving it with his tongue, then drawing it deeper, sucking and nibbling, until Michelle was squirming and arching and shuddering with pleasure.

“It feels so good,” she heard herself murmur in a throaty, sexy voice that she hardly recognized as her own. Her eyes were tightly closed. It felt almost
too
good. The intensity of the tempestuous, voluptuous sensations sweeping through her made her feel dizzy and dazed and completely out of control.

It was wild, scary and exhilarating at the same time. She felt his fingers at her waist, manipulating the button and zipper of her skirt, then deftly divesting her of it. Her bikini panties were dark blue with white stars on them. Steve’s lips curved into a lazy, sensual smile.

“Patriotic,” he drawled.

Michelle blushed. “I—I’m partial to stars and stripes and anything red, white and blue,” she felt obliged to explain. “Maybe because I come from a military family.”

“I won’t be able to look at Old Glory again without thinking of these.” His eyes gleaming, he slid his hand over the fabric.

She felt chary and exposed and so very vulnerable. “Don’t tease me, Steve.”

Her shyness touched him. “I wasn’t teasing you,” he said softly, his lips feathering the creamy smooth flatness of her belly. “Well, maybe just a little.” His tongue circled her navel. “Serves you right for pulling that disappearing act.” “Disappearing act?” she echoed drowsily. Her mind was spinning, and she was having difficulty keeping the threads of the conversation straight.

“I’ve been trying to track you down since Saturday night. It was as if you’d vanished.” Steve frowned, remembering. “I was madder than hell.”

“At me?”

He audaciously inserted the tip of his tongue into her navel’s tiny hollow depth. Michelle gasped. When his hand moved between her legs, cupping her intimately, she uttered a soft cry.

“At myself,” Steve admitted gruffly. He rubbed her, watching as she shivered helplessly under his fingers. “For being a jackass and for letting you get away.”

“But you found me,” she managed to whisper. Her breath caught and held as he slipped his big, warm hand inside her panties.

“I found you,” he echoed huskily. His fingers combed through the luxuriant triangle of dark blond curls, gliding along the exquisite folds of feminine softness.

She blushed at the swollen wet heat he found there. Then he was kissing her again, as wildly and hungrily as before, and her embarrassment was dissolved in a storm of intoxicating passion. He slid her panties down the length of her body and opened her legs farther with his hand. Caressing her with light, gliding touches, exquisitely probing, he penetrated the hot secrets of her body.

Michelle cried his name and clutched his shoulders, unconsciously digging her nails into the muscled strength. What he was doing to her...how he was touching her...the way he made her feel... She’d never experienced anything so profoundly intimate. She felt delirious, as with fever, but she never wanted it to stop. She didn’t want him to stop.

And he didn’t. Slowly, carefully, as if he had all the time in the world, he concentrated on pleasuring her, with his lips and his hands, gauging her responses and tailoring his caresses to suit them. Repeating, intensifying, taking her higher and higher. She moaned, her whole body shuddering as each tender penetration and gliding withdrawal stretched the burgeoning tension within, until it burst into shimmering waves of heat, so pleasurable that emotional tears streamed down her cheeks.

Through her convulsive sensual daze, she could hear Steve’s voice, exultant and male and proud. “Yes, baby. That’s it. Just let go...”

Her whole body felt bathed by a glowing warmth and Michelle lay limp in Steve’s arms, feeling too languorous to even open her eyes.

“I didn’t dream you’d be so responsive.” Steve brushed light, biting kisses over her cheeks, her forehead, her lips.

Michelle’s eyelids fluttered open. She gazed at him with wide, wondrous blue eyes. And then a dark blush swept over her. She was in bed with him, naked, while he was stUl fully clothed. And her unbridled responses to the intimacies he had performed on her made her flinch with self-conscious embarrassment.

“You—didn’t?” She didn’t know what to do, what to say. Her inexperience was so blindingly obvious to herself, she was sure it must be apparent to Steve, as well. “Why not?” Steve smiled. “It crossed my mind that you might find it difficult to give in and lose control. You’ve certainly demonstrated your ability to
keep
control and call a halt whenever—”

“Do we have to have a postmortem?” Michelle interrupted, flinching. Her blush deepened.

Steve stared in fascination as her white skin turned a warm pink. “I’ve never seen anyone blush from head to toe. You, my sweet, are an ever-surprising phenomenon.” Michelle winced. If this was bedroom banter, she knew she wasn’t going to be good at it. Better complete silence than trading these shatteringly intimate observations. Even worse, she had none to trade. He’d done everything while she had simply lain there.