Lotus Blossom (7 page)

“I never thought of it as fun before . . . but that’s because I was always arguing with my brothers about whose turn it was to do the dishes.” Lotus smiled up at him, then caught herself. She mustn’t talk about her family! She might slip and tell him too much. Dash Colby was a very sharp man. He needed very little information to add two and two and get a conclusion.

“Tell me more about your family.” He could feel his eyes narrowing on her. He had sensed her withdrawal. What was bothering her?

“There’s not much to tell. Most of the time we’re happy with each other.” She took a deep breath. “Besides, I told you a great deal about myself; yet, you haven’t told me anything about you.”

She’s putting me off again,
he thought smothering his irritation. “Ask away.”

“Are you an only child?”

“No. I’m the middle of five children. I have two older sisters, a younger brother and sister. They all live in Boston. The three girls are married. Alan is still looking.”

“Like you.”

“No. I’ve stopped looking.” The sensual twist to his smile had Lotus blinking.

“Then you two will be the only single ones.” Lotus couldn’t hold his gaze. “Watch out, your mother will be after you.”

“Not to mention my father, my uncles and aunts and my cousins.  . .” Dash grazed her cheek with his lips.

“It sounds as though you have a large family.” She gave a breathless laugh.

“A mob scene.” He watched her, amazed that her laugh could bring him such a good feeling. “Was it your parents who called you Dash?”

“My mother calls me Dasher, but that’s an old family name and she would never think of shortening it to Dash. My sisters and brother shortened it, as I recall, though when my sisters are angry they call me Dasher.”

“I like Dash,” Lotus said, settling on a long couch set at right angles to the oak-mantled stone fireplace.

He walked to a sideboard, poured thimbleful sizes of liqueur, and sat very close to her on the furry white settee. “I hope you like Dash, and not just his name.” He handed her a glass and sat down again, his arm along the back of the settee.

Lotus sipped the strong liquid tinged with the taste of orange and wrinkled her nose. “Different.” “Grand Marnier, love. Don’t you like it?”

“I’ve never had it before, but I think a couple of sips is fine.” She leaned back against the overstuffed upholstery, happy when his arm dropped to her shoulder and he scooped her into the curve of his body.

“Then leave it, sweet. You can’t be tipsy on half a glass of champagne and a thimble of liqueur,” he told her, his soft voice ruffling the hair on her forehead

“I know.” She closed her eyes and sagged against him. When he sighed, she could feel her pulse rate jump. In lazy excitement she watched him place her tiny glass on the coffee table in front of the couch along with his. It was her turn to sigh when he put his other arm across her waist and pulled her even closer to him.

“I know this must seem too quick to you, angel, but I want you so much. I have wanted you from the moment I saw you in my office the first day.” He tilted up her chin. It both jolted and gladdened him to see the serene acceptance in her face. “Do you want me?” He had never asked that question in his life! He had always assumed that the women he pursued wanted him as much as he wanted them. He never had had reason to suppose that such a supposition was incorrect.

“Yes, but don’t expect too much.” She felt calm. “My experience hasn’t been as extensive as you might think for someone my age. . . ” She lifted her hand and rubbed it on his chin. “You have bristles already.”

“Which I will shave off, my darling.” He felt his face crease in concern. “Are you a virgin, love?”

“No . . . but I can’t say that I’ve enjoyed sex.”
Which was only once
, she told him in her mind,
and Alex Venet was a flop as a lover.

He watched her for long minutes, his mind turning over, computing the small amount of information she had  given him and coming up with the full picture.
Some clod was her first and only lover,
Dash grated,
and though my China doll doesn’t say it, she is a little afraid of making love.
“If you are at all unsure we won’t do anything but kiss a little, hug, nuzzle.” He punctuated each word with, the action, feeling her small frame wriggle against him. “You don’t mind that, do you?” His voice was thick.

“I like it when you touch me,” Lotus told him, her hands coming up to rub up and down his skin, the light bristling of his cheeks an erotic stimulation to her being.

Dash rose to his feet, pulling her with him. “Come with me while I shave.”

“I’d like that.” Lotus meant it. Doing the most mundane things with Dash were fraught with excitement, she mused.

They ambled out of the living room, across the tiled foyer and along the corridor to his suite.

“You’ve decorated this house with American Indian artifacts. I like that,” Lotus said in lazy happiness when he led her into the master suite, through the sitting room to the large cream-colored bathroom. “I like your hot tub.” Lotus leaned against the vanity while he shaved.

With half his face covered in shaving cream, he smiled at her, leaned toward a console and flipped a switch. The hot tub began churning at once, and in minutes, the steam on the surface was being carried through vents in the tiled ceiling. “Be my guest.”

Lotus looked from him to the hot tub and back again. “All right.” She left him and went into the dressing room, closed the door, and removed her clothes. With a towel wrapped around her, she returned to the large bathroom, smiling at Dash who was waiting for her freshly shaven . . . and naked except for a towel around his waist. “That didn’t take you long,” she told him.

“The thought of getting into that hot tub with you speeded things up considerably.”

Lotus went right up to him, her eyes never leaving his, even when he leaned down and lifted her up, his one arm across her shoulder blades, the other under her buttocks. “I feel very tall," she whispered, her mouth less than an inch from his.

“I feel able to leap tall buildings myself, my sweet lady. By the way your towel is slipping.”

“Is it?” Lotus whispered.

“Yes.” He bent his head and began to kiss her throat, her collarbone, then her breasts.

Lotus’s fingers dug into his skull. She couldn’t have suppressed the groan that escaped her if her life had depended on it. She was still holding him that way when he pushed the towels away from both their bodies and then stepped down into the tub and lowered them both into the hot swirling water. Lotus was sure her body was filling with helium as Dash continued to caress her, to love her. Their bodies bent and swayed in the current of water yet their mouths clung, then quested over each other’s form. She wanted him to love her so much all earlier qualms left her.

Finally after an eternity of loving, when Lotus knew that her blood was bubbling faster than the water, Dash lifted her in his arms and stepped out of the tub to rub her body with an exotic emollient, then pat her dry.

"Your skin is delicate. It needs protecting,” he told her as he carried her through to the bedroom. "I will protect you in all ways, my China doll, even from my love.”

That’s good because I didn’t come prepared,” she told him out of breath.

He chuckled into her hair, his hands tightening on her.

She had a moment’s earthbound sanity. How could she be making love with a man who could destroy her uncle and others like him? She hated gambling and gamblers. She stared at the face so dose to her own. Does he know who I am? Would he set a trap for me this way? She clutched at him, her mouth seeking his. Her uncomfortable thoughts melted away and there was only Dash.

Nothing in Lotus’s life had prepared her for the sensual onslaught as Dash loved her body from her ankle to her chin, not missing a pore as his mouth went over her. With mounting impatience
she
resorted to a similar attack as instinct guided her hands and mouth. When she heard him groan, her blood pressure went through the roof and she wriggled against him with joy.

"Darling! Don’t! Let me love you . . Dash told her thickly.

“I am. And I am loving you.”

“You are indeed,” he murmured.

His tongue explored into her body, surprising her, arching her against him. She called out his name as passion filled her.

When he parted her legs and slid between them, s
he
was ready and eager to be joined with him.
She
had the feeling of soaring on a meteor as the rhythm of the love took them, propelling them past the sun and the stars. “Dash! Dash!” Lotus called to him

“I’m here with you, darling.”

They spiralled together, poised above Venus, to fall in gentle plummet back to earth and each other.

CHAPTER THREE

“I love you. I love you.” It stunned her when he said that to her.

“I love you too.” That shocked and delighted her too, when she answered him back.

“Marry me,” Dash groaned in her ear.

“Marry me, marry me, marry me, marry me . . .” the jet engines on the plane sang as Lotus flew east from Las Vegas to Rochester, New York, with a stopover at O’Hare in Chicago. The words that Dash had said to her filled her mind. She couldn’t concentrate on anything else. And she had told him she loved him back! He had made love to her all through the night, and she knew before morning that she belonged to him for all time. She groaned in her mind as she stared sightlessly out at the clouds scudding past the wing of the plane. And she did love him! Her eyes were dry but tears coursed through her being as she thought of Dash and all she had given up when she fled from Cicero’s.

Petras had booked her flight and she had taken
a
taxi from her rooming house after telling Dash she had to change for work and that she would see him later.

It was as though she were with him still on that huge bed of his, lazy eyes alight with fire as he looked down at her.

"Cat got your tongue?” he had whispered as he stared down at her after loving her and making the declaration.

“Marriage is a very serious step,” Lotus had replied from the circle of his arm, her one hand caressing his fresh shaven cheek.

“Very.” Dash’s smile had been white heat. “I heard you say that you loved me.”

“Did you hear that?” Lotus’s voice had tremored. “I heard you say it too.”

“Yes.” His mouth had begun a slow search of her breast. “So when shall we marry?”

“Could I have a little time to think about it?” She wanted to tell him no, that she was going back home, but she couldn’t destroy what was between them with such words. She wanted to hold it, cherish it, keep it . . . forever.

“Five minutes?”

She had smiled up at him and shook her head. “Let me think about it.”

Dash could feel his being stiffen in resistance. He didn’t want her to think. He wanted her to say yes, then they would find someone to marry them at once! He wanted to keep her. “All right.” He expelled a big sigh and nodded. He didn’t think there was a someone like Lotus for him on the planet and now that he had found her, he didn’t want her out of his sight.

When Lotus tried to rise from the bed, he’d urged her back again. “I want to love you,” Dash had told her.

Lotus ran every reason why she should get up from that bed, dress, and leave around her head. They dissipated like smoke in a wind as she lifted her arms to hold him, embrace him, and lock him to her body.

They had made love again. The gentle frenzy generated by Dash had left her gasping with delight and awe, as it would do all through the night.

They were still lying on the bed holding each other the next morning when the phone rang next to the bed.

“Colby,” Dash had barked. “Yes. Damn it, man, you don’t need me for that. All right, all right, I said I’d come and I will.” Dash cradled the phone with barely suppressed violence. “I have an appointment.” He turned to look at her. “Another casino has come on the market. My business adviser assures me it’s a good deal.” Dash grimaced and hugged her close to him. “The last thing I want to think about is business, but I gave my word I would make this meeting. Will you wait for me here?”

Lotus felt shot with lightning. She had to go home today! She couldn’t stay any longer! She had the file. “Dash, take me back to my room, please. I need a change of clothes.”
And I need to say good-bye to you,
she added silently. She reached out and clung to him, her lips coursing his face and neck.

“Darling,” Dash groaned. “I won’t leave you.”

“Yes. You must. Go to your meeting. I’ll see you later.”

Dash’s face was expressionless as he studied her,

!
his eyes seeming to X-ray her being. “I’ll drop back to pick you up.”

Lotus bit her lip, then nodded, her smile feeling painful as she stretched it across her mouth.

They rose and dressed, separating for moments only as each one took turns using the bathroom.

Sometimes Dash would stop and kiss her, startling her out of her painful reverie.

When they were driving back to Las Vegas, Dash kept hold of her hand, often kissing the palm, his teeth nibbling at the sensitive skin on her wrist.

Returning to her rented room, he came around to her side of the car and opened her door, leading her in the house and following her up the four flights of stairs to her tiny attic room, the ceiling slanted over the eaves. The dormer windows provided little sunlight.

“I’ll be glad to get you out of here,” Dash muttered as he ducked to keep from striking his head on the low ceiling.

“You’d better hurry.  . .” Lotus felt a sudden surge of tears as she embraced him.

“I’ll see you later, darling.” Dash kissed her long and lingeringly, then let his mouth trace her jaw-line and throat. “Take care,” he told her huskily, then was gone.

Lotus didn’t do anything until she had stood on tiptoe and pressed herself against her one window that would allow her to see the street. Yes, that was Dash’s car pulling away.

In a daze, she phoned Petras and told him what she was doing. “So I can take a flight out today. . . ” “Lotus, my God. We’ve been so worried. When you didn’t come to dinner and didn’t call . . .” Petras’s voice cracked over the phone. “I almost went out of my mind.”