My Man Pendleton (35 page)

"Don't."

He searched her face in silence, cupping a hand over her jaw before dipping his head to kiss her cheek. Then he rolled away from her and rose from the bed, to tend to that little matter of sexual convenience that had prevented the mingling of their physical essences.

Would that it had been as effective dividing their emotional ones, Kit thought sadly.

At the sound of water running in the bathroom, she closed her eyes. And when Pendleton returned to bed, drawing his hand slowly, gently along the length of her spine, she pretended to be asleep. Doubtless, she didn't fool him for a minute. But, thankfully, he had the decency to simply lie down beside her, draw her close, and shut his eyes, too.

Always the gentleman, Pendleton, she thought.

And she wasn't sure whether to be happy about that or not.

* * *

As had become his habit of late, Pendleton awoke slowly, clinging to the edge of a dream about Kit. This one, however, had been different from the others. Normally, right about the time he got Kit naked in his dreams, the scenario went a little surreal. Like she was suddenly dressed as Carmen Miranda, and she shook a couple of maracas as she marimba-ed out the door.

But this time in his dream, she'd stayed Kit. A naked Kit—a warm and wonderful naked Kit who had made love with him in the most warm and wonderful—not to mention naked—ways.

It had been some dream.

As he rolled over in bed, he threw an arm across his eyes, as if by denying himself a view of his room, he might somehow make real the erotic images parading through the forefront of his brain. Amazingly, the gesture succeeded. Because, just as he had in his dream, he heard the soft sigh of Kit's breathing, tasted the lingering flavor of her on his tongue, smelled the musky fragrance of their coupling, felt the heat of her body as it pressed into his.

In fact, so realistically did four of his five senses recreate the events of his dream, that Pendleton removed his arm from over his eyes to see if there might be an equally genuine vision to greet him. But all he saw was the ceiling overhead, noting with some disappointment a patch of flaking plaster that he had missed the day before.

"Damn," he muttered under his breath.

A languid, muffled murmur was his reply, and he turned his head on the pillow to find that—lo and behold—Kit had indeed emerged from his dream in warm, wonderful, naked reality.

And that was when it finally hit him, like a bag of wet plaster upside his head. That dream he'd had about Kit last night? It hadn't been a dream at all. They really had made love. More than once. After all the sniping and snipping, after all the fighting and flirting, after all the denial of feelings, finally, finally, the two of them had come to their senses and submitted to what should have been obvious from the beginning. They'd wanted each other all along.

As if she'd read his thoughts, Kit stirred, turning onto her side to face him. One arm was shoved beneath her pillow, and the other was folded over her bare breasts. Her eyes were closed, but her mouth was open, curled into the hint of a smile that was very, very naughty.

"Sleep well, dear?" he asked, returning her smile with an equally naughty one of his own.

"Mmm," was all she said in reply. Her eyes remained closed, but she extended one long leg into a graceful stretch that rocketed Pendleton's blood to the boiling point.

"Did you have nice dreams?" he asked further.

"Mmm-hmm," she replied with a stretch of her other leg. Oh, God.

"Was
I
in any of your dreams?" At this point, Pendleton was really only half paying attention to his side of the conversation, as the comings and goings of Kit's legs were really much more interesting.

She opened her eyes to half-mast and smiled some more. "No."

Well, that, finally, brought his attention back around. A little. "No?" he echoed. "I wasn't in your dreams?" He probably would have felt indignant if it hadn't been for the fact that the sheet chose that moment to fall away from her legs, exposing them from thigh to calf.

"No, you weren't," she repeated sleepily. "But Keanu Reeves was."

Pendleton's smile fell. "Keanu Reeves? I thought
I
was the man of your dreams."

She chuckled low, a profoundly erotic sound. "Oh, come on, Pendleton. Why should you be the man of my dreams when I can have Keanu Reeves in them?"

He scooted over to close what few inches of space separated them, then rolled to cover the top half of her body with the top half of his. Man, he loved the feel of Kit McClellan naked beneath him.

"Why should I be the man of your dreams?" he repeated.

She looped her arms loosely around his neck and nodded.

"Because I'm the one who knows where to touch you so you make that extremely erotic little sound that drives us both wild."

He reached down between their bodies to touch her in that very spot, and her eyes fluttered shut as she emitted a quiet murmur of delight.

"Yeah, that's the sound I was looking for," he said with a smile, his body tightening at hearing it again.

She bent one knee to facilitate a more thorough exploration, and Pendleton took advantage of her offer. Gently, he nudged her thighs further apart, palming the heated core of her, noting the immediacy of her dewy response to his touch. Her eyes closed more tightly, and she bit her lip, but the gesture did nothing to quiet the ripple of pleasure that escaped her lips on a sigh. Wanting to hear more, he dipped a finger deep inside her, reveling in the shudder that wound through her entire body.

"Oh," she murmured. "Oh, what a wonderful way to wake up in the morning."

This time, Pendleton was the one to respond, "Mmm."

He parted her soft folds and plowed her more deeply, furrowing his fingers back and forth and around and around, until she bucked her hips up to meet his petting.

She curled her fingers around his nape and pulled his head down to hers for a voracious kiss. "More," she commanded him.

He rolled on a condom and tumbled his body over hers, then entered her swiftly and deeply, setting a rhythm that was at once leisurely and demanding. Over and over he buried himself inside her, until their entire bodies rocked with their reactions. Then, at precisely the moment she arched herself against him, crying out in her completion, he, too, went utterly rigid.

For a moment, they remained as if frozen in space and time, neither moving, neither speaking, neither breathing. Then, gradually, Pendleton relaxed, blanketing Kit as her body eased beneath his. He threaded his fingers through her hair, kissed her forehead, her temple, her cheek, her jaw. Then he pulled back far enough to gaze upon her face.

And what he saw there nearly stopped his heart. Nothing. He saw absolutely nothing in her expression. Kit had pulled a shutter closed over her face that made it impossible for him to tell what she was thinking or feeling about the intimacy that had just passed between them.

"Kit?" he said softly. "Are you all right?"

She nodded in silence, then lifted her hand to feather her fingers through his hair. It was a simple, affectionate gesture, but for some reason, it felt like neither of those things.

"I'm okay," she said softly. "I just—"

She never finished the statement, because the alarm clock erupted on the nightstand beside her, and she jerked at the shrillness of the sound. Pendleton slapped a hand down over the intrusion, but the moment of her revelation—whatever it might have been—was gone, and there was little chance of recapturing it this morning. So he dipped his head to hers again and kissed her tenderly on the lips.

"I have to get ready for work," he said. "But there's no reason you need to get up. Unless you want to, oh, I don't know
…
shower with me?"

He wasn't sure, but he thought she smiled at that. "I better not. You'd never get to work."

"And the problem with that would be
…
?"

"Daddy would fire you if you missed two days in a row."

"Not if I missed because I'm making wild, jungle love to his daughter, he wouldn't. He'd probably give me a nice, big raise."

He'd meant it as a joke, but something clouded her expression when he said it. And then he remembered that it wasn't a joke at all. Hadn't McClellan, Sr. done just that? Promised Pendleton a great, fat bonus if he married Kit and secured the family fortune? Of course, she had no way of knowing about that. But it made sense for her to conclude that if her old man had paid good money to chase a guy off once in an effort to save millions, then he'd certainly be amenable to offering cold, hard cash to another one, if it meant saving a bundle in the long run.

"Oh, come on," she said, clearly striving for a levity she was nowhere close to feeling. He could tell that, because instead of sounding happy, she sounded wounded. "Daddy has a business to run," she went on, her voice hollow. "Sure, he'll be delighted to find out that you really are boffing his daughter, but—and I know this will come as something of a shock to you, Pendleton—my father's not much of a romantic at heart."

"Boffing his daughter?" he echoed, finding the suggestion more than a little distasteful. "I beg your pardon. What I've been doing to the boss's daughter goes way beyond boffing."

She arched her eyebrows in query. "Oh?"

He smiled and pressed another kiss to her forehead. "I've been making love to her, sweetheart. Big difference."

She eyed him with an expression that was at once hopeful and disappointed.
"You
don't expect me to believe that there was any more to last night than a good time."

"Why don't I?"

"Because there was nothing more to last night than a good time, that's why."

Oh, sure, he thought. Like she expected him to believe
that.

He threaded his fingers gently through her hair, framing her face with his open hands. For a long time, he only looked at her, silently willing her to please, just this once, open herself up to the possibility that there was more to what went on between a man and a woman than a financial arrangement.

Yes, she'd grown up with the knowledge that her father had only married her mother for her money. And yes, she'd been forced to acknowledge that the one relationship she'd been allowed to have with a man had ended with a check for six figures. And yes, her father had only ever looked at her in terms of her monetary value when it came to keeping the family fiscally sound.

Money and the worth for being loved were irreversibly linked in Kit McClellan's mind—she'd never quite been taught to separate one from the other. But surely, Pendleton thought, the suggestion that she couldn't be loved without money wasn't so deeply ingrained in her that she couldn't at least give their budding relationship a chance.

"We have lots of time to talk about this," he said. "But right now I have to get ready for work." He dipped his head to hers and kissed her tenderly, first on one cheek, then the other, before brushing her lips softly with his.

Reluctantly, he pushed himself off the bed and padded naked across the bedroom, but he couldn't resist turning around for one more glimpse of her warm, rosy body. "Get some sleep, because you're going to need it," he told her. Then, rousing the most libidinous smile he could muster, he added, "I have plans for you, tonight, Kit. Big,
big
plans."

Chapter 16

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"
B
ut I told you this morning that I already made plans for tonight."

Pendleton hooked his hands on his hips and glared at Kit, silently demanding an explanation. She was dressed for an evening out, wearing an elegant little sapphire dress that hugged her in much the same way he wanted to be hugging her himself. Her long, long legs—which he'd frankly planned on having wrapped around his waist right about now—looked absolutely decadent in black hose, and her black high heels defined quite nicely the calves he'd rather be gripping in his fists.

Briefly, he wondered if maybe she had on stockings instead of pantyhose, wondered, too, just how long it would take to skim her panties down around her ankles, hike up her skirt, lift her onto the dining room table behind her and—