Spiral of Bliss 02 Allure (34 page)

“You became my world the minute I saw you, Olivia Rose.” He breaks our gaze first and drops the string onto the foyer table. “You know that, don’t you?”

“Yes. And it’s why I know you’ll do this for us.”

I move toward him. He meets me halfway. We stop a foot away from each other. He holds up his left hand. I put my palm against his. Our wedding bands make a familiar, soft click before I slide my hand over so we can weave our fingers together.

“I’ll be here, Dean, love of my life.” I tighten my hand around his. “I’ll be waiting for you.”

The first time I brought Dean to meet Aunt Stella, it was spring. Wisconsin bloomed with dandelions, green leaves, tulips. Even the town of Castleford seemed brighter, more colorful, although now I suspect that my perception had less to do with the season and more to do with Dean’s presence.

Aunt Stella and Henry lived in a little, two-story house that was a polar opposite from the West family’s beautiful villa. My aunt was a sour-faced woman who gave me a brief embrace and looked Dean over with a critical eye. Henry, thin and wiry, shook Dean’s hand and then disappeared into his garage workshop.

“Sit down.” Stella patted her short-cropped hair and gestured to the worn sofa. “Olivia, fetch your… guest something to drink.”

I scrounged through the rusted refrigerator and came up with a pitcher of lemonade. After pouring three glasses, I returned to the living room where Dean was complimenting Stella on her choice of circus-themed artwork.

“Heard anything from your mother?” Stella looked at me.

“No.” I handed her a glass and sat beside Dean on the sofa. “Have you?”

“Got a letter maybe a month ago. Said she was in New York, New Jersey. Something like that.”

A knot formed in my chest. Though Aunt Stella was my father’s sister, my mother occasionally dropped her a letter or note—and I could not help believing that was because she knew Stella was the only way she could reach me. If she ever wanted to.

“How is she?” I asked.

“All right, I guess. Living with a mechanic or a musician. Something like that.”

“Did she give you an address?”

“Nah. Likely she’s moved on already.”

Likely.

My glass was cold and slippery between my palms. I hated to ask the question, but couldn’t help it. “Did she ask about me?”

Stella shook her head and sipped her lemonade. Dean settled his hand on my thigh.

“Looks like you’ve had a warm spring, Stella,” he remarked. “I noticed the tulips along your front walk.”

Stella brightened a little and began chatting about her garden. I rubbed my shoe over the brown shag carpet and tried not to wonder where my mother was now. Tried not to wonder if she ever thought of me.

We stayed through a dinner of meatloaf and potatoes. Dean asked Stella what she put in the meatloaf to make it so moist (it wasn’t). He listened to Henry’s description of repairing a chain-link fence as if it were interesting (it wasn’t). He wondered if the serving spoon was an antique (it was).

He asked about the town, the local businesses, Henry’s electrician job, and Aunt Stella’s bridge club. He asked about the schools, their church, the last state election, the farmers’ market. He asked how much snow they’d gotten last winter.

When we returned to our room at the only motel in town, I watched Dean as he unbuttoned his shirt.

“I love you,” I said. It was the easiest confession I had ever made.

He stopped in the motion of pulling the shirt off his shoulders. My heart skipped a beat. For a frozen instant, he just looked at me.

Then he smiled—slow and beautiful.

“I’m really glad to hear that, beauty,” he said. “Because I love you too.”

The words sang through me, filling my whole being with light, hope, and happiness. I flew across the room into his open arms. He enclosed me in a hard embrace. I wrapped my legs around his waist and lowered my head for a kiss.

I love you. Love you. You.

Within seconds, our kiss was deepening with heat, our tongues sliding together. I ran my hands over his smooth shoulders, his skin so warm and taut with muscle. His breath brushed my cheek as he trailed his lips down to my neck and the hollow of my throat. I shivered, squirmed.

He lowered me to the bed, his eyes darkening as he undressed me. He eased my skirt off, pulled my shirt over my head, flicked open the front clasp of my bra.

Naked, I felt different, bared to the depths of my soul. I watched with a pounding heart as he kissed his way down my body, licking the peaks of my breasts, smoothing his hands over my hips, dipping his tongue into my belly button.

He slipped his hands between my thighs and eased them apart.

I lifted my head to stare down at him. “Dean…”

“Easy.” He stroked my thighs in a soothing motion, much the way he had the first time we made love. “Do you trust me?”

“I… of course.” I trusted him with everything—my heart, my soul, my life.

“I’ll make it good,” he promised.

And he did. He always made it good. He rubbed me through my underwear, pressing the damp cotton into my cleft. So smooth, so adept was his touch that I started twisting my hips and panting. Urgency spiraled through me.

Dean moved lower, his fingers tangling in the elastic as he pushed it aside. His hot breath contrasted deliciously with the sudden rush of cool air. My eyes drifted closed, my body strumming with excitement as he probed gently with his forefinger. Then he slipped his tongue into me. I gasped, bucking upward so hard that he settled his hands on my hips to keep me still.

“Oh, God… Dean…
Dean
.”

Pleasure cascaded over me, in me. I stretched my arms over my head and pushed toward him, trying to intensify the stroke of his tongue against every intimate crevice.

I shifted, reached down to grab a fistful of his hair. “Dean, please.”

My plea went unheeded as he continued to take his time. It was more than good. It was exquisite—a slow exploration of my sex, an increasing push toward rapture. He stroked, licked, sucked. I writhed, panted, moaned. Finally, when convulsions broke in waves over me, Dean held my thighs open and used his mouth to urge every last sensation from my body.

Gasping, I watched him rise and shed his trousers. He rolled a condom onto his thick erection, the shaft gleaming in the dim light. He pulled my panties off my legs and dropped them to the floor.

Then he came over me, bracing his hands on either side of my head, easing himself inside me. His lips captured mine, and the press of his body sparked renewed need through me.

I lifted my legs to hug his hips, and then we rocked and thrust together in a rhythm that felt so right, so natural, that I never wanted it to end. I came again, intense and sharp, tightening my muscles around him and feeling him convulse in response. He thrust deep, his own orgasm shuddering through him with a force that matched my own.

He rolled over and hauled me against him, his breath stirring the tendrils of my hair. I burrowed against his side, pressing my face to his shoulder.

And so it was there, lying entangled with Professor Dean West at an old motel in the only town I’d lived in for longer than a few months… that was the moment I finally knew I was home. I was loved.

Loved.

I hadn’t even realized how desperately I’d wanted love. How much we both needed to know that in a world of dark corners and sharp needles, there really is a place where kisses taste like apple pie and where stars spill like sugar across the sky.

A place where unknown roads no longer scare you because you have another hand to hold. A place where butterflies always flutter whenever you see each other, and a single touch tells you that you are not alone. A place where every kiss still feels like the first.

In that place of us, Liv and Dean, love has its own poetry and language.
Allure, quatrefoil, fleur-de-lis. Right here. PR9199.3 R5115 Y68. My white knight. I’m yours. Give me a kiss. Pie love you. I remember. Professor. Beauty.

The sound of textbook pages turning as rain pours outside the window. The twist of a string around his long fingers. That tight, knotted ball inside me opening, flowering into pleasure for the first time ever. Papers about library collections, medieval architecture, database systems, and archeological surveys.

Quiet weekends, board games, take-out pizza, houseplants, and boring foreign films. The soft, gentle healing of old wounds. The glide of his palm over my skin, his deep voice whispering in my ear. The easing of my heart.

The way he smiles at me. The way I look at him. The way we can always just be us.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

estselling author Nina Lane writes hot, sexy romances and spicy erotica. Originally from California, she loves traveling and thinks St. Petersburg, Russia is a city everyone should visit at least once. Nina also spent many years in graduate school studying art history and library sciences. Although she would go back for another degree if she could because she’s that much of a bookworm, she now lives the happy life of a full-time writer. Nina’s novel
The Erotic Dark
hit #1 on Amazon’s Erotica Bestseller list, and she is currently working on the third book in the Spiral of Bliss series.

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