The Satin Sash (33 page)

“I like that.” She squeaked in delight when he massaged deeper, his chuckle echoing in her warming body. “Hmm. I like that more.”

She dropped her skirt and whirled around to trap him by the collar. “I thought I could steal
you
now.”

“I’m afraid that’s going to cost you,” he drawled in deceptive casualness.

“Oh? And do you take body as payment?” She signaled to all five feet four inches of herself with what was, hopefully, a tempting sweep of her hands.

Brows quirked in interest, Grey moved around his desk and punched an extension from his desk phone.

“Louisa, what does my afternoon look like?”

It seemed to look busy, because Louisa spent a long time on the other end of the line. But what mattered to Toni, what gave her the opportunity to be with the man she loved and talk and make love, was Grey’s arrogant smile and the husky command, “Empty it.”

Chapter Fourteen

It was a hotel room number, and the two times she tried there was no answer. She didn’t dare to leave a message.With a sinking heart, she grabbed the Post-it and tore it.

Enough of him. Forget it. Forget Cabo!

Plopping down on the couch, she covered her face with her hands and groaned in misery. It was no use; she couldn’t forget. And all she wanted was to know how he was doing. Whereas before their weekend, Grey would mention him all the time, the subject of Heath had been carefully avoided for two weeks. Toni was desperate to know something about him. Anything. Was he all right? Was he with someone? Did he at least think about her?

She was in that same sulking position when Grey got home, and as she rose to greet him as she always did, she gathered her courage. She worked on his tie and jacket and rumpled his hair, and whispered, “Grey, I want to talk to you about something.”

He placated her with a kiss. “Ten minutes, then I’m yours.”

And he disappeared into the bathroom, where she heard him running the water for a shower. Normally she might have joined him, but she was too anxious for anything except running her thoughts through her mind. So she waited on the bed, knees curled under her, fingers drumming on her thighs. Talking was the best way to go. If only he would express his opinions more openly, and he would listen to hers . . .

The phone rang, and when she lifted it, she answered to silence. “Hello?” she repeated.

“I’m calling for Grey.”

The low, gruff sound of thunder gripped at her chest. “Heath?”

“Yeah.”

Inside her a feeling went loose, wild and untamed, like a deadly tornado. She began to shiver, her hand trembling, her lungs straining for air. She wanted to weep with joy and to cry with sorrow at the distance she sensed between them.“You could at least say hello to me,” she said, more with longing than accusation.

And briskly, almost coolly, he said, “Hello, Toni.”

His voice . . . it was almost too much to bear. A breath shuddered out of her.

She wiped her free hand on her lap—it was clammy, and suddenly she didn’t know what to do with it except tug at the fabric on her waist. “H-how have you been?”

“Working.”

“Oh.”

“Is Grey there?”

“He just got in. He’s in the shower.” She lowered her voice, pressed the receiver closer to her lips, her voice betraying her emotion. “Why won’t you talk to me?”

“I’ll call back later.”

“Heath, please.” Why didn’t he talk to her? Was she the only one who felt this?

The tomblike silence was deafening.

When she spoke again, she sounded desperate even to her own ears. “Please.
Please
.Talk to me, Heath.”

For a wrenching heartbeat, she thought he would hang up, but then his terse, emotional hiss charged into her ear. “I’m losing my mind. I get hard just listening to your voice. I hurt all over, all day. You’re in my mind, in my dreams. I try and try to forget you, and just knowing you’re with Grey is driving nails into me.”

She squeezed her eyes shut as she fell back on her pillow, the sheets cold against her nape while her body felt so hot. “I hurt, too.”

“Cat, baby.” His sharp inhale skittered through her. “Where do you hurt, tell me?”

My heart.
Toni hesitated before saying it. Grey would hear. He would see. He would know. It didn’t matter. Nothing mattered. It was all wrong, it was all terribly, unbearably
wrong
.

“I hurt all over.”

“Where?” His voice dropped to a coo that might have been meant to soothe her but wreaked havoc on her rioting nerves. “In your little pussy?”

“Y-yes.”

“Oh, Cat, what I wouldn’t give to be there now. I’d kiss you until I don’t know who I am anymore, spread those long, silky legs and . . .”

Planting her heels on the bed, she spread open her legs, sliding her fingers into her panties, imagining it was
him
searching her body to find this place he’d been before.This place that missed and wanted him so badly. “And?” she asked when he stopped. “Please tell me.”

“I can’t do this.”

“Heath, tell me!” She pinched her clit so hard she winced in pain. It was nothing, that pain. Compared to the other. Nothing. “I’m wearing your dress.”

“Oh, baby.”

“I’m so wet just hearing you. My cream is all over me. I’m touching my clit and I’m desperate; I want your fingers in me.”

He made a strangled sound.

She found her slick folds and gentled her strokes, pleasure radiating up to her tingling breasts.“Heath.” She moaned as she circled. “Oh, Heath.”

“I can hear you panting for me,” he said in a terse rasp.“Are you touching yourself? I want to hear what you’re doing.”

“I’m touching my pussy. I want it to be you.”

He made another sound, full of agony and frustration, then croaked, “Where are you?”

“On the bed, with my legs open. And I ache all over.”

“If I were there, I’d be licking that wet, syrupy puss—” He trailed off when she slipped two fingers through the slit and cried out, moving them fast. The pleasure whirled around her walls, piercing up to her nipples, her pussy rippling with wanting.

“Heath, I miss you so much.” She rocked against her hand, seized by the sound of his voice, the rampaging need that listening to him unleashed in her.

“Toni.” She heard it then, in the sound of his voice, the quick scrape of flesh; she knew he was touching himself. She imagined him pulling from root to crown, humping, sweating, and her blood felt sluggish with arousal.

“Heath, I don’t want you to be with anyone. I think of you going to some prostitute somewhere and I feel sick. You belong with us.”

He didn’t reply. She heard his grunts, his sounds of pleasure. A fever broke in her, merciless, racking her with shudders inside and out. She moved her fingers in her, wishing they were the fat, blunt-tipped fingers of Heath.

“Heath . . . what are you doing?”

“I’m fucking you,” he rasped, and as though he couldn’t think of anything else, “I’m fucking you, Cat.”

“Don’t stop. Please don’t stop.” Her hand was drenched with cream and his voice in her ear struck her womb like a thunderstorm. “Fuck me harder.”

And she heard him—him coming, the breath tearing out of him so that even the phone seemed to vibrate—and she closed her eyes and pushed deeper into her cleft.

“Want some help with that, princess?”

Her eyes flew to a bare-chested Grey, exiting the bathroom with a towel around his waist, his face impassive as he propelled himself forward.

As though in slow motion, she watched with a thundering heart as he pried the phone from her fingers, his free hand curving on her hip as he set it back into its cradle. He was so . . . calm.

“Want to explain to me why you’re having phone sex with . . . ?”

She chewed on her lip, embarrassed, angry, desperate. “Heath.”

“Heath. Of course.”

“Grey . . .”

“How long?”

“What?”

“How long has this been going on?”

She tugged her skirt back down and swung her legs over the side of the bed. While she spoke, all she could face were her own bare toes. “I’ve never done it before. He was calling for you. I just heard his voice and . . . I wanted to talk to him.You used to tell me everything about him, and now that you don’t, I’ve felt so thirsty for just a little news.”

“But you weren’t talking just now, were you?”

She shrugged, swung her legs back and forth.“I miss it. I miss . . . him.”

When she dared look up to gauge his reaction, there wasn’t so much as a flicker of his eyes to betray him. Flooded with relief that he was so self-possessed, she plunged on, wanting to get this out in the open.

“
You
talk to him,” she explained.“He’s your partner.With me . . . I shared things with him, personal things, and suddenly all ties have been severed.”

“
I
talk to him?” As though she weren’t safe around him, or him around her, he stalked across the room, gritting his teeth. “Heath and I are fucked.
Fucked
,Toni.We barely speak three words to each other.”

“But why?”

“Because you still want him and it is tearing me
apart
!”

“No, Grey, no!”

The phone began to ring and ring and ring. Incessantly.

When Grey saw her glance at the phone, considering answering, an icy veil settled over his eyes, making the hair on her bare arms rise. For the barest of seconds, pain ravaged his features as if a flood or wildfire swept through life and civilization and love.Then there was nothing on his face at all.

The idea that he thought he wasn’t important to her, that he thought she didn’t
care
, made her break out in a sweat.

“Grey.” She took a step toward him, but was quickly halted by his stare. Grey never lost his temper. The only time she’d seen him out of control was after the benefit, when he’d been so jealous. But the walls he put up now to obstruct her seemed as effective as a roar. She cringed under his eyes.The gold in them was glacial. Freezing her to the spot.

If she hadn’t experienced the fire within him firsthand, seen his face crumple when he came in her, his every wall shatter when he looked at her, she’d have thought him inhuman.

His mellow tone and his lack of emotion as he regarded her was no less chilling. “Am I failing you in some way, Antonia Kearny?”

“No! You’re perfect. I love you.” She dared to step up to him and rise on tiptoe to kiss him. She’d never felt such unmoving lips under hers. She tried coaxing them open with feathery movements of her mouth, catching his lower lip between hers, giving hot little tugs. She slid her hands around his strong neck, caressed the damp hairs at his nape. “Grey, I love you.”

“Do you?”

“I’m passionately in love with you.”

“I used to believe you were.” He extracted her arms from his neck and set them at her sides before walking to the window to peer out through the blinds.

The muscled back he revealed to her was so taut and rocklike that it proved successful in keeping her from approaching, from
reaching
him. She wrung her hands, tried to explain. “Grey, somehow it’s as though he’s always been a part of us. Like a ghost, but he’s alive.”

He stroked the back of his head with one hand, his frustration so tangible it caused her throat to squeeze. “One weekend, Toni. It was supposed to be just that. But it’s not enough for you, is it, princess? Nothing’s enough for you. I can’t fill you. I can’t make you happy. I can’t—”

“That’s not true!”

“You
call
to him. In your sleep, you say our names, you say my name,
his
name.” At his sides, his knuckles jutted out of his fists. “You’ve been . . . god, you’ve been pining away for him.”

Fury and a dispiriting frustration seized her, and her voice trembled with both. “You’re the one who invited him!”

He whirled. “Like hell I did!” he roared, his scowl ominous.

“You did, Grey!” she cried, as confused and hurt as he was. She wanted to slap him. She wanted to hug him. She wanted him to understand.“You planned the trip, you took my sash to dinner.You thought it would go away just like that? What do you think everything you told me about him felt like?
Foreplay
, Grey.You wanted me to like him, to accept him, to want him—you even wanted me to fuck him to rid yourself of that guilt of having it all while he had shit.You wanted me to care, and guess what. It worked!”

“I wanted you to appreciate a man whom I appreciate and nobody else seems to—that’s far from wanting you to screw him behind my back!” He was shaking, the ice melting within hot, volcanic anger, and Toni felt his pain like a suicide, like driving a dagger into her chest that she was twisting herself.

“Grey, I promise you we’re not doing anything behind your back.You thought I would have sex with him that day I went to say good-bye, and you
let
me.”

He was breathing for control, fighting for it as he advanced. “He’s been like a brother to me.The most important person in my world, until you came along. You wanted him, Toni. You wanted him, and I
gave him
to you.”

“Why, how generous of you! You, the Almighty Grey Richards, took pity on us both and let us fuck! And for your information,
he
gave himself to me!”

He slammed a fist to his chest. “
I
gave myself to you! I am . . . I am
humbled
with you. I’ve stripped my soul bare for you! Does that even matter to you?”

Her eyes stung and a tear leaked. She brushed it off with a hand that shook violently, her words strangling her. “It means the world to me. At first I lived to live, and now I live for you to love me and for me to love you.”

He put a halting hand up.“Don’t.” The torment in his eyes was unbearable to her. He didn’t want to believe that she loved him. He didn’t want to love her. She could see it hurt him, and she wanted to choke in her pain.