To Trust a Stranger (30 page)

Then he kissed that ankle, and suddenly his mouth was crawling up the inside of her leg.

As she realized where he was headed, Julie began to shake.

When he reached the velvety delta between her legs, she closed her eyes. He kissed her there, his mouth scalding. His tongue touched the tiny bud that quivered and ached for attention, and she cried our.

“You like that?” It was a rough whisper. Julie nodded without opening her eyes. “Thought you would.”

Any other time, the smug masculine overtone of that might have caused her to bristle. But the pleasure she was experiencing was too exquisite to allow her to focus on anything else. She felt as if all her bones had turned to water and her insides to fire. Breathing in fast little pants now, clutching the sheet for dear life, she lay supine, her head thrown back, her body pulsing with tremors as he pressed his mouth to her needy flesh. His hands slid beneath her, closing on her firm round cheeks to lift her and hold her in place, and as his mouth worked its magic she thought she had died and gone to some place far more marvelous than heaven.

Her body burned and clutched and trembled; she bucked and squirmed under his ministrations like a worm on a hook. Her orgasm was there, right there, rising on the horizon like a blazing summer sun, blinding her with its promised brilliance, searing her with its building heat. . . .

And then he stopped what he was doing, stopped just like that, pulled his mouth back and heaved himself up and away from her and right off the bed. . .

“Mac!” Her eyes flew open. He was standing beside the bed looking down at her, his eyes flaming, his hair mussed, shucking his jeans. She saw what he was doing, knew what was coming, but still felt indignant-and bereft. She lay there naked, watching him, trembling, weak with longing, so hot and hungry for him, her body so burning and empty and needy, that she couldn't even stay still. Her breasts rose and fell as she drew in quick panting breaths. Her legs and hips moved restlessly. Then his jeans dropped, and his shorts with them. She saw that he was enormous and hung, and she reached out for him because she just couldn't help herself He was already climbing back onto the bed when her hands found him. His shaft was burning hot velvet over steel and as her fingers closed around him he groaned and seemed at last to lose control. His eyes flashed at her, his jaw hardened, and every mouth-watering muscle she could see seemed to go taut as a bowstring. Then he was moving, pushing her down and coming on top of her, and she wrapped her legs around his waist and clung to his shoulders and arched up to meet him.

With one quick thrust he was inside her. He felt so unbelievably good, filling her to capacity and then some, that she cried out. Then he was taking her, hard and fast, plunging into her until Julie was so caught up in the pounding rhythm that she lost all sense of time and place in the fiery maelstrom of her response. Only dimly did she register that it was she who cried out again and again and again. When he kissed her, she tasted herself on his lips and shuddered.

While she was shuddering he drove inside her with a shattering series of fierce, deep thrusts and she came, just like that, so violently that her body convulsed and she dug into his back with her nails and screamed his name, “Mac, Mac, Mac, Mac, Mac!”

“Julie,” he groaned in answer, burying his mouth in the tender hollow between her neck and shoulder, and found his own release, grinding himself into her shaking body, then, finally, shuddering and going limp.

Afterward, she lay there, totally replete. Her eyes were closed and her body was motionless except for the random tremors that still racked it. Mac lay on top of her, sweaty, hot, his deadweight about as heavy as a truckload of wet cement. About as responsive, too. His face was buried in the curve of her neck, and his breathing was stertorous and growing louder.

She wondered if he had fallen asleep. From the feel of him, and the sound of his breathing, probably.

God, were all men alike that way?

For the first time since she had said I do, she had slept with a man besides Sid.

Could anybody say, adultery?

Julie opened her eyes. A wide bronzed shoulder blocked her view of most of the room. When she shifted her gaze to the right, a fair-sized section of close-cropped blond hair, an ear, the hard curve of his jaw, part of his cheek, and a glimpse of his parted lips-if the breathing that fluttered them wasn't snoring, she didn't know what it was-came into view.

Looking the other way, she saw a single window with floor-length blue drapes closed over it, an unadorned white wall-and his hand still curved possessively around her breast.

Julie felt a stab of squirm-inducing guilt. What had she done?

Her marriage was over, she reminded herself, averting her eyes from; the sight of those long bronzed fingers cupping her so intimately, in every way but the legal. She had nothing to feel guilty about. Indeed, e had done just what Oprah had said most women do on the demise of a marriage-fall into bed with the first presentable guy who asks.

Only Mac hadn't exactly done the asking.

And he was a little bit more than presentable. All right, a lot more. And she didn't regret it. Exactly.

How could she? The sex had been phenomenal. She'd definitely felt the earth move. She now owned the Big O.

But lying here with him like this, naked and sweaty and listening to him snore, felt-weird. Like she wasn't herself any longer. What she really wanted to do was get up and go home and take some time to just sort this whole thing out.

But, she remembered forlornly, she had no home to go to. No home that felt like home, anyway. Not anymore.

First she'd been viciously attacked there. Then Sid had brought a woman-girl-child-Amber--into her house.

Julie realized that she was feeling sorry for herself, and took a deep breath. Instead of looking back with regret, she was going to look forward with anticipation. She was going to face her problems head-on, and deal with them one at a time. That's what she had always done, ever since she was a little girl. For too long now, her whole identity had been wrapped up in being Sid's wife. She was going to reclaim her life.

Phase One of her recovery was already over: she'd had down dirty sex with a really hot guy.

Phase Two involved confronting Sid, firing Amber, contacting a lawyer, telling her mother, filing for divorce-in other words, blowing her life as she knew it off the map.

Okay, so the prospect was enough to give her hives. Get over it, she told herself Phase One might have been more fun, but she was going to make it through Phase Two as well. The secret was, as she'd learned many times over, to just keeping trudging ahead one step at a time.

Her life might have been reduced to rubble, but she was going to survive. She was going to leave the shambles behind and move on.

And the first step in moving on was to get off this bed.

Some things-including the direction any future involvement with Mac might take-required perspective before any rational decision could be made, and in this particular case perspective required distance.

Stealthily, not wanting to wake him until she had come up with a mature and sophisticated response to the current situation, Julie pushed his hand off her breast. She would just wriggle out from beneath him and get dressed ....

He stirred, lifted his head, and looked at her. Julie felt her stomach clench as she met his eyes head on.

So much for distance.

Feeling trapped and a little panicky, Julie held his gaze. With his hair all tousled and his eyes sleepy-looking and a small smile curving his lips, he looked like a man who was content with the world. Which of course he should be. She had just given him her all.

At the thought, Julie winced.

He must have seen, because his smile vanished, to be replaced by a searching look, and then a touch of wryness around his mouth. The hand that curved around her rib cage-the one she had just pushed off her breast-tightened. Its warmth and size felt uncomfortably intimate against her skin.

Feeling more trapped than ever, Julie tensed.

“So, was it as good for you as it was for me?” There was a slightly ironic note to his voice that told her that he was aware that she was not exactly planning to wrap her arms around his neck and beg for more.

Thank God he wasn't going all
kissy
-face on her, was Julie's predominant coherent thought as she registered his tone.

She might be naked and he might be on top of her, but Mac was still being Mac, and she could deal with that. Kisses and cuddles she couldn't have faced. Not until she had her own feelings sorted out.

“It was good. Thank you very much. Now, would you please get off me?” Her tone was polite: the kind of tone she had used frequently in the past to thank the hostess of a dinner party for a well-prepared meal.

Apparently he didn't appreciate it. His eyes narrowed at her.

“So now we're on to the hating yourself in the morning part, are we? Jesus Christ, Julie, how predictable is that?”

22

MAC DIDN'T KNOW WHY he felt as if he'd just found the winning lottery ticket in a jumble of papers in his wallet only to discover minutes later that the damned thing had expired the previous week. He had a beautiful, naked girl in his bed. A beautiful, naked girl he'd just shown a hell of a good time. A beautiful, naked girl he'd had a hard-on for since he'd first laid eyes on her.

What was there to get bent out of shape about in that?

“I don't hate myself, it isn't morning, and I believe I asked you to get off me. Please.”

If she used that ultra-polite tone on him much more, he was going to lose it, Mac thought, rolling onto his side but keeping his arm around her so that she couldn't just spring up and take off. A fleeting mental picture of her high tailing it naked down the street with him equally naked in hot pursuit had a certain appeal, but he didn't think there was much chance of that actually happening and, anyway, if it did Mrs. Leiferman would have a field day and he'd hear about it later in spades.

“You ever hear of pillow talk?” He didn't know why her clear desire to put the steamy little interlude they'd just shared behind her bugged him so: he would have bet dollars to doughnuts on her having just that reaction. Her skin was silky and supple beneath his hand, and he had to fight an urge to stroke it, which he had a feeling would not, just at present, be well received. Her entire right side was pressed up against him, soft and warm, and she smelled totally delectable. The elusive fragrance of the perfume she habitually wore, mixed with the scent of her skin and the unmistakable aroma of sex, was the most potent aphrodisiac ever to assault his nostrils. Probably the scent was what was playing games with his head. While he was inhaling it, he couldn't think straight. “Something on the order of, Oh, Mac, that was just wonderful?”

“What do you want, a blow-by-blow?”

It was her snippy attitude, he decided, that annoyed him so, as well as a few other things. Her hands were covering her breasts now, he noticed, as if to hide them from his view. The truly delectable leg closest to him was raised and bent at the knee and tilted inward over her body, which pretty much kept him from seeing any other salient body part, too. She seemed to be forgetting that he'd just done a whole hell of a lot more than look at just about every square millimeter of her. By default, his gaze returned to her face. Then he wished it hadn't. Her eyes were big and brown and shooting off sparks at him. Her cheeks were flushed a rosy pink.' Her hair was a mass of shiny black waves spread out like a halo around her head. Mac frowned. Even with her lipstick all kissed off and her nose shiny and her expression peeved, she was so beautiful she grabbed at his heart.

Then she drew her lower lip into her mouth and started to chew on it, and he felt himself start to get hard all over again.

Hell. What was happening to him here was not a good thing. “Hey,” he said. “Give the attitude a rest, okay? You had a good time. You came.”

She quit chewing on her lower lip and glared at him.

“Let me up.”

He lifted his arm obligingly, and was rewarded for good behavior by an excellent view of her shapely butt and legs as she scrambled off the bed and stood up with her back to him. Propping himself on his elbow, he rather grudgingly admired creamy shoulder blades and the delicate curve of her spine and a truly bodacious set of butt cheeks before she crouched down out of sight to retrieve the top sheet from the floor. He craned his neck instinctively, but it was no use: she was already wrapping herself in yards of dark blue cotton. As she straightened pulling the cloth modestly around her legs and tucking one end in between her breasts, he happened to glance down at himself. What he saw sent him grabbing for the edge of the sheet-only the fitted bottom one was available, and persuading it to part company with the mattress required a vicious tug-which he dragged across his waist to hide the fact that he was now at full mast.

Once she was swathed from armpits to ankles in voluminous folds of cloth, she seemed to consider herself girded for battle. Shaking her hair back from her face, taking a deep breath, she glared at him.

“Could you get up and get dressed, please? I've got to get back to the shop. I've got an important client coming in at three.”