Truly Madly Yours (26 page)

“Relax.” His palm slid up another half an inch, and the tips of his fingers drifted along the elastic leg of her underwear.

Relax
. Delaney wanted to shut her eyes and moan.

“She doesn’t know anything.” He paused a moment, then said, “Except maybe that your nipples are hard and it isn’t cold in here.”

Delaney looked down at her breasts and the two very distinct points in the red velvet. “Jerk.” She shoved his hand at the same time she shoved her chair backward. Grabbing her velvet handbag, she walked from the dining room and hurried down two different narrow hallways before she found the women’s restroom. Once inside, she took a deep breath and looked at herself in the mirror. Beneath the fluorescent lighting, her cheeks looked flushed, her eyes overly bright.

There was definitely something wrong with her. Something that made her brain-dead where Nick was concerned. Something that allowed him to caress her in a room filled with people.

She tossed her red velvet handbag on the counter and ran a paper towel under cold water. She pressed it against her warm face and sucked in a breath. Maybe she’d been on the wagon so long, she was suffering from sexual deprivation. Starving for attention and affection like an abandoned cat.

A toilet flushed behind her and a hotel employee appeared from a stall. As the woman washed her hands, Delaney opened her bag and pulled out a tube of Rebel Red lipstick.

“If you’re with the wedding party, they’re cutting the cake now.”

Delaney looked at the woman through the mirror and smeared red across her bottom lip. “Thanks. I guess I better get back then.” She watched the hotel employee leave and dropped her lipstick back into her little purse. Using her wet fingers, she smoothed the front of her hair and fluffed the back.

If Lisa and Louie were cutting their wedding cake, then dinner was officially over and she wouldn’t have to sit by Nick any longer.

She grabbed her bag and swung open the door. Nick leaned back against the opposite wall in the narrow hallway. The sides of his tuxedo jacket were brushed aside, and his hands were buried in his front pockets. When he saw her, he pushed away from the wall.

“Stay away from me, Nick.” She held out a hand to hold him off.

He grabbed her arm and pulled her against his chest. “I can’t,” he said softly. He crushed her to him, and his mouth slashed across hers in a fiery kiss that left her numb. He tasted like unchecked passion and warm wine. His tongue caressed and plundered, and when he pulled back, his breathing was uneven, like he’d just run the mile.

Delaney placed a hand over her racing heart and licked the taste of him from her lips. “We can’t do this here.”

“You’re right.” He grabbed her arm and propelled her down the hall until he found an unlocked linen closet. Once inside, he pressed her backward against the closed door, and Delaney had an impression of white towels and mop buckets before he was on her. Kissing her. Touching her anywhere his hands landed. Her palms slid up the pleats of his shirt to the warm sides of his neck, and she combed her fingers through the side of his hair. The kiss became an avaricious feeding frenzy of mouths and lips and tongues. They tore at each other. Her handbag fell to the floor, and she pushed at the shoulders of his jacket. She kicked the little velvet pumps from her feet and raised onto the balls of her feet. Like a complete wanton, she hooked a leg over his hip and strained against the swollen ridge of his erection.

He groaned his pleasure deep, deep within his chest, and pulled back to look at her through eyes heavy with lust. “Delaney,” he said, his voice rough, then he repeated her name as if he couldn’t quite believe she was with him. He kissed her face. Her throat. Her ear. “Tell me you want me.”

“I do,” she whispered, pushing his jacket from his shoulders.

“Say it.” He shrugged out of the jacket and tossed it to the side. Then his hands were on her breasts, and he brushed her hard nipples through the velvet dress and lace bra. “Say my name.”

“Nick.” She trailed kisses down his neck to the hollow of his throat. “I want you, Nick.”

“Here?” His hands moved to her hips, her behind, holding her against him, grinding against her soft inner thigh.

“Yes.”

“Now? Where anyone could walk in and find us?”

“Yes.” She was beyond caring. She ached with desire and emptiness and the need for him to fill her with pleasure. “Tell me you want me, too.”

“I’ve always wanted you,” he breathed into her hair. “Always.”

The tension inside her built and pulled and made her mindless to anything but him. She wanted to climb on top of him. Inside him, and stay there forever. He rubbed his straining erection back and forth against her aroused flesh.

Nick removed her leg from him and bunched the hem of her dress and slip in one fist, holding them up as he shoved her hose and silky panties down her thighs to her knees. He planted his foot in the crotch of her underwear and nylons, pushing the garments to her feet. Delaney kicked them free, and his hand moved between their bodies, and he touched her between her legs. His fingers slid into her slick flesh and she shuddered, feeling herself slowly propelled toward climax with each caress. A moan slipped past her lips, a husky sound of need.

“I want deep inside you.” His gaze locked on hers and he shrugged off his suspenders, leaving them to hang at his sides. His hands tore at the waistband, fumbling with the button and zipper closing his wool pants. Delaney reached for him and pushed his cotton briefs. His penis jutted free in her palm, huge and hard and smooth as polished teakwood. His skin stretched tight and he slowly pushed himself into her tight grasp. “I have to have you—
now
.”

Nick lifted her and she wrapped her legs around his waist and her arms around his neck. The voluptuous head of his hot erection nudged her slick opening. Their flesh touched, and he reached between their bodies and wrapped his hand around the shaft of his penis. He forced her down as he thrust upward inside, stretching her until a stitch of pain invaded Delaney’s erotic haze, but he withdrew, then buried himself deep, and there was nothing but intense pleasure. The penetration was so powerful and complete, his knees buckled and for one tense moment she feared he might drop her, but he didn’t. His grip on her hips tightened; he withdrew then plunged into her again, deeper. “Sweet Jesus,” he gasped as his powerful body crushed her against the door. His chest heaved as he fought to pull air into his lungs, and his uneven breath whispered across her temple, the sound of his passion and pleasure all the same.

Her legs tightened around his waist and she moved with him, slowly at first, then faster and faster as the pressure built. Her heart beat in her ears as he hammered into her, over and over, pushing her closer to orgasm with each thrust of his pumping hips. Like their frantic mating, there was nothing slow or easy about the intense pleasure that grabbed her, pulled her down, and turned her inside out. Tremor upon tremor shook her, rippled across her flesh, and robbed her of breath. She felt weightless, and a sound like a hurricane thundered in her head. Her back arched and she clutched at his shirt. She opened her mouth to scream, but the sound died in her dry throat. His strong arms crushed her against his chest, his big shoulders shook, and he held her tight as wave after luscious wave continued to roll through her. Her muscles contracted, gripping him tight within her. Her spasms had barely slowed when his began. A deep groan rumbled in his chest as he plunged into her. His muscles turned as hard as stone, and he whispered her name one last time.

When it was over, she felt battered and bruised, as if she’d just lived through a battle. Nick rested his forehead on the door behind her until his breathing slowed and he pulled back far enough to look into her face. He was still embedded deep within her body and their clothes were in disarray. Carefully he eased himself out of her, and she lowered her feet to the ground. Her dress slid down her hips and thighs. His gray eyes looked into hers, but he didn’t utter a word. He studied her for a moment longer, his gaze more guarded with each passing second, then he reached for his pants and pulled them to his waist.

“Aren’t you going to say anything?”

He glanced at her, then returned his gaze to his pants. “Don’t tell me you’re one of those women who like to talk afterward?”

Something wonderful and awful had just happened, she wasn’t quite sure which. Something more than sex. She’d had her share of orgasms in the past, some really good ones, too, but what she’d just experienced was more than getting off. More than waves crashing and the earth quaking. Nick Allegrezza had taken her someplace she’d never been before, and she felt like sitting down and crying about it. A sob escaped her throat, and she pressed her fingers to her lips. She didn’t want to cry. She didn’t want him to see her cry.

His gaze shot to her as he shoved his shirttails into his pants. “Are you crying?”

She shook her head, but her eyes began to water.

“Yes, you are.” He threaded his arms through his suspenders and snapped them in place.

“I’m not.” He’d just given her the most intense pleasure of her life, and now he calmly got dressed as if this sort of thing happened to him all the time. Maybe it did. She wanted to scream. To curl up her fist and hit him. She’d thought they’d shared something special, but obviously they hadn’t. She felt raw and exposed, her body still aching from his touch. If he said something nasty, she was afraid she’d shatter. “Don’t do this to me, Nick.”

“The damage is done,” he said as he retrieved his jacket from the floor. “Tell me you’re taking some form of birth control.”

She could feel the blood drain from her face and she shook her head. She thought back to her last period and felt a glimmer of relief. “It’s the wrong time of the month for me to get pregnant.”

“Honey, I’m Catholic. A lot of us are conceived at the wrong time of the month.” He pushed his arms through the sleeves of his jacket and straightened the collar. “I haven’t forgotten a condom in about ten years. How about you?”

“Ah ...” She was a woman of the nineties. In charge of her life and her body, but for some reason she couldn’t talk about this with Nick without getting embarrassed. “Yeah.”

“What exactly does ‘ah ... yeah’ mean?”

“You’re the first in a really long time, and before this, I was careful.”

He studied her for a moment. “Okay,” he said and tossed her underwear and pantyhose to her. “Where’s your coat?”

She clutched the garments to her chest, suddenly feeling shy and embarrassed. An odd delayed reaction, considering what she’d held in her hand a few moments before. “On a rack by the front doors. Why?”

“I’m taking you home.”

Home had never sounded so good.

“Get dressed before a maid decides she needs some towels or something.” His unreadable gaze stared into hers as he pulled on his cuffs. “I’ll be right back,” he said, then slowly opened the door. “Don’t go anywhere.”

Once she was alone, Delaney looked around the room. She spotted her handbag by her left foot, a velvet pump beneath a step chair, and the other beside an empty bucket. Without Nick to distract her, thoughts and self-recriminations came rushing at her. She couldn’t believe what she’d done. She’d had unprotected sex with Nick Allegrezza in a linen closet in the Lake Shore Hotel. He’d made her lose complete control with nothing more than a kiss, and if it weren’t for the lingering physical proof, she probably wouldn’t believe it even now.

She carefully sat on the step chair and put on her underwear and pantyhose. Just last month she’d assured Louie that she and Nick wouldn’t do anything to cause gossip at his wedding, yet she’d had wild sex with his brother behind an unlocked door where anyone could have caught them. If anyone found out, she’d never live it down. She’d probably have to kill herself.

Just as she pulled her hose to her waist and shoved her feet into the shoes, the door swung open and Nick entered the small room. She had trouble looking at him as he held her coat open for her. “I need to tell Lisa I’m leaving.”

“I told her you got sick and I’m taking you home.”

“Did she believe you?” She glanced up quickly, then shoved her arms into her wool coat.

“Narcisa saw you run out of the dining room and told everyone you looked like death.”

“Gee, maybe I should thank her.”

They left out a side door, and white downy snow drifted from the black sky and settled on their hair and shoulders. A new layer slid inside Delaney’s pumps as she made her way across the parking lot toward Nick’s Jeep. Her feet slipped from beneath her, and she would have fallen on her behind if he hadn’t reached out and grabbed her upper arm. His grasp tightened as they walked across the slick ground, but neither of them spoke, the only sound the crunch of snow beneath the soles of their shoes.