Until the End of Time (17 page)

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Authors: Melanie Schuster

BOOK: Until the End of Time
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Andrew’s long arm braced the door shut and he looked at her as if she had lost all her reason. “Renee, it’s late and you’re not going down there alone. Are you crazy? I’m coming with you,” he said in a tone that suggested she not argue.
Feebly she countered, “But Andy, I do it all the time. Bennie and I both do, it’s no big deal.”
Andrew’s brows lowered in a knot. “Well it’s a big damned deal now. And I will deal with Benita later. Come on,” he said roughly as he took her arm and led her out of the duplex.
***
It was a false alarm, as it always was. Someone hadn’t turned off a panel of lights, which triggered a sensor in the overly alert alarm system. It knew that something was not as it should be and did its little job of alerting the alarm company, which alerted Renee as the first name on the call list. The nice young officer who met them at the door walked the premises with Renee to make sure nothing else was amiss, while Andrew made his own inspection. After the officer left, Renee turned to Andrew.
“
See? I told you it was nothing. It happens fairly infrequently, but I can handle it when it does. It was strictly a non-event,” she said breezily.
“
I don’t care what you say, Renee. It’s dangerous for you to be coming down here alone at night to meet a policeman. From now on, either I come or one of the other boys comes. Or you get yourself a security guard. If something happened to you I would lose my damned mind, and that’s a fact. Not to mention what Benita and the rest of the family would do, or your family. Don’t even think about attempting something like this again, do you hear me?”
Andrew looked so forbidding and serious, yet so utterly sweet and loveable that all Renee could do was say “Yes, Andy.” He was really concerned about her! They stood in the middle of the reception area staring at each other, but Andrew was still basically glowering. Renee knew just what would put him in a better frame of mind. She took his hand and offered him a tour of the spa. “I don’t think you’ve seen everything around here,” she began. “Let me show you the works.”
She walked him through the various rooms in the spa, skipping the salon, which he had already seen. She showed him the various facial rooms, the areas for waxing and body wraps and the room just for manicures and pedicures. Then she took him into the massage room. “This is everybody’s favorite room,” she said in a low, sultry voice.
Andrew looked disinterestedly at the room--it looked like no big whoop to him. It was in the same soothing green as the other rooms, but it was hardly furnished at all. It just had three rather high tables that looked too tall for anything really useful. He was still pissed by the idea that Renee thought it sensible to come traipsing in here at all odd hours of the night. And his sister did the same. These women had no idea of personal safety, none at all. Gruffly he said, “So what’s the big deal? What kind of abuse goes on in here?” He didn’t mean to sound so crabby, but this day was wearing on him.
Renee seemed to understand perfectly, though. She simply drew him into the room with a sweet smile on her face. “This is the massage room, honey. This is where you get all the knots and kinks and stress rubbed right out of you.” Before Andrew could react to that statement, Renee had made him an offer he couldn’t possibly refuse. “How about you take off that shirt and get up on that table and I give you a massage? And how about a Jacuzzi to follow?” she asked seductively.
Andrew was undressed almost before she finished speaking. True to her word, Renee gave a great massage. Andrew had no idea how tensed he was until Renee’s fingers started to release all the stiffness and tension from his knotted muscles. She had strong, capable hands which seemed to know exactly how to find the source of the strain and get rid of it. He was in a state of complete bliss, thanks to her loving ministrations. He moaned his pleasure as her warm hands rubbed and stroked and massaged every inch of his strongly muscled back.
Renee was enjoying the massage every bit as much as Andrew was. She loved the way his smooth caramel skin looked and felt and she loved the perfect musculature of his back. His skin felt warm and supple under her hands and she knew that she was soothing him and driving him crazy at the same time. It was an intimate, erotic experience that she wouldn’t have believed possible until this very minute. Everything that she was giving Andrew she was getting back and more. The trembles, the hesitancy, the fear she had experienced earlier were all gone, at least for the moment. She leaned over and whispered to Andrew, “Turn over.” Without hesitation he did so, and pulled her head down to his for another slow, sweet kiss. Renee managed to pull away from him and say breathlessly, “I’m not finished with your massage.”
Andrew looked at her with a combination of desire and pleasure. “Damn, Renee, what else could you possibly do to me? You’ve turned me to mush as it is,” he groaned.
Renee poured a few drops of massage oil in the middle of his chest and used the palms of both hands to smooth the oil across his nipples. At his shuddering sigh she smiled. “Well, there’s
that
, to begin with,” she said. And she proceeded to show him exactly what else she could do to him that would further assist him in the relaxation process.
Andrew couldn’t take anymore and forced himself into a sitting position. He brought his legs down over the side of the table and locked Renee between them while he cupped her face with his hands for a kiss. “Okay, that’s enough! You’re trying to kill me,” he accused. “I know that’s what you’re doing; you’re trying to pay me back for all those years when we didn’t get along. But if I have to die at your hands, I’d rather it be in bed,” he said softly, lowering his head to her willing lips.
Renee lost all conscious control of her body. She was perfectly willing to go wherever Andrew wanted to take her as long as she could keep feeling what she was feeling. It was wonderful; she was hot, she was cold, she was tingling all over and throbbing in places she had long forgotten about. She actually had her fingers at her own buttonholes, ready to offer herself totally to Andrew when the voice of reason in the form of an insistent, noisy pager interrupted. This time it was Andrew’s and if there was one thing a dedicated doctor could not do, it was ignore a page.
Andrew looked up at the ceiling and said “Oh Lord, just take me now and get it over with!” He hopped off the table in obvious discomfort due to a huge bulge in his pants and looked at Renee with great distress. All he could say was “Damn.” He immediately put his arms around her and pulled her as close as he could get her. He cupped her derriere with his hands and let her feel just how very much he didn’t want to let her go. “Just one more kiss and then I’m taking you back to my place to get your car. This is not an omen. This is just…the life of a doctor, dammit. Wow, that was melodramatic, wasn’t it?” He kissed her as though he depended on her lips for sustenance, which at the moment he did. Abruptly he let her go and put on his shirt, never taking his eyes from hers. He grabbed her hand and they paused just long enough to reset the alarm before leaving.
They were back at his house in record time and he kissed her once more after she got into her Mercedes. “Soon, Renee. Very, very soon,” was all he said. He watched her drive off and then got into the Bentley and took off for the hospital. All the way over he tasted his lips with his sensitized tongue, to see if any of Renee’s sweetness remained. Very
soon, or I’m going to lose my mind
, he thought.

 

 

 

 

Chapter Nine
As Einstein explained in his theory of relativity, time is relative. A minute may not seem like a long time when you’re next to a pretty woman, but if you’re sitting on a hot stove it seems like an eternity. And when you’re a virile sexy man with designs on an incredibly sensuous woman that you have desired for over a decade,
soon
can’t come soon enough. After trying to get with Renee for several fruitless days, Andrew felt like the Spanish Inquisition was a day at the beach. He was being subjected to a form of torture that was much, much crueler.
It was just his bad luck that their little assignation came right before his father’s retirement celebration. After 50 years in the radio business, Andrew Bernard Cochran Sr., known affectionately as Big Benny, was officially retiring. He and his sister, with the help of the other siblings, had been planning a huge, gala party to celebrate the event. To be fair, Benita had done most of the planning and organizing, but Andrew had done what he could when he could. And now that the event was a mere day away, it was mandatory that his precious free time be spent in last minute preparations. Thus he could spend virtually no time with Renee who was knee deep in the party planning with Benita.
They saw each other, of course, and they’d even concocted a logical reason why they were attending the event together. But it wasn’t nearly enough for Andrew. Since the first time their lips met, all he wanted to do was spent two or three days doing nothing but making love to Renee. He was trying to take his time and be a gentleman about it, because he liked her as a friend and a person and he respected her. There was so much more to Renee than had ever met his eye that he was actually humbled at times. He had always thought of her as beautiful and smart and certainly sexy, but he was getting to know the sweet and sensitive person she hid from public view. He didn’t want to rush her, but at the same time, he felt like he was dying by degrees every time he touched her without consummating the relationship. In short, he walked around as randy as a schoolboy most of the time. When he was in the same room with her it was pure agony. He couldn’t stop looking at her, wanting her and needing her. Like right now, for example.
They were in Benita’s basement ostensibly tending to final details. Renee was busy checking the boxes of party favors that would be placed on every chair in the ballroom. She was absorbed in her task and was not paying any real attention to Andrew. Andrew was sprawled on the big leather sofa staring balefully at Renee. He glanced at an authentic lariat on the wall above the sofa and contemplated throwing a lasso over Renee’s head. That would certainly get her attention. Benita had decorated the basement area to look like a 1950’s ranch house. Big Benny’s love of Westerns, particularly the rare ones with African American stars, had influenced the décor. For a time all of the Cochrans had been mad for cowboy movies and all things western. There were several pictures displayed of all the children in cowboy regalia, which lent a sweetly nostalgic air to the room. Right now, though, the kitschy charm of the area was lost on Andrew. All his attention was focused on Renee who was counting objects in boxes and making notes and just generally ignoring him. Even Aretha, who was dogging her every step in case one of the boxes was for her, was ignoring him. Finally he couldn’t take it anymore.
“
What does a man have to do to get some attention around here?” he demanded.
Aretha and Renee both turned and looked at him as if he had lost his mind. Andrew noticed for the first time how much the two resembled one another, but thought it best not to bring it up. He repeated his question in a less querulous tone. “How can I get you to stop that and come talk to me for a minute,” he said nicely.
He looked so sweet and handsome Renee relented for a moment and went to sit with him on the sofa. She tried to look aloof but failed miserably as he immediately sat up and put his arms around her. “Hey. Hey!” she protested. “We are supposed to be talking, not necking. I have to finish this inventory and you have to take it over to the Roostertail. And I have to get back to the Oasis—there are about 5 heads that I have to do, all of whom are members of your family, so…so….”
Her voice trailed off as Andrew found an effective means of stopping her recital. The feel of Andrew’s lips on hers never failed to drive all conscious thought from Renee’s mind. She couldn’t think at all when he was kissing her, all she could do was respond to the touch of his lips, the demands of his tongue and the intoxicating passion that overtook her in his arms. When they finally broke apart she was drugged with sensation and breathing hard. She couldn’t open her eyes, even when Andrew started speaking to her.
“
You know,” he said hoarsely, “If I had any idea you could kiss like that when we were in college, I would have kidnapped you a long time ago. In fact, I think I’ll kidnap you right now,” he growled. “Let’s get out of here and go someplace where we can be alone. Like my bedroom.”
Renee finally opened her eyes and gave him a look that almost stopped his heart. “Bennie would kill us both and you know it. We are going to be responsible adults and get this finished so that the party will go as planned tomorrow,” she said firmly. Of course, while she was saying this she was stroking Andrew’s bottom lip with her forefinger, which was driving him crazy. He retaliated by drawing her finger into his mouth and sucking on it gently. Renee sighed softly and tried to pull her finger away. He held on for a few more seconds and then recaptured her lips. All of her resolve was swept away until she heard Bennie calling her. They finally pulled away from each other and looked totally bereft as the contact ended. Renee jumped to her feet and looked over her shoulder at Andrew before going to see what Bennie needed. “Don’t forget where we left off,” was all she said.
Andrew fell back onto the sofa with a groan. Aretha ambled over to see what ailed him. She stood on her hind legs and pushed her elegantly feline face into his. Andrew reached out to scratch her between the ears, something that she adored. “Bad timing, Aretha. Just bad timing, that’s all,” he said.
But not for much longer
.

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