Anything You Can Do(61)
He moved back from her a few inches and gazed at her through slitted, smoky eyes. A slow smile curved his lips.
"You're so—" he began, then the smile widened, and he traced one finger down her cheek. "You're so—Bailey." Bending toward her, he claimed her lips again, moving, caressing, then sliding away, trailing down her throat. With a soft groan, he pressed her to him tightly.
The flames already igniting every inch of her body, especially those inches Austin was touching, blazed higher. She sighed, reveling in the exquisite feelings. Maybe they could stay like this forever. At least until the morning when she'd have to feed Samantha.
But his warm mouth was moving onward, downward, eliciting new, wonderful sensations, igniting fires that demanded ever more fuel. He slipped the top button of her blouse and pushed aside the fabric, and she wasn't sure if the heat arose from his kisses or directly from her breast. Boldly, brazenly, she tangled her fingers in his thick hair, urged him on, though he didn't seem to need any urging.
As he fumbled with the other buttons of her blouse, his gaze returned to hers. In his eyes she saw the same overpowering desire she'd seen the night on Gordon's lawn, but now there was something else. Amid the leaping blue flames a softness smoldered, demanding and offering.
Then her blouse slid off her shoulders and he pressed her closer, his lips returning to hers with that same odd mixture of passion and tenderness. A moan started in her midsection and rose from her throat into his mouth as she opened to him, tasted wine and peppermint candy, felt his moist warmth, the smoothness of his mouth, and the roughness of his tongue.
Frantically she unbuttoned his shirt, pressed her bare breasts against the coarse hairs and hard muscles of his chest, and it was his turn to moan. His fingers trembled as he fumbled with the clasp of her jeans, and that trembling increased her passion, overwhelmed any inhibitions she might have had left. Their desires moved together as surely as their psyches had been together all evening.
His mouth again left hers, moved down to her breast, seeking and finding first one turgid peak, then the other. She leaned against the door for support, her legs and knees suddenly weak.
As if sharing the same mind, they sank to the floor together, and he slid her jeans down her hips, then tossed them aside with his own. For a moment she leaned away from him to look, to capture his naked body in her memory, to see and incorporate every muscle, every hair, every inch of him.
With one hand he traced a gentle line down her cheek and neck, over her breast and stomach, down the valley of her waist and over the curve of her hips. She looked at him, and again it seemed her thoughts were joined with his. In his eyes she saw a reflection of the need she felt to enfold and encompass him.
Then his flesh was against hers, joining with her, and the need was met. They moved in perfect unison instinctively, and she was almost unable to endure the exquisite agony, wanting culmination but wanting it to continue forever, to be always united like this.
As their movements quickened and their passions surged to a peak, she sought his gaze, found him looking at her, and they spiraled together, bodies and souls merging in a crashing crescendo.
For a long time they remained motionless, silent, still joined. Bailey couldn't think of anything to say and felt no need to say anything. Their bodies had said it all. She was content to drift in the afterglow.
Abruptly a cold, wet nose on her cheek interrupted her mellow mood, and Bailey laughed.
Austin jerked upward, apparently as startled by her laughter as she had been by the little dog's intrusion.
"Samantha," he said when he saw the problem, "your timing is terrible."
"No," Bailey disagreed, "it could have been worse."
He grinned. "It could have been." He stood, pulling her with him and against him. "You know, she's a really short dog, much shorter than the average bed. Maybe if we found yours, we could hide up there."
His hands cupped her derriere, held her against him.
"We could try that," she murmured, and decided not to tell him Samantha regularly jumped onto her bed.
*~*~*
Bailey flipped the quarter for the twentieth time, recording the results on a yellow legal pad. Ten heads, ten tails. This method of eleventh-hour decision making about the merger wasn't working out any better than the more logical ones she'd tried.
The situation was bad enough of itself, but she was having a difficult time concentrating that morning. Austin hadn't left Sunday until shortly after noon. They'd made love most of the night, neither willing to admit to being tired, then gone out to brunch. As soon as she was alone, Bailey had fallen into an exhausted sleep, waking to the morning and the miserable merger decision.