Dance Away with Me(82)

He leaned back on his heels. “More wine?”

She shot up onto her elbows, nearly screaming at him. “What are you doing? How can you be so . . . detached?”

“Detached?” His eyes shot thunderbolts. “Ever since I met you, I’ve been living with a permanent hard-on. Watching you sashay around . . .”

“I don’t sashay.”

“Seeing those glorious breasts of yours. That beautiful ass. Even the back of your neck. And all the while, you’ve been oblivious. Now, babe,” he said with a growl. “It’s payback time.”

“Payback?”

“Think of it as well-deserved retribution.”

The way he said that word. The delicious menace thrilled her. “I’m sorry.” She wasn’t, but she loved how meek she sounded. No longer the seducer . . .

“You’re going to be even sorrier.” He jammed his hand in his jeans pocket, pulled out one of those condoms he carried around, and slapped it down on the platform in a way that told her exactly how serious he was. In one swift motion, his jeans came off along with the silky boxers she’d seen in his drawer. She was hardly a stranger to the male anatomy, but this . . . This was . . . “I don’t think . . .” she said. “I’m ready for all that.”

“Tough,” he said, “because you’re going to take it.”

She shivered. This was a whole new game, and she was more than ready to play it. “I— I’m not ready.” The world’s biggest lie.

He lowered himself next to her. “I’ll see about that.”

And he did.

He explored her. Delving. Testing. Her underpants gone. His expression fierce and his touch perfect. How did he know this was what she’d craved in her fever dreams?

She shattered again, even before he entered her, but it was his turn now. He thrust deep. She stretched. He arched. Drove. Again and again. Erupted.

Sated and smiling, she held him through the aftershocks, feeling his scars, wanting to kiss away each one. He finally rolled over. “That”—he groaned—“was a total failure.”

“Very disappointing.”

“There’s only one thing to do.”

“Try again?”

“I’m afraid so. But first . . .” He poured more wine.

They sipped, sitting naked on the blanket in the darkness, barely talking. Eventually, they fell back on the blanket, and this time it was even better.

Afterward, they lay on their backs. She stretched and said the only thing she could think of that made sense. “Can we eat now?”

“A woman after my own heart.”

But she wasn’t. No matter how satisfying this had been, his heart was safely entombed in the sturdy wall that had protected it for so very long.

*

The night had grown chilly, and they went back to the house. It seemed natural for him to return to his old bedroom, to lie down with her. Make love again. And then again.

Eventually, she heard the deep, even sound of his breathing, but she couldn’t sleep. She was thirty-five years old, and until now, she’d been with only one man.

Ian didn’t stir as she slipped from the bed and curled into the chair by the window. She stretched her feet onto the ottoman and tried to unknot her tangled thoughts. The intimacy of sleeping together made her feel exposed and defenseless, but defenseless against what?

Against this surge of emotion . . . This swelling in her heart . . . This yearning for more than sex. For . . .

Stop! She couldn’t go there. Ian’s emotional boundaries were set in stone, and she needed to be equally firm with her own. Love had almost destroyed her once. That would never happen again.

*

She awakened at dawn with a stiff neck and a few other sore places that had nothing to do with spending the night in the chair. She sneaked into the bathroom for a shower. When she came out wrapped in a towel, he was still in bed, but awake. The hair on one side of his head stood up in crisp peaks, and the snowy white pillows deepened his tan. “You’re up early.”

“I want to see Wren before I go to work.”

“Missing her?”

“I can’t help it.” Wren was perfectly safe with Heather. Sending her off last night hadn’t been anything like the night the Dennings had taken her. But Tess’s arms felt empty.

He cocked his elbow behind his head, exposing the white scar on his arm, and giving her a scruffy, sexy, half-lidded once-over. “How ’bout dropping that towel.”

She was tempted. Too tempted. “I would, but then you’ll think I’m easy.”

He laughed, got out of bed, and walked naked across the room. His body was strong and rangy, with long ligaments instead of bulky muscles. He was lean where she was curved. His scars were dramatic, while hers came from nothing more notable than a childhood tumble off her skateboard.

He knew she was looking at him, but he merely smiled and disappeared into the bathroom, leaving her alone with the messy stew of her thoughts.

*

He stepped into the shower before it warmed up. He needed the shock of cold water. Otherwise, he’d go right back in the bedroom and change her mind, something he doubted would take much work.

He’d never been with a woman like her. A lover so over-the-top sexy, so imaginative, so raunchy and seductive. As the water grew hot, he used his index finger to draw a naked silhouette in the steam on the shower door. The curve of a thigh, the bow of a breast.