Now You See Her Linda Howard(71)

In the silence afterward, she heard her own breathing, rapid and jerky. Her heart was pounding so hard she could feel it thudding against her rib cage. Every muscle in her felt like butter, mushy and helpless.

He lay heavily on her, crushing her into the couch, and she could happily have lain there forever. The pleasure she'd had with him before didn't compare to actually making love. She felt exhilarated, and exhausted, as if she could move mountains if only she could manage to move herself, but at the moment, she wanted nothing more than to just lie there with Richard's weight on her, feeling the tremor in those powerful muscles, and know that she had been enough for him, that he was satisfied.

This was, she realized, what women had always felt at these times, with the men they loved. It was sweeter than she had imagined, in those brief, rare moments when she had allowed herself to think of what she might be missing in her solitary state.

Richard lifted his head. His dark hair was black with sweat, his face stark with triumph and possessiveness and a very male satisfaction. "Are you okay?" His voice was low and rough.

She swallowed. "You tell me," she managed to say. "I haven't had much practice."

A quick grin lit the hard places of his face. "I'd say you're damn wonderful." He released her wrists to balance his weight on his elbows, framing her face with his hands and kissing her with slow, deep deliberation, mimicking with his tongue the small strokes between her legs that kept him semierect and inside her. She quivered beneath him, her swollen inner tissues almost too sensitive to bear even that gentle stimulation.

He knew, and withdrew from her so gently she wanted to weep. He drew back on his knees and restored his pants to rough order, then stood and scooped her up. She lay draped in his arms like a naked offering, clinging to his shoulders as he carried her out of the living room and up the stairs. "I hope you can stay the night," he murmured, "because I'm not even close to being through with you."

"No… Candra's bed—"



"She never slept in this bed," he reassured her, gentle but implacable. "Or in this room. I had the house renovated and redecorated." He shouldered open a set of double doors and carried her across a large expanse of gleaming hardwood floors, strewn with rugs the colors of jewels, to a bed that looked large enough to sleep six. He let her legs drop, so that she was standing, but kept her clamped to his side as he bent and stripped back the covers.

Her knees wobbled. "I need to wash," she said. She needed to find a robe, or a towel, or even a couple of washcloths she could hold over strategic places. She had never felt more naked than she did right now, or more aware of her body.

He stiffened. "I'll be damned," he said softly. "I didn't wear a rubber."

They stared at each other, and Sweeney became acutely aware of the wetness between her legs. She did some fast counting. "I think we're safe. It's been almost three weeks since my last period." She had a brief moment of insanity, a flash of regret that the timing hadn't been better—or worse. At the moment she couldn't decide which it would be.

He opened a drawer in the bedside table and took out a box of condoms, placing it on the tabletop. He extracted one from the box. "We both need a shower. The bathroom's through there." He turned her and pointed her in the direction of two white louvered doors.

He intended to shower with her. He intended to do more than that, considering the condom in his hand.

Sweeney's heartbeat speeded up as she walked to the bathroom with as much poise as she could muster, though she could feel her cheeks heating. By the time they reached the bathroom, he had shed all his clothes except for his pants and shorts, leaving them strewn in a trail from bed to bath.

She stopped in the doorway. His bathroom was bigger than her bedroom. A square whirlpool tub sat directly in front of her, with thick white towels stacked on the ceramic tile ledge beside it, next to a crystal container filled with small, round, multicolored soaps. To the right a glass door opened into a large shower. The floor was laid with glossy tiles in a soft, rosy brown color that seemed to glow under the bright lights. To the left was a small private enclosure for the toilet, and at her left hand stretched a long, long double vanity in some sort of shiny, rich brown. Gold faucets arched over the bowls. Thick, soft rugs were spread in front of the shower and bathtub.

"This is decadent," she pronounced.

A large warm hand moved over the bare curves of her bottom. "Glad you like it."

She didn't just like it; she loved it. The colors were wonderful. A dull brown would have been awful, but this brown was so deep and rich she felt as if she could sink into it. The gold of the faucets seemed to pick up gold flecks in the vanity top, making it glow.

She opened the shower door and peered in. "Wow." The shower stall was at least eight by five feet, fashioned in marble streaked with brown and rose. There was a showerhead at each end of the enclosure, positioned so one would be rinsed front and back simultaneously The hand on her bottom became more insistent, urging her into the shower. She turned, and faced a very naked man. Her breath caught. She had already seen him mostly naked and had imagined him completely so, but the reality was so much better than her imagination. He was in marvelous shape, but it was more than that; he looked exactly the way a man should look, in her opinion, mature and muscular and interested. Impulsively she reached out and closed her hand around his stiffened penis, only half-hearing his involuntary hum of pleasure, and concentrating instead on how the thick shaft jumped in her hand.