his bedroom, the master suite. He went on, tugging her behind him, past the sitting area where the fat chairs and the sofa were of wonderfully soft-looking caramel-colored leather scattered about with pillows of tan and sage-green.
The bed was wide, with a sage-green spread and piles of gray and ivory pillows against a wide curving headboard of some grainless light-colored wood. He stopped right beside it and pulled her around so that she faced him.
“I want you. Now. Here.”
Her body thrummed with excitement, with heat and desire. Already she could feel wetness between her legs.
“I’ve waited,” he said. “I won’t wait anymore.” She only stared at him, at his lean face and his burning pale eyes. “Cleo,” he said. It was a command.
And somehow from her clutching throat she got the necessary words out. “Yes. All right. Now.”
Chapter Eight
Cleo lay on oyster-gray silk sheets.
She turned her head toward the bedside chair in the corner. Her clothes were laid out on it: her conservative knee-length silk dress of vivid royal blue, her bra, her panty hose, her white leather bag. In front of the chair, standing neatly side by side, were her camel suede pumps.
It was true. It was real. Her clothes were over there. And she was here.
In Fletcher’s bed. Naked.
He rose up above her, naked as she was, all lean muscle and hard, hot flesh—and glowing wolf eyes. He braced himself on his fists. “Cleo,” he said. “At last …”
And then, oh-so-slowly, he lowered himself down to her.
She couldn’t stop herself; she moaned as his lips touched hers.
Unbelievable. Their first kiss—with both of them naked, their bodies pressed close. She wrapped her arms around those wide shoulders, her fingers slipping upward into his thick, silky hair. She breathed in and she breathed him—the expensive aftershave, the healthy male scent of his skin.
His mouth moved on hers, his tongue seeking, parting. With another low moan, she opened for him. His hot tongue swept her mouth, burning where it touched, and his body moved above hers slowly in one long, all-over caress.
She could feel him acutely—all of him. There, at the place where her thighs joined, he was thick and hard, nestled and nudging against her. He moved his hips, a slight, slow rocking. She rocked with him, holding him close, loving the way he felt, the way that their bodies fit so perfectly together, as if they’d been made to make love with each other.
He broke the burning kiss and he looked down at her, the blue rims around his irises darker than before, his fine mouth swollen from plundering hers. “Everything,” he whispered. “Everything, all of you …”
And all she could say was, “Yes,” and “Yes,” again.
He eased his legs between hers, pushed up to his knees and loomed above her. She cried out at the loss of his fine, strong body on hers. And then she looked up at him and …
He was so thrilling to look at—wide shoulders, lean arms. A light dusting of silky dark hair formed a cross on that hard chest, nipple to nipple and trailing down in an enticing line over his corrugated belly. The lean, taut muscles of his thighs were temptingly prominent. From the nest of dark hair between those thighs, his erection jutted, stiff and ready for her.
His gaze was on her, moving, those eyes pale and shining as moons in the dark of night. “So beautiful,” he whispered. “More beautiful than I imagined. And I did imagine. Often …”
He bent close again. And he began to kiss her—all over. She heard the hungry pleading noises coming from her own throat as he laid a knowing hand over the curls that covered her sex.
He sought and found the swollen secret flesh where her pleasure was greatest. With his thumb he teased that spot as his fingers delved lower, between the slick folds.
She cried out again at the searing delight he brought her, a cry he took into himself as he once more covered her mouth with his.
Her mind was on fire, like her body. She was liquid and she was fire, both at once. She was thoughtless, needful flesh and all she knew was the searing wet heat of his tongue in her mouth, the knowing way his fingers played her below.
He didn’t rush. Oh, no. He took his time. He had the slow hands women whisper of, the erotic skill to make her burn for the feel of him inside her.
More than once she tugged at him, moaning, urging him to fill her—but he wouldn’t. He only kissed her some more and touched her yet more deeply.
Until she gave in. Until she couldn’t hold out, couldn’t wait. She felt her body rising, gathering, reaching the crest.
And then she went over with another sharp, shattered cry. Sweat dewed her body. She went limp with satisfaction. Sighing in contentment, she pushed his hand away.
But he wouldn’t let her rest. His fingers, wet with the evidence of her desire, played along her rib cage, traced teasing patterns on her stomach. He tormented her with pleasure, arousing her all over again.
He stroked her thighs, took her breasts in each hand, covering one with his mouth, teasing her nipple between his teeth, worrying it and then latching on and sucking, drawing the yearning into a shining thread, a strand of pure heat spinning out and pulling tight from her breast to her womb.
And in no time she was crying out all over again, rising to meet him, all yearning and open and hungry for more.
It was then, deep within the delicious web of pleasure he wove so expertly around her, that she found herself remembering her mother, remembering Lolita, scenting again the smell of perfume and sex; seeing in her mind’s eye the flushed, loose, dewy smile on her mother’s beautiful face when she would come home from the first night with a new man.
These were powerful memories, old images that had always brought Cleo pain and bewilderment that her mother could be such a fool, could surrender to the same temptations over and over again.
Now, though, Cleo smiled between moans.
Incredible, but while Fletcher touched her, while his hands worked their thrilling magic on her flesh, in the heat and the wonder of this, she understood …
Everything.
She understood her mother for the very first time, understood how a woman might be willing to give up so much for the shining, hot joy of this; saw why Lolita had always chosen to toss herself, heedless of old lessons learned, into the arms of yet another player who could sweep her away like this.
Again Cleo rose to the peak, clutching the silk sheets, moaning his name, whispering, pleading, “Oh, please. Make it now….”
He kissed her so deeply and then he reached for the drawer in the bedside table, brought out a condom, tore the wrapping open and expertly slid it down over himself.
She watched him as he performed those necessary actions. She was achingly eager for the moment when he would slip between her thighs—and
