* * * *
“Would you like more, Bette?”
“No, thank you, Mrs. Monroe. This was wonderful, but I couldn’t eat another bite.”
“Are you sure? I don’t think you young people who live alone get enough to eat. I’d hate to think you’d be hungry later.”
Paul’s chuckle spluttered into his glass of water. Bette thought she heard something resembling “told you so.”
Giving him a quelling look, she politely declined once more, then helped Mrs. Monroe clear the table. In the kitchen she put a few things away while her hostess prepared coffee and chatted of cooking, gardens, the symphony and family.
“...I’ll have to show you a portrait of my father after dinner. Paul looks so much like him at the same age.”
Bette wondered if Paul had ever heard that comparison. Considering his views on that relative, he wouldn’t like it.
In Nancy Monroe’s mostly gray hair, Bette could see the vestiges of Paul’s chestnut color. Although he shared a lot of mannerisms with his father, Bette saw that many of his features had come from his mother. Physical features, but also the ability to make people comfortable in an instant.
Bette could admit to herself now that she’d been a bit awed. Not only by meeting Paul’s parents so unexpectedly—so soon, she almost added, as if it were an occurrence she’d expected eventually, when that wasn’t the case at all—but by the house, with its sweeping, dignified exterior, its views of Lake Michigan through multiple sets of French doors, its casually elegant furnishings.
But Nancy Monroe melted away the awe. She was a very nice woman. In fact, Bette thought as she prepared to take the cream and sugar in to the dining room, they were a very nice family. Not so unlike her own.
As she stepped into the dining room, she became aware that the Monroes were not unlike her own in other ways. She felt the tension immediately. Between her and her parents, the topic was her living alone. Between Paul and his father, it apparently concerned his business.
“Contact with a prestigious museum like that can’t help but enhance your reputation and that can only aid your business. It’s the sort of opportunity you should cultivate.” James Monroe took a breath, and Bette could tell he was repeating a question, more to drive home a point than to get an answer. “So, are you going out there to discuss this opportunity with them?”
“I’m going out there.” The coolness in Paul’s voice surprised her.
“But are you—”
Paul caught sight of Bette. Rising to take the sugar and creamer as if they were too heavy for her, he cut off his father. “Ah, good. Now all we need is something to mix them with.”
Without the usual amusement lighting his face, the words fell flat. He seemed to realize that. As he returned to his chair, he went on immediately. “Did you know my dad was a heck of a shortstop thirty-five years ago? Reached the top of the minor league system. Would have made it to the majors, too, only—”
Paul looked up as his mother came through the door with the coffee on a tray, and broke off.
“Are you two talking about baseball again?” she asked with fond exasperation.
“No,” answered her husband. “I was trying to pin him down to make a decision, with as little success as ever. Or at least to find out if he’s making a trip to D.C.” He faced his son again, and his voice seemed to gentle. “And I was a borderline shortstop at best. My making the majors was extremely doubtful.”
Nancy Monroe looked from one man to the other. If she forced her smile, she did it very well. “Well, if you do go to Washington, Paul, be sure to give Tris our love, won’t you?” She turned to Bette in explanation. “Tris is Paul’s cousin. James’s sister’s girl. She and Paul were always close. When they were children . . .”
Nancy Monroe went on, skillfully drawing Paul and his father into the newly directed conversation, and soon any lingering tension dissipated.
Nearly an hour later, as they said their thank-yous and good-nights at the door, Bette thought James Monroe was about to question his son once more, but his wife touched him lightly on the sleeve, and he let it fade.
As Paul pulled the car out of the drive, it was obvious he, too, had seen the interplay. “Parents trying to push their kids into making the same mistakes they did,” he muttered.
“I always thought parents tried to prevent their kids from making the same mistakes they did,” she commented mildly.
He frowned at her, but then seemed to relax. Before he turned back to the road, a quirk of humor lifted his mouth. “That’s one of those lines all parents are taught to feed their kids, along with clean-up-your-plate, don’t-play-with-that-or-you’ll-poke-your-eye-out and someday-you’ll-have-children-of-your-own-and-you’ll-understand.”
“Ah, the famous ‘School for parents’ where they learn one thousand and one ways to say no.”
He laughed, and the sound warmed Bette. She’d brought him laughter. She’d changed his mood from bad to good. She couldn’t remember ever having done that for someone before.
Instinctively, she reached for him. But she let the gesture fall short, her hand dropping to the seat between them.
“That’s the one,” he answered. Without taking his eyes off the road, he settled his right hand over hers where it lay on the seat.
The rest of the drive was accomplished in easy silence.
Easy was about all Bette felt capable of at the moment.
Occasionally, the wheel demanded both of Paul’s hands, but his right always returned to hers. Resting her head against the top of the seat, she watched the lights go by without bothering to focus. She felt surrounded by the scent of pumpkins, straw, dried leaves and Paul Monroe. She was replete with delicious food and the satisfaction of laughter.
Languor seeped into her, until she wondered if she’d have control over as simple a movement as raising her arm. Did astronauts feel like this when they experienced weightlessness, when a twitch translated into some large, slow, ungovernable gesture and a step became a floating trip to unknown destinations?
When they reached her house, Paul drove the car directly into the garage, turned off the engine, pressed the button to close the automatic door and shifted to face her. She tipped her head just enough to see him.
“Bette?”
His voice came, husky and near. He trailed the knuckles of his right hand down her neck, then pushed her hair back, behind her shoulder. Her cocoon of languor took on heat and sensation. She should be thinking ahead, considering what might come next. But she couldn’t. She should be alert, prepared. But she wasn’t. For once the present moment filled the screen of her mind so fully that there was no room to preview the future.
“Bette.”
Slowly she shifted until she could see his features, strong and marked by lines of humor in the slash of artificial light slanting in through the garage window. She didn’t believe she had enough energy to move, but somehow she must have had, because she felt the soft prickle of his stubbled jaw under her palm.
Then she experienced all the energy in the world. It suffused her, pouring into her skin and bones and blood when he turned his head against her hand and inscribed a circle with his tongue.
She thought again of the odd buoyancy of weightlessness as her arms rose, seemingly of their own accord, to his shoulders. He moved in front of her, so the light cut a path across his face, half-bright, half-dark. She could see nothing other than his face before her. There was nothing else she wanted to see.
He leaned into her, so she felt the weight of his body against hers.
“You have the most amazing upper lip,” he murmured as he took it between his own, pulling slightly, then testing it with his teeth.
“Family trait,” she finally got out when her lungs had produced enough oxygen to fuel the words.
He shook his head slightly, and since he still had his mouth on hers, she felt it as a change of texture, a sliding and melding. “No. I think it’s a sign of great hidden sensuality.”
/> He kissed her, not hard, not deeply, but thoroughly. A kiss that seemed to muffle every sound in the world except their breathing and their heartbeats, that seemed to stifle every thought in her head except the urge to get closer, to give more to him.
Lifting his head at last on a low, quiet groan, he rested his forehead against hers.
“That’s something else,” she told him when she could once again control the motor skills necessary to form the words.
“Hmm?”
“The sign of hidden sensuality—that’s something else.”
He ran the back of his knuckles down her throat once more, this time beyond the hollow at its base, across the edge of her collarbone and softly along the rise of her breast. “It sure is.”
It took three deep breaths to regulate her lungs into some order, but when she did, she doggedly finished. “It’s a gap between the two front teeth.” For emphasis, she tapped her own closely spaced front teeth. “Like that old actor Terry-Thomas had. A gap—” another tap “—is supposed to be the sign of great sensuality.” And another tap.
She wouldn’t have thought he could move so fast, but before she finished the final tap, he swooped in as if to kiss her and instead caught her finger in his mouth and pulled it gently in. Her eyes drifted closed. Her heartbeat skittered. Her breathing stopped.
His tormenting mouth released her finger and she tried to straighten herself. “Paul, I—”
He simply shifted his torment from her finger to her mouth, slipping his tongue through her parted lips, and drawing a moan that vibrated in her throat. His palm went to her neck, as if to absorb that vibration, then skimmed the sensitive skin, following the path his knuckles had traced.
As he had before, he ended the caress with a fleeting brush to the first swell of her breast. She felt an ache there, an ache of deprivation, and it brought a sound to her lips that she was grateful his mouth muffled.
But he must have heard it, or sensed the frustration, because his hand returned to that spot, pressing lightly, then circling until he cupped the weight of her breast in his palm. Through the folds of cotton and the slide of lace, she felt the rub of his thumb. His touch fueled her ache the way someone tends a fire, keeping it burning steadily yet brighter and hotter.
She felt her own hands dispensing with the buttons of his shirt. When she reached the waistband of his jeans and paused, he jerked the tails out with one impatient hand, and she finished the task.
She didn’t have a chance to hesitate. He brought her hands to his chest, spread them wide against his taut skin, then pressed them tight by trapping them between their bodies as he leaned into her. His fingertips stroked a path from her collarbone down, across the smooth skin where it curved, and lower. Then he turned his hands and skimmed the backs of his fingers over the same tingling territory, only to start again. The draped folds of the V neck retreated a little farther with each movement. She felt her breast swelling and rising against the lace of her bra. She shifted restlessly. He stroked down, his fingertips easily sliding under the lace, not quite grazing where she most wanted the touch, then skimmed up. And started again.
Under the lace, his fingertips tempted and teased. If he didn’t touch her, and soon—
Her breath came in on a gasp and released on a moan. His fingers had found the peak, already pebbled and proud. They lingered, stroking and circling.
He muttered something, then twisted, turning their bodies so she no longer rested against the seat, but across him, in the circle formed by his right arm and his body.
“Paul, I don’t think...I don’t think this is a good idea.” The habits of a lifetime formed the words, though she felt unconnected to them.
“We’re well beyond the idea stage, Bette. Don’t you think?”
He gave her no chance to answer as he returned to her mouth, but she must have been well beyond thinking, because she found her arm straying from his back to his shoulder, and some part of her knew it was to allow him greater access.
Her bra strap slid over her shoulder. She didn’t know if it was her movement or his that was responsible, but she knew the result immediately. His hand curved around her inside the loosened lace, treasuring the weight of her breast, his thumb caressing her nipple. She heard his moan mingled with her own.
He wrenched his mouth from hers, and their breathing came in oxygen-depleted gasps. But he couldn’t seem to bear to be away from the taste of her skin as his lips formed wet, openmouthed kisses to her jaw, her throat, her collarbone. She knew what would happen and she wanted it. Oh Lord, she wanted it.
Sensation was all that was left in the world. The sensation of his mouth on her breast, his hand sliding across the curve of her thigh. The pull on her nipple, the feathering touches near the juncture of her thighs, were promises of the rhythm, of the touches she most desired. The desire rose in her throat, escaping as his name, a soft moan of a syllable.
“Paul.”
He raised his head, and she felt the force of his look, demanding that she meet it.
No teasing, no amusement in those eyes now. Just intent desire.
But he had reined that all in. Barely. For the moment. For long enough to ask her. For that was the other thing she saw in his eyes: a question. He left it up to her. She could say no and he would abide by that, but he wanted her. Now.
The weight of the decision crushed her with something like disappointment. If he hadn’t stopped, if he hadn’t left her to answer—But he had.
They had to stop.
But she’d hesitated too long. His mouth met hers, his tongue passing the restraints of her lips with bold certainty. The exploring was past. His tongue set up a rhythm that echoed in the brush of his fingers against her. The stroking, thrusting excitement of it foretold how their bodies would match in another union. And that thought pushed her closer to him, tightened her fingers on him until her nails pressed into the hard flesh. But it also let the future slip back into her mind, to voice its demands and expectations.
This single moment couldn’t be separated from what could follow—would follow—if they didn’t stop.
They had to stop.
The union her body craved would mean a blending of lives to her. But to him? How could someone who refused to look beyond the moment give her the permanence she needed?
He couldn’t. She knew that. As she knew that if they made love, in the end, she would feel so much pain.
Ah, but first there would be such pleasure. Under her touch, his muscles contracted, and she shivered at the controlled power. Such a delicious aching pleasure...
If they didn’t stop...soon...
He groaned and shifted, so he could slip his hands beneath the lace edge of her panties.
No. No, she had to stop it—now.
“Paul.” She broke away from his tips and gasped the name. “No.”
She had to stop...She had to stop before—
“No.” She pulled away from him and reached for the car door handle.
—before she couldn’t stop.