* * * *
If her plot had worked, Paul was waiting, just inside this door.
If he’d believed her, he thought she was home packing for her early-morning departure for Arizona. When she told him it would be better if he didn’t come to her house until later because she needed time to get ready, he’d said exactly what she’d been hoping for—that he’d stay late at the office and use the time to catch up on some work. In fact, his ready acceptance had irked her at some level. So he thought she’d sacrifice a last evening with him in order to neatly fold slips and shirts?
At home her suitcase waited, already packed. She’d left work in midafternoon to do that, and to find exactly the right thing to wear. Now she stood, just outside his office door, trembling between nerves and anticipation.
It might not be the kind of spur-of-the-moment inspiration he’d have had, but he’d shown he appreciated her planning...at least in some areas of their relationship. Areas such as soft, clean sheets, fluffy bath sheets and scented candles. And her lingerie. Bette fought an urge to giggle. It used to be she only considered if something was clean and appropriate for wearing under a certain blouse or dress. But now she found that every morning her choices were affected not only by how she would look, but by what was easy to get into and out of...especially out of.
Maybe she wanted to give him something to remember her by while she was gone. Maybe she wanted to give herself a final memory. Just in case it was a final memory.
She sucked in a breath and turned the door handle.
Paul—tieless, first two buttons opened, cuffs rolled to midforearm—looked up from behind his desk as she walked in, surprise heating immediately to pleasure, and beyond. It was the look she needed to keep going. “Bette! What are you . . .”
Perhaps he saw something in her face, because he let the words trail off as she closed the door and leaned against it.
Without taking her eyes from his, she let her coat slide off her shoulders and down to the floor in a heap.
She smoothed a nervous hand down the wrap-front knit dress and wondered if she’d lost her mind. Maybe. But the look in his eyes left her very sure she hadn’t lost her senses. He knew why she’d come.
“If memory serves me, you’re supposed to be on the couch, Paul.” Nerves, and something rawer, made her voice low and breathy.
His look never wavered as he dropped his pen onto the pad on which he’d been writing, and stood. Slow and deliberate, he moved to the couch and, obeying her slight gesture, sat down.
Shaking knees didn’t prevent her from taking the three steps that brought her in front of him. Trembling hands didn’t stop her from undoing the dress’s tie at her waist. The weight of the material swung the sides open, and she knew he could see what was underneath. She knew, because she’d tested it in front of her bedroom mirror, wondering all the time if she’d feel like a fool when she did it in front of Paul.
He swallowed sharply. She watched his Adam’s apple drop and rise and she felt her own tension ease. She felt a lot of things, but none of them was foolish.
She eased one knee onto the couch near his thigh and supported herself with a hand on the cushion by his shoulder, as her blood pulsed hotly under the lace and satin of the midnight-blue bustier. If he didn’t touch her . . And damn soon.
“Uh, Bette?”
“Hmm?”
“I have a question.”
Was he going to ask what she thought she was doing? Oh, Lord, if it wasn’t obvious, maybe she wasn’t doing this as well as she thought.
“What?”
“Have you gotten me a Christmas present?” At least his voice sounded as strained as his face looked. She moved her free leg, and one side of the dress slipped behind it, revealing more of her body to him.
“A Christmas present?” She bent to touch her lips to his temple, and absorbed the hard, demanding beat there. His skin felt hot under her lips. This close, she could feel, the heat of him, holding off the chill of her state of near-undress.
“Uh-huh.” He went even stiller when she moved to the other temple, leaning across him, close enough that his breath teased the tops of her breasts. “I know you shop early, so I wondered if you’d already gotten my present.”
She noted his assumption that she would get him a present, but felt too absorbed by the way his pulse first hesitated then sprinted to comment on that.
“No. Why?”
“I know you like to save time, and I can save you some time shopping.”
“Oh?” She leaned back enough to see his eyes, and felt a deeper heat when she met his look.
“Yeah. I know exactly what I want.”
“What’s that?”
“This.”
He pushed the dress off her shoulders and down her arms. His palm cupped her left breast possessively, weighing it, testing it, molding it. His thumb hooked over the bustier’s edge, stroking the bare flesh and catching her nipple tauntingly.
“You like that, don’t you, Bette?” he asked when the nipple hardened and peaked.
Swaying a little toward him, she gave him the answer they both knew, but he seemed to need to hear. “Yes.”
“You feel so wonderful. And you look . . .” He pulled her forward sharply, so she fell against him while he buried his face between her breasts. She felt the rasping moistness of his tongue against her skin and shivered with it. Slowly, he eased her all the way down to his lap, and raised his head and looked at her.
She felt herself responding, her blood pooling deep in her body at the desire in his look, her lips curving at the glint of humor. He’d pulled a tighter rein on his control. For now. They both knew what pleasure there’d be in testing how much longer it would last.
“You look like the most beautiful package I have ever seen,” he said. He stroked her from hip to belly to waist to abdomen to breast, burning the feel of his touch into her through the thin fabric. He slid the narrow straps off her shoulders and freed her breasts, letting his fingers trail one by one over peaks already hard, until she wanted more, much more. He tongued each, briefly, tantalizingly. “A beautifully wrapped package, too. But you know what happens to wrapping paper Christmas morning.”
Something blazed in her, but she wouldn’t give in to it. Not yet. When he raised his head, she forced her fingers to move slowly, deliberately. Open one button of his shirt. Then the next. And the one after. Complete one task, then start on the next.
“In my family,” she told him, pulling out the tails of his shirt, and helping him slide it off before opening the waist of his slacks, “we carefully remove the tape and fold the paper neatly.”
Her primness was marred only by a soft gasp at the end when he guided her hands under his loosened waistband and around him.
“You would,” he groaned. Quickly, he shed the rest of his clothing and dragged the hosiery down her legs. “Not me. I rip.”
One word, and he would. She knew it, and it thrilled her. But sense prevailed—this time, she thought with a wicked grin to herself and a defiant mental promise that there would be a next time. She bent her head, dipping her tongue into his ear, then whispering, “There's no need to rip in order to unwrap, Paul.”
“No? Then there’d better be a fast way to undo this thing.”
“There is.”
“How?” She heard the break of control in his voice, felt it in his urgent hands. “How the hell does this —”
“There—”
“But, it doesn’t—”
“Yes. It has—”
A growl reverberated against her skin in the vicinity of her breastbone, the sound a mixture of frustration eased and satisfaction anticipated. “Snaps.”
Abruptly, she felt the couch’s smooth cool leather against her back, the lace and satin bunched around her waist, the heat and weight of her man above her. Around her. Inside her.
“Ah, Bette . . .”
“Yes.”
“God...so good. So damn good.”
Then there wer
e no words. But whispers. Warmth. Moist darkness. Movement. Moans. Fire. Wet lightning.
Rhythm. Explosion.