She reached for her bottle of Chanel, then stopped.
He’d said naked—nothing but her hair and a smile.
She walked around the condo, lighting candles, her pulse quickening in anticipation of the pleasure to come. Sex with Will was…indescribable. No man had ever made her feel the way he made her feel—as if life began and ended in his arms.
She loved him more than she’d ever thought she could love anyone.
She had just turned down the covers on their bed, when the phone rang. Knowing Will would be back in a few minutes, she was tempted to let it ring through to voice mail. Then she saw the number on caller ID.
Lead in her stomach, she picked up the receiver. “Hello, Mother.”
Will stepped around the orange cones that blocked the sidewalk in front of their condo complex. Lord knew how much longer this construction project—which seemed to eat more of the street and sidewalk every day—would take the city to complete. He couldn’t wait until they moved out of this place and into the old Victorian they’d bought a few blocks away on Capitol Hill. He’d finished fixing it up last week, and they’d started moving their belongings one pickup truck–load at a time. When they got back from their honeymoon in France, they’d rent a U-Haul, and Will and his friends would make short work of the rest of it—furniture, clothes, dishes, the new plasma TV.
He took the front steps to their condo two at a time, oblivious to the pain in his knee, the spicy-sweet scent of chicken pad thai wafting from the plastic bag in his hand. He was ravenous—in more ways than one. The thought of Lissy waiting for him, warm and willing and naked, was making him intensely horny.
He slipped the key into the door, pushed it open and saw a handful of candles lit on the coffee table. He smiled. “Honey, I’m home.”
Saying it amused him, pleased him. Perhaps it was the suburban normalcy of it. Or perhaps it was the fact that at age thirty-two he’d almost given up on the idea of having a honey to come home to. Not that there hadn’t been lots of women in his life, but most of them had been more interested in fucking his name than in having a relationship with him. Once they’d discovered he wasn’t rich and realized how mundane the life of a sports journalist was, they’d moved on to the next bit of beef in a jockstrap.
But not his Lissy. The very things that attracted other women to him had left her cold—perhaps because she knew how little money could buy.
That and she’d had a pathological loathing for sports.
He found her in the dining room, setting china plates, silverware and water glasses on the table they’d so recently sanctified, her long coppery hair swaying as she moved, her luscious round ass bare. She looked over her shoulder at him, her lips curving in a smile that made his blood run hot.
Then he saw the look in her green eyes.
He set the plastic bag on the sideboard. “What’s wrong?”
She turned toward him, hair spilling over one soft shoulder, and walked into his arms. “Nothing really. My mother called.”
He ought to have known. He pulled her closer, felt the tension in her body, reined in his own temper. “What was it this time? ‘He’s marrying you for the money,’ or ‘He’s marrying you for sex’?”
“Both. Maybe we should just elope so she’ll give up.”
“Since I’m after your money and your body, I’ll do whatever you want to do.”
She laughed. “What I want to do is eat! I’m starving.”
It wasn’t until hours later, when the pad thai was long gone and other appetites had been temporarily satisfied, that Will got an idea as to what her mother must have said to upset her.
She sat before him in the tub, her back against his chest, her head resting limply against his shoulder, her damp hair clinging to his skin, while he lazily fondled a lush breast.
“Do you think it’s possible for a couple to have too good a sex life?”
He managed not to laugh out loud. “Hell, no. Are you kidding?”
“What I mean is could a couple get together and end up getting married just because they had a great sex life? Could they mistake hot sex for love?”
She wasn’t kidding.
There were times Will wished he could rip the phone line out so Lissy’s mother could never call again. The woman had all the misery her late husband’s money could buy, and she seemed to be doing her best to make sure her only child was miserable, too. Thank God she hated snow and lived in San Diego!
A wealthy attorney and his useless trophy wife, John and Christa Charteris had led a cold life, not a shred of affection between the two of them, as far as Will could tell from the stories he’d heard. John had wanted Christa for sex and looks, and Christa had hooked onto him for money and prestige. Their marriage had generated very little love in which to nurture a child.
Lissy’s relationship with her father, never warm, had soured after she’d left the pre-law program at Cornell to double major in art and English. Her father had cut her off, both financially and emotionally. Though he’d eventually resumed paying her tuition, he’d died of a heart attack without making amends. Her relationship with her mother, a calculating woman who clearly did not approve of her daughter’s independent streak or her choice of man, wasn’t much better.
Lissy Charteris. Poor little rich girl.
Growing up, Will wouldn’t have thought it possible to be wealthy and unhappy. He’d watched his mother literally work herself to death to feed him and keep the overpriced roof over their heads and had thought having money must be the solution to everything. He’d planned to earn millions through football, only to have that ripped away from him. It was his mother’s illness and death that made him see money for what it was—a convenience, but no substitute for health or life or love. Eventually he’d come to disdain those who’d had the way paved for them, preferring to spend time with people who’d earned their way through life.
Lissy was both. Born to privilege, she’d turned her back on it in order to live the life she wanted. It was just one of the things Will cherished about her.
Feeling the frustration he always felt when he thought of how her mother treated her, he said the first thing that came to mind. “Hot sex is a better reason than most to get married. Look at all the people who marry for money or power or property.”
Like your parents.
He felt her stiffen, knew he’d somehow said the wrong thing, so he hastily added, “Of course, when it comes time for me to walk down the aisle, it will be for the right reason, the only reason that matters—my bride’s cooking.”
Her snort, followed by giggles, told him he’d been reprieved.
Lissy lay with her head against Will’s sweat-slick chest, running her fingers absentmindedly through his chest hair, her body limp and glowing from their most recent round of crazed sex. She loved these nights when she had him to herself.
An unpleasant flutter in her stomach drew her mind back to what she’d spent all evening trying to forget—her mother’s call. She was still trying to get Lissy to postpone the wedding until Will signed a prenup, dangling cash in her face as if she could be bought. Hadn’t she proved long ago that she didn’t give a damn about her parents’ money?
But it wasn’t the usual discussion about divorce and assets that had bothered her; it was her mother’s comment about sex and love. She had quoted some study showing that couples who’d lived together before getting married had a higher divorce rate than those who waited to have sex until after marriage.
Lissy had argued that the study, like most, was skewed from the beginning, as people who waited until after marriage to have sex tended to be people who also opposed divorce. Statistics never told the whole story. Any good journalist knew that.
You wouldn’t be the first woman to confuse a man’s sexual attention with love, Melisande. Just wait till he gets his fill of you and the hormones wear off. Men like him marry for two things: sex and money.
Not her Will. No way.
“Do you realize that a hundred or
even fifty years ago, we’d both be virgins?” She didn’t know she’d spoken until she heard her own voice.
His fingers stroked the hollow above her hip. “Good thing it’s not a hundred or even fifty years ago. My balls would have burst by now.”
“But don’t you think things were more romantic then? Sex would have been a great mystery for us.”
“I doubt it would have been that much of a mystery. We’d probably both have grown up in the country and seen our share of farm-animal lovin’.”
“The point I’m trying to make is that neither of us would have any personal experience with sex until our wedding night.”
“That’s assuming that I hadn’t already charmed my way into your bloomers or found some ‘loose woman’ willing to let me defile her.” His voice dropped to a dark, velvet purr. “I can be very persuasive.”
Lissy sat up, trying not to laugh, and glared at him. “You’re ruining my fantasy.”
He grinned, stretched and folded his muscular arms behind his head. “Oh. Sorry. Go on. I’m listening.”
“After the reception, we’d go to the bridal chamber, where everything would be roses and candles. There’d be a fire in the hearth—”
“—if it were winter.”
She ignored him. “You’d undress me first and then yourself. I’d probably never have seen a naked man before, so I’d be shy and afraid—”
“Oh, Will, it’s soooo big! Please, don’t hurt me!”
“—but you would soothe me and assure me that everything was going to be fine. Then you’d undress yourself, carry me to the bed and make passionate love to me.”
He reached out, ran his fingers down her hair. “Are you sure that’s how it would go? I think you’ve read too many novels. If it were a hundred years ago and we were both virgins, I think it would go more like this.”
“Do tell.”
“We’d have been raised to see nudity as shameful, so the room would be dark, and you would have changed from your wedding gown to a proper white nightgown and gotten into bed before I entered the room. I’d come in, wearing my nightshirt, and crawl into bed with you. You’d be worried that it was going to hurt, and I’d be worried that my dick might not work. I’d lift your gown up to your hips, spread your legs, and it would be over in a minute. You’d hate it, and you’d get pregnant—with the first of my twelve children.”
She fought back a giggle. “Thank you for that enchanting vision of romance.”
“You’re welcome.” His knuckles grazed a nipple, sent heat skittering into her belly.
She batted his hand away. “You’re just afraid you can’t do it.”
He frowned. “Do what?”
“Wait.”
He raised a dark eyebrow, raked her with his gaze. “It’s a bit too late for that, isn’t it?”
And then it came to her. “Not if we start over.”
“Start over?”
“You know—wait until our wedding night to have sex again.”
The look on his handsome face almost made her laugh out loud, but there was something about this that felt important to her.
Then he sat up and brushed a strand of hair from her cheek, the humor gone from his eyes. “This is about something your mother said, isn’t it?”
She hated that he was able to see through her so clearly. “I just think it would add to the romance if we held back a little bit, made ourselves wait. It’s only two weeks. Unless you don’t think you can hack it.”
Will was tempted to end this conversation by pulling her beneath him and showing her just what she’d be giving up, but something told him saying the wrong thing just now would be a bad idea. Besides, he wasn’t one to turn down a challenge.
“If you want to wait until after the wedding to have sex again, that’s fine.”
The surprise on her face mirrored the astonishment he felt.
What the hell did you just say, Fraser? Are you an idiot?
Her eyes narrowed. “You really think you can do it?”
Her long hair hung about her heart-shaped face, tangled from a night of repeated lovemaking. Her nipples peeked out from between the strands, just begging to be licked and sucked. Her lips were swollen from kissing, and her cheeks were still rosy from her last orgasm, when she’d ridden him to within an inch of his life. Her green eyes shone with a mix of intelligence and feminine allure. And he was agreeing not to fuck her?
“Of course I can do it. I’m not some eighteen-year-old college student.”
She sat up on her heels. “Then how about we make a bet?”
He leaned back on his elbows, suddenly feeling competitive. “You name it.”
“Okay. We agree not to have sex again until our wedding night, and whoever gives in and asks for it first loses.”
That sounded easy enough—two weeks, no sex. “Fine. It’s a deal.”
“But there has to be some penalty.” She hopped out of bed, walked the length of the room, forcing him to stare first at the bare curves of her scrumptious ass, and then at the auburn curls of her muff. “If you lose, you and your groomsmen have to wear the mauve cummerbunds I wanted.”
He gave a snort, lifted his gaze to her face. “In that case, there is no way I’m going to lose. I’m not wearing pink.”
“Mauve.”
“Whatever.”
She crawled back into bed, smiling. “We’ll see.”
“And what about you, Miss Lissy? What price will you pay if you come begging for it?” And then he had it. “I know. You’ll have to promise to love, honor and obey me.”
Her mouth fell open in outrage. “No way! Absolutely not!”
He couldn’t help but chuckle. “Okay, then. How about this? If you lose, you have to wear the slutty gown.”
“The Oleg Cassini?”
He had no idea what the designer’s name was, but he’d loved the way she’d looked in that dress—ultrafeminine and sexy as hell—and had been disappointed when she’d decided to go with something else. “The one that’s skintight and has the crystals on the straps.”
She gaped at him. “The Badgley Mischka! I’m fashion editor of the paper, Will. I can’t walk down the aisle half-naked!”
“Then I guess the bet is off.” A part of him—the part located about six inches below his navel—heaved a sigh of relief. He reached over and turned off the bedside lamp.
Then out of the darkness, she spoke. “You’re on.”
Lissy’s first inkling that their bet might not be as easy to honor as she’d imagined came the next morning when she awoke to find herself rubbing her bare derriere against something delicious and hard. Still half-asleep, she was already wet and more than a little turned on.
With a surprised gasp, she scooted away from him only to discover he was asleep—and sporting a glorious, thick, full erection.
She rose, pulled on her white silk bathrobe and headed off to the shower, drowsily pondering the strangeness of penile hydraulics and wondering how she was going to make it two weeks when her body seemed inclined to betray her even while she slept. Clearly, she had to do something to protect herself.
She brought it up as she sliced a grapefruit in half for their breakfast. “I’m moving into the guest room until after the wedding.”
Will, who had just shuffled out of the bedroom wearing nothing but boxers and a serious case of bedhead, looked at her as if she’d just suggested a vacation on Mars. He poured himself a cup of coffee, leaned back against the counter and sipped with the reverence of a man at prayer.
Some people needed their coffee in the morning. Will was one of those people.
After five minutes had passed and he’d moved on to his second cup, he spoke. “Okay. But isn’t that taking things a bit too far?”
Not willing to admit that she’d nearly lost the bet before she’d even opened her eyes this morning, she shrugged. “It just seems that if we’re not having sex, we shouldn’t be sleeping together either. It’s more romantic that way, don’t you think?”
She plopped the grapefruit halves on lunch plates, plucked two slices of fresh, hot toast out of the toaster, and carried the plates over to the kitchen table.
“Okay,” he said, echoing himself and looking completely confused. “I’ll move the boxes out for you, make some room.”
Then he set his coffee down on the table and went off to fetch the morning papers. He returned with an armful, and the two of them quickly sorted through the plastic bags and newsprint. He got all the sports sections. She got all the fashion, arts and lifestyle sections. Whoever finished fastest got first dibs on the news sections.
Neither of them spoke as they nibbled their breakfasts and perused the pages. Reading newspapers was serious work, offering the conscientious editor a chance to spot every typo he or she had missed the day before, as well as the opportunity to compare the contents of one’s own paper to that of the competition. As Tom Trent, the paper’s rather caustic editor in chief was fond of saying, being a journalist meant starting every day with your bare ass hanging out the window, waiting for passersby to come along and smack it.
In the world of newspapers, mistakes were very public.
A half hour later their gazes met over the serrated edges of newsprint.
“Anything?” He reached for his coffee.
“I think the Post completely overplayed that feature on customized drapes. I mean, how exciting are drapes?”
He rubbed his foot against hers beneath the table and grinned. “Pretty damned exciting—if you’re a window.”
The contact was reassuring, comforting—arousing. “Do you know that a hundred or even fifty years ago you’d have ruined me?”
His grin grew wider. “Not me, sugar. You were ruined when I met you.”
“No, I mean by moving in with me. You’d have ruined my reputation for all time.”
He got a disgusted look on his face. “What did people do before television—sit around discussing their neighbors’ sex lives? ‘Verily, Myrtle, methinks he hath boffed her silly.’ If you ask me, whatever we’ve lost in romance, we’ve more than made up for in the people-minding-their-own-business department.”