“I can’t take this anymore!” he shouted fiercely, grabbing her by both arms and pulling her off the bed. “I don’t care what might happen later! I can’t stand seeing you like this and I can’t stand myself like this! Do you want me. Red? Do you want me to stay here? Do you want me to be your lover until you go back to Washington?”
She looked up at him in stark amazement. “W-what?”
“Oh, Red,” he said hoarsely, and grasped her face between his big hands. “Look what I did to you. I’m sorry, Red.”
“I d-don’t need a m-mercy—”
“I’m the one who needs mercy, because I’m half out of my mind from wanting you.” He pulled her closer and searched her eyes. “No promises, no regrets. Just you and me. You need a teacher, and I promise you that I’ll be the best.” His voice dropped to a graveled whisper, and he repeated, “Do you want me to be your lover?”
Dreams came true, magic was real, and for the first time in her life she belonged.
“Oh yes.“
DARKNESS WAS A gentle cloak around the house, and the open windows let in just enough air to stir the flames on the big candles James had placed on the bedside stand.
Erica smoothed trembling hands over her hair and robe as she stood there in the flickering brightness watching him light more candles on the dresser. Her skin felt deliciously warm and receptive, as though the bath she’d just finished had cleaned away old sorrows.
James glanced up and saw her in the doorway. He straightened slowly, smiling at the way she eyed the white towel wrapped around his hips.
“Have a nice soak?” he asked. “You were only gone five minutes.”
“I was lonely.” Her heart beat a thready rhythm as she watched the candlelight dance on his body, polishing his skin to burnished copper.
He held out a hand. “That’s the last bath you’ll take alone here.”
Somehow she made her rubbery legs cross the floor to him. Erica slipped her hands into his and smiled from the inside out, emotion rushing through her. “You made the room look beautiful,” she murmured. “Even the furniture.”
She watched his breath quicken as he looked down at her. Knowing that he wanted her, that he found her extremely desirable, gave Erica a confidence she’d never had before. “Let’s go take a bath together,” she told him.
He chuckled. “Easy, Red, easy. This is a very special occasion, and everything has to be done just so. That’s why I wanted to wait until nighttime. Important ceremonies should be performed slowly and at might.”
Erica realized that she was squeezing his big, warm hands and that his fingertips were making suggestive movements against her palms. “It’s going to be a ceremony?” she murmured with a crooked smile. “Will I have to make a speech?”
He cradled her hands against the center of his chest. His dark eyes glittered with amusement and unmistakable anticipation. “No speech, but you’ll probably want to say a few words in appreciation.”
“Oh? Will I get some sort of award?”
He smiled wickedly. “You might call it that.”
Erica placed her hands flat on his chest and smoothed them slowly over his sleek skin. “I’ve never touched a man this way before,” she murmured, her face flushed more from excitement than uncertainty.
He inhaled sharply as she brushed her fingertips over him. “You missed out on a lot of awards, then, ‘cause you’re great at it.”
Erica grasped his shoulders and looked up at him wistfully. “I read how- to books for fun. Ask me any clinical question. Go ahead. I know exactly how things are supposed to be done.”
He put his hands on her waist and pulled her closer, until their torsos were almost touching. “Reading about it is like trying to learn football by correspondence course. Can’t be done. You’ve got to get out there and really play.”
“Make passes,” she added, nodding sagely.
He winked at her. “And complete them.”
“Without fumbling.”
“Or rushing.”
Erica slipped her arms around his neck. “And certainly without roughing the passer.”
“Never.” He gripped her sides and slid his hands down her hips. “But it’s important to take possession any way you can.”
Her voice throaty, Erica murmured, “Intercepting the pass is one way.” She lifted her mouth to brush his.
James gripped her rump hard and teased her lips with quick, flirtatious kisses. “I like your offense.”
“I like your defense.”
“It’s not working very well,” he said huskily, and lifted her slightly, so that their mouths could merge.
The gentle invasion of his tongue made her moan and press upward for more. She quickly found herself exploring his mouth while he kept still, enjoying it.
“That’s a very unusual defense you’ve got,” Erica whispered.
“It’s all part of a winning game plan,” he said with a soft growl, then nibbled her lower lip.
Erica arched against him. Her spine felt loose and pliable; she could bend with him, wrap herself around him, easily become a part of him. “James. Oh, James. This was worth waiting thirty-three years for.”
He stepped back, holding her gently by the shoulders as he studied her with quiet determination. “That’s the way I hope you’ll feel tomorrow morning too.”
“You made me wait all afternoon,” she said teasingly. “Now you’re telling me I’ll have to wait until morning?”
He jerked her to him with playful roughness. “You’ve got a smart mouth, doll.”
Erica tilted her head back and inhaled the blended scent of masculine and feminine arousal. This was an essence no book could capture, no fantasy imagine. She looked at James through heavy, half-shut eyes. “It’s actually a very uneducated mouth. Waiting for you to train it.”
“Erica,” he said in a helpless, rebuking tone, and kissed her so deeply that her knees buckled a little and she clutched his arms for support. Then he wound a hand into her hair and turned her head to one side. His lips brushing her ear, he murmured the details of his training techniques and how he hoped she would respond. His towel fell to the floor.
Leaning against him in perfect relaxation, her senses tuned to every nuance of his voice and scent and touch, she floated in a blissfully hypnotized state. When he stepped back and took her hands again, she gazed at him in speechless surrender.
He led her to the bed and stood looking at her, his dark eyes burning with affection and desire. “Take off your robe for me. Erica Alice.”
Erica pushed the soft material from her shoulders and let it fall to the floor. Feeling a little shy, she studied his reaction stoically. “All six feet of me is happy you like tall women.”
His gaze roamed down her body with uninhibited admiration. “So you thought you weren’t sexy to me?”
“Yes. Skinny. Plain. Average. That’s my self-image. Actually, I didn’t think too much about the way I looked, until I met you. Then I wanted to be beautiful.”
Trying to put her at ease, he gestured grandly toward his arousal. “Does this look like you’re not beautiful to me? I have this reaction every time I get near you.”
Erica stepped closer and caressed him. He made a throaty sound and roughly pulled her against him. She caught her breath as her belly cushioned the hard ridge of his body and her nipples touched his chest. Sliding her hands over his lean hips and thighs. Erica explored his taut contours.
Happiness burst inside her. “I’ll never forget this night.”
“I’ll make sure of it,” he whispered, and kissed her.
Erica put her arms around him and reveled in the power and possession of his embrace. The erotic sounds of their kiss were enough to make her body open with silky anticipation.
James drew her down on the shadowy bed and lay on his back with her half on top of him. Erica rubbed her thigh over his, feeling deliciously astonished at each new experience.
James molded one hand to her hip and seared a trail of sensation down the back of
her leg, his fingertips brushing her intimately in passing. Erica realized that both she and he were panting lightly.
No fantasy could do justice to this, either—this breathless delight in sharing pleasure, this knowledge that they were partners even though he had so much experience and she had so little.
Erica cupped his face in the golden candlelight. “You are an incredible teacher.” She spoke slowly, her voice husky. And I love you, she added silently.
He gave her a slight smile and inhaled sharply as she stroked his stomach. “Keep doing that and you’ll graduate with honors.”
A minute later he switched their positions, so that she lay looking up at him. Erica trembled as he brushed the back of his fingers down her torso, stroking her breasts and belly with long, slow movements.
She burrowed her face against his shoulder and kissed the hot, smooth skin. After a hesitant second she licked it with the tip of her tongue.
“More,” he urged gruffly. “Don’t hold anything back.”
As if I could resist you, she thought. Erica tried to laugh, but the sound was more like a primitive begging for his touch. When he caressed her thighs her hips rose instinctively. Deep in a still-reasoning corner of her mind she was intrigued by the basic forces that had taken hold of her.
“This is the most natural thing in the world,” she told him, startled. “I don’t even have to think about what to do.”
James made a strangled sound, and she looked up to find his face ruddy with passion and amusement. “That’s the way it’s supposed to be. You learn quickly.”
Against her hip his aroused body was wonderfully mobile and eager. He prodded her gently, and the slow flexing of his hips brought explicit images to her mind.
He searched her half-shut eyes and saw the images there. “That’s right,” he murmured. “That’s what I wanted you to think about.”
Her back arched as his hand dipped between her thighs. “I feel so heavy and relaxed and ripe,” she whispered in awe.
James drew the hand up, circled one of her breasts, and squeezed it sensually as his mouth covered the nipple. White-hot desire shot through her body, and Erica speared her fingers into his hair.
He tantalized her as if she were a rich fruit he wanted to take whole into his mouth. The uninhibited loving left her breasts wet from his lips and tongue.
Erica made a high-pitched keening sound. She was lost in a haze of pleasure; nothing had ever felt so good in her whole life. She could have died happy, feeling James’s lips on her this way.
He whispered earthy compliments against her skin during those brief moments when his tongue wasn’t involved otherwise. They were the crude kind of words Erica heard construction workers bandy when good-looking women walked by a work site. If the workers had ever used such language about her, they’d been careful to make sure she didn’t hear.
‘Oh, thank you,” she told James in rapt gratitude. “I needed that.”
He lifted his head to smile at her, and the half-wild look of arousal in his expression excited her even more. He kissed her. “Later I want you to talk to me that way.”
“Now,” she said eagerly.
James chuckled deep in his chest and put a hand over her mouth. “It wouldn’t be a good idea.”
She knew her eyes must have looked huge with understanding, because he chuckled again. “Your voice is too sexy.”
He moved down her body, kissing, nibbling, sucking her skin roughly. Erica forgot about talking when James coaxed her legs apart and grasped her gently. “Easy, now,” he murmured in a soothing way, as his fingers became part of her.
With a ragged gasp of pleasure she pushed against his hand, aching for release. His mouth sank onto her, and he groaned happily at the taste and feel of her readiness. Erica lost all control and tugged at his hair, urging him to come to her and make this magnificent ceremony complete.
He whispered against her swollen flesh, “That’s it. Red. Want me as much as I want you.”
Half-crying with the fervor of emotion and sensation, she grasped the item he’d arranged on the bedside stand. It lay on top of its package, waiting grandly. Erica thought no other man in the world would have gone to so much trouble to make her feel safe and uninhibited at the same time.
She was beyond words; the best she could do was a hoarse mewling sound as she stroked the offering against his shoulder. He felt the odd texture against his skin and looked up, his eyes gleaming.
“Yeees?” he asked, his voice a coy rasp. But when he saw the look on her face he quickly knelt beside her and cupped his hand under her shoulders.
He pulled her upwards and watched as she prepared him with shaking hands. “Are you afraid?” he asked hoarsely, stroking the disheveled hair back from her forehead. “It won’t hurt. I swear I won’t let it hurt.”
Devotion surged through her as she looked up at him. “Not afraid,” she whispered raggedly. “I want you so much that I don’t care if it hurts.”
“Oh, Red.” He put his hands on her shoulders and eased her back. Gently he caressed her face as he lowered himself on top of her.
“Like this?” she asked as she gripped him with her thighs.
“Perfect,” he said, and it sounded like an understatement.
Their eyes met and held. Erica was lost in so many new experiences—the feel of his body nudging her patiently, the weight of him pushing her down into the mattress, the almost fierce look of controlled desire in his face.
The air seemed to hum with intensity, as if it might shatter into crystal fragments just from the swift harmony of their breaths.
Erica lifted her head and kissed him, “No more old maid, please.” Then she added in a voice too sensual for him to resist, “Do it quickly, James.”
He bowed his head to her shoulder and thrust into her with one smooth, sure movement that filled her completely. She felt her body stretching to accommodate him, but there was only that tightness, no pain.
Erica smiled, and tears came to her eyes. He drew back and looked at her anxiously. As her hips began to move in slow, erotic circles, he sighed with relief.
“No more volcano candidate,” he murmured tenderly.
She shook her head, and somewhere in the midst of it she realized that the ache inside her was exploding. Erica shut her eyes and whimpered.
He felt the gathering of sensation and moved carefully, bending his head close to hers so that he could whisper delicious promises in her ear; promises of slower times, of many times, of all night and everything she ever wanted from a man.
Erica slid her feet over the backs of his thighs and rose wildly, her hands digging into his shoulders, her lips moving soundlessly against his jaw.
Caught in her abandoned writhing, he moaned her name and, trembling violently, managed to thrust only once more before he joined her in a trance of sensation.
They rode the cloud down together, looking into each other’s eyes, hands moving in gratitude over damp, hot skin, mouths meeting to promise more.
Erica made herself admit that he didn’t think of this as anything serious, that he wanted her out of friendship and desire, not love. But she knew also that they had given each other something special, and there would always be a bond between them because of it.
The candlelight made yellow flecks in his eyes, like golden stars gleaming in a night sky. “Da-nitaka,” he murmured.
Erica stroked a fingertip along his cheekbone and asked tenderly, “What does it mean, Wolfman?”
“They are together.” He put his arms under her and lifted her slightly. Erica was lost in his gaze.
James arched gently inside her. “Their spirits are so close that they share one body,” he explained. “Da-nitaka.”
Forever, she added silently. Some day she hoped he’d want that too.
CHAPTER 8
ERICA QUICKLY DISCOVERED that James had a marvelous way of turning everything into foreplay or afterplay.
Such as at that moment. He sincerely wanted to know a
bout her construction company, but he had his head pillowed on her naked rump and he kept dawdling a finger down her spine.
“Why’d you decide to study civil engineering in college?”
Erica hugged a pillow under her chin and tried to think despite the fact that he was nibbling her right hip. “I was good in math and science, and I thought I’d make the world a better place by learning to build highways. After I graduated I decided that the last thing the world needed was more strips of concrete covered with oil slicks and flat animals.”
Now he politely kissed the spot he’d bitten. “So where’d you learn about building houses?”
“When I was at school I worked summers for a residential contractor, a woman. She wanted to give women a chance in the business, and half her crew was female. You wouldn’t believe the looks we’d get when we’d show up at a construction site with our tool belts and hard hats. We had T-shirts printed up that said ‘Yes, we’ve heard the one about the lady carpenter.’ ”
“So that’s where you learned to use a drill,” he said ruefully, and began nuzzling the small of her back.
Erica chuckled, and slumped lazily onto the pillow. His nuzzling destroyed coherent thought. Finally she twisted around and grabbed his bad knee. “Poor baby,” she said in a crooning voice, and began kissing the surgical scars that framed the kneecap.
“Sympathy. Ah. Hmmm.”
She placed kisses up his leg and scrutinized several tiny white dots on the top of his thigh. “I’d thought that these were just reverse freckles. But they’re scars.”
He cleared his throat and said softly. “That’s where I used to give myself steroid injections. But mostly I put them here.” James slapped his rump. “Hurt like hell.”
Erica rested her cheek against the scars on his thigh and curled one hand protectively over his leg. “Was it worth it?”
His voice was gruff. “At the time, yes. But I’ll never let a kid of mine do it.”
“How do steroids help a player, besides making him bigger and stronger?”
“They make you so aggressive that you want to rip people apart. That’s a good attitude for football; not so good for anything else. The last season I played, I tore up my locker before every game. Pulled it off the wall and beat the hell out of it. And I wasn’t the only player doing crazy things like that.”