A Kiss Remembered (18 page)

“It’s not so little anymore,” she said against the warm masculine skin of his throat.

“Do they make maternity clothes in conservative gray pinstripes?”

“I hate conservative gray pinstripes as much as you do. No one has complained about my maternity clothes. It gives my women customers confidence to see a woman combining a career and motherhood.”

Four months of pregnancy had made little difference in her body except for the obviously healthy growth of the infant and the fullness of her breasts, both of which delighted the expectant father. Grant’s hands explored her abdomen each day, measuring the progress of their child.

“I love him already,” he said, kissing the still supple skin of her abdomen. “But not quite as much as I love his mother,” he whispered, straightening up far enough to kiss the deep cleft between her breasts.

“Even after three years of marriage?”

“Has it been that long?” His mind wasn’t on the conversation. He was lazily testing the texture of her nipple against his tongue.

She purred and slipped her hand past the waistband of his trousers. “Yes, and I’m still fighting coeds off you.”

“Naw,” he scoffed with what breath was left him.

“Oh yes. They can be hot-blooded, too. I know what it’s like to sit in a classroom and lust after the teacher.”

“You do?”

“Um-huh.”

After her graduation, they had moved from Cedar-wood to Tulsa where she had secured a prestigious position in a bank. Grant had begun teaching at a noted state college and within two years had become chairman of the political-science and prelaw department. He was still as ruggedly handsome as ever, trim and athletic. The additional silver in his hair only heightened his attractiveness.

For their first Christmas together, she’d given him a pipe and a tweed jacket with suede patches on the elbows. He’d looked up from the unwrapped present with ill-disguised disappointment. “No professor should be without them,” she’d said teasingly. On December 26 he’d exchanged them for a leather battle jacket and a tight pair of jeans. Grudgingly, she had admitted that they were an improvement over her selections, but she glared at every woman on campus who dared to appreciate his sex appeal overtly.

Now and then fragmented accounts of the Lancaster scandal would surface, but the details of it grew dim in public memory. Grant was admired for what he was now. The shadowy past had little influence on the respect he presently commanded. Indeed, he’d been asked to consider running for the state legislature.

“Do you want to?” Shelley had asked in delight when he’d informed her of the political-party committee that had approached him.

“I wouldn’t be opposed to becoming involved on a local or even a state level. Maybe if we inject some integrity into state politics, some of the muck I saw in Washington will clear up.”

He was still considering it and she had made it clear that whatever his decision, she was behind him all the way. Her life was full to overflowing. The years with Daryl, who they had read was already divorced from his second wife, might never have been. Her life had begun the day Grant Chapman had invited her for coffee after his political-science class. Or rather, the day he had kissed her the first time when she was still in high school. Those dismal years in between had almost been erased from her memory.

Now, as he held her, all the love she had for him went into her ardent caress. “Shelley,” he gasped. “Since you’re not behaving at all like a reserved banker should, I’m going to have to unzip my pants.”

“Why don’t you just take them off,” she suggested with a sultry voice and a lascivious wink. Their hands competed over whose could move the fastest, until he was as naked as she.

“Got any more good ideas?” he asked in her ear as he slid his hand between her slender thighs.

“Um-huh,” she hummed. She touched him again, rubbing him against her own body.

He sighed her name as he lifted her and carried her into the bedroom. Laying her gently on the bed, he came down beside her, facing her. She nuzzled her face against the crinkly dark hair on his chest. Her mouth moved seductively. Daintily she caressed him with her tongue.

“Shelley, you’re … yes … sweet… .”

She lifted her head for the glory of his deep, plundering kiss. As ever, it robbed her of breath, of reason. The cords of her body began to vibrate like the strings of a finely tuned harp. She closed her lips around his tongue as it roamed her mouth, tasting her, gathering her essence and making it his.

His hands cupped her breasts, lifting them and pressing them together. He lowered his head and praised the new dusky color of the sensitive nipples.

“Grant, love me,” she beseeched him as he joined their two bodies into one.

Embedded deep inside her, he rocked them toward the sublime. “This is the way I first made love to you,” he said. “Remember, Shelley?”

“Yes, yes,” she said against his mouth as she felt herself slipping into the velvet oblivion. “I remember.”