A Novel Seduction (19 page)

But he wanted her. He was powerless to stop.

He bit her ear, enjoying the tug of her flesh while his hand made her mewl and squirm.

“Axel,” she whispered.

Her skin was so warm, and the hair on her nape rubbed his cheek softly. He released his hand and her head fell forward with a pant.

He dropped his jeans and briefs and stepped out of them.

He tore open the condom. He didn’t want to use it, wanted to ask if he could feel her again, just as he remembered, but a careful sideways glance from her seemed to answer his unspoken question, and he unrolled the latex along his length.

She leaned into him as he entered, and the animal in him sprung to life. He buried his hand in her hair, clutching a handful as he moved.

She stretched like a cat, pushing to bring herself closer.

He bent, thrusting deeply, and found that silky triangle again with his fingers. She groaned, surprised at his touch. Her cheek was against the wall now, and he could see her eyes pressed tight, the pleasure apparent in her flushed skin and open mouth.

It took all his strength to delay his release, but he wanted to feel her tremble.

He caught her nipple and teased it lightly. Her hips began to jerk. “No,” she whispered. “No.”

Then she convulsed and he twisted the nipple tighter, drawing her peak higher. She shuddered once, twice, and with the third he thought she might collapse, so he caught her hips and held her wiggling against him.

Every nerve in him screamed for relief. He turned her limp body around and caught her leg. The heels helped, and he slid back inside. He tore off his shirt to feel those breasts bounce and gave her the first hammering blow. The nipples skimmed his chest, tightening his balls.

But this wasn’t how he wanted her. He wrenched himself free, lifted her in his arms and carried her to the bed. In an instant he was on top of her, his tongue deep in her mouth. She wrapped her arms and legs around him,
responding feverishly. Slowly he drew away and sat up, settling himself over her waist. She was breathing deeply, watching him with her temptress’s eyes.

He palmed her breasts and brought them together, squeezing them over his length. Slowly he moved, dying in the tight, pleasuring warmth, savoring the heft in his hands. He bucked, feeling the release score his spine. When he could breathe again, he fell alongside her, groaning.

“As always,” she said, “you consider the experts, then go them a step better.”

He laughed, but his laughter was only half felt. Something had been missing. The ebullient young woman who had approached their lovemaking with unflagging joy was gone, replaced by a cooler, more self-contained partner. She had not gasped or cried. Perhaps he was the one who had changed. But to him every motion had felt as raw and powerful as it had when they’d first fallen in love.

He thought of the end of that wonderful time, that call he had answered, the ring that had interrupted his packing that day. It had been unusual for him to answer: the landline had been hers, but he’d lived there long enough for some of his own calls to come through on it, and there had just been something unusual in the tone of the ring, as if the caller were urging him to lift the receiver.

As he looked back, he must have thought it was her, calling to tell him she’d changed her mind, that he did not need to remove himself from the apartment and her life.

But it had been a nurse from a doctor’s office, a doctor whose name he didn’t know. The nurse had asked for Ellery, and when he’d said she wasn’t home, the nurse had
asked his name. He’d given it, curious, and she’d paused for a moment before saying, “Oh, yes, I see it here. You’re listed as husband and next of kin.”

“Yes,” he’d said, feeling the hairs on his neck rising and choosing to be deliberately vague in his correction. “We live together.” He heard the shuffle of paper. “Is there something wrong?”

“No. Not at all. I was just checking her privacy options. Will you please let Miss Sharpe know the report shows the procedure was complete? She should have no more problems.”

“The procedure.” He had tried not to make it sound like a question.

“Yes, the D and C. Everything is clear. No remaining products of conception.”

Products of conception?
“Okay,” he said uncertainly. “You’ll be able to conceive again,” the woman said, her voice suddenly reassuring.

“You should have no problem.”

He’d put down the phone, head spinning, and sat, unmoving, for a quarter hour before he noticed his surroundings again.
Had Ellery been pregnant? How long? Had she had an abortion? A miscarriage? Had the child been his? What part, if any, had this played in their breakup?
He’d felt as if he’d taken a hard kick to the gut. Each time he’d reached for his cell phone to call her at her aunt’s, where she and Jill had escaped for the weekend, he’d stopped, uncertain he knew the woman he was calling.

She rustled next to him on the hotel bed, pulling the sheet over them both and curling into his shoulder with a happy sigh.

Axel gazed at the gleaming dark espresso of her hair, shot through with glints of chocolate and plum. That time seemed so long ago, though the thought of it would come back to him in an unhappy rush that took his breath away and he’d find himself pulling up those photos on his camera, scouring her face for clues. He would tell himself it didn’t matter, that what was done was done, and in a quarter hour he’d be distracted by something and the memories would retreat.

He’d never expected to find himself here again by her side or with his arm in its usual place around her.

“Well,” she said with a smile in her voice.

“That about sums it up—though if I’d had to pick one word, it might have been ‘brava,’ eh?”

She looked at him and grinned. “Thanks. You were pretty wonderful yourself.”

He exhaled happily and pulled her closer. He had started this tired, and their liaison had rendered him deliciously numb. His lids were so heavy, he could barely hold them open, and the scent of her hair was like a pleasant sort of ether carrying him off to a distant wonderland where he didn’t have to worry about what any of it meant. Even if everything was different when he woke up again, every inch of him—
every
inch—would go to sleep happy now.

She got up on an elbow, allowing a whoosh of cool air to hit him, and he opened his eyes. “Hmm?”

“Bathroom,” she said, getting to her feet. “Back in a flash. Then let’s sleep.”

He sat up, grabbed a tissue and disposed of his condom, trying not to imbue her determination that he
wear one with anything more than the usual worry about STDs.

In the old days he would have lit a joint, or at least a cigarette. Now he just had to count the hours from his last shot of insulin or, for a really grand time, check his blood sugar levels. There was nothing like coming down with a serious chronic illness to really shake up one’s view of life. But the diagnosis had only served to put the last nail in a lifestyle he’d already grown out of. Once, playing hard had been the reward for working hard. These days, the work was its own reward. And he found the hours after work becoming ones he wished he could fill with something more meaningful. He listened to her in the bathroom, remembering the year he had called her his.

With the book club set for seven and a visit to London College planned before that, he knew they’d only sleep a couple hours, and he decided his blood sugar would be fine until then. He reached for his pants and found his phone. Then he pulled up his e-mail. Jill had replied to his Facebook message. “I can’t BELIEVE IT!” she’d written. “Please, please tell me she still has the shirt.”

Axel grinned and wrote back, “I don’t know. It’s been pretty hard keeping any shirt on her lately. Next time you see her, ask her about dumping the yeast.” He hit
SEND
, then called up Black’s e-mail from before the flight and typed,

Ellery’s research continues. She has wrapped herself around the subject and has been banging away since we arrived.

I’m here all week, folks.

I have probed her a little bit—it was admittedly a very quick review—but I liked what I saw. She also reviewed my stuff and found it deeply penetrating.

He backspaced over the last line, then changed his mind and put it back in.

“You’re e-mailing?” Ellery had emerged from the bathroom

“Just something about an assignment,” he said vaguely.

“Bed?” she asked, slipping between the covers.

He quirked an inquisitive brow.

“Sleep.” But her look suggested while sleep was it for now, the future definitely held promise.

“Sounds heavenly.” And as he shut off the light, he wondered what, if anything, it all meant.

Blue Lagoon Geothermal Springs, Iceland

Black waved the hot steam away from the top of the water, clutched his ballooning bathing trunks and reread the last line of Mackenzie’s e-mail.

“What?” Bettina lay half submerged in the hot, milky blue pool beside him, eyeing him like a crocodile.

“I’m not quite sure. I have the oddest impression of having just read porn.”

“For heaven’s sake, put that thing down. I didn’t come here to watch you fiddle with your BlackBerry. I can do that on videoconference. I still don’t understand why you chose this godforsaken place.”

“It seemed about equidistant from London and New York, my love.”

“The Presidential Suite at the Royal Savoy in Madeira is equidistant. Rio is equidistant. Iceland is an unattended petrol station on an ice floe. For God’s sake, the place looks like it was bombed.”

“It’s one of the largest areas of geothermal activity in the world. It’s practically one of the Seven Wonders.”

“It’s practically a nuclear waste dump. I can see the power plant right there.” She made a scornful noise and swam in a slow circle in front of him. Black watched her pale locks stretching hypnotically over a clingy red suit and felt his own trunks tighten.

“It’s one of the few places I can be sure we won’t run into anyone we know,” he added. “And you only had a day before your conference.”

She
hmm
ed, relenting a degree.

“Besides, there’s a lovely fireplace in the bedroom.”

With an enigmatic smile, she ran a finger along the edge of his waistband. “Are you going to put down your e-mail?”

He obeyed instantly. “It was about your article.”

The croc eyes lit with interest. “When can I read it?”

“Well, my dear, it takes—”

“You’re not going to disappoint me, are you?” She leaned back just far enough to pierce the surface with her hardened nipples. “I want to read it.”

He tried to ward off the incipient erection, heart racing, as the headline
INTERNATIONAL INCIDENT
flashed through his head. “As soon as I have it.”

“Do you think you can get it by Friday? A draft, at least.”

He felt her hands on his suit, tugging, exploring. He clutched the wall behind him. “I’ll try.”

“‘Try’?” She held up a finger. “I can hold my breath underwater for two minutes. Why don’t you show me what
you
can do for two minutes?” She grabbed the BlackBerry, placed it in his hand and slid slowly down his body and out of sight.

St. Paul’s Church, Covent Garden, London

Axel clutched his jacket against the rising wind and gazed curiously at the phone screen. He had a general idea of what Black meant by “Send maniscip ttttonit. oNo excussssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss,” but fifty-two “S’s”? Had he been typing with an eggplant?

He turned his gaze to Ellery. The London College connection had canceled on them, and Ellery had immediately suggested that they head for Covent Garden instead.

She had been surprisingly untransformed by their brief assignation. He’d woken after an hour and hopped out of bed to begin a quest for something to appease his rapidly falling blood sugar. When he’d returned, apple in hand, she’d already gotten dressed and was reading. Not a word had been spoken regarding the moments before they’d gone to sleep. If Axel had had anything more than two extremely mediocre beers on the flight over, he’d have sworn he’d blacked out and imagined the whole thing. Not exactly the long-lasting impression Jemmie would have left.