Beauty & the Beasts (22 page)

Patience, Eric thought tensely. Finesse. Their lovemaking had to be good for Madeline. He knew in his bones that this was his one chance.

He didn’t pull over to the side of the road to kiss her, much as he wanted to. He wasn’t sure they’d have gotten any farther if he had, and she deserved better than a quickie in the back seat.

When he parked the car in the garage, shutting the rolling door with a push of the button, he turned to her, still not letting himself touch. “Are you sure?” he asked hoarsely.

Madeline nodded, almost but not quite smiling. “How many times do I have to say it?”

“A hundred.” He put his hand to her throat, pausing where her pulse beat frantically, then slid it upward to her jaw. “A thousand.” He bent his head, mouth poised just above hers. “A million.”

This kiss was deep and slow and left him feeling drugged. He grazed her lips with his teeth, traced the curve of her cheek, nibbled on her earlobe. Then he lifted his head and for a. moment just gazed at the
perfection of her face. A blush ran across her cheekbones, her lashes formed a thick fan against ivory skin, and her mouth was soft. When she opened her eyes, he saw the dark dreaminess that he’d imagined nights when he couldn’t sleep.

“We’d better get in the house,” he said roughly.

She stared at him with clouded eyes, then blushed again and gave a small nod.

Her dress rode up as she swung her legs out. Then she dropped her purse and had to bend over to pick it up from the concrete floor. Finally she was on her feet, far less gracefully than usual. Maybe she felt a little foggy, too.

He kissed her and wrapped his hands around her hips, lifting her against him. She felt so good there he hurt. If she quit on him this time, he was going to sink to his knees and bellow like a wounded bull.

Still kissing her, Eric maneuvered them through the door into the kitchen. He stumbled over something, staggered, regained his footing. Looking down, he realized it was Hannah, waiting just inside. The cat gave her speciality, a silent meow, and gazed up hopefully.

“Oh!” Madeline tugged away from him and scooped up the small gray tortoiseshell. “Did we almost trample you? Sweetie, you’re getting plump.”

Eric groaned and sagged back against the wall.

Madeline lifted her head. A smile quivered on her sexy mouth. “I suppose we could talk later about how she’s doing.”

“Much later,” he said from low in his throat. He
watched her deposit Hannah on the floor. “Come here.”

“Ooh, how macho,” she teased, but took a step, anyway, and melted into his arms.

Hannah didn’t follow them down the hall. Eric did have to evict Mannequin from his bed and plop her out in the hall, shutting the door in her sweet vacant face.

Madeline’s breath was warm on his neck. “It’s just like my house.”

They wouldn’t have room on the bed if they combined their households. The thought wasn’t such a jolt this time. They’d manage. They could keep their bedroom door shut. Like now.

He framed Madeline’s face with his hands, his fingers slipping into her smooth hair. “I’ll ruin it.”

She smiled, lifted both arms like a ballerina pirouetting and pulled out pins that dropped to the carpet in a brief shower. Her glorious mane fell free, tumbling over his hands and her silken shoulders.

He heard an animal sound that shouldn’t have come from a man. Her mouth opened willingly for his; he ravaged it, his tongue thrusting. At the same time he shimmied up her dress and drove his hands inside her panties, gripping her high firm buttocks.

He was going to embarrass himself if he didn’t get inside her.

Finesse.
She wasn’t ready. She couldn’t be.

He wrenched his mouth away and squeezed his eyes shut, breathing hard through his nose. When he opened his eyes, he looked down into hers.

They were misty and wondering. “I’m sure,” she
whispered, for the third or fourth or hundredth time just over the thunder of his heartbeat.

Hands trembling, he very slowly peeled off her panties and stockings, kneeling at the last to slip the silk off each foot as she lifted it. There she stood above him, naked from the waist down, gloriously slim and pale, with a V of silky dark curls holding a hint of the same fire as the auburn hair that now swung down over her breasts.

His hands went back up, from her ankles to her calves, stroking the backs of her knees, up, up her thighs. God, her skin was smooth! She took little sobbing breaths. When he reached those curls, he didn’t dip his fingers in. Instead, he bent down and rubbed his cheek against them. And then he turned his face and kissed her there.

The breath that escaped her was closer to a sob than a sigh. He kissed her again, then rose to his feet, lifting her with him, wrapping her legs around his waist, tumbling them both onto the bed.

Not ready. Finesse.

But she squirmed as though she was, adjusted her hips to cradle him and ran her fingernails over his back. Only his pants were between them. He thought he might go crazy. He sought her mouth again, willing himself not to rip down his zipper and take her.

Not yet.

Instead, he wormed his hand under her back and found the zipper of her dress, working it down even as he kissed her. Once it tangled with the bedcovers and he swore. Madeline giggled and arched her back
to give him better access. When her dress loosened, he made another guttural sound and tugged it down.

He’d been right. No bra.

“You’re—” He stopped.

“You can say it.” Madeline was working on his last shirt button. “I’ll say it.” She pushed his shirt off his shoulders. “You’re beautiful. Sexy.” Her hands searched the contours of muscle and bone. “Will you take your pants off?”

“In a minute.” Now her searching fingers were driving away what little sanity he still possessed. “They’re the only thing keeping me from having you.”

Madeline said simply, “I know,” and kissed his nipple.

He’d never removed an article of clothing as fast as he did those slacks. Then he put on a condom damn near as quickly.

Just for one second he reared above her, looking, savoring, not quite believing. He’d been afraid they would never get here. He didn’t know how they had. Why she’d changed her mind. Why the evening had been one long seduction, why her thighs were parted to welcome him, why she was saying again, “I’m sure. Eric, please.”

And then he lowered himself over her, found the damp hot entrance to her body and thrust Every muscle in his neck and back was rigid as he fought to go slowly. Madeline’s arms came up around his neck and she let out a long, sighing, “Ooooh.”

Heaven. Sheathed so tightly in her, he paused long
enough to brush her mouth with his and murmur, “You feel incredible.
I
feel incredible.”

“Yes.” Her eyes didn’t seem quite able to focus. “Me, too. I didn’t know…”

Gasoline to the fire. Eric pulled out, buried himself again. Again. And again. Desire roared over him like a sonic boom rumbling from the sky. Madeline cried out and clung, hips lifting to meet every driving thrust.

When he didn’t think he could hold on for another second, shivers started deep in her belly and spread, ripples of exquisite tightening that had her stiffening, digging her fingers into his shoulders and gasping. The rhythmic squeeze of her muscles carried him over the edge.

Heaven.

S
HE’D NEVER FELT
more gloriously feminine and fulfilled in her life than she did when Eric kissed her on her doorstep and left her that night.

After slipping inside, Madeline turned the dead bolt, did a twirl and laughed out loud.

“Madeline? Is that you?”

Oh, Lord. Her mother was sitting up waiting for her.

Reluctant to ruin her mood, she ran her fingers through her hair, hoped the end of her evening wasn’t too obvious and moved to the open archway. “Yes, I’m home.”

Mrs. Howard sat primly at one end of the couch, the lamplight pooled on a book open in her lap. “Did you have a nice time?”

“Yes, very nice.” Even more reluctantly Madeline stepped into the living room, where she couldn’t avoid the light.

Her mother’s eyebrows rose. After a pause she said, “You looked lovely tonight.”

The slight emphasis on the
looked
made obvious that it was past tense. In other words, now Madeline’s appearance was tawdry, past its bloom. The first compliment she remembered hearing from her mother in years, and it was delivered with a sting.

“That’s all you’ve ever cared about, isn’t it, Mom?” Appalled, she heard herself say the unspeakable. Couldn’t stop herself now that she’d begun. Had she shed all her inhibitions tonight? “I should apologize for letting you down. How dare I live without taking care that my face and clothes are flawless!”

Her mother stared at her in shock. “What on earth are you talking about?”

“Oh, you know exactly what I’m talking about.” A part of Madeline gloried in the freedom to say everything, to let the bitterness she’d nourished so long leach from every word. Another part of her stood back, horrified. She didn’t have to do this. It wasn’t necessary for her accusations to escalate. All those years she and her mother had been so careful not to destroy their fragile relationship. Why blow it now?

Too late, because she’d already launched her attack. “All you ever wanted was the money and the glamor and the glory of my success! Forget having a daughter who might get pimples or skin her knee
or be too busy with school or friends or a boy to play her part. I could never be fallible.” Hopelessly she threw up her hands. “Fallible? I couldn’t be a kid! Do you know what I felt like by. the time I was a teenager?”

Mrs. Howard rose to her feet and stood extraordinarily still. “No.”

“Like I was for sale.” Bile rose in her throat. “And you were the seller.”

Under bright spots of makeup, her mother’s face had gone pale. “What a dreadful thing to say!”

“Wasn’t I?” Madeline challenged.

“No!” Ghostly white stood out on the knuckles of her mother’s hands as she clasped them together. “I did my best for you.”

Something close to hatred laced Madeline’s voice. Contempt, perhaps. “That was your best?”

For a moment Mrs. Howard’s gaze faltered and her mouth trembled, but then she lifted her chin and looked Madeline straight in the eye. “I suppose,” she said with dignity, “I did want the money and the glamor. Once we’d stumbled into it, it was tempting. But what you’ve forgotten is that you wanted that life, too. From the time you were a tiny girl, you came alive on the stage or in front of photographers. You begged to go to auditions.”

“We fought constantly!”

“When you were a teenager. Other parents fought with their teenagers, too. Underneath, I thought you loved the life. If nothing else, I hope you’ll believe that much.”

“How can I?” Madeline’s voice rose and she
whirled away. “I begged you to let me spend the night with friends or date or play sports! I wanted so badly to be like everyone else.”

She felt her mother’s tentative touch on her arm, and she flinched.

“I’ll say only one more thing.” Now Mrs. Howard sounded completely composed and inexpressibly sad. “After your father left, we were desperately poor. You were too young to know. We lost our house right away, and the places I could afford to rent got worse and worse. Your day care ate up half of what I earned. I had absolutely no skills that would give us a chance. When I read about the beauty pageant, it seemed like—” her voice quivered “—a bright spot in our lives. Something fun. Exciting. You were so pretty. I suppose I was channeling my own longing for chances I’d never had. I don’t know. But when you won and the agent took you on, and then they offered money for you to spend a few hours modeling…” She was begging now. “It had to be better than the way we were living.”

Madeline couldn’t have spoken if her life depended on it. Her eyes were dry, burning, and her stomach churned with pain. She couldn’t even bring herself to face her mother.

For the longest time neither moved or said a word. At last Mrs. Howard said quietly, “I always loved you. I’d have loved you even if you weren’t pretty. I was…proud of you, I admit it. I let you be our financial salvation. Maybe that was wrong. But it had nothing to do with how I loved you. Or how I love you now.”

“Then why,” Madeline whispered, “didn’t you ever say that?”

“I don’t know.”

Madeline felt as much as heard her mother leave the room, a whisper of footsteps receding, the soft closing of the guest-room door. And now the hot tears poured down her cheeks.

G
ARTH DIDN’T TALK
on the way home. Eric had studied himself carefully in the mirror after dressing to be sure he didn’t have a smear of lipstick on his neck or some other dead giveaway. Except for a stupid grin he couldn’t seem to wipe off his face, he saw nothing unusual. And what kid really looked at his father, anyway?

Not his. Garth stalked past him to the car, slumped down in his seat and, when they reached home, hurried into the house and slammed his bedroom door.

“Good night!” Eric shouted.

No rejoinder came from his son.

Tiredness replaced some of his earlier buoyancy. He opened canned food for the cats and made his usual nighttime rounds, locking up and checking windows, then took a quick shower and turned out the lights. By that time, only darkness showed beneath Garth’s bedroom door.

Eric’s bedcovers held a wisp of Madeline’s perfume—and a muskier scent. Sex. Restless, he kicked off the covers and lay sprawled on his back, wearing nothing but boxer shorts, staring up into nothingness.

He wanted her here again, warm and substantial, her voice drifting softly from the darkness beside
him: “I’m sure.” He wanted to feel again as if he could walk on water, as if she loved him.

Instead, uneasiness stole over him, settling heavily in his stomach, keeping his eyes open, shoehoming his thoughts into an inescapable maze.

Why, tonight, had Madeline defied everything she believed, everything she feared? Why had she flaunted her beauty? Seduced him?

Why was she suddenly “sure”?

He flung an arm over his face and clenched his teeth. Had he really made love to
her?
Or to a total stranger?