Breathless (13 page)

If kissing Tawny meant blending his life with hers, he’d be a happy man.

He held her still and looked into the eyes that had swum with humor and intelligence for three years while he’d ignored them. He looked at the mouth that had cajoled and joked with him, and encouraged him when he’d been worried about clients, business, and overdue accounts. His thumbs brushed the eyebrows that she’d knit in concern for him when a job turned dangerous.

“This kiss? This kiss means a lot,” he murmured as he drank her in.

“Yes,” she breathed. “Kiss me, Stack, make me yours.”

And he slipped his lips across hers, once, twice, hesitating, drawing out the blurred heat, the want, the love.

He settled on her then, let his cock wedge along her opening, let his hands hold her head, let his lips coax and his tongue tip inside her eager mouth.

She tasted of love and forever, and he wasn’t scared.

Not at all.

This was hot. Hotter than anything he’d ever done before. A kiss. Who’d have thought it? Her body was soft and giving under his, her legs smooth and open. She kissed him back with power in every tongue stroke, with greed and female need in every response.

He lifted his head, saw her eyes gleaming in the gentle light, and dived into her mouth again. She was sweet, demanding, female in every way.

And now, finally, he was scared.

“You never touched me before,” he said. “You never let me touch you. Why now?” She shifted under him, opened enough that he could feel the wet entrance of her, the labia resting, wet and slick around his shaft. Half an inch and he’d be in her. He arched back, ready to slide, needing to bury himself and touch her from the inside.

“You can’t, we’re not protected,” she said as she slid a little to the side. “But I want you skin-to-skin so much it hurts.”

He tore open the package he pulled out of his bedside table in record time and sheathed himself quickly.

The need to drive into her consumed him, and all thought fled as he gave in to the primal need of man for woman.

She was tight and wet and lusciously ready, and he’d never felt so welcome. Tawny sighed when he seated himself in perfect alignment, in quiet reverence, and in tumultuous joy.

She rocked.

He rolled.

She bucked.

He pressed.

She came.

He groaned and let his heart pour into her as he joined her in the leap over the precipice.

“I
can’t recall ever touching you before,” he said after he’d exhausted his supply of condoms. He snugged Tawny close and petted her long, lean body from sternum to pubis. Soft, smooth, giving, he loved the textures of her, the scent, the taste. He nuzzled her hair, kissed her ear. “I don’t know that I’ll ever get enough of just touching.”

She pulled his head down to hers for a kiss. “I know what you mean.”

Dawn had edged into the room by the time the kisses ended. They were heading down an unsafe road, so he rolled her to her side and spooned instead. This way he could cup her breasts and feel her ass pressing into his crotch. He slid his mouth to the nape of her neck and nipped lightly. She turned with a sexy chuckle and he growled into her ear, turning the chuckle into a throaty laugh.

Tawny rocked her ass against his rock-hard cock. His hips strained to within an inch of sliding deep. “Stop moving or I’ll be fuck-deep inside you again. And I’m out of protection.”

She moved so fast away from him, he wondered if she’d fall out of bed. He chuckled. “Glad to see you feel the same way about a baby as I do.”

“Bad timing. I’m not having anyone’s baby until I’m sure daddy’s sticking around. Which means I’ll likely die childless.”

“You’ve got a hard line to walk on that.”

“It’s only fair. I won’t bring a kid into a world without a real father. The kind they write about in books. Those authors sure know how to spin a tale.”

He chuckled. “My father stuck around. I had a great childhood. Steady, reliable parents. Got a brother and sister I see regularly. My parents have been married for close to forty years.”

“Hmph. So I guess it’s possible.”

Her doubtful tone ticked him off, made him defensive. “I’m not making it up, Tawny. Some men are happy to stay. Some men stay in love with their wives and take an interest in their children too.”

She rolled to her back. “That so, big man?”

“That’s so.” A sharp edge of panic cut its way through his belly. He didn’t like the feeling.

She patted his cheek, then slipped out of bed. He watched her leave the room. A couple minutes later, he heard the shower running. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been so easily dismissed.

Her phone rang inside her purse on the dresser. He plucked the phone out and checked the number, but it wasn’t one he recognized. He let the call go to voice mail. He walked into the bathroom and called to her that she had a message on her phone.

Then he hit the kitchen to put the coffee on. He considered joining Tawny in the shower but changed his mind. There would be more time later, after he stopped at the drug store.

Now that he’d had her, he wasn’t about to let her go anytime soon. In spite of her thoughts to the contrary, he wasn’t the kind of man to walk away from women he cared about.

The implied insult about being a walk-away father still stung, but it was way, way too early to tackle that one.

“We shook hands once. When I accepted the job,” she said when she walked into his kitchen fifteen minutes later. She gently patted her long hair with a towel, squeezing out excess water. “You said you couldn’t recall us touching before. That handshake sent me on my butt, so I made sure not to touch you again.”

He didn’t recall the handshake. He swallowed hard. Damn, but his fingers burned to skim her cheek, to hold her still for his kiss. But a deep fear kept him at bay. Tawny was different from his other sexual partners. Correction, his previous partners.

He didn’t see a time when he’d go back to any one of them.

He
liked
Tawny. Affectionate appreciation for a woman was rare. He had it once for a buddy’s kid sister. She’d been in the fearless freckles and braces stage, and he’d corrected her assumption that all boys wanted sexpots. He’d been her friend when she needed a shoulder and couldn’t talk to her big brother.

But this thing with Tawny had him twisted up. He had burned his retinas on the sight of her in that bikini. She’d read his sudden rush of desire and lust, and had run as far and as fast as she could.

No way could he afford another mistake with her. Not now, not when he’d had her all night long.

Under the scent of shampoo and his deodorant soap, she held a fragrance that was all Tawny. The scent lured him close, made him want to drive into her and cosset her at the same time. He didn’t know which way was up anymore.

Which way was right.

If he touched her now he’d be lost, and without another condom, he had to wait.

The sheen in her eyes, the way she licked her lips after each sip of coffee told him she was ready and wanting more too.

The want of her was so fierce it scared the piss out of him.

“About Lila,” he began, “I need to apologize for engaging in sex at the office. I thought you’d left for the night, and she’s not—”

“Please. Stop. I don’t want to think about you and her.” She closed her eyes and shook her head as if she wanted to erase an image in her head.

Regret burned for giving her the image in the first place. “I’m sorry you saw anything, if I could go back and undo it all, I would.”

She looked at him again and waved a hand in dismissal. “I’d been hoping,…never mind. It was silly.”

“Hoping what?”

“That you’d like me for me. Not just this—” she waved her hand down her spectacular body, once again hidden by baggy jeans and an oversized tee. “Like I said before, I got a little crazy.”

The bikini was beginning to make sense. She hated that her body made her a target of lust. She was a man magnet, and that day at the pool he’d behaved exactly the way other men had.

Too bad.

She’d shocked the shit out of him. After three years of working together, her standoffish behavior and the ugliest clothes he’d ever seen, it was no wonder he’d nearly had a stroke. He
would
have had a stroke if there’d been any blood left to run through his body. One look at Tawny and every drop had raced to his cock.

Hardest woody he’d ever sported until last night.

“I’m sorry you saw me that night, but I won’t apologize for being a man. I don’t know what else to say. But at the pool the next day, you waved a red flag at a bull. You show off a body like yours, cocks sit up and take notice. There’s nothing new there.”

She raised her hand. “I’m not the first woman in my family to make stupid mistakes. This body has been a curse for generations.”

“So you hide it.”

She nodded.

“And when I reacted like any red-blooded male would, you ran.”

Another nod.

Which meant she didn’t want the same reaction from him that she’d had from every other man. “You’ve put me in a bind here, Tawny. You think we hit the sack because I’m in lust. You need to know it’s more than that.”

“It is?” Her eyes went wide, softened into “come love me,” and he very nearly did.

“Oh, yeah.”

“Oh. So what do you want to do?”

“I want to fuck you until your eyes roll back in your head. I want to hear you moan and scream. I want to feel your soft, wet pussy suck me in and hold me there, tight, until you come.”

“You’ve already done that, and more,” she whispered, heated response in every word. Her pretty face flushed pink. She blinked at the memories he’d brought to her mind. With any luck at all, he’d replaced the old image of him with Lila with new ones.

He swallowed. Not a drop of moisture wet his throat, but he’d made his point. “We need to get moving. I’ll take my shower.”

Tawny was funny, smart, and capable. The kind of woman any man with a brain would want. Tawny was the kind of woman a man held on to. Too bad she didn’t realize that for herself.

Half of him wanted her to follow him into the shower, to take charge and reach for him. He heard the musical notes of her cell phone from the bedroom again.

“Your phone’s ringing,” he called as he headed into the bathroom. “I’ll be out in two minutes.” He couldn’t spend his day smelling of sex, but he wanted to hear the quality of her tone when she answered the call. If she sounded agitated, he’d put off his shower to find out what upset her. Her footsteps sounded down the hall.

The ring tone ended, and her soft voice sounded calm. “Hi, Mom.”

Not her stalker, but this was rare. Tawny and her mother had little contact except for family emergencies. Raised the way she’d been, Tawny had an independent streak. A streak he’d admired, much the way he’d admired everything else he knew about her. Leaving her to her conversation, he jumped into the shower and prepared for the day.

Tawny was safe for now. If not from him, then at least from her stalker.

“Sorry,” Tawny said to Pansy, “I haven’t been in touch. I’ve been meaning to call. Things have just been hairy around here.”

“Did you get the package I sent?” Her mom’s voice sounded urgent.

Confession time. “No, I moved.” She winced.

“When?”

“Last month, and I’m sorry I didn’t let you know. This place came up suddenly and I had to take it right away.”

“Sure. I know how that goes.”

Guilt for not calling more often settled in her spine. Pansy didn’t ask for much, never had. The men in her mother’s life had made sure she kept her expectations low.

The least Tawny could do was stay in touch. “What did you send me?”

“Loretta’s Vegas costume. She wanted you to have it.”

“Really?” She’d seen a picture of her grandmother in the sixties during her dancing days. The family called her the Queen of Rhinestones on a good day. On a bad day, the name-calling had been ugly. “The bustier alone must weigh what? Five pounds? Ten? I don’t know how she could stand up straight.” Add that to the weight of her breasts and the woman was a goddess of strength and endurance.

“She worked out. My mother was stronger than you could imagine. Not just physically but emotionally strong.” Pansy’s voice broke.

“Are you all right?”

“I got a letter from Loretta through the estate lawyer when the will was read. She knew about her dementia so she wrote it while she still could. It explained so much about her life with my father. As it turns out, he wasn’t my biological father.” Soft sniffles filled the air between mother and daughter.

“What?” The bastard grandfather, the abusive serial philanderer wasn’t Pansy’s dad. Loretta had had a lover before that old bastard had made Loretta’s life a living hell. “Good for her,” Tawny cheered.
You go, Loretta!

Pansy chuckled mid-sniff. “In the letter she said the memories she had of my father sustained her through her rotten marriage. She suffered for my sake, Tawny. I feel like such a shit. I never looked beyond what I needed from her. When I didn’t get it, I never asked why. I never stopped to consider what she was suffering at the hands of…that bastard Frank. God, it’s such a relief to know I’m not related to
him
.”

“She loved you. She put up with Frank for your sake. You did some of that for me too.” Please, let Stack be different. Let Stack feel something more than lust.

“She was afraid of Frank. She let him believe I was his child to protect me. And in the end, to protect you too.”

“Why me?”

“There’s something sewn into the bra.”

“What?”

“I don’t want to say, but you have to get that package. If I’d opened this letter before I sent the package to you, I’d have delivered the costume myself.” She sighed and lobbed a full-out guilt blast. “You still wouldn’t have it, though, since you moved without telling me.”

“Nice shot, Mom, and I deserve it. Are you done with the guilt thing now?”

“Yes.” The silence after the single-word response said a lot. But it gave Tawny time to accept that Loretta had kept a lot of secrets.

She sighed. “I’m sorry. I should have told you about the move.” The why of her mysterious pervert seeped into her conscious. “But this is creepy. Someone else must know about the costume.”

“Then I’m coming to see you. I need to explain more in person.”

Stack walked back into the room, probably in response to her louder, more urgent tone of voice. “Hold on a sec, Mom.” She quickly told Stack the gist of the story.

“Get the tracking number for the package.”

She did. “I’ll call back when I get it, Mom. No worries.”

“What’s going on?” Suspicious mother’s voice rang through the air into her ear. “Will you pick me up at the airport?”

“Sure. Let me know when you’re getting in.”

“You still haven’t given me your new address. In case things get crazy for you, I can meet you there.”

“I’m, ah, staying with Stack for now.”

“What?!”

“Gotta go!” She hung up on her mother for the first time in her adult life. Teenage angst didn’t count. Pansy always said aliens had abducted Tawny then, anyway. They didn’t return her until she was twenty and had learned a little about life.

Stack, already on the move, headed for the door, leading with a trail of hot testosterone and clean male. She snatched her purse off the sofa on the way by and followed him out. “I don’t know what’s sewn into the costume, but my mother’s on her way.”

They took the stairs down quickly while Tawny filled him in about her grandfather and grandmother. “Rumor has it, Frank was connected back in the day. He was a vile man and a worse husband. A thug.”

“Hmm, so what you’re saying is, you come from a line of strong, smart women who know how to survive.”

The idea nearly stopped her cold. Loretta was a wily survivor, not just a victim. Her decision to pretend Pansy was Frank’s child must have been one born of desperation and fear. “But where did my real grandfather go? Why wasn’t he there for Loretta and my mother?”

“You said Frank may have been in the mob back then.” He bent the tip of his nose. “You may never know what happened to your real grandfather. Maybe Frank kept that secret. Maybe the guy who fathered Pansy wanted to be there for the woman he loved and their child.”

“I’d like to think so, but with Loretta gone now, too, there’s no way to know for sure.” This all gave Tawny more to ponder. “The creep factor’s just gone up a notch, though.”

“Whatever’s inside that costume must be valuable or dangerous if Pansy wouldn’t say more on the phone. And call her back with my address. I moved since you worked with me, she won’t know that.”