Step Into My Parlor (8 page)

Trish poked Lisa and rolled her eyes.

A strange emotion, quick and clutching, seized Anne. If she hadn't known better, she'd have thought she was jealous. Silly, of course, since she and Spider were only friends. Anne managed to laugh at Lisa's faux pas and they returned to the table.

Everyone danced, tried their hand at several of the games in the corners of the room, and drank more beer. Anne couldn't remember when she'd had so much fun. Spider's friends were genuine, caring people who gathered her into their intimate circle as if she'd always belonged.

When a slow ballad began. Spider grabbed her hand. "Come on, they're playing our song."

Anne laughed as she trailed behind him to the dance floor. "You idiot, we don't have a song."

He pulled her
into
his arms. "We do now."

"I think
I’ve
had too much beer," she said, snuggling into the perfect spot against his body. "I'm getting very relaxed."

"That's okay, sugar.
I’ll
take care of you. Just lean on me."

Even as big as he was, she seemed to mold exactly
into
the contours of his frame. His head bent slightly and her forehead resting on his cheek,
they moved in slow, synchronized rhythm. So close that not a speck of daylight showed between them, she followed his lead as if they'd been dancing together all their lives.

Spider took the soft hand he was holding, brought it to the nape of his neck, and left it there. Both arms around her, he pulled her tight. He closed his eyes and savored the exquisite torture of Anne in his arms. God, she felt good. He would pay for this later, but for now, he was in hog heaven. If the song went on forever, it would suit him fine.

"You smell like flowers and sweet, sweet woman."

Sighing, she rooted her forehead against his cheek and wiggled her body against his, trying to get closer. He almost went up in smoke.

"Spider?"

"Hmmmm?"

"I think I'm getting turned on."

"I know I am."

"Is that good?"

"Probably not."

"Do you mind?"

"Hell, no."

She sighed. "Me neither."

They stayed on the floor for another song. Couples two-stepped around them, but they swayed on to the beat of their own slow, seductive music. By the time the song ended, beads of perspiration rolled from his hair and he was rock hard and ready. If it had been anybody but Anne, he would have dragged her out to the parking lot and made wild love on the front seat of the Silverado.

But it wasn't just anybody. This was Anne.
Married!
a part of his brain shouted.
Remember your promise.

Promises, hell, he was on fire! And hurting bad. He'd never in his life wanted anybody the way he wanted her. Every curve of her body was burned into his memory. The smell of her made his mouth go dry. And she wanted him; he knew she did.

But he forced himself to smile and say, "It's late. You about ready to go home, darlin'?"

She stared up at him with big brown eyes gone dark and sultry. "I'm ready when you are."

She sat snuggled against Spider as he drove home. He'd barely said a word, but she knew he wanted her. She'd have to have been a fool not to have felt the evidence that had pressed against her when they'd danced. And Anne Foxworth Jennings—oops! Jennifer Anne Webb—was no fool.

Despite all her best intentions to keep their relationship platonic, she had changed her mind. Maybe there wasn't a future for them, but there was certainly a mind-blowing present. And she meant to take advantage of it. A man like Spider might only come along once in a lifetime, and she didn't want to pass up the opportunity.

She laid her hand on his thigh.

He flinched.

She giggled.

"I like your friends. Spider. They're lots of fun."

"They like you, too. They're good people."

She slid her hand up farther. He grabbed it and
pushed it back down. "Woman, what are you doing to me?"

She giggled again.

"I think you had too much to drink."

"Uh-uh." She
cozied
against his shoulder, rubbing her cheek across the leather of his jacket. No wonder he liked to wear the jacket; it was sensuously soft. And if she lived to be a hundred and three, she'd never forget the delicious, virile smell of him.

He stopped the truck. "We're home."

Handling her more delicately than if she were fine porcelain, he helped her out of the pickup. As she watched him unlock the front door and turn off the alarm, she studied the dark set of his jaw, the sinuous curve of his lips, the deftness of his big hands and long fingers. She could
imagine
those hands on her bare skin, and desire for him uncoiled low in her body. This was the night that she would make love with the sexiest man on earth. And damn the consequences.

"Step into my parlor, sweet thing," Turk said.

Anne laughed. "
I’ll
never forget the time I first heard that. I was terrified."

"And now?"

She smiled. "I'm not terrified."

He locked the door behind them and reset the alarm. Anne wondered if they would go to his bedroom or hers. Should she shower and put on the slinky gown she'd bought at the resale shop? Perhaps they would simply undress one another slowly, kissing, touching, exploring as they went.

With a hand at her back, he guided her through
the shop and down the hall. Her heart pounded, and her breath was shallow. She'd didn't think she could wait for a shower. She wanted him now. They stopped at her door, and she looked up at him. He smiled.

"Good night, sugar." He gave her a brotherly peck on the cheek. "Sleep tight." He turned and started back down the hall.

Stunned, she called after him. "Where are you going?"

"I'm going to work out on the Nautilus equipment for a couple of hours."

Humiliation still stung as Anne stepped out of the shower, dried, and pulled on her sexy new gown. She muttered to herself as she stomped through Spider's room and across the hall to her own. She climbed into the undulating water bed and yanked the covers over her head. But she couldn't sleep.

She heard Spider when he came down the hall; she heard the shower running; she heard the muffled oaths as he punched his pillow.

She was wide-awake. And she had to go to the bathroom. It was the beer. She tried to ignore the urge, but it grew more desperate.

The only way to the bathroom was through Spider's room. She got up and tiptoed to the door. Everything was still, so she eased across the hall, trying to be as quiet as possible.

When she'd finished her business and was sneaking out of his room, Spider growled, "I'm awake."

"So
rr
y," she said. "It's the beer."

For a long time after she left. Spider lay there inhaling her lingering fragrance. He ached for her so badly that he was tempted to handcuff himself to the bed to keep from getting up and going after her.

An hour later, he was wide-eyed. He was obsessed with the idea of running his tongue over every square inch of her skin. Lord, he couldn't take this much longer. He was going out of his mind!

He heard her tiptoeing to the bathroom again. Involuntarily, his gaze fixed on the closed door. When it opened and he saw her, he felt like he'd been clipped by King Kong. She was wearing something long and flimsy, but she might as well have been naked. The light behind her made the gown transparent, and he could see every lush dip and curve.

"Damnit, woman!" he roared. "What are you trying to do to me?"

"I'm sorry. I was trying to be quiet. It's the beer."

He slung his arm across his eyes and muttered a string of curses. "I'm dying. You're killing me."

The bed dipped and he looked up to see Anne sitting there, a worried look on her face. Light from the bathroom outlined her like a halo. She was a blond-haired angel; she was a honey-mouthed temptress. She was
his,
and he wanted her. Now.

She put her hand on his bare chest. "Spider, what's wrong?"

"What's wrong? I want you so bad it's tearing my guts out. That's what's wrong."

She chuckled. "Is that all?" Her hand made a lazy circle. "That's easily remedied."

He grabbed her wrist. "But I promised."

"I release you from your promise."

She-bent and touched the tip of her tongue to his nipple. It streaked over him like a flash fire, and he almost bowed double.

Holding her face in his hands and his control by a hair, he said, "Darlin', you're married. I don't mess with married women, remember? Never have. I had it done to me, and I damned sure don't mean to do it to anybody else."

She smiled. "Sugar," she drawled, "I'm not married."

"You're divorced?"

She shook her head slowly. "I've never been married."

“
Then who in the hell is Preston?"

"Your
stepbrother?"

She nodded and raked her fingers through the silky black curls on his chest.

His eyes, heavy-lidded and sparking blue fire, bored into hers, and his voice was a deep growl. "Sugar, you've got a hell of a lot of explaining to do." He grabbed her under the arms, and she laughed as he dragged her across his body and flung her onto the cool red sheets beside him. With a lightning-fast move, he rolled and trapped her, one hand propped on each side of her head. "Later."

Lips parted and tongue poised, a feral noise rumbled deep in his throat, and his mouth covered hers in a searing, devouring kiss. She moaned and her arms clamped around his broad back. The hot kiss went on and on amid groans and insatiable tongues thrusting and touching and plunging.

He tore his lips from hers and kissed and licked a frantic path down her throat. His tongue was like fiery velvet. And when it reached the rise of her breasts, the sensation arched her back and wrenched a breathy moan from deep inside her.

Nuzzling the soft swell, he dragged the straps of her gown down and pushed the filmy fabric to her waist. His tongue drew a hot, wet trail along the underside of each breast, circled and circled each hardening peak.

"Oh, darlin', you taste like sweet heaven."

He drew one nipple into his mouth and gently suckled. Each pull tugged at her sanity and heated her blood. She gasped from the wonder of it, and her palm pressed and slid down his back to his tight, bare buttocks, then back up again.

"Let's take this off," he said. "I want to look at you." She lifted her hips; he peeled off the gown and tossed it to a fluttering heap on the floor.

His eyes and his hands swept over the length of her. "I've dreamed of this. I
’v
e lain awake in this bed and imagined you here. Lord, you're even better than my dreams."

She tried to speak, but she was breathless with longing for him. His every movement was erotic. He was taut muscle and raw, dark beauty. And magnificently aroused. All she could do was whisper his name.

His eyes flashing and his lips parted, he knelt at her feet, ran his hands up the outside of her legs, and watched his dark fingers move over her
pale skin. Grasping her ankles, he lifted her feet to his mouth. He kissed the ball of each foot and set her heels, one on each of his shoulders.

His fingers began a slow slide along the
i
nsides of her legs. Ankles, calves, knees, thighs, higher; then he lingered, his thumbs gen
tl
y brushing the length of exposed flesh and soft curls. Strangely, she felt no shame or embarrassment, only intense hunger and a heady sense of feminine power and pride.

She whimpered with the delicious agony of his touch as he worshiped her body with his hands and eyes.

Shuddering, he closed his eyes and sucked in a trembling breath. "Babe, I wanted this to last. I wanted to touch and taste every bit of you, but you're wet and ready, and I can't wait much longer."

He opened his eyes and looked at her with pupils gone wide with desire. His magnificent body glistened with the fine sheen of arousal.

"I want you, too, love," she whispered. "Now."

Rolling to the edge of the bed, he reached under the mattress. In a moment he was back, nudging apart her legs, bending to kiss her lips with a savage yearning.

"Woman, you set me on fire," he groaned as he scooped her buttocks in his big hands and lifted her from the slippery satin sheets.

He tried to enter her slowly, but Anne wrapped her arms and legs around him. "Fill me," she urged. "Please."

With a hard thrust, they were joined. Flesh in
flesh, and caught in a wildfire. Plunging and meeting, demanding and taking, there was nothing quiet or gentle in their lovemaking. It was raw and savage and earthy. He drove hard and she demanded more, rising to meet and move and twist and cling, seeking greater pleasure.

She bit his shoulder and scraped his back. Wet with passion and slick with striving, she urged him on to a release that seemed just beyond her grasp.

He slipped a hand between them to stroke an aching spot. Her whole body lit, glowed, then burst into an explosion of exquisite sensation. She sucked in a cry and arched to the source of her pleasure.

"Sweet love," he murmured, pausing until the spasms of bliss subsided into soft ripples. Then he began to stroke again, with his hand, with his body.

"Oh, Spider," she gasped in surprise as the pleasure began to mount. "It's happening again."

He chuckled and licked his tongue across her mouth before he plunged it between her lips. When her climax burst once more, he cried out with her, his face a mask of exquisite agony, his body bowed, tense and still, as if focused on the pleasure ripped from his nerve endings.

They lay quiet, still joined. His forearms held some of his weight off her, but he didn't move for the longest time. His head was nestled in the crook of her shoulder, and his ragged breath tickled the base of her throat. She stroked his back,
loving the feel of
its
broad expanse beneath her fingers.

She teased his left earlobe, smiling at the gold spider she felt there. He'd worn nothing else since she'd given it to him. She ran her fingers through his thick hair and pushed a few errant strands from his forehead. Still he didn't move.

"Spider?" she whispered, sliding her hands along the breadth of his shoulders.

"Sugar, I don't think I can go again right now. Give me a couple of minutes."

She giggled and swatted his backside. "Get off me, you hulk. You're heavy."

Putting his arms around her, he rolled away, taking her with him so that she lay atop him. He fingered strands of her hair and touched her lips. "I'm sorry I was so rough with you, darlin'. I wanted you so damned bad, it got out of hand. Did I hurt you?"

She shook her head and chuckled. "I was as rough as you were. I don't know what got into me."

He wiggled one black eyebrow and grinned. "I do, darlin'. Me."

Laughing, she gave him a playful swat. "Bad pun."

He wrapped both arms around her and held her close. His voice was thick with emotion as he said, "Lord, Annie, I'm crazy about you." After a moment he added in a lighter tone, "And you're hell on wheels in bed."

'That's not a very romantic thing to say." She
poked him in the ribs and he flinched. "You're ticklish!"

"No, I'm not."

But he was. She delighted in torturing him as they tussled in the tangled satin sheets until he was laughing and begging for mercy.

They showered and laughed and made love. They straightened the bed and slept with Spider holding her close to him, as if he never wanted her to move from his side. Sometime after dawn they awakened and reached for one another again.

During that time, Preston wasn't mentioned. But when Anne awakened later, she found Spider lying beside her, his head propped by his elbow, his blue eyes watching her.

"You have some explaining to do," he said. "Want some coffee first?"

She nodded.

"
I’ll
fix it."

While he was gone, she slipped on her gown and went to the bathroom. Brushing her tangled hair, she tried to decide what to tell him and how much to tell him.

The truth. All of it. He deserved no less.

Feeling chilly in her thin gown, she draped his black leather jacket around her shoulders, then straightened Spider's bed and sat down on its edge to wait.

She suspected that he was going to be angry that she had lied to him about being married, and the idea of his being angry or disappointed in her hurt. Absently, she stroked the worn leather of the jacket. It occurred to her that his reaction
was extremely important. She was very close to falling in love with Spider Webb, pawnbroker and ex-football player, a man far removed from the life she'd always known. It was a sobering, scary thought. When had she come to care so much for this man? Was it after last night? Or had it gradually sneaked up on her without her even being aware of it?

Maybe he'd understand when she explained the whole story.

Dressed only in black jeans, zipped but unbuttoned, he came back carrying a tray. His hair was tousled and already dark whiskers shadowed his jaw, but one piercing look from his diamond-blue eyes and her heart turned over.

"Why are you out of bed? I brought coffee. And some toast I fixed while the coffee dripped."

"It looks like you used a whole loaf of bread."

He grinned. "I'm hungry. And
I’ve
got to keep my strength up." Setting the tray down, he stacked pillows against the headboard and held back the covers for her. "Get in. It'll keep your tootsies
warm.”

When she did
,
he tucked the fur cover around her, put the tray across her lap, and spread a towel under her chin. Dragging the step stool up close, he slathered butter and grape jelly on a piece of toast and insisted on feeding her every bite of it.

"What about you?" she asked.

"I cheated. I had a couple of pieces in the kitchen."

"No, I mean, aren't you cold?"

A slow, cocky smile lifted one side of his mouth. "I told you I was hot-natured."

She laughed, and he poked another bite of toast into her mouth.

When their coffee cups were empty and only a few crumbs dotted the toast plate, he set the tray on the floor. Resting his bare heels on a rung of the stool, he propped his elbows on his knees, clasped his hands together, and leaned forward.

"Now, we talk."

Anne looked at him for a moment, then took a deep breath. "Are you angry with me?"

"Do I look angry?"

"No, but I . . . lied to you."

"Yes, you did, sugar. And I want to know why."

"Well, at first, I had to explain why I was using a name different from the one on my driver's license. It seemed like a logical explanation."

He nodded. "And later?"

"Spider, this is later. I trust you now. I
...
I
care about you. So I told you the truth. I didn't have to."

"What about this Preston character, your stepbrother? Is he really after you?"

Anne nodded and told him about her mother's death, Preston's proposal, and the conversation she had overheard between Preston and Bradley, the deputy director of the FBI, the night she came home. Spider's jaw tightened until the muscles twitched and his eyes went as cold as a Canadian winter.

"Son of a bitch! He ought to have his eyeballs roasted over a slow fire."

"I would provide the matches," Anne declared. "I was so scared after I heard what he said to Bradley that I hid in the hall closet until Preston went upstairs. I knew that I had to get away somewhere, calm down, and think what to do. Somehow I kept my wits about me enough to open the safe and stuff every file I could find into a briefcase. I figured that the deputy director's 'extremely sensitive' one that Preston alluded to would be among them and might give me some leverage. Then I grabbed my purse from the hall table, sneaked out to the garage, and took off in my car. I went to an all-night diner a few miles away."

"You should have called the police."

"I did. The chief. Fool that I was, I told him everything."

"Didn't the bastard believe you?"

"Oh, he believed me. He told me to calm down and stay put, he'd be there in a few minutes. I was sitting in a back booth, drinking a cup of coffee and trying to stop shaking, when I saw him get out of a car in front of the diner. Preston was with him. I ran out the back way. I'd parked my car in the shadows on the side, and they didn't see me leave."

"Why in the hell did the idiot call Preston?"

"They play golf together. And I
hadn't looked at any of the files then, but Bradley's was not the only sensitive one in the safe. I discovered later there were a score of them, and Preston had a particularly nasty dossier on the chief
’
s daughter. I was almost hysterical by then, and it was after midnight, so I drove to Georgetown to my friend
Meg's house. I know I wasn't making much sense, but Meg and her husband Howard put me in their guest room. I couldn't sleep, so I went downstairs to get a glass of milk and overheard Howard talking on the phone. I gathered from what he said that Preston had called my friends and told them that I was having a breakdown."

"And they believed him?"

She gave a bitter laugh. "Preston is very powerful and very persuasive. The story gets worse." She shivered.

Spider climbed into bed with her, drew the covers around her chin, and held her close. "Sugar, you don't have to talk about it right now if it upsets you."

"No, I want to tell you all of it. Needless to say, I sneaked away from Meg's house. I just drove until I was exhausted. I ended up in Norfolk. I checked into a hotel and slept for about twelve hours. Room service provided my meals, and a boutique downstairs brought clothes to me. For three days, I didn't go out of the hotel. That's when I read the files in the briefcase."

"The briefcase in there?" He inclined his head toward the organ against the wall.