Tea and Destiny (18 page)

“But they’re going to think we’re terribly rude.”

“I assure you that is not what they’re going to think.”

Her eyes widened. “Hank, exactly what did you tell them?”

“The truth, that I wanted to be alone with you.”

“And they went along with it?”

He gave a secretive little smile. “Let’s just say they owed me one.”

Ann folded her hands tightly in her lap and stared straight ahead. “Hank, I am not ready for this.”

“Annie, believe me, we are both more than ready for this. Before the afternoon is out I’m going to prove it.”

“But that’s just it, it’s afternoon.”

“Late afternoon.” He peered at her. “You have something against making love in the afternoon?” he teased.

Well, there it is,
she thought wildly. The words were out in the open, lying there between them like a gauntlet that had been thrown down. “It all seems so calculated somehow,” she retorted.

“Annie, we are living with six children. I can almost guarantee you that making love would have to be calculated under circumstances like that.”

She regarded him closely. “Doesn’t that bother you? Isn’t spontaneity better?”

His voice dropped to a seductive murmur. “Annie, I want you in my arms. That’s the only thing that matters.”

She swallowed hard as he continued. “I want to kiss every single inch of you. I want to get to know your body as well as I know my own. I want to bring you alive under my fingers. If I have to do a little calculating to accomplish that, I can handle it.” He turned his head toward her. “Can you?”

“I don’t know,” she said honestly, though her heart was beating so hard and fast she could barely hear herself think.

He reached over and took her clenched hands in his. “Annie, once we get there, once we’re inside and all alone, if this isn’t right for you, we’ll forget it. I promise. Okay?”

She heard the raw hunger in his voice, saw the depth of desire in his eyes and still she recognized the sincerity of the promise. Hank would be guided by her needs. What she wanted would always be uppermost in his mind.

Suddenly the last of her doubts fled, replaced by a wild, pounding urgency she’d never thought to experience. Responding to that frantic need, she lifted his hand to her lips and kissed the scarred knuckles, the callused palm. She felt the shudder that gripped him at her touch and asked softly, “Think you can drive any faster without getting caught?”

Chapter 11

O
ne of the few advantages of winter, Ann decided, was that darkness came early. She was grateful for the rapidly dimming light because the minute they walked through the front door of Hank’s house, her timidity returned. The twilight shadows helped her to hide her fears from Hank, though they did nothing to keep them from her heart.

Even though a part of her yearned desperately to be in Hank’s arms, wanted to know the sheer physical pleasure of abandoning herself to his possession, another part was still holding back. She was still deeply troubled by the cold planning of it, worried even more about the long-term consequences for her emotions. The risks seemed enormous, far too great for a woman who’d only gambled on love once and lost everything.

They’d barely made it into the living room when
Hank said, “I’m a mess from the football game. I think I’ll take a shower.”

He said it matter-of-factly, as if there were nothing more important on his mind than washing away a little dirt and grass. The comment was so far from the romantic murmurings she’d been anticipating, Ann felt like laughing hysterically with relief. Then she felt like screaming. If they were going to make love, why couldn’t they just do it and get it over with? Why this slow torture, when they’d already waited far too long? She hadn’t felt this nervous the first time…the only other time.

“Hank,” she began, intending to protest, only to have him take her hand and squeeze it gently.

“Come with me,” he suggested softly, his gaze locked with hers.

Heat pulsed through her, quick and hard and thrilling. Excitement and that maddening, intense desire warred with caution. “I don’t know…”

“You can scrub my back.”

It was a light, almost innocent taunt, but the prospect of touching him, of running her fingers over his shoulders set her blood on fire. The temptation was irresistible. Further denial would have been as pointless as trying to hold back the tides.

Willing herself not to think beyond the moment, she went with him through the house to the master bedroom suite. The previous night she had avoided this end of the house, not daring to envelop herself in the intimacy of Hank’s room. She’d been afraid to enter a room that was so very much his domain. Now she gazed around with rapt curiosity.

The carpeting was a thick, dark navy. The bed was
king-size, the only size large enough to accommodate a man of Hank’s stature. Staring at it made her pulse race. The comforter was a rich, masculine pattern, the lines of all the furniture clean and modern. Vertical blinds let in the last of the muted afternoon light and shadowed images of the garden beyond the sliding glass doors. It was expensive, understated and very male.

She scanned the dresser and nightstand for any additional clues to Hank’s personality, but found not one bit of evidence that would tell her his taste in books, his preference in after-shave or his family history. The room looked as though the decor had been completed by a disinterested professional the month before and as if it had been cleaned religiously each week since then. She might have attributed the tidiness to his absence had he not been in the room last night. There wasn’t even a tossed-aside T-shirt or an empty beer bottle to indicate that he’d spent that time here, either. The bed had been remade with army boot-camp precision. She doubted there was even a dent in the pillow to indicate where his head had rested. No wonder the man had been appalled the first time he’d walked into her house. He was compulsively neat. Her professional training kicked in and she wondered what had caused it. The question was definitely untimely, but valid nonetheless.

A little bit stunned, she sank down on the side of the bed. “Hank?”

A worried frown creasing his brow, he knelt down in front of her and took her hands in his. “Second thoughts?”

“Not exactly. How do you live like this?” She gave an all-encompassing wave around the impersonal room.

Following the sweeping gesture, he stared around blankly. “I don’t understand.”

“It’s so…sterile.”

Shadows crossed his eyes, but he merely shrugged. “I guess I’ve never paid much attention to it.”

“Don’t you have any pictures of your parents? An ex-girlfriend? Something?”

He grinned at that. “You’d actually be happy to find a photograph of an ex-girlfriend by my bed?”

She reached out and ran her fingers through his hair, then touched his beard. “I actually think I might prefer it to this.”

“Why?”

“This doesn’t tell me anything about you. I feel as though I could be in the room of a complete stranger or even a totally impersonal hotel.”

“You already know all you need to know about me.” He drew her hand to his chest. “You know what’s in here.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so. How can I really know what’s in your heart without understanding you? You told me about your mother and father, but there’s more to growing up than that. Tell me about you, Hank. What were you like when you were a little boy? What subjects did you like in school? Did you always want to be an engineer?”

He touched a finger to her lips, then trailed it down along her jaw, finally moving to her breast, where he drew slow, deliberate circles around the already erect tip. Ann felt the effect of that lazy touch all the way down to her toes. As a distraction it was very effective, but she had no intention of letting him win out this time. In the long run, they’d both lose if she did. She seized
his hand and held it, pressing her lips to the scarred knuckles.

“Talk to me,” she pleaded.

“Now, Annie?” His voice was low, incredulous and threadbare with desire.

“Now,” she said firmly, plumping up the pillows at the head of the bed and settling herself there. It was a deliberate attempt to put some distance between them without removing them entirely from the seductive atmosphere. This was a time-out, not an ending.

“I thought I was the one who was supposed to be on the couch for a session like this,” he said with an edge in his voice.

She ignored the tone and patted the place beside her. “Join me.”

He studied her intently. “You’re really going to insist on this, aren’t you?”

She nodded placidly, comfortable in the role of inquisitor as she hadn’t been in the role of seductress. “I think I am.”

He ran his fingers through his hair. She could see the debate raging inside him before he finally shrugged, kicked off his tennis shoes and settled himself beside her. “Okay, doc. It’s the strangest sort of foreplay I’ve ever seen, but what do you want to know?” he asked, then peered at her closely. “I hope it’s not too much, because I’m not sure how long I can stand being this close to you in this bed without touching you.”

“Think of it this way,” she said sweetly. “It’ll put some of the spontaneity back into the afternoon.”

He groaned at that and tugged her down until she was lying flat beneath him, laughing. As she recognized the look in his eyes, though, the laughter suddenly
died, along with her need for immediate answers. Never before had she seen such naked longing, such open loneliness and need. How was it possible that a man who’d filled his life with so many companions could seem so desperately alone? Why had he chosen her to banish the loneliness? Could she do it with her inexperienced touches? She knew only that she had to try, that she had to share with him some small measure of the joy he had brought into her life these past few weeks. If this was all they had between them, just this moment, it would be special, it would last them forever.

She smoothed the hair off his forehead. “I do want you to make love to me, Hank.” She made the admission on a sigh. “Now.”

“Are you sure this time?”

She nodded. “Very sure. The talk can wait.”

His mouth came down on hers then, stealing the last of her declaration. The last of her doubts fled on a wave of pure sensation as his hands began to slide over her, stroking, exploring. With fingers that actually seemed to shake, he pushed her T-shirt up to expose her breasts to the tender mercies of his lips, his beard a gentle, but oh-so-seductive irritant across the sensitive flesh.

“Don’t be afraid, Annie love,” he whispered, when she trembled at the intensity of the feelings sweeping through her.

“This isn’t something I do every day,” she managed to say.

“Neither have I lately,” he said with wry humor.

“But you’ve had so much more experience, what if…”

He touched a finger to her lips. “Annie, this is our first time together.
Ours.
No matter what’s happened in
the past, we’ve never been together like this before. I’m every bit as nervous as you are. I want it to be perfect for you and I won’t know how if you won’t tell me. So, you see, we’re in the same boat.”

Not quite, she thought as his expert touches robbed her of further arguments. Hank made love with astonishing gentleness. He taught her the way to tease and madden. His caresses were slow, provocative follow-ups to the adoration in his eyes. And, as if to prove his point that there were no comparisons being made, he told her again and again of all the things that made her special.

“I love the way your lips are a little off center,” he said, his fingertip tracing the outline.

“And your hair is so soft. It’s like silk,” he whispered, smoothing it back, the callused pads of his fingers gently grazing her cheek in the process.

“Do you know what your eyes remind me of? The blue is usually the same shade as those fields of wildflowers in Texas, but now…” His voice dropped even lower. “Now it’s like midnight.”

And on it went. He made love to her from head to toe, without hesitation, without restraint, letting her see the joy she was bringing to him, commanding her with his patient, lingering touches to share it. She was practically humming from the inside out, her body quivering with excitement, covered with a light sheen of perspiration. One by one her muscles stretched taut with expectation as he played his fingers over and inside her, kissing her with increasing urgency.

“I love
you,
Annie,” he whispered with added emphasis as he held himself poised above her. “Only you.”

The truth of the words was in his eyes. And the ache that had been building inside her became even more compelling. “Show me,” she pleaded, willing him to dispel the last of her uncertainty. “Please, Hank.”

Showing her how to help, he slipped on protection. Then he entered her, so slowly that she thought she’d go mad before knowing the sensation of being filled up by him. When he was deep inside her at last, she felt complete for the very first time in her life. And as he began more of those slow, tantalizing strokes, she began to know the meaning of magic, the rhythm of fulfillment.

“You are so beautiful,” he said, his voice ragged, his muscles tense with the strain of holding back.

“Please, Hank,” she cried again, rising to meet his thrusts, urging him into a more frenzied pace. His musky scent lured her. The taste of his skin only teased at her hunger. She was past the need for compliments, beyond the desire for promises. She wanted release from the wild, wonderful, awful tension that had coiled so tightly inside her that she was certain she would explode with just one more gliding touch, just one more deep, demanding kiss.

Then his tongue circled the taut peak of her breast, the hot, moist stroking almost unbearably tender. The caress was gentle, incredibly gentle, but it was that which set off the flare of rockets that ripped through her, shattering the tension and carrying him along with her.

She didn’t realize she’d been crying until Hank hovered over her, his expression filled with concern. He touched a finger to the tears rolling down her cheek.
“Are you okay? Did I hurt you?” he murmured, his voice rough with anxiety.