Bait & Switch (17 page)

The song ended, and she pantomimed a pleasant expression. She waited until they were back at their table and had finished their drinks before she pleaded a headache and asked if they could leave.

The night was over and so was a romance that had existed only in her mind.

CARY TRAILED LEEZA down the corridor leading to her hotel room, barely noticing the way her slinky red dress hugged her shapely rear end. He was too busy puzzling over her behavior.

“How’s the head?” he asked.

“Still pounding.” She didn’t break stride. In lieu of her stiletto heels, her quick pace was an amazing feat.

“I could go down to the main desk to see if they have ibuprofen,” he offered.

“No thank you. I think I’ve got some in the room.”

She reached her hotel room door and dug in her compact evening purse for the key card. Any second now, she’d dismiss him, the way she’d tried to at the elevator before he’d insisted on walking her to her door.

The complexion of the evening had changed after they’d danced. Cary’s gut told him that whatever was wrong with her had nothing to do with a headache.

She pulled out the key card.

“Good night, Grant. Thank you for a lovely evening.”

The words were devoid of warmth. She turned away from him to insert the card in the slot, her posture screaming that she didn’t want to be touched.

“Wait a minute,” he said.

The green light on the door was blinking and he thought she’d shove open the door and slip inside the room, ignoring his request. Her hand stilled and she turned wary eyes to his.

“How ’bout you tell me what’s wrong,” he said.

Her eyes shifted, not a lot but enough to indicate he was on to something. “I already told you. I have a headache.”

“I don’t believe you do.”

She sighed, her chest rising and failing under the slinky material of her dress. “Come on, Grant. I’m trying to make this easy for you.”

“Make what easy for me?”

She swallowed. “Do you really need me to put it into words?”

“Yeah, I do.”

“I’m giving you an easy out. There. I said it. You’re dismissed, okay? No hard feelings.”

He wrinkled his forehead. “What are you talking about?”

She heaved another heavy, bewildering sigh. “I’m saving you the trouble of letting me down gently. I get it. I’m not your type.”

“Why in the hell would you say that?” he asked before remembering the Boy Scout didn’t swear. He cleared his throat. “Sorry. Why in the
heck
do you think you’re not my type?”

She gazed at the floor and she seemed. . . embarrassed. He racked his brain, trying to figure out where she’d gotten the wrong impression. The one time they’d kissed, he’d had to exert super-human control not to drag her to bed. Especially because she’d made it clear she’d be a willing partner.

“Is this about that kiss the other night?” he asked.

Her eyes lifted briefly before her gaze returned to the floor, but the hurt he’d glimpsed in their brown depths convinced him he’d hit the mark.

“I only stopped because I was being a damned - ah, hell, I mean a
darned
- gentleman!”

Her gaze lifted, and an indentation appeared between her eyebrows. “Really?”

“Really. You got me so hot I’d have dived in the ocean if the water was cooler. Surely a woman like you could tell.”

Her veneer of sophistication, however, had slipped. With a red stain flushing her cheeks, she looked innocent and so damn sweet he could hardly stand it.

“What made you think,” she whispered, “that I wanted you to be gentlemanly?”

He’d thought he should act like his brother, who was a gentleman down to his bone marrow. Hadn’t Cary fallen into this situation in the first place because he wanted her and she wanted his twin?

She waited for his answer, her dark eyes locked on his. The air around them seemed charged and filled with promise. If only he could bring himself to take what she was offering. And, oh God, how he yearned to take it.

He forced himself to give her another out. “Just so I’m sure I understand, are you saying you don’t want me to act like a gentleman?”

The tip of her tongue licked her bottom lip, though he doubted she was aware of how the simple action made his groin tighten. She seemed about to say something. Then she simply nodded.

The other night, Cary had been able to resist what she was offering. He should fight against it now, but her allure was so powerful that he couldn’t.

He was only a man, after all. Weak, imperfect and powerless to fight the need churning in his gut.

The key card was still in the slot but her hands were shaking so badly she couldn’t grip it. He reached past her, opened the door and gently pushed her inside the room.

The moment the lock clicked, he gathered her in his arms and put his mouth on hers. Her lips were already parted, inviting him to deepen the kiss, and he thrust his tongue into the opening. She matched his passion, stroking her tongue against his, threading her fingers through his hair to cradle his head.

It took all his restraint not to tumble her to the floor, tear off her clothes and lose himself inside her.

He ran his hands over her as he kissed her, from the fullness of her hips, to her rounded rear end, up the slim column of her back and around her rib cage to stroke the sides of her breasts.

He was already so hard that his pleasure verged on pain.

Cary prided himself on being a tender, patient lover, but something about Leeza robbed him of any sense of control. She made him feel primitive, like a man whose hunger to mate was so overpowering nothing else mattered.

But of course it did. Leeza mattered. This would be the first time they made love, and she deserved more than a wild, frantic coupling only steps from the door.

He tore his mouth from the carnal pleasure of hers, hoping he’d be able to slow things down. But her lips landed on other accessible parts of him: the side of his mouth, his cheek, the column of his throat.

She rubbed her lower body against his erection. He groaned, sliding his hands up the tight fabric of her dress until he reached the zipper. He managed to tug the zipper down far enough to touch her warm, silky skin.

With trembling fingers, he cupped the softness of her breasts, unfastened the clasp of her bra and felt something come loose.

Her mouth, which had been pressing kisses to his neck, stilled against his skin. He looked down at the flesh-like pad that had been inside her bra and held it up.

“Oh, no,” she wailed, shutting her eyes tight.

“Did I hurt you?” he asked anxiously.

“Just my pride,” she said miserably, feeling her passion-flushed face turn redder. “You outed my silicone bra pad.”

The pad in the other cup of her bra slipped out, and she buried her face in his shoulder. What must he think of her? How could she ever meet his eyes again? If he laughed, she’d curl up and die.

“Why would you think you needed bra pads?” he asked against her hair.

She could hardly articulate the embarrassing answer. “I’m an A cup.”

“What’s wrong with that?”

“Did you know only fifteen percent of American women wear an A cup?” she mumbled. “The average cup size is B.”

He grasped her by the shoulders and with a forefinger tipped up her chin so she had to look at him. His pupils were dilated, his gaze intent. “Who says I want average?”

He slipped her dress and her loosened bra from her shoulders. The garments fell in a heap to the floor, leaving her clad in only high-cut underwear and stiletto heels.

She started to cover her small breasts. Before she could, he captured both her hands in his and gazed his fill. Her stomach roiled in fear that he’d find her lacking. But when he lifted his blue eyes, they’d darkened a few shades.

“I think your breasts are way above average,” he whispered, a husky note in his voice. “In fact, I think they’re perfect.”

She tried to swallow, but couldn’t. “You do?”

He nodded. “I do.”

Joy flooded her. Her knees went weak. “Would you like to, um, see the rest of me?”

“Oh, yeah,” he rasped.

She didn’t know what had possessed her to ask the question, but she couldn’t very well take the offer back.
Act sophisticated
, she told herself.

She nodded toward the bedroom, which was in a separate room. “Follow me into my lair.”

She tried to move sensually into the bedroom. Her
lair.
Why had she said such a stupid thing? But he followed. When she turned on the light, she noticed a smile playing about his full lips.

He sat down on the bed, obviously waiting for her to follow through on her offer. Expecting, she realized with a sinking heart, a striptease.

“Would it help if I took off my clothes first?” He didn’t wait for her answer, quickly pulling his short-sleeved shirt over his head until his chest was bare. Wonderfully, mouth-wateringly bare. He had an athlete’s chest, defined with muscle and sprinkled with dark hair.

“Your turn,” he said with a sexy grin.

She took a breath for courage, balanced on one of her high heels to take off the other shoe and lost her balance.

“Oh, no,” she cried an instant before she tumbled.

Grant leaped off the bed in a flash, taking the brunt of her weight as she toppled with him to the floor. Grunting, he hit the carpet with her sprawled on top of him. He lay there with his eyes closed, as still as death.

“Grant, Grant.” She frantically slapped him in the face to revive him. First one blue eye opened, then the other.

“Now I
am
the one who fell for you,” he drawled, harkening back to when they’d met on the street.

Overwhelming relief hit her. She started to laugh and he joined in. They both seemed to realize at the same time that they were bare chest to bare chest. The laughter stopped.

Lizabeth wasn’t sure who made the next move. Their mouths were soon in a lip lock, their hearts beating hard against each other, their hands ridding each other of clothing. From somewhere a condom appeared, and he sheathed himself.

She felt his fingers slide inside her hot, wet center. She helped as he grabbed her hips and positioned her above him to slide her onto his penis. She cried out at the pain, biting her bottom lip to stop the sounds.

He stopped moving. “Leeza, are you okay?”

Her body gradually adjusted to the size of him and the pain lessened, just as she’d been told it would.

“I’m wonderful,” she said, hoping to convince him. For good measure, she added
dahling
and restlessly moved against him, asking for she hardly knew what.

“Once we get started,” he said, his voice a husky purr, “I won’t be able to stop.”

“I don’t want you to stop.” Pleasure had already started to replace the pain. The only sounds after that were murmurs and sighs and groans as they lost themselves in the wonder of each other.

Lizabeth met his thrusts with her own, feeling closer to him than she had ever felt to anybody. The warm sensation between her legs turned hot and liquid, spreading like a fan inside her. She cried out again, this time in wonder. He pumped into her a last time and met his own release.

She didn’t move as their heartbeats slowed and their breathing returned to normal, wishing she could confide in him that this had been the first time she’d made love.

At the same time, she fervently hoped he hadn’t been able to tell she’d been a virgin. Then he’d know that ultra-sophisticated Leeza Drinkmiller was a fraud.

She didn’t think it would be any compensation to find out that boring, colorless Lizabeth was falling in love with him.

Peyton smoothed the sheer black stocking over one of her long legs until the lacy top hugged her upper thigh, keeping the stocking in place.

When she’d put on the other stocking, she walked over to the full-length mirror on her wardrobe and presented her back to it. Swiveling her head, she tried to make sure the black seams were straight but got an eye full of naked butt.

She laughed at herself, not because her butt looked bad naked but because her black thong was the most daring thing she’d ever worn. She turned around to face the mirror and changed her mind about the thong.

The lacy black shelf bra with the boning that strategically uplifted her cleavage but left her nipples and half her breasts bare was definitely more daring.
 

She went to her closet, where she’d hung the mere wisp of a minidress she’d bought that afternoon at a store miles from the downtown boutiques her mother and her friends frequented. She shimmied into the dress, grateful she hadn’t eaten much that afternoon. The black garment was so slinky that even an extra grape would show. She stepped into a pair of equally new three-inch high heels and returned to the mirror.

She posed this way and that, feeling a draft at the open oval at the back of the dress, and giggled. Her mother would faint dead away if she saw her now.

But Peyton hadn’t gone to all this trouble to shock her society-conscious mother. She’d put on the sexiest clothes she could find to propel Mitch into action.

After he’d failed to kiss her the other night while they stood under the sea spray, she’d had a crisis of confidence for, oh, maybe two minutes.

Then she’d come to her senses because there was no way Mitch didn’t want her.

He’d tried incessantly to get her into bed from the day they’d met until about a week ago. A man’s ardor didn’t cool that quickly and that completely.

Nope. Mitch wanted her, of that she was sure. But she was equally sure he’d taken her previous reluctance to get intimate too much to heart.
 

She didn’t jump into bed with a man on the first date or even in the first month. She appreciated that Mitch respected her and had decided to act like a gentleman.

But too much gentlemanly behavior was too much. It was Friday night and she hadn’t even seen him since Tuesday, for heaven’s sake.

She was ready, willing and about to leave him with no doubt that she was eager to make love to him. Tonight.

Mitch had asked her, for no reason that made any sense, to meet him at a restaurant across the Cooper River in Mount Pleasant. The location was fortuitous because she wasn’t sure she’d have the courage to dress this way if she thought she’d run into someone she knew.