Bedroom Eyes (26 page)

“I’ll take that as a no,” he said, and, leaning into her, closed his lips on hers.

“Mmmmmmmm,” she murmured, curling into his embrace.

He smiled, his lips moving against hers. What a babe. What an incredible, impossibly innocent woman he’d stumbled across, yet an innocent so accomplished she managed to make him feel like a stumblebum half the time.

Forcing that thought from his mind, he kissed her more fiercely. She moaned and tangled her fingers in the hair at the back of his head. He caught his breath and plunged his tongue deeper into her mouth. The more he kissed, the more tightly she clung to him, until the tables were practically turned and he felt like crying out for mercy.

But of course he didn’t.

He kissed her back. He raced his hands up and down the back of her trembling body, a wonderfully soft body wedged against his own aching body.

A horn split the night.

She jumped and pulled away. “What was that?”

Tony opened his arms, hoping like heck she’d race right back into the safety he offered. “A boat going out into the lake.”

“Ohhh . . .” She seemed to consider his answer, shifting from foot to foot, nibbling on her bottom lip.

“It’s okay,” he said. “It’s a noise you get used to at the lakefront.”

“Oh,” she said, gazing at his arms.

He opened them wider, and to his relief and delight, she stepped back into the space of his arms.

“Tony?”

“Yes?” He didn’t care what she said. He had her in his arms, for better or for worse, Hinson be damned, for this one night.

“You’re nice,” she said.

Those words almost undid him. All he’d been thinking about was wooing her back to his place, ripping her clothes off, and having his way with her. He could taste her, envision her writhing beneath him, dancing in the candle-light burning beside his bed.

But nice? How in the hell did that comment equate to the wild visions he had of thrashing about in the sheets with her?

Tony nuzzled his lips against her neck, unwilling to let go, to come to grips with what she had to offer in reality, versus his own fantasies.

“Want to go to my place?” he heard himself asking, about to kick himself. Of course she’d say no. This was Penelope Sue Fields, rising attorney, star counsel, straight-A student. Why would she go to Tony Olano’s house?

She stilled, then her body went almost slack. He started to laugh, offer up a joke about his request, but somehow he found he couldn’t do it. She meant too much to him.

He sighed, realizing he was doomed.

What an idiot, he thought, and began to pull away.

“I’d love to,” she said softly.

“You’d what?”

“I’d love to see your place,” she said.

“Hot dog.” Tony hugged her close, then, one arm around her shoulders, hustled her off the bridge and toward the parking lot.

Then he stopped, rock-still.

“Is something wrong?” Penelope sounded anxious as she asked the question.

“No, I just remembered we can’t go to my place.” Was he out of his mind? He knew for a fact Hinson had a man watching his house.

“Oh.” Her disappointment showed clearly.

He put his arm around her. “Don’t worry, I’ll think of something else. It’s just that . . .” Tony racked his brain for some excuse, “I’ve, uh, had the place fumigated. Termites. Very bad in New Orleans.”

“Oh,” she said again.

She didn’t invite him over, which was just as well. Everyone was watching her building. Still, Tony thought, she might have offered.

“We could . . .” her voice trailed off, then strengthened. “We could go to my place, but that houseguest I mentioned has arrived.”

It was Tony’s turn to utter an “oh.” Placing a kiss on her lips, he said, “Never fear. I have the solution.” He opened the door to his twelve-year-old Plymouth as suavely as he’d seen Hinson sweep open the door of his brand new Town Car in front of Primo’s.

Penelope smiled at him and Tony knew he had to have tonight with her. He wanted Penelope, in his arms, in his heart, and in his life.

Chapter 19

Penelope didn’t know where Tony was taking them. But, driving along the darkened streets, so near to him she could feel his heart beating, Penelope didn’t care.

She trusted him.

She did wish she hadn’t told that silly fib about Mrs. Merlin being the name of her cat.

After Tony’s sympathetic reaction to the news of Mrs. Merlin’s flattened state, he’d no doubt think she was nuts if she launched into the tale of the six-inch magick practitioner.

And now, driving through the night together, the last thing Penelope wanted was any reason for Tony to reject her.

In the occasional illumination from street lamps, she studied Tony’s face, especially the darkly brooding eyes that had so captivated her from the first moment she’d seen him in the Oil Building elevator.

Tonight the dark fire in his eyes burned even more intensely. Penelope, however, thought maybe she was reading that intensity into his gaze due to her own incredible thrill at having him look at her as if he wanted her and only her.

Just then he glanced over and found her watching him. A slight upward curve to his lips, he said in a deep, low voice, “Like what you see?”

She nodded.

“Good.” Reaching over, he took her hand and started circling his thumb against her palm.

She sighed.

“Like that?”

She nodded again.

In a low voice, he said, “I want you to like everything we’re going to do tonight.”

Penelope shivered and clutched his hand, then reminded herself she wasn’t turning back. No matter what bridge she was about to cross, no matter the irrevocable consequences, she wanted to give herself to him, if only for one night.

For so many years she’d been the perfect example of goal-driven virtue.

Tonight, she’d live for the moment.

When she’d moved to New Orleans, she’d promised herself she’d begin to live life in a way she’d avoided for far too long. Tonight she wanted to turn a corner; from the tips of her toes to the edges of her hair, she wanted to feel alive, wanted, desired.

A radio sounded and he slowly withdrew his hand from hers and lifted his radio microphone.

Immediately missing the connection, she shifted toward him, needing to bridge the gap between their bodies. She kicked off her heels, then pulled her legs onto the seat. Feeling bold and daring, she stroked the side of his rock-hard thigh with her toes, wondering where within herself she’d found the courage to do such a thing.

He smiled and let the radio dangle from its cord. His hand drifted in a teasing feathery path from the tips of her toes, along the length of her calf, behind her knee, and along her thigh, where her skirt had inched up dramatically.

Penelope sighed and instinctively tilted her body more openly toward his exploring hand.

She thought she heard him utter a noise somewhere between a growl and a sigh.

She smiled.

She might grow to like this flirting stuff.

She sure hoped Tony liked the way she did it, too. From that sound he’d just made, she couldn’t tell, and she was too shy to ask.

“Penelope?”

She shifted toward him, thankful for the darkness that hid her expression. She didn’t want him to see just how consumed with longing she suddenly felt. “Yes?” she managed the question in a languid tone, trying to sound like a woman accustomed to running her toes over a man’s thigh.

“How’d you find me tonight?”

“Good detective work, I guess.” Remembering suddenly the cherry-red candle she had burned late last night, she added, “And a little bit of magick.”

“Threw a spell on me, did you?”

He kept on stroking her leg, making it almost impossible to answer. And since there was the teeniest chance she’d done exactly that, Penelope couldn’t think of anything to say.

Just then Tony pulled off the road and the car bumped along a gravel lane before stopping in front of a small house with a sprawling porch that extended on pilings over the water. “Here we are.”

Penelope shifted around, scrambling for her shoes. Before she got both of them on, Tony had whipped around to her side of the car, opened the door, and held the right shoe out. “For you, Cinderella,” he said, a provocative smile curving his lips.

Feeling a lot like she’d fallen into one of her own fantasies, Penelope slipped her foot into the shoe as he held it for her. Then he took her by the hand and led her from the car and up a path that crunched underfoot as they walked on it.

From underneath a flower pot, Tony produced a key that glinted in the moonlight. “Thankfully my brother is a creature of habit,” he said, inserting the key in the door.

“Should we? I mean, will he mind?”

Tony chuckled. “Not Chris. He’d be happy to know someone was getting good use out of the place.”

Penelope hesitated. “So no one lives here?”

Tony had the door unlocked. “It’s a camp, a summer place, but Chris is so busy at the restaurant he rarely gets out here. We used to come here as kids, everybody, the cousins, aunts, uncles, you name it, and run wild.”

“Wild?”

“Oh, the usual, swim, fish, pull the girls’ pigtails.” He turned and caught her hand back in his. “That was my favorite,” he said, staring down at her face with those incredible dark eyes of his. Penelope noted extra circles under his eyes and wondered with a tug of tenderness whether he had trouble sleeping at night.

Then she forgot all about that as he pushed open the door and said, “After you, Cinderella.”

She told herself to move forward, to enter this strange house that belonged to someone else, with a man she scarcely knew. She sent the message from her brain to her foot, but somehow it seemed to get all tangled up.

Tony must have sensed it, because he simply picked her up in his arms and carried her inside the house.

“Oh, my,” she said, her words muffled in his thick hair curling over his shirt collar. She wondered for the most fleeting of moments if Cinderella had experienced this incredible mix of anticipation and trepidation as she stepped into the glittering golden coach on her way to the ball.

Tony settled her gently on the floor. Dim light glinted in the room through gaps in the window coverings.

He closed the door behind them.

Turned the key in the lock.

And took her in his arms.

His lips moved like velvet over silk as he caressed and nibbled at her mouth. She sighed and nestled even more closely against his chest. He stroked the back of her neck with one thumb and as she uttered a tiny moan at the magic of his kiss, his tongue eased between her lips and danced in rhythm with the raging beat of her pulse.

She moved in unison with Tony as he half-waltzed, half-circled his way across the darkened room. In the rush of his kisses, Penelope scarcely noticed when her head settled against a nest of pillows. Then, his arms still encircling her, Tony lay atop her.

A tiny note of warning, a last echo of common sense, began to sound in her head.

Then Tony slipped his hand under her jacket, beneath the lacy cup of her bra, and the warning drowned in the wave of pleasure that swept over her.

Tony was pretty sure he’d lucked out and gone off to heaven. The touch of Penelope’s skin under his hand, the curve of her breast, the rise of her excited nipple, all combined to assure him that no matter what else happened in his life, he had to have this woman as his tonight.

Any questions, hesitations, or reservations had long since fled his mind.

He freed the buttons of her jacket, shrugging it from her body as she wriggled and sighed beneath him in a way that was fast driving him over the edge. For a fairly prissy woman in fussy suits with her hair slicked back, Penelope warmed up faster than a cup of soup in a microwave.

Sure enough, the only thing she wore under that jacket was her bra, a concoction of lace and satin that barely covered her full breasts.

She lay with her head thrown back on a sea of pillows. His hand on one breast, he turned his attention to the other with his tongue, palming the nipple through the lace of her bra.

She squirmed and he let go long enough to unbutton his shorts and reach for his zipper.

Between kisses, he said, “For someone so incredibly starchy, you are the most passionate woman I’ve ever known.”

Her eyes flickered wide and the most adorable smile curved on her lips. “Really?”

The innocent way she asked the question undid Tony. Working on her skirt, he shed it along with her pantyhose. The scrap of satin that passed for panties he left in place, excited by the sexy outline of the white silky fabric and the wisps of hair that curled around one edge, beckoning him inward.

Tony groaned, choking in a ragged breath.

She lay beneath him, the picture of female perfection, her breasts under the lacy bra rising and lowering rapidly, offering herself to him with every breath she took.

Of course he accepted the offering, after first tugging off his shirt and tossing it somewhere on the floor along with the rest of their clothing.

She had the most incredibly awed look on her face. It tugged at his conscience as he lowered his mouth to suckle on her breast, first warming the tightened nipple through the barrier of the fabric, then edging back the lace playfully with one finger.

She gasped and raised her hands to the back of his neck. Murmuring jumbled words Tony couldn’t quite make out, she curled her hands in his hair and kissed the top of his head.

She was more than ready.

Tony eased one hand beneath her back, making quick work of the catch of her bra. He skimmed it off her body and tossed it over his shoulder.

This time not even a wisp of fabric lay between him and her ripe breasts. He circled first one nipple, then the other before edging off the couch and patting his hand around the side table until he found what he sought.

With a click, the soft light of a table lamp cast a glow in which Penelope basked. Staring up at him, she looked completely open, totally vulnerable, utterly beautiful.

“You don’t mind the light?”

She smiled. Tracing the shape of his lips with her little finger, she said, “All the better to see you.”