Beneath the Surface (36 page)

He stripped her of pants and teddy in short order, picked her up in his arms and balanced her on his thighs as Tabitha twined her legs around his waist and arms around his neck.

“Take me now, Eric. Right here!”

“I’m going to.” He fiercely bit and sucked her neck as he poised her directly over his jutting cock, and Tabitha knew that she would have to wear a turtleneck or scarf for the next few days to cover the mark of ownership that would surely be cropping up on her throat.

She was so wet, he barely had to thrust before he was sliding through her sheath all the way to the hilt. He alternately rolled and pistoned his hips in silent desperation, lightly biting and licking her pebbled nipples as Tabitha met his plunges with her own strong thrusts.

A few minutes later, she came with a keening whimper, face pressed against his shoulder, teeth firmly sinking into the soft flesh where shoulder and neck met as he violently shuddered and climaxed an instant behind her.

She kept her head on his shoulder as he walked her to the bedroom, lay her on the bed, and proceeded to finger and lick her to multiple orgasms again and again for the next few hours.

* * * *

“I guess we should get up to eat,” she whispered, reading his mind. “If only to refuel for another go-round.”

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“I like your thinking, woman.”

She giggled as he pressed his face against her stomach and blew a long and loud raspberry against her flesh. “Get up, silly.”

“Before we eat, there’s something we need to talk about.”

“I know what you’re going to say. We didn’t use anything.”

He arched a brow. “And you’re all right with that?”

“It’s done now.”

“Coming from someone who likes to plan for everything, that’s awfully nonchalant of you isn’t it?”

“I guess it’s the company I keep.” She shrugged and when he just stared at her, she sighed and said, “Look Eric, whatever happens happens, and we’ll deal with it then.

Okay?”

“I guess it will have to be.” He leaned in to kiss her lips, then pulled back and said, “I have something for you.”

“I have something for you, too.”

“Wow, we can do a real-life traditional exchange of gifts on Christmas Eve!”

She laughed and he realized how childish he must have sounded, then the seriousness, the implications of his words must have sunk in because her face almost instantly fell.

“You’re not going to run off on me again, are you?”

“No, of course not. I just…I don’t do traditional very well.”

“Who doesn’t do traditional?” he asked rather than saying what he really wanted to say.

He had so many questions to ask her, so many things he wanted to know about her childhood besides the flashes he’d gotten. How much worse could it have been? Had there been any bright spots?

He remembered that first time in her office when he’d teased her about selling cookies door-to-door, realized how far away from that reality her life had been.

I was entirely too busy with more important activities to indulge in that particular
whimsy.

So much unsaid in that sentence, what had been left out so telling.

He wouldn’t push, he told himself. Whatever he got from her from now own she would give of her own volition. It was beyond time that he more strictly abided his personal code. He’d abandoned it far too easily, for too long and Tabitha deserved better from him.

She deserved her privacy.

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EJ reached into the bedside drawer and pulled out a gift-wrapped, long slim box, and proffered it.

She gaped at it for so long before she took it, her look tempted him to break the promise he’d just made himself, but he didn’t need to scan her to know how afraid she was.

She glanced at him before she put out a shaky hand to take the box. “It’s jewelry.”

“Open it and see.”

She ripped the paper so meticulously and slow he was ready to snatch the box out of her hands and open it himself.

Finally she revealed the burgundy velvet box, paused a long moment before she flipped it open and gasped at the sight of the jade elephant with ruby eyes suspended from an eighteen inch, twenty-four-karat gold, Italian link chain.

“Oh, it’s so beautiful!” She carefully lifted the elephant from its velvet cushion, caressing the smooth jade and rubies with a thumb before turning her back to him. “Put it on for me.”

EJ happily obliged, watched as the turned and showed off her new necklace.

The stones and chain looked flawless against her copper skin, the gold and rubies catching and gently glinting beneath the light of the room.

“Thank you so much. I love it!” She put her arms around his neck, hugged and kissed him long and hard before she pulled away to get up. “Now yours.”

Tabitha retrieved her bag, pulled out a nine-by-twelve gift-wrapped box and EJ’s heart fell at the notion that she had bought him a sweater or some other clothing before he realized Tabitha wouldn’t do anything so uninspired.

He smiled as she handed him the box, didn’t care what it was, her closeness, her reaction to his present, was gift enough.

EJ didn’t waste time opening his gift, quickly ripped away the paper, and flipped open the box to see the silver and crystal plaque inside. His heart smiled at the engraving as he pulled the plaque out of the box:
Best Writer In The World Award, to Eric James
Vega, for his unflinching attention to narrative excellence and entertaining creative
prose, from your Biggest Fan.

“You are crazy!” He laughed, pulled her against his chest with one arm and hugged her tight before releasing her to admire his plaque.

“I take it you like it?”

“I love it and I’m going to hang it right over my computer so I can see it whenever I’m stuck. It’ll make me kick myself into gear and get unstuck.”

“Speaking of, isn’t there a little matter of me getting my greedy little hands on the rest of that manuscript?”

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She could put her greedy little hands wherever she wanted but he guessed the manuscript and some food would have to do for now. “C’mon, let’s go get you some sustenance.”

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Beneath the Surface

Tabitha spent more time during her half-day at work fingering her new jade elephant—nestled against her breastbone and that she never took off, and staring off into space contemplating her and Eric’s Christmas Eve together than doing any work.

When he’d pulled out that box she’d been on the verge of running again, and had it been a little square box and he had gotten down on one knee, she probably would have.

This was serious, had been serious for a long time; the minute she’d hopped that plane and jetted to Colorado things between them had changed, had ceased to be light and airy, or teasing and joking.

Surprise parties, Christmas Eve as a couple and Christmas with the big and wild family meant serious in anyone’s book, especially her raised by Mr. and Mrs.

Dysfunctional, brought up in a broken home before she’d been abandoned to the system.

On top of all this, she knew that Eric had not treated another woman with the attention and trust that he’d so far shown her; knew that he had not exposed his family to any other women, not even the inimitable Ms. Secret. Her heart swelled with the knowledge but just as quickly beat with the distinctive rhythm of alarm and anxiety.

How was she supposed to measure up to his expectations? How could she continue to entertain a relationship with him, when she wasn’t ready to tell him how she felt, or show him the same level of trust he showed her?

Tonight she would be bringing in the New Year with Eric and his family. That was momentous enough in itself, but the fact that they were going to be celebrating a union that had lasted half-a-century and survived six kids in this day and age, filled her with an equal level of dread and hope that exactly coincided with her ambivalent feelings for Eric.

She knew that she loved him, which was one of the only things that she was certain of, but was love enough?

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There’d been a time as a child when love and stability were all Tabitha had craved and dreamed of, all she’d thought she’d needed to be happy and normal like all her classmates and neighbors. Now she knew that there was a lot more to happiness, and for her it began with loving herself enough to relinquish and entrust that love to someone else.

She wasn’t sure yet whether she was ready to take that step in the relationship.

Cynthia knocked on the jamb and smiled when Tabitha looked up.

“I thought you left an hour ago,” Tabitha said.

“I had some stuff to clear up.”

“I think you’ve been hanging around me too long.”

“It’s only two and I’ve still got time to get home and pamper myself before my and Dillon’s night on the town.”

“Time Square?”

Cynthia nodded, smile widening. “Our first time and I can’t wait.”

“Better you than me.”

“What about you? What’s on the agenda for you and Mr. Vega?”

“You don’t have to front, Cyn. I know you call him EJ and it’s okay.”

Cynthia sighed at being let off the hook, then brightened once again. “So, any plans?”

Tabitha shrugged, tried to play off how much the coming evening meant to her.

“Just going over to his parents’ house for an anniversary party, then ring in the New Year from there.”

“Wow, the parents. Sounds serious.”

The girl had no idea, and Tabitha wasn’t going to tell her, scared enough as it was without Cynthia reminding her of what she had gotten herself into.

She tried to shrug it off by mentioning the surprise party and Christmas, didn’t realize she was digging herself deeper in Cynthia’s estimation until her assistant widened her eyes in awe.

“So, where’s the ring?”

“We’re not
that
serious.”

“If you say so, but I’ve seen the way he looks at you, and it’s serious.”

Eric’s mother had said something similar.

What way was he looking at her that Tabitha was missing? She swore all she saw was lust. Sure, there was some tenderness, some compassion but did he love her?

“So whose anniversary is it?”

“His parents’. Their fiftieth.”

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“Wow!” Cynthia suddenly got all dreamy eyed and sighed again. “I hope Dillon and I make it that far. Of course, we have to make it to one first, huh?”

“You will.”

“I wish you were as certain about your relationship as you are about mine.”

“I wish you would go home to that man of yours and start your celebrating.”

Tabitha got up from behind her desk, walked to the door and shooed Cynthia out. “Go on.

Go home now.”

Cynthia giggled, leaned in to give Tabitha a hug. Tabitha returned it.

“Have a good time,” Cynthia said.

“You, too, and be safe.”

As soon as she was alone Tabitha went back to her desk and shut down her computer. It wasn’t like she had gotten that much work done today, but it was either come to work and play at being busy, or stay at home and drive herself crazy with thinking about tonight.

By now she would have cleaned the house to within an inch of its inanimate life had she stayed home, and probably still would with the time she had to kill between now and tonight when Eric was due to pick her up.

No use putting it off any longer, she had to go home sooner or later.

Tabitha retrieved her coat and bag, shut off the lights, locked up her office and left.

As soon as she made it home a little under an hour later, she dumped her bag in the corner by the coat tree, got out of her clothes, and checked her messages.

There was one from Frankie wishing her a belated Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and saying he had found an apartment in Los Angeles, was adjusting to the wild and crazy Hollywood scene and doing well with his band. He left a number for her to reach him and said to give him a call sometime.

So he’d finally settled down and gotten his own apartment. Tabitha hoped this new stability lasted for a little while and wasn’t just a fluke.

The other one was from Eric confirming that he was going to pick her up at nine.

There was a long pause between his message and sign off of “I um…I’ll see you later.” and Tabitha wondered what he’d been about to say.

She played the message several times just to give herself a little thrill listening to his rich baritone over and over again while she ran a hot bath with one of her favorite Body Shop oils. Once the bath was full, Tabitha abandoned her bathrobe, picked up a paperback from her bookshelf and settled into the tub with a drawn-out sigh, muscles singing with gratitude.

She tried to get into the book, a recent purchase of the fifth installment in a vampire romance series on which she was hopelessly hooked, but as soon as she finished 215

Gracie C. McKeever

the first page, she knew she wouldn’t be able to get into it, not so soon after reading Eric’s
Body Language.

His voice haunted her, his twisted sense of humor contagious.

She mentally revisited certain passages, admired his view of human nature, especially his perceptiveness where women were concerned.

Where did he come up with his ideas? What made him such an expert on body language?

In his foreword he paradoxically claimed not be, stating outright “I’m no expert.

You don’t have to listen to me, but I’ll tell you this, I know what I know. And after two decades of growing up in a house full of the female gender, I especially know about the body language of the fairer sex. Trust me.”

She realized she did trust him, more than she trusted anyone else in her life, even Frankie. No, much more than she trusted Frankie. Frankie was her past, still her brother who she’d always love, whom she knew would never harm her, but Eric was her present and future. She trusted him with her safety and her life, was beginning to trust him with her soul.