Flying High (15 page)

The waiter seated them in the upstairs dining room in a cozy alcove that boasted a round table for two beneath a hanging candelabra that lent a soft glow to the setting and gave the palm trees beside it a tropical shimmer.

“Do you like it?” he asked her before the waiter left them.

“It’s very special,” she said, and it was. He accepted the menus and tipped the waiter.

After a dinner that met the highest standards, he paid the check and stood. “Ready to go?”

She guessed so, but the butterflies in her stomach demanded that she deal with them, so she decided she’d best level with him.

“My nerves are shredded,” she said, “and they may not straighten themselves out. Just thought I’d warn you.” She’d meant to sound flippant, but didn’t succeed.

He splayed his hand on her back and urged her toward the exit. People that she suspected were notables greeted him as they passed, and not a few women gaped at him. He walked behind her, and she couldn’t tell what effect that adulation had on him.

During the drive to her home, he spoke for the first time since leaving the dinner table. “Don’t worry about shredded nerves, mine aren’t exactly dormant. But they don’t have to be calm in order for me to be efficient. You know what I’m saying?”

She did indeed, and figured she would be more comfortable with a different subject. “Any chance we’ll get rid of these bodyguards soon?”

She didn’t believe he wanted to talk about that, but he answered her question. “Probably a week, at most. A few things happened while I was in California that suggest Mustache and his friends have become impatient.”

She heard herself gasp. “Friends?”

“Yeah. These things are never a matter of one person. I’m told that their goal is no secret. The only problem is catching them in the act.”

“But that’s dangerous.”

“For them, yes. Our folks are on the job.”

He stopped in front of her house and cut the motor. “I’d like to come in, Audrey.”

She knew that, but she appreciated him saying so. “Want to put your car in the garage?”

He shook his head. “It’ll be fine right here.”

“Would you like a glass of wine?” she asked once they were inside, not as a means of stalling, but because she wanted whatever happened between them to evolve naturally.

“I’d love it, but just one.”

She took that as a signal that he didn’t plan on spending the night. What else could it mean? As if divining her thoughts, he said, “I don’t think it’s a good idea for Ricky to wake up in the morning and find I’m not there. He’s not yet as secure about me as I had thought.”

“I noticed that when I took him home and he discovered you weren’t there. Be right back.”

She slipped into the guest bathroom, brushed her teeth, then got a bottle of chilled white Bordeaux from the refrigerator and two stem glasses.

“Would you like a petit-four? Or I’ve got some cheesecake.”

He stood, took the wine and glasses from her hand and placed them on the coffee table. “Sit here with me, and tell me what you’re nervous about. If you don’t feel that this is right, I’ll understand and we’ll work toward it. But I want you to know that I don’t have a single reservation. I want this with you, and I’ll welcome the consequences.”

“Do you know what you said?”

“Definitely. I said exactly what I meant.” He took her hand and sat closer to her on the sofa. “I know a man misused your trust, that he deceived you. I’ve figured out that he dealt you a blow. I am what you see. If you can’t trust me, tell me now and I’ll be on my way.”

“I’ve done a lot of thinking, soul-searching or whatever you want to call it, since you said you no longer consider this attraction between us as anathema, and I—”

“Whoa! I never said it was anathema, but that a deep involvement with you or any other woman wasn’t for me. But slowly you got into me, seeped into my head, my heart, my veins, my whole being.” He threw up his hands. “Yeah, I fought it, but I’ve been trained to know when I’m losing a battle.” He laughed. “Baby, this one was lost long ago.”

Her heart fluttered like a butterfly in the breeze, and she gave thanks that she was sitting down for, even then, a weakness crept along her limbs. “Are you sure? You’re telling me that you welcome a relationship with me, that you want to see where it will lead? Is that what you’re saying?”

He squeezed the fingers of her left hand. “That night when you kissed my cheek and whispered that I was sweet... From then on, I knew I had to test it, that you could offer what I needed.”

“I’d sworn off relationships completely,” she said, “and for the past five years I’ve kept that vow. The first time you kissed me, I knew I was vulnerable.” The twinkle in his eyes was soon followed by a rumble of laughter from his throat.

“What’s so amusing?”

“Lady, when you start kissing, you don’t fool around. You could melt a glacier.” As if fueled by his memories, his voice dropped a full register and his eyes darkened. She reached for the bottle of wine, and her shaking fingers betrayed her reaction to the desire that possessed him.

“Give me that,” he said, taking the bottle from her and pouring them each half a glass. He held a glass to her lips and, after she sipped the wine, he drank from the same glass, never taking his gaze from her face. Then he repeated the ritual with the other glass, taking the first sip himself and giving her the remainder.

He set the glasses on the table in front of them, and she stared into the dark desire of his mesmerizing eyes. Immobile. Transfixed. Never had she seen his need spread so blatantly across his face. Exposed. Nothing hidden. Her nerves tingled with exhilaration, drowning her in a pool of sensuality. She crossed and uncrossed her knees, balled and released her fists until at last her bosom heaved and she had to breathe through her mouth. Still he gazed. She thought she would scream with the need to feel his hands, lips and tongue all over her.

“Nelson,” she said in desperation.

“Come here. I need to taste you.”

For a split second she stared at the impassioned turbulence in his eyes, breathing his breath and smelling his heat, and then, with trembling lips and a thunderous pounding of her heart, she opened her arms to him. He lifted her into his lap, bent to her parted lips and let her know once more the sweet torture of his tongue claiming her. Possessing her. She heard her own moans as she sucked his tongue deeply into her mouth and feasted.
More. More.
She needed more of him. His lips caressed her eyes, cheeks and the corner of her mouth until she thought she would scream. Jolts of electricity whistled through her veins until, caring for nothing but the way he made her feel, she grabbed his hand and plunged it into the bosom of her strapless dress. And, as if waiting for that move, he freed her breast from the confines of her dress and sucked her areola into his mouth, sending fevered sensations to every nerve in her body.

“Oh, Lord!” she cried aloud from the pleasure of it.

Heat roared arrow-straight to her feminine center, and the tugging of his mouth at her nipple plunged her deeper and deeper into the whirlpool of desire. She squirmed, crossing and uncrossing her knees until the warm liquid of love flowed from her. Beyond control now, she struggled to get to him, to feel him, to get him inside her, and frantically grasped his belt buckle. But he stilled her hand.

“Are you sure?”

“Yes.
Yes
.”

“If I take you up those stairs, we’ll—”

“It’s what I want. Here. Right now.”

“No,” he whispered, “not here.” He lifted her into his arms and raced up the stairs.

Standing at the edge of her bed, he set her on her feet and stared down at her, his face a question mark, as if waiting for permission.

Without a thought as to what she did or why, she grabbed a handful of his shirt and pulled it. The fire of desire blazed in his eyes, and his breathing quickened. Her fingers worked at his belt buckle, and he allowed it, seemingly passive. Letting her have her way. And as if emboldened by his permissiveness, she threw off his jacket, loosened his tie and began to unbutton his shirt. Suddenly, arms of steel imprisoned her body, and he plunged his tongue into her mouth, stunning her with the force of his passion.

His hot hands on her naked flesh as he sent her zipper downward released a gut-searing sensation in her and, not caring about anything but him and what he had in store for her, she unzipped him. But he stopped her, lifted her, and lay her on the bed. She threw off her bra and let him see her bare of all but the red bikini hiding her treasure.

He stepped out of his pants, tore off his shirt and stood before her, a brown Adonis, muscled, strong and all man. Gazing at the treasure before her, she swallowed the liquid that had accumulated in her mouth, reached out and pulled away the tiny G-string that cupped him and let him spill into her hands. She wanted to kiss him, but he didn’t give her the chance. After protecting her, he covered her with his body and wrapped her in his arms.

With his arms cradling her head, he kissed her eyes, her cheeks, neck, nibbled at her ears and, when she thought she could no longer stand it, his lips covered hers, at last giving her his tongue. He didn’t linger there, but inched downward until his lips fastened on her left nipple and began that rhythmic sucking motion that made her scream for relief.

“You’re nowhere near ready,” he whispered. “Just let me love you.’

He moved to suckle her right breast while his fingers tortured her left one, teasing and tantalizing until she thought her body would incinerate. His lips skimmed the sides of her breasts, and shivers raced through her as he adored her belly. But when his fingers teased the insides of her thighs, barely touching her flesh, she tensed. He looked up at her.

“Relax, love, I’m only going to make you happy. Trust me.”

“I do. I do. But I’m going out of my mind.”

“Good.”

When he lifted her knees over his shoulders and parted her folds, she stopped breathing. Then the tip of his tongue fired the nub of her passion, and, as if of their own volition, her hips swung up to meet him, and he loved her until an unfamiliar throbbing began at the bottom of her feet and an awful fullness gripped her. Nearly mindless, she screamed for relief.

“Nelson, honey, I can’t stand this, I’m so full. I...I need to—”

“Be patient, baby, and I’ll give you what you need,” he said, and sipped the love liquid that flowed from her. Then he kissed his way slowly up her body, torturing her senses. With one hand around her shoulder and the other beneath her hips, he kissed her cheek and pressed against her. Feeling him at her portal, she thought she’d go mad if he didn’t enter, and flung her body up to force his penetration and winced at the pain.

“It’s been a long time for you,” he whispered. “Be patient.”

He entered slowly and, after allowing her to adjust to him, flexed his hips and let her have the powerful thrust of his loins, moving in and out of her, twisting and circling. Loving her. Staking his claim. She caught his rhythm and moved with him as if in a choreographed dance.

“Ooh!” she said as a pumping and squeezing began in the muscles of her vagina. “Honey, I’m so full, and I can’t...I want to burst...please, I—”

“You will. Concentrate on that feeling. We’re going to fly out of here together.”

“But—”

She couldn’t speak. Couldn’t think. He was all around her, over her, on her and in her. Surely she was dying. And then she sank until the bottom fell out of her as he hurtled her into a vortex of ecstasy.

“Nelson!” she cried. “Nelson. Nelson. I love you.”

* * *

It was more than he’d hoped for or ever dreamed could happen to him again. He had a woman beneath him who wanted him, wanted him to know it, didn’t have to fake and wasn’t stingy with her loving. And miracle of miracles, she was the woman he adored. He wanted to give her everything, with no care for his own feelings or needs. He gloried in her hard, driving passion. Fired by her body’s demands as well as his own, he drove into her with every trick at his command, using his strength and skill to please her. He meant to love her until he drained her of desire.

Her moans and pleas threatened to drive him to completion, and he bent to her sweet lips. Her little moves triggered in him a desire for release, but he told himself to think of something else. Anything. As he pictured the battle of Orleans, her muscles clutched at him, squeezing and pinching him and finally erupting in spasms and shaking him to the core of his being. He held fast, until he heard the words “I love you.”

“I’m yours. Yours and nobody else’s!” he shouted, and poured the essence of life into her as he splintered in her arms. Her own arms tightened around him and he gripped her to him, stunned by the force of his release and of his feeling for her.

He raised up. “Look at me,” he whispered. “I’m in love with you. I didn’t want it to happen, but it has and I’m not sorry. You said you love me. Does that still hold now that you’re back to earth?”

“Yes. It holds. That’s why I’m here with you like this. As you said, I was afraid of this, but I wouldn’t have missed it for the world.”

The eyes into which he gazed blessed him with a wordless affirmation of love, holding him transfixed, suspending him in a cloud of joy such as he had never experienced, not even with the woman to whom—in what now seemed the aeonian past—he had pledged his troth. His heart fluttered as he drank in the wonder of Audrey lying beneath him, and he gathered her closer, wanting to shield her from anything and everything that could hurt a single hair on her head or cause her one second of pain.

Frustrated by his inability to express what lodged so deeply and so solidly inside of him, he kissed her nose, and she rewarded him with a softening of her features into a loving smile.

After a long time, he said, “I’d move because I’m probably putting too much weight on you but, silly as it sounds, I can’t bear to stop feeling your skin against mine and your breasts against my chest. Do you mind?”

She raised both arms toward the ceiling, closed her eyes, shifted her hips beneath him and stretched like a sated feline.