Just One Taste (29 page)

“Lie down,” he rasped.

She slipped out of the robe and tried to cover herself with the crumpled sheet, but Daniel was having none of
that
. He traced his fingers from her lips to her throat to her breasts, teasing the tips to swollen buds.

“Roses,” he said, not stopping to explain. He dipped lower, fingers of one hand circling her naval, the others edging a path to her sex. Her legs fell shamelessly apart for him, and he took quick advantage. Now it was her turn to breathe sharply. Each brush, each stroke, each sweep left her wanting, needing more.

And she hadn’t even put her hands on him yet. Kissed him recently. She had to remedy that.

She rolled and reached for his nape, lifting her face toward him. His hands continued on their blissful journey as his lips found hers. Her breasts rubbed against the breadth of his chest as their tongues tangled in a hazy shower of sparks, little bursts of taste and desire. Alice felt if she looked down, she’d see a filament of flame between their every touch point.

And she wanted to get closer. Hotter.

She slipped a hand around his shaft as he groaned into her mouth. He drew back and looked at her, his eyes mossy and dark. “I’ll take that condom now.”

She swept her hand over the sheet until she found the little square. Wordlessly she watched as he sheathed his cock into its confines.

“No,” she said suddenly.

He looked as pained as if she had stabbed him, strangled him, and then shot him for good measure. “What? You’ve changed your mind?”

“No. Yes. I’m on the pill and I haven’t had sex in over two years. I’m clean. Disease-free. I—I had to have a complete physical before I got the job. They ran every test imaginable. Do you know I had to carry a wooden box with a twenty-five pound weight up a set of stairs before the town selectmen would hire me?”

Daniel’s expression was more confused than ever. She reached for him. “I want to feel you. I want to feel
all
of you. You haven’t been with anyone in thirty years?”

“Longer. I should be ashamed.”

She touched his cheek. “Don’t be. You were saving yourself for someone special. Take the condom off,” she whispered. “I want to kiss you there.”

H
e was
in the worst kind of torture. Exquisite, consummate pain. Alice’s velvet-soft tongue swirled from his balls to his shaft, tracing the pulsating vein with its tip. He found he couldn’t block out her thoughts anymore. Didn’t want to, either. The moth had crashed through the screen and flown in, fluttering around the open candle flame, singeing her pretty white wings.

What she was thinking about was flattering in the extreme, and very, very naughty. The words ‘hot seed’ kept recurring, and he would be obliging her soon if she didn’t stop. But he indulged himself under her small hands and luscious lips for a few more sublime seconds, until he knew he’d spill that hot seed into her mouth any minute. Which was, in fact, exactly what she wanted, the little hoyden.

But he didn’t. He wanted to be buried deep inside her, feel her smooth freckled skin alight with her unexpectedly wanton sensuality. He wanted to drive in and out of her until her sweet greed would trap him with its fervor and he lost himself within her. Spend his last drop. And then he would start again before she could catch her breath.

With an oath he pulled her up and kissed her, one hand slipping through her gloriously tangled auburn hair as he held her bottom with the other, pressing her sex to his. Her lush body covered him like a soft warm pillow, a squirmy pillow.

She wanted to ride him. She wanted to do everything she’d ever read about in all the erotic novellas she’d downloaded from the Internet when she couldn’t sleep.
Everything
. Whoa, she was reading some wild stuff. Forget that shades of whatever book, her mind was waaay more creative. She wanted to call in sick tomorrow and spend the whole day in bed with him.

“We can’t, sweetheart. I’ve only got two more days. But I promise you my nights.”

She blinked her eyes above him. “I thought you weren’t going to read my mind.”

He held a finger to her lips. “I can’t help it. Your thoughts are inside me, now. I’ve never felt anything like this. This connection. I wish you could read
my
mind. You’d know I’m speaking the truth.”

He gentled her back to him with a kiss, then raised her hips and slid her down his rock-hard cock. She was tight and oh so wet. Her knees gripping his sides, her nails grazing his shoulders, she moved above him, slowly at first. Almost too slowly. As though she wanted him inside her forever, completing her. A faint flush stained her breasts and belly. He flicked a rigid nipple with his thumb and watched her eyes lose focus.

“What am I thinking now?” she gasped.

She was going to make
him
blush. “You’re going to…you’re going to fuck my brains out.” As if to prove it, she came down again, squeezing his cock. “Then when so I’m weak that I can’t f-fight you, you’re going to suck me off until I get hard again.” She rose up on her knees, and he met her challenge by holding her hips and pushing her back down. “You’re going to get me to come in your mouth this time. You’ll swallow it. All of it. You think you’ll be such a slut.”

He could hardly believe or think or utter the x-rated plans bouncing around between them. He’d have to make some of his own, but he really didn’t think he was in her league in the imagination department.

She tossed him a brilliant smile. “I
am
a slut, aren’t I?”

Gone was the shy, prim little librarian. In her place was a woman who knew just what she wanted and went after it. Thank God she wanted him.

He knew sex had never been like this before for her, either. He could feel the wonder, the joy, the sheer carnality that rippled through her curvy body. She increased her rhythm, taking him roughly. He was as in as deep as he could be. The friction was both punishing and perfect.

He slid his hand to her swollen clit, watching her mouth slacken and her eyes shut as he circled and pressed against the glistening jewel. With a stifled scream, she climaxed on his fingers, her vaginal walls contacting around his cock until he had no choice but to follow suit. He erupted within her, each thrust more powerful than the last.

He held her close after, their bodies slick and shivering. Every tightening, every constriction sent him into further into bliss. They stayed connected until nature inevitably reared its head and his receded. He slipped out reluctantly and brushed a damp curl away from her cheek.

“What am I thinking now?” she whispered, her voice hitching.

They thudded together, heart to heart. Her eyes were filling with tears. He closed his.

“Don’t. Don’t cry.” Drops of moisture landed on his chest and he wiped them away.

“I’m crying because I’m happy.” She snuffled as he licked the salty tears from her cheeks. Biologists had observed moths drinking tears from birds, but no bird could taste as delicious as Alice. Daniel felt that he was somehow taking a part of her within, to keep and treasure, to remind him of this night.

“I know. I’m happy too.” And wretched just the same. How could he leave her in two days? This was why he never made any attempt to have a relationship with anyone. At first, it was because Rebecca had been so patently disgusted with his lovemaking. He didn’t need to read her mind to know that she considered the marital bed both boring and repulsive. He thought there was some defect in him. How could he want her so badly when it was clear he didn’t have the capacity to give her pleasure?

He knew better now. He was practically a virgin when he married her, a few trips to his father’s brothels notwithstanding. He’d been as anxious and callow as any youth when he married at twenty-two. Rebecca was just seventeen, a sheltered child, her mother dead, her father seeing sin in every corner.

There had been little chance of happiness for them.

Once Daniel was in exile, he was too disoriented to think about his own needs. He hadn’t been a monk, but coupling with anyone seemed futile, a foolish whim. He had work to do. Had done it. All but for the few intransigent books in Alice’s library. And as of today there was only one left.

But he was not going to think of the past tonight, his own or his father’s. He was going to make love again, and again if he could, before they both rose from the disheveled pink gingham sheets and faced reality. And if he failed, which seemed likely, he would spend a few decades wondering what Alice was doing. Was she reading aloud to preschoolers? Was she stamping books? Was she sharing her life with someone worthy of her?

He settled her against his side, massaging her shoulder. “Shh. Let’s sleep for a bit. What time do you have to get up?”

Alice squinted at the clock. “In six hours.”

“Plenty of time, then.”

“Oh, for what?”

He kissed the tip of her head. “Read my mind.”

H
e was awakened
by the sound of the Jeep below. Alice’s mother was a fourth grade teacher at Merrills Mills Elementary, dreading today’s outside recess duty. Fridays were always wild. And there was a full moon to consider as well.

Daniel shot straight up. He had to get home. Alice stirred and sighed.

He hated to leave her, but he’d see her again in two hours. His hopes for a quickie this morning were probably unrealistic, anyway. Nothing could be quick with Alice. She was a marvel, to be savored slowly and thoroughly, like fine wine or chocolate or a Tim Horton’s jelly doughnut.

He slipped out of bed, got dressed as quietly as he could. Alice was still asleep, her dreams making him grin. They’d try that later.

He went over to the breakfast bar, found a message pad and pen in a little basket next to the phone and left her a note. Short, but full of sweetness. It would have to do. At least she wouldn’t think he’d ditched her like a one-night-stand man.

He ran all the way down the Merrill Road, even though his body jarred every time his trainers hit the pavement. Trees older than he was lined the lane, their leaves now brown and scattered. He remembered when this road was dirt, out in the country, his father’s house the only one. It had started as a long carriage drive and ended at the Merrill Mansion. Now it was fairly well-populated with a mix of trailers and tract homes.

His father would not have approved. But Daniel had sold off parcel after parcel. He had to have something to live on.

Once inside, he shed his jacket and went to the room off the kitchen he used as a bedroom here. In the seventies, he’d arranged to have the majority of the furniture taken to an auction, so the house was mostly empty. Unwelcoming. But it had always been that. Built more as a symbol of power than a family home, its inhabitants had never been happy.

There had been a series of caretakers over the years, all from the same family, who didn’t have to do much except keep the lawn trimmed and see that squatters didn’t make themselves too much at home. He’d contacted the current one with specific instructions to turn the electricity on for one week and have half a cord of wood delivered. Daniel could do without oil heat, which was a good thing, as the house had no furnace. There was a woodstove in the kitchen, and it was only October. He guessed he should be happy his Prodigal Son act didn’t happen in January.

January in Maine was not for sissies.

He opened the small trunk at the end of his bed. In it were things that he’d shoved into a backpack in preparation before he was zapped into Merrills Mills, appearing like an uncorked genie in front of his wife’s grave as he did every single time. As though he needed reminding why he was being punished.

He picked up the small frayed cloth-bound Bible that had once belonged to Rebecca when she was a child. It was too worn for him to turn its pages anymore, but tucked inside was a folded piece of typing paper. Yellowed from being handled so many times, its creases were just about ready to separate the paper into sixths. On it, he had transcribed from the flyleaf of the Bible what his father-in-law had written in his crabbed hand.

It was the ultimate joke to present a curse with a Bible, but the Reverend Porter Gosford had taken great satisfaction in doing so. Once Daniel had touched it, his life was changed forever.

Perhaps it was time Daniel wrote Gosford’s words on fresh paper so Alice could help him. He brought the book into the kitchen and placed it gently on the round oak table next to a new notebook. He busied himself with the woodstove, putting in a few logs to take the chill off the room, ate some toast, drank some coffee, brushed his teeth afterward over the kitchen sink. He’d take a shower later, although truth to tell, he was reluctant to wash the sweet scent of Alice from his body.

He was almost finished copying the odd poem into the notebook when he heard a car pull alongside the house. He looked through the wavy glass windows and saw Alice get out and march toward the mudroom steps. Her wild hair was now tamed into an actual librarian’s bun and she looked all business. And pissed.

He checked his watch. It was a little after eight. Not much time before she had to turn around and drive back into town. He pushed himself away from the table and opened the back door before she had a chance to knock.

“Good morning.” He smiled at the sight of her. She was bristling in anger, a little hellion in brown knee-high boots. He was very sure she’d like to kick him, and he wasn’t even trying to read her mind.

She poked him instead, kind of hard. “You left!”

He took a step backward. “Didn’t you see the note on the kitchen counter?”

“What good is a note when I wanted you?”

“You’ve got me. Better late than never.” He bent down and she threw her arms around him, greedily kissing him almost senseless. For a man who had led such an ascetic life, he was now a walking, raging, hormonal mess. He wished he had the time to get used to it.

Backing her into the mudroom wall without breaking contact, he pulled her jacket off, palming her breasts beneath her brown turtleneck, sliding his hand under her plaid pleated skirt.

“Why, Ms. Roy,” he said, his mouth curving in delight against her throat, “you’re not wearing any underwear. Whatever will the selectmen say?”

“Shut up.” Her hands were working furiously at the buttons of his jeans to free him. He picked her up and was sheathed within her in seconds, her hot wet heat another delightful surprise. He held her tight and tried like hell not to tumble them both to the floor. Her legs were wrapped around him, her hips surging. Her tongue, her teeth, her lips, every inch of her brought him pleasure. He’d never imagined fucking anybody against a wall, but it was clear from the starbursting thoughts in her head that
she
had. He felt her crossing one more thing off her bucket list.

He was wrong about the quickie. It could be done. And done well.

“Happy to oblige,” he gasped, once the shuddering stopped and sense started.

She smoothed her pleated skirt down, looking for all the world like a parochial school girl. A naughty one.

“Why did you leave?” she asked, still pouting.

“Something your mother said.” He smiled at her confusion. “Thought, I mean. When she left for work this morning, she was thinking about the full moon, how some kids act like little werewolves and go crazy.”

“I’ve heard that theory.”

“It reminded me of Gosford’s curse and I came home to get it. I was going to bring it to you in the library.”

“Where is it?”

He grabbed her hand and led her into the kitchen. The wood was spitting and crackling in the kitchen range and the room seemed almost cheerful. But maybe that was because Alice was here. She’d bring cheer anywhere.

“I was just rewriting it before you came in and so rudely interrupted me. The paper it was on is kind of grungy. And the ink of the original curse in the Bible is so faded now you can’t really read it.”

Alice’s rosy cheeks drained of color. “In the Bible? He cursed you with a Bible?”

“Yeah. Go figure. He and his buddy Satan.”

“Don’t talk like that.” Alice shivered. “I’m not terribly religious, but I guess I’m superstitious. I’m getting rid of those portraits downstairs too. They’re bad karma or something.”

Daniel gave her a quick hug. “I don’t think you have anything to worry about. You’re a good person.”

“I try to be.” Alice looked at the notebook with interest. “You finish up. Where’s the bathroom? I have to put on my underpants.” She fished them out of her purse.

“Damn. Just when I thought of you going commando behind the circulation desk all day.”

C
ommando
! For an old guy, he was pretty hip to the lingo. She followed him through a butler’s pantry into a large, old-fashioned bathroom. There was a rusted, clawfoot tub with a jerry-rigged shower hose. The toilet and sink were not as old, and seemed to be in working order.

He left her to straighten up. Alice looked into the speckled mirror when she was done. Her bun was a hopeless disaster, but the wall sex had been worth every lost bobby pin. She wet her hands and combed her fingers through her hair, trying to calm things down.

When she returned to the kitchen, Daniel handed her a sheet of lined paper he’d torn from the notebook. She checked the time. “I’m going to have to read this at work. Can I give you a ride?”

He winked. “I think you already have. No, I’ll be late today. I’ve got a couple of things to do. And I’m going to take a shower. See you in a little while.”

When he kissed her good-bye, she experienced the urge to ask Jamie to cover for her so she could stay in the Merrill Mansion all day. But then she remembered his words. He only had two days.
They
only had two days. Unless she could make some sense of the paper she clutched in her hand, by midnight tomorrow he’d disappear, and she’d be back with her books and her vibrator.