New and…Improved? & Andrew in Excess (20 page)

“Did you talk to your father tonight?” she queried as she crossed the room. He'd swear his bold, brazen wife had a case of nerves.

“Yes. Did you?”

“Talk to your father?”

“No. Talk to
your
father.”

The mattress shifted slightly as it absorbed her weight. “Oh, yeah. I called Dad about half an hour ago.”

Out of the corner of his eye, he watched her try to discern whether he had on any clothes as she drew the sheet around her. A flicker of annoyance told him she still didn't know.

“Let me guess. He was thrilled to welcome me into the bosom of the Hamilton family,” Andrew said.

She turned to face him, dramatically reducing the space between them. She smelled faintly of mint toothpaste, and in his mind he easily stripped her of the green abomination. He knew what was underneath, and wasn't likely to forget anytime soon. His jockeys seemed to shrink. Certain parts of him remembered all too well.

“I wouldn't call him Dad the next time I see him in
court, if I were you.” She grinned, quick and irreverent. “And your father's thrilled I'm a Winthrop?”

“A.W. and Rand probably have a lot in common.” Thank goodness, she hadn't inquired about his phone call to Claudia. Graciousness hadn't been in Claudia's vocabulary.

“Did he mention your partnership?”

“No. Let's just say he was surprised that it wasn't Claudia.”

Doggie snores filled the silence between them.

Kat shifted underneath the covers. Her soft calf whispered against him for the briefest moment. His mouth dried.

Awareness filled the space between them. She didn't look at him, but it was there in the budding of her nipples against her T-shirt. If he hadn't married her, he'd consider seducing her, because he wanted her in the most basic way and her body seemed to respond in kind. But he'd become a sperm donor when he'd signed on the dotted line.

Kat dusted her hands together. “Well, we seem to have some more business to take care of tonight. I checked my ovulation prediction kit and it seems I'm in season. You know, now's the time. We should probably get the sex thing over with.”

U
H-OH
. K
AT NOTED
the slight narrowing of Andrew's eyes. Perhaps she should have been more select in her terminology. However, she was determined not to go overboard. She'd show moderation. Keep it to a business level. Theirs was a business arrangement after all. No need to lose her head just because they were about to get naked together. If he wasn't already…

Andrew propped on one elbow and leaned closer to her. The sheet slid down, baring his flat stomach. “I've never done the 'sex thing' with procreation in mind. Anything I need to know? Does it matter which of us is on top? Should you be facing east?” The low timbre of his voice caressed her even as he reached over and traced a small circle on the back of her hand in a rhythmic motion.

Damn him. He was toying with her. All she wanted was a wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am. Just the thing most women got with most husbands. But no. She had the rotten luck to stumble onto one intent on seduction. And darn good at it. She felt slightly dizzy and he'd only touched the back of her hand. So far.

It had been a really long six-year dry spell since Nick had hit the door. Six long, abstinence-filled years in which she'd avoided entanglements like the plague—because of that blasted all-or-nothing tendency of hers. She'd heard somewhere that sex was like riding a bike. Except she suspected she'd upgraded from a three-speed
to a ten-speed along the way. Suddenly nervous, Kat ran her fingers through her perpetually disheveled hair.

“The only requirements are once a day for the next three days.”

“Only once a day? Surely twice a day would double our odds.” He slid his bedeviling hand beneath the neckline of her T-shirt and trailed her collarbone. Frissons of delight danced across her skin.

How was she supposed to keep her wits about her with his touch igniting small fires? “Uh, no. It doesn't work that way. It decreases the potency of the sperm if you…” His mouth whispered along the shell of her ear. “If you, uh…oh my, uh, do it, um, too often.”

“You're the boss. If you say once a day, then it's once a day.” Andrew pushed the sheet into a tangle at the foot of the bed.

“What're you doing?”

“I have a job to do and it's time to get down to business.”

Now this was more like it. Now they were getting to the wham-bam part. Business. This was a business arrangement.

Baby for her. Partnership for him. Cut-and-dried. No crazy excesses.

Andrew leaned away from her, his gaze sweeping her from head to toe. She looked her fill of him. Peering at him through binoculars didn't come close to this. Golden skin lightly covered with dark hair. No bulging muscles marred the classic lines of his body. He was all hard planes and angles bisected by a pair of white briefs that evidenced his willingness to get down to business. Want and intent warmed his eyes to a smoky gray.

She closed her eyes and inhaled his male scent.

“You have the most exquisite legs.” The low, heated timbre of his voice opened her eyes and increased the ache building inside her.

Not
okay
or
nice,
but
exquisite.

With a gossamer touch, he stroked from the arch of her foot to her calf. He followed that same path with kisses that sampled and savored. The moist heat of his mouth against the sensitive skin behind her knee mightily weakened her earlier resolve.

Andrew lavished her thighs with kisses. Instinctively she parted her legs in supplication. But her wicked, wicked husband taunted her with a look that only promised, and pushed her T-shirt aside to nibble his way to the slight rise of her belly.

Kat tugged her T-shirt over her head and tossed it to the floor. Her senses begged to indulge in him. She stroked the hard line of his shoulder and felt a faint shudder ripple through him at her touch. She stroked the sleek muscles of his back as he explored her ribs and the underside of her breasts, the faint rasp of the stubble on his face, stoking the fire he tended with his sensual exploration. With deliberateness, he bypassed the aching peaks of her breasts and moved on to the pulse tattooing a rhythm of desire at the base of her throat. Braced on his forearms above her, only his mouth touched and caressed her.

His muscles bunched beneath her fingertips as her hands clutched at him, transmitting the fever building inside. Her breath grew ragged as he pushed aside her hair to sample the sensitivity of her neck and the shell of her ear. Trekking across a desert could not have left her with a greater thirst.

She groaned in frustration and invitation as she pulled his mouth to meet hers. It was the sweetest of tortures. Rather than gaining some satisfaction from the taste and feel of his mouth, it only turned up the heat coursing through her.

When his tongue touched hers, the last tenuous hold on her moderation slipped. She touched him as she'd wanted to the first time she'd seen him at his beach house. She purred her appreciation for the tight ripple
of his buttocks when she slid her hands beneath his briefs and stroked and kneaded.

Andrew had teased and incited her earlier, but she'd sensed he did so while fully in control of himself. She'd sensed his measure of restraint in his touch, the cadence of his breath. Now spiraling urgency replaced his control.

He found her breasts and measured their fullness against his palms, intensifying the ache of his earlier neglect. She murmured a request on their behalf and he took one pearled tip in his mouth.

Pleasure rocked her, rippled through her and left her wanting more. Impatient to feel the hard length of him against her skin, she tugged at the waistband of his underwear. “These have to go. Now.”

“You're the boss.” He took over for her and shucked his briefs.

My, oh, my. Kat lay very still and closed her eyes. The cool cotton of the sheets against her fevered skin
felt
real.

The heady scent of aroused male mingling with her own excitement
smelled
very real.

“Kat, please tell me you're not falling asleep.” The sexy thrum of Andrew's voice
sounded
real.

The questing probe of his hand down her belly to the slick wet between her thighs felt, oh, so very real.

She moved against him in an age-old request, opening her eyes.

No doubt about it. She wasn't dreaming. She was in bed with her husband, who happened to qualify as the all-time sexiest man.

“Do you know what redneck foreplay is?” Her voice sounded husky, even to her.

His finger stroked against her silky fold. “Hmm, I hope not.”

She nudged his shoulder and delivered the punch line. “You awake? You awake?”

He chuckled as he slid his finger in her.

Kat arched. No more jokes. Coherent thought lessened with each dip and stroke. She wrapped her hand around the length of his shaft. “And no, I'm not asleep.”

His fingers found the sensitive nub of her womanhood. “If you are, you're having one hell of a wet dream.”

She writhed beneath his ministrations, excited by his touch and his comment. Could this man with his naughty talk possibly be the same stiff shirt she'd married? She rubbed her hand up his hardness. He was stiff all right, but it wasn't his shirt.

Kat lost herself in a kaleidoscope of sensation. Of touching and being touched. Of tasting and being tasted. Want became need—the need to feel him deep inside her.

Then he was. And amidst the maelstrom of pleasure she recognized an emotional connection. She hadn't sought it. She didn't want it. But it was there, almost as tangible as the thrust of him within her. This was not some nameless, faceless sperm donor. This was stuffy, sexy, thoughtful, quirky Andrew.

She gave herself over to a pleasure so intense it bordered on pain. She panted and moaned, close to tears from the tension that mounted with each rhythmic plunge. And then she transcended to a place she'd never been before. She soared even as she shattered and became part of the kaleidoscope.

As if her satisfaction had pushed him over the edge, Andrew found his own release. She had never heard a sweeter sound than his harsh rasp of her name as he spilled into her.

 

S
TILL DAZED
and somewhat befuddled, Andrew turned off his bedside light with a snap. He'd set out to teach his wife a lesson and fulfill an obligation. Somewhere along the way he'd lost sight of both objectives and
given himself over to pleasure. And something else he couldn't name. Or wouldn't.

Kat followed suit with her light, but instead of plunging the room into its customary nighttime darkness, a faint glow illuminated the bedroom.

Andrew propped himself on one elbow, trying to find the source. The glow seemed to originate somewhere to the right of Kat. “What's that?”

Beside him, Kat faced him in a similar fashion. “
That
is a night-light.”

The emotional intensity of their lovemaking still disconcerted him. “Why do you need a night-light?”

“If I had my own room, it wouldn't bother you.”

“I didn't say it bothered me. Not exactly. But why's it on?”

“Maybe Toto can't sleep without it.”

Andrew harumphed his disbelief. “Toto could sleep next to a freight train.”

In the shadows, the vulnerable look on her face told its own story. Just because he was annoyed by his own lack of control, he'd tried to bait her. He kicked himself for being an insensitive moron, anticipating her answer before the words left her mouth.

“I'm afraid of the dark.” Embarrassment tinged her defiance. “So, now you know. Go ahead and laugh.”

The indomitable, unflappable Kat Hamilton Devereaux Winthrop feared the dark. He realized what the admission had cost her. He was an ass for asking.

Without forethought, he reached out and smoothed his hand over her unruly hair, drawing her down to the bed. He settled beside her, rubbing her back with a soothing rhythmic motion. It had been a hell of a day for both of them.

“It's okay. I don't like spiders.” He'd never divulged that to anyone.

She relaxed. “The light won't bother you?” Impending sleep slowed her speech.

“No.” Beneath his fingertips she tempted him again, a bewitching heady mixture of feminine flesh and muscle, wrapped in the scent of satisfaction. He swelled a bit recalling his role in her satiation.

“You sure?” She sounded one step closer to slumber.

“Positive.” This impromptu back rub qualified as torture. He'd given in to an urge to comfort her and look where it had landed him—more than ready to make love to her again, but they were on a once a day ration and she was almost asleep.

Snoring intruded on the quiet.

“Kat?”

“Hmm?”

“Does Toto always snore?”

“Uh-uh.” Though she verged on sleep, the smile in her voice wrapped around him.

“A'drew?”

“Hmm?”

“Thanks,” she slurred into her pillow.

For the back rub? For marrying her? For his sperm donation? For being the kind of guy she wouldn't fall in love with, one who'd walk away from his own kid?

Kat snuggled her delectably plump rear against him, her even breathing punctuated by a gurgle of contentment. Andrew frowned into the dark of the night as his hand rested against her belly. Maybe even now in the aftermath of mind-boggling lovemaking, his numerous sperm were competing for a chance to form a new life—a red-haired little tyrant with serious gray eyes and a penchant for mischief.

He'd never wanted a child. It wasn't part of his plan. He was too dedicated to his career. Too remote. Too emotionally distant. He might be great at sperm donation, but he wasn't good dad material. Was he? Could he be?

His hand flexed in a protective gesture until sleep claimed him.

 

K
AT ROLLED OVER AND STRETCHED
without opening her eyes, her face buried in Andrew's pillow. The warmth of his body and his scent lingered. Still fuzzy with sleep, she breathed in the increasingly familiar combination of expensive aftershave and Andrew's own masculinity.

She turned her head and squinted at the nightstand. Six forty-five loomed at her from the digital readout. Closing her eyes, she snuggled deeper into the pillow, content to drift back to sleep.

“Wake up,” a voice rang in her ear.

Good God! The pillow not only smelled of Andrew, now it was sounding like him too! She jackknifed to a sitting position, slamming her head into a solid wall behind her.

“Ugh.” A groan sounded in her ear.

She whirled, now on her knees in the bed. The “wall” was Andrew. He stood by the bed, one hand nursing his right eye.

“Are you okay?” She reached forward to examine his face. Even dim-witted with sleep, she appreciated the still-damp crispness of his hair, the clean line of his freshly shaved jaw, the scent of soap and sandalwood. And the rapidly discoloring flesh around his eye.

He stepped back and snapped, “You could've warned me you were lethal first thing in the morning.”

“Only when I'm scared out of my wits!”

He felt beneath his eye and winced. “What scared you about a wake-up call?”

“I was asleep and the next thing I know the pillow's talking.”

A hint of a smile played at the corner of his mouth. “You thought the pillow talked?”

“Go ahead and laugh, you're the one with a heck of a shiner coming up.” She mustered a grin that turned into a big yawn. “Just the thing for a successful attorney about to make partner.”

“Thanks, Kat. A new wife and a black eye, all in one weekend.”

She wasn't a morning person. Never had been. Never would be. Her brain was mush first thing in the morning—overcooked oatmeal. She flopped back on the bed and pulled the sheet up to her chin, prepared to resume sleep. She spoke with her eyes closed. “Did you wake me up just to harangue me?”

“No, I was hoping for a black eye.”