Scrambled Babies (32 page)

“Yes, of course, right now.  We both have nannies.  And my mother let’s me stay out after midnight.” 

He was gaining momentum.  She knew she should say no to whatever it was Steve was concocting before it was too late. 

“Grab a cab, airport in twenty minutes.  Planes leave on the hour.  Takes about an hour.  Be there by two.”

Her heart pounded out a warning, but the thrill of what might be coming drew a curtain across it.  She was scared to death of what she knew lay ahead, and she couldn’t wait to embrace it!  “Two?”

“Ricki’s till closing at four o’clock—then breakfast at the Top of the Mark till whenever.”  Steve was coming around to pull back her chair.  “What do you say?  Winners!  Don’t we deserve to let out all the stops?  All that we’ve been through.  Never to go through again.”

As stealthily as a phantom, Steve was behind her, tugging at her chair.  The hair on the back of her neck was tingling—as were other more significant and frightening portions of her body.  “Well, I guess if—when do we get back from San Francisco?”

“Oh, let’s never come back!”

Paeton felt her mouth fall wide open in a gasp. 

“I’m kidding.  We’ll be back by nine tomorrow morning.  Promise.”  He took her hand the way he had that night in her hotel suite.  Only that time it was for comfort.  And this time?  Paeton fastened her “seatbelt!”  Was she really going to do this?

“Okay, but let’s call the nannies.”  She felt herself squeeze Steve’s hand.  Why deny that she loved the feel of Steve’s hand holding hers?  Why deny that this jock did things to her that no male had ever done before?  But did he want more than simple conquest?  Was she just another game to win and then—?

“We can call from the plane.  Come on, we may have only two sets left at Ricki’s.”

“Tennis?”  Things were moving much too fast for Paeton McPhilomy.

Steve laughed warmly, put her hand to his lips, and kissed her fingertips gently.  “No, not tennis sets, silly.  Dance sets.  Gee, Paeton, I’m not always into sports.”

Paeton’s heart was doing cartwheels.  It was definitely more than the Rothschild 1968 that was affecting her.  Was Steve Kaselman different from other jocks?  Did his world expand outside of jockdom? 

Or after conquest, would he—?

Chapter 12

Paeton’s pumps were shucked, and the shiny oak dance floor was burning holes in the balls of her feet.  She could almost smell the smoke.  But she knew that smoke wasn’t coming only from Ricki’s dance floor.  It also was coming from the fire Steve had ignited within her. 

“Hey, for a single-mom writer, you’re not a bad dancer.”  Steve had removed his jacket and tie and was laying down some mean steps of his own.  His smile spread ear to ear as the perspiration rode down his cheeks.

Paeton’s face was streaked too, and her entire body was flushed with excitement and relief.  She realized how the baby scare had turned her life upside down and left her hanging helpless, fearful, angry, and frustrated.  She put every ounce of energy into grinding the agony of the past few weeks into Ricki’s dance floor.  An agony never to return, she hoped.  She didn’t think she was up to another bout with the media, and all that came with it.

“You’re not so bad yourself for a guy who wears his vests too tight.”  She playfully pinched his stomach.

Steve laughed, whisking Paeton into him.  Just as quickly, he spun her away, waiting until she was almost about to collide with the stage, then rescuing her with his strong hand and spinning her back.  Then the two of them, tightly entwined, hopped and popped around the dance floor like a top almost out of control, deftly missing collision after collision with other less exuberant couples.

Paeton tossed her head, splashing her auburn hair against the frenzied music.  She found Steve’s eyes, and the reflected fantasies were inappropriate for Ricki’s dance floor.  She laughed naughtily and put her mouth to Steve’s ear.  “Steve—whirl me and whirl me and whirl me and whirl me!”

Steve answered by intensifying their closeness to the point that had they been naked, they would have had no choice but to spend the rest of their lives forged together into a single offering to Eros.

They pledged their hearts to the evening, and the evening showered them with gifts.  They opened laughter; they unwrapped gentle whispers; they peeked into pleasure domes through keyholes of promise. 

Finally, with their breath coming in gasps, with their hearts beating too fast for the music, with Ricki’s becoming a size too small for their excitement, enter, the last dance.  The last dance any place in the world is always one of slow rapture.  The last dance is a tradition that whispers wordlessly, “time for the mating.”

She rested her head on Steve’s shoulder.  She smelled his cologne.  She felt the taut muscles of his chest, his hand on the small of her back. 
Well, not to worry
!
We’ll be at breakfast and back on a plane soon.  I hope I hold up that long.
  Or did she mean “hold
off
that long?”

They tumbled out of Ricki’s, and a cab whisked them to the top of Nob Hill.  The hotel doorman smiled knowingly as he held the huge brass-rimmed door for them at the Mark Hopkins.  The elevator flung them upward, keeping pace with their spirits. 

The view of The City from the Top of the Mark was breathtaking!  One at a time lights were winking out, allowing an awakening sun to yawn up long, dangerous shadows as it spread across the tips of the Embarcadero buildings. 

Almost immediately the maitre d’ swept them to a table, and soon drinks miraculously appeared. Paeton’s head and heart swirled with the ice in her drink.  She had never drunk a Bloody Mary, or any alcoholic drink for that matter, at this hour of the morning.  She watched her hand reach across the table.  In response, Steve’s hand found hers and rested wonderfully on it.  She absorbed the rightness of Steve’s hand holding hers. 

She lifted her eyes from their joined hands to Steve’s eyes!  A kaleidoscope of stars and planets tumbled crazily into view.  All the wrong things and all the right things welled up from her deepest places.  A shard of guilt pierced her heart as Kevin’s spirit asked for recognition.  But she couldn’t keep her chest from swelling, her legs and nether regions from singing in rhythm to the dancing heavenly bodies in Steve Kaselman’s demon eyes. 

She watched Steve put down his drink.

“The network has a suite here.”  He pushed his chair back and carefully removed his hand from hers.  His eyes never left hers as he came around the table to usher her from her seat.  She found herself spinning her head to keep their eyes touching.  She felt Steve spinning her heart into the palm of his magnificent hand.  Kevin’s shadowy spirit or no, she knew there was no thwarting her stampeding desire!

Paeton quivered and took his hand again.  They were moving, but she said not a word.  Something was moving her.  Something she had no control over.  Something she knew had always been lying in wait behind Steve’s eyes since that day of destiny at JFK International.

They were at the door of the network’s suite.  She heard the click on the lock allowing them to enter.

They were inside.  She turned her flushed face to meet his waiting lips.  What she felt wasn’t a kiss.  It was a tongue of fire!  Was she in heaven—or hell?  The sentry inside her soul had abandoned its post.  She was at the mercy of those flaming eyes.  That mouth of fire.  Something in her attempted one final effort to ward off the total consummation ahead.  Too late.  There was no battle to be waged.  It had been decided by a greater power than she.

Steve moved his mouth down her neck to the top of her heaving breasts.  She flung her head back.  She captured great handfuls of his hair in her hands, and he moaned
.  Great god, how could anyone feel like this! 

It was at that moment she realized all the love scenes she had written for her books had been altered versions from other romance novels, not from her own experience.  She had never tasted her own ecstasy until now—now with Steve Kaselman, the man who would shack up, the jock who would be her demise!

“You all right?” Steve barely managed to get out the words between heaving breaths.  “We’re about to make love, you know.”

Paeton could manage only a nod, her body quaking with anticipation.  His amazing words fueled Paeton’s desire.  Since when had urgency and caring come together in a man?  Could Steve be this lustful and this loving simultaneously? 

She answered by gently biting his lower lip while she began unbuttoning his shirt.

His hands were inexorably approaching the blouse that veiled her feverish, swelling bosom.  His fingers worked nimbly, and soon her taut nipples greeted his greedy mouth.  Her breath caught in her throat.  She felt the fire in her spreading indiscriminately.

They flowed in an ocean of rapture into the bedroom, two waves rising, anticipating cresting in a height of untold pleasure.  But not so blind to the ascent as to forsake reveling in the outposts of rhapsody visited before the rolling crescendo.

Now Paeton was inside her wave.  She was buoyed by a sea of honey on a newly discovered planet where Steve’s hands and mouth fed her entire body, and she dined on the pleasures of his.
 

Bared in body and soul, they toured the planet of their desire.  Her nakedness peaked and burned the torrid flesh of Steve’s chest.  Her nether regions blossomed in the hot summer rain of Steve’s mouth.  Every inch of her body pulsated with a life of its own.  Every inch sucked in the magnificence of the man enfolding her.  She became an erotic vessel to be filled with Steve’s majestic manhood.

They were two searching lovers who had finally been cast together in a tumult of exuberance.  Every touch, every taste, every sight, every sound, flooded them with treasures of the sexuality of a love that had sprung to life in that fleeting moment.  Paeton, until now untouched by true yearning, felt the release of a tethered desire storm from her soul to be met by Steve’s own glorious passion.

She teased him and he groaned, asking her never to stop.  She played him like a musical instrument, fed on him, a tender tropical fruit, making him wet with her mouth.

Paeton could feel the pleading of Steve’s urgency  He stopped her feeding and moved down her body, his eager mouth and tongue searching her, bringing her to even greater heights of abandon.  Her breathing mounted, fiery and urgent.  She wanted him to dive deeply with her, to couple perfectly, and then to explode out of this nectar, gulping for air, and finally, to be totally spent, lying together on the sun-drenched beach of sublime release.

He entered her.  Magnificently.  The moment shrieked.  Her craving enclosed them—they came together in a furious uplifting, and she heard the song of ocean angels.  She felt herself tossed to mingle with these new heavenly bodies she and Steve had invented.  She achieved her rapturous crescendo.  Then began the languid, sultry descent, complete fulfillment pervading her body and soul for the first time.  She lay quietly, the scent and warmth of Steve’s body lingering on hers like a thousand lily petals driven by a heavy thunderstorm.  Their breathing slowed.  Their senses drenched, they wandered helplessly into each other’s eyes.