Strange Bedfellow (14 page)

A HAND WAS MAKING rubbing strokes along her upper arm, pleasantly soothing caresses. Then fingers tightened to shake her gently.
 

“Come on, Dina, wake up!” a voice ordered.
 

“Mmm.” The negative sound vibrated from her throat as she snuggled deeper into her pillow.
 

Only it wasn't a pillow. There was a steady thud beneath her head, and the pillow that wasn't a pillow moved up and down in a regular rhythm. No, it wasn't a pillow. She was nestled in the crook of Blake's arm, her head resting on his chest. She could feel the curling sun-bleached hairs on his chest tickling her cheek and nose.
 

Sometime in the night she had forsaken the hardness of the mattress to cuddle up to the warm hardness of his body. Her eyelids snapped open at the familiarity sleep had induced. Dina would have moved away from him, but the arm around her tightened to hold her there for another few seconds.
 

A callused finger tipped her chin upward, forcing her to look at him, and her heart skipped a beat at the lazy warmth in the craggy male face.
 

“I'd forgotten what it was like to sleep with an octopus,” Blake murmured. “Arms and legs all over the place!”
 

Heat assailed Dina at the intimacy of her position. Sleep had dulled her reflexes. When his thumb touched her lips to trace their outline, Dina was too slow in trying to elude it. As the first teasing brush made itself felt, she lost the desire to escape it. Rough skin lightly explored every contour of her mouth before his thumb probed her lips apart to find the white barrier of her teeth.
 

It became very difficult to breathe under the erotically stimulating caress, especially when his gaze was absorbing every detail of his action with disturbing interest. Situated as she was, with a hand resting on the hard muscles of his chest, afraid to move, Dina felt and heard the quickening beat of his pulse. Hers was racing no less slowly.
 

The muffled groan of arousal that came from his throat sent the blood rocketing through her heart. The arm around her ribcage tightened to draw her up. His mouth renewed the exploration his thumb had only begun. With a mastery that left her shattered, Blake parted her lips, his tongue seeking out hers to ignite the fires of passion.
 

In the crush of his embrace, it was impossible for Dina to ignore the fact that Blake was naked beneath the covers. It was just as impossible to be unaware that her nightgown was twisted up around her hips. It was a discovery his roughly caressing hands soon made.
 

As his hands slid beneath it, his fingers catching the material to lift it higher, Dina made a weak attempt to stop him. It seemed the minute her own hands came in contact with the living bronze of his muscled arms, they forgot their intention.
 

More of her bare skin came in contact with his hard flesh. The delicious havoc it created with her senses only made Dina want to feel more of him. Willingly she slipped her arms from the armholes as Blake lifted over her head. His mouth was absent from her lips for only that second. The instant the nightgown was tossed aside, he was back kissing her with a demanding passion that she eagerly returned.
 

Blake shifted, rolling Dina onto her back, the punishing hardness of the mattress beneath her. His sun-bronzed torso was above her, an elbow on the mattress offering him support. His warm, male smell filled her senses, drugging her mind. When he dragged his mouth away frown hers, she curved a hand around his neck to bring it back. Blake resisted effortlessly, the burning darkness of his gaze glittering with satisfaction at her aroused state.
 

At sometime the covers had been kicked aside. As his hand began a slow, intimate exploration of her breasts, waist and hips, Blake watched it, his eyes drinking in the shapely perfection of her female form. The blatant sensuality of the look unnerved Dina to the point that she couldn't permit it to continue. Again came the feeling that it was a stranger's eyes looking at her, not those of her husband.
 

Gasping back a sob, she tried to roll away from him and reached the protective cover of the sheets and blankets. Blake thwarted the attempt, forcing her back, his weight crushing her to the unyielding mattress that had already bruised her muscles and bones.
 

“No, Dina, I want to look at you,” Blake insisted in a voice husky with desire. “I imagined you like this so many times, lying naked in the bed beside me, your body soft and eager to have me make love to you. Don't blame me for wanting to savor this moment. This time no screech of a jungle bird is going to chase away this image. You are mine, Dina, mine.”
 

The last word was uttered with possessive emphasis as his head descended to stake its first claim, his mouth seeking her lips, kissing them until passion overrode her brief attempt at resistance. A languorous desire consumed her as he extended his lovemaking to more than just her lips. She quivered with fervent longing at the slow descent of his mouth to her breasts, favoring each of them in turn to the erotic stimulations of his tongue.
 

Under his sensuous skill, Dina forgot the strangeness of his arms and the hardness of the rocklike mattress beneath her. She forgot all but the dizzying climb to the heights of gratification and the dazzling view from the peak. They descended slowly, not finding their breath until they reached the lower altitudes of reality.
 

Dina lay enclosed in his arms, her head resting on his chest as it had when she had awakened. This time there was a film of perspiration coating his hard muscles and dampening the thick, wiry hairs beneath her head. Dina closed her eyes, aware that she had come very close to discovering her love for Blake again, its light glittered in the far recesses of her heart.
 

Blake's mouth moved against her hair. “I had forgotten what an almost insatiably passionate little wench you are.” His murmured comment suddenly brought the experience down to a purely physical level. What had bordered on an act of love, became lust. “I enjoyed it. Correction, I enjoyed you,” he added, which partially brought the light back to her heart.
 

Crimsoning, Dina rolled out of his arms, an action he didn't attempt to prevent. The movement immediately caused a wince of pain. Every bone and fiber in her body wag an aching reminder of the night she had spent in the hard-rock bed.
 

“How can you stand to sleep in this bed?” Dina was anxious to change the subject, unwilling to speak of the passion they had just shared. “It's awful.”
 

“You'll get used to it.” When Blake spoke, Dina realized he had slid out of bed with barely a sound while she had been discovering her arches and pains. Her gaze swung to him as he stepped into the bottoms of his silk pajamas and pulled them on. Feeling her eyes watching him, Blake glanced around. There was a laughing glint in his dark eyes as he said, “It's a concession to Deirdre and her Victorian modesty this morning.”
 

Dina smiled. Even that hurt. “What time is it?”
 

“Seven,” he answered somewhat absently, and rubbed the stubble of beard on his chin.
 

“That late?”
 

Her pains deserted her for an instant and she started to rise, intent only on the thought that she would be late getting to the office unless she hurried. Then she remembered she no longer had any reason to go to the office and sank back to the mattress, tiredness and irritation sweeping over her.
 

“Why am I getting up?” she questioned herself aloud. “It took me so long to get to sleep last night. Why didn't you just let me keep right on sleeping?” Then he wouldn't have made love to her and she wouldn't be experiencing all this confusion and uncertainty, about herself and him.
 

“You'd be late to work,” was Blake's even response.
 

“Have you forgotten?” Bitterness coated her tongue. “I've been replaced. I'm a lady of leisure now.”
 

“Are you?” He gave her a bland look. “Your boss doesn't think so.”
 

“What boss? You?” Dina breathed out with a scornful laugh. “You're only my husband.”
 

“Does that mean you're turning it down?”
 

“What? Will you quit talking in riddles?”
 

“Maybe if you hadn't been so proud and stubborn yesterday morning and attended the meeting as I asked you to, you'd know what I'm talking about.”
 

She pressed a hand against her forehead, tension and sleeplessness pounding between her eyes. “I didn't attend the meeting, so perhaps you could explain.”
 

“We're starting a whole new advertising campaign to upgrade the image of the Chandler Hotel chain,” he explained. “We can't possibly compete with the bigger chains on a nationwide basis, especially when most of our hotels are located in resort areas, not necessarily heavily populated ones. We're going to use that fact to our advantage. From now on, when people think of resort hotels, it's going to be synonymous with Chandler Hotels.”
 

“It's a sound idea,” Dina conceded. “But what does that have to do with me?”
 

“You're going to be in charge of the campaign.”
 

“What?” Blake's calm announcement brought her upright, wary disbelief and skepticism in the look she gave him. “Is this some kind of a cruel joke?”
 

There was an arrogant arch to one dark eyebrow. “Hardly.” He walked around the bed to where she stood. “I put the proposal to the rest of the staff yesterday, along with the recommendation that you handle it.”
 

“Is this a token gesture? Something for me to do to keep me quiet?” She couldn't accept that there wasn't an ulterior motive behind the offer. It might mean admitting something else.
 

“I admit that picking you as my choice to head the campaign was influenced by the tantrum you threw in the office yesterday morning when you discovered I was taking over.” His gaze was steady, not yielding an inch in guilt. “But you can be sure, Dina, that I wouldn't have suggested your name to the others if I didn't believe you could handle the job. You can put whatever interpretation you like on that.”
 

Dina believed him. His candor was too forthright to be doubted, especially when he acknowledged the argument they had had earlier. It surprised her that he had relented to this extent, putting her in charge of something that could ultimately be so to the company. True, she would be working for him, but she would be making decisions on her own, too.
 

“Why didn't you tell me about this last night?” She frowned. “Your decision had already been made. You just said a moment ago that you told the staff yesterday. Why did you wait until now to tell me?”
 

Blake studied her thoughtfully. “I was going to tell you last night after we'd had our talk, but circumstances altered my decision and I decided to wait.”
 

“What circumstances?” Dina persisted, not following his reasoning.
 

“To be perfectly honest, I thought if you knew about it last night you might have been prompted to make love to me out of gratitude,” Blake replied without a flicker of emotion appearing in his impassive expression.
 

There was an explosion of red before her eyes. “You thought I'd be so grateful that I'd....” Anger robbed her of speech.
 

“It was a possibility.”
 

Dina was so blind with indignant rage that she couldn't see straight, but it didn't affect her aim as her opened palm connected with the hard contour of his cheek. As the white mark turned scarlet, Blake walked into the bathroom. Trembling with the violence of her aroused temper, Dina watched him go.
 

When her anger dissipated, she was left with a niggling question. If he hadn't made that degrading remark, would she still be angry with him? Or would this have been the first step towards reestablishing the foundation of their marriage, with Blake recognizing that she had the talent and skill to be more than a simple housewife? Hindsight could not provide the answer.
 

At the breakfast table, their conversation was frigidly civil.
 

“Please pass the juice.”
 

“May I have the marmalade?”
 

That fragile mood of shy affection they had woken up to that morning was gone, broken by the doubting of each other's motives.
 

When both had finished-breakfast, Blake set his cup down. “You may ride to the office with me this morning,” he announced.
 

“I would prefer to take my own car.”
 

“It's impractical for both of us to drive.”
 

“If you had to work late, I would be without a way home,” Dina protested.
 

“
If
that should arise, you may have the car and
I'll
take a taxi home,” he stated, his demeanor cold and arrogant.
 

Dina was infuriatingly aware that Blake would have an argument for every excuse she could offer. “Very well, I'll ride with you.” She gave in with ill grace.