The Misconception (6 page)

“I don’t think I can go this slow,” he said when he’d finished the stroke.

“I don’t think I want you to,” Marietta said on a gasp.

He moved, faster and faster, and she kept pace with him until she didn’t think she could stand the sensual assault anymore. This is why some women enjoy having sex, she thought incredulously. This was bliss.

The scientist in Marietta knew there was some reason sex with this man was immeasurably better than she’d ever imagined sex could be. She didn’t have time to analyze why. The hot gush signaling his release flowed into her, and a soaring storm of unfamiliar, exhilarating tremors turned her body into a human earthquake. Then he collapsed on top of her.

Neither of them spoke for a few saturated minutes. Marietta couldn’t even think coherently. Finally, he rolled them over on the bed so that she was on top of him. He smiled up at her. “Wow.”

Feeling suddenly shy, she tried to avert her face. He didn’t let her, putting a hand on the side of her cheek so she had to look at him. His hair was tousled, his eyes were crinkling and he had the most endearing smile lines radiating outward from his mouth.

“Did you ever hear the one,” he began, “about the little girl who came back from playing with some older neighbor kids and asked her mother what an orgasm was?”

Marietta shook her head, surprised that she still had the strength to complete the motion, amazed that Jax was telling her a joke while he was still inside her.

“‘I don’t know,’ the mother answered. ‘Go ask your father.’”

Marietta smiled, although it really wasn’t funny. Until a few moments ago, when she’d had her very first orgasm, the joke would have rang more true.

At the thought of Jax with a child, Marietta sobered. Even now, Jax’s baby could be growing inside her. No, she mentally corrected herself. It wouldn’t be his baby. It would be
her
baby. The baby who was the reason she was here, in this bed, with this man. The baby she’d forgotten all about until this moment.

“You’ve gone away from me. What are you thinking?”

“I was thinking,” she said truthfully, “that the woman in your life would never reply that way.”

“Not if I can help it,” he said, and she felt his body come to life inside hers again. “I’ve got an idea. Why don’t we try to give you another orgasm?”

Before she could answer, his mouth covered hers in a searing, bone-melting kiss. Since she still didn’t have the answer to why sex with Jax had been so transcendent, she owed it to herself as a scientist to repeat the experience. But, as his body moved inside hers, she forgot all about collecting data. She even forgot about the baby. All over again.

SOMETIME AFTER MAKING love to Rhea, summoning room service and eating lunch as quickly as he could so he could make love to Rhea again and yet again, Jax must have dozed.

When his eyes opened, the oversized red numbers on the bedside alarm clock were the first things he saw. When the numbers registered, he squeezed his eyes shut, not wanting them to be true. Slowly, apprehensively, he opened his eyes again and groaned when the numbers still said the same thing.

Six o’clock. It was six o’clock, an hour past the time he was to have reported for work, and just an hour before things really got started. It would be the height of irresponsibility, and possibly the funereal march of his career, if he wasn’t there when things got started.

Rhea was snuggled sweetly against his back, her soft curves reminding him of how they’d spent most of the past seven hours and tempting him to relive some of them. She was an incredible lover. Jax was usually nearly as talkative in bed as he was out of it, up front about where he wanted to be touched and when. With Rhea, words hadn’t been necessary. She’d seemed to know what he wanted, sometimes even before he knew himself. His body reacted to his erotic thoughts, and he had to fight himself so he wouldn’t turn to take her into his arms.

He had to leave her bed.
Right now.

Heaving a frustrated sigh, Jax pushed himself away from her and sat up. He caught a glimpse of his navy jockey shorts, pulled them on, got up and began the hunt for the rest of his clothes.

He’d just shrugged into his shirt when he realized that she was watching him. The bedside light he’d turned on hours ago was still burning. She made such an appealing picture, even with a thin sheet covering her delectable body, that he wanted to crawl back into bed with her.

He smiled. She didn’t.

“Are you going somewhere?” She anchored herself on an elbow and raised slightly from the bed. He noticed she was careful to keep the sheet covering her nakedness in place, and that made him sad.

“I have a business commitment,” he said while he buttoned his shirt. “Believe me, if I could break it, I would. But I can’t. It’s completely unbreakable.”

“But I thought. . .” Her voice cracked, and she started again. “I thought you were in town because of me.”

Jax closed his eyes briefly, because he’d almost forgotten. She still thought he was Harold McGinty, who’d flown to D.C. specifically to see her. For the first time, he wondered why Rhea and Harold had arranged to meet. Had they been set up by mutual friends? Or, perhaps, were they Internet e-mail pals?

He should tell her about the mix-up right now. Maybe they’d even have a laugh about how anybody who knew both of them would never mistake six-foot-four Jax for five-foot-four Harold.

The trouble was that he didn’t have time to explain. He’d be back later. Nothing could keep him away. Then he’d explain. But right now, he needed to leave.

“It’s something that can’t be helped.” He picked his suit jacket up from the floor and tried to shake the wrinkles out of it. “But I’ll be back. You can count on that.”

“Actually,” Rhea said, sitting up straighter in bed, still clutching the covers to her chest, “that won’t be necessary.”

For the first time since he’d awakened, Jax went still. “What do you mean?”

“We’re done here,” she said in the same clipped tones she’d used at the airport, before they’d spent hours tangled in each other’s arms. “I’ll have your bags delivered to another room. You can check which room at the front desk when you return.”

“What?” Her nonsensical words drew him to the bed. She backed up against the headboard, as though the intimacy they’d shared was a figment of his imagination. “What are you talking about?”

“You’ve served your purpose.”

“Am I missing something here? I just had the most incredible sensual experience of my life, and I could have sworn it was you who spent all afternoon in bed with me.”

“Sex is supposed to be sensual.”

“What we had was more than sensual. It was special.”

“What we had is a biological act millions of people engage in daily.”

What had happened to the woman who’d moaned in his arms? Where had the connection they shared that made words unnecessary gone? “You’re deliberately misunderstanding me,” Jax said.

“No, you’re misunderstanding me.” She fixed him with a level stare. “I’ll admit the experience was extraordinary, but that’s because you have a talent. Other men have a propensity for mathematics or music. You have a gift for sex.”

Jax wasn’t sure whether he’d been complimented or insulted. Either way, he figured he should go with the flow. “Then let me keep on giving it to you.”

“No.” She shook her head decisively. “This is it. I don’t need you anymore.”

Time was ticking. His career was on the line. And she wasn’t listening to him. In desperation, Jax dropped one knee to the bed and pulled her into his arms. She reacted instantly, as she had all afternoon. Her body went soft, her lips clung to his and she kissed him back as fervently as he was kissing her.

When he broke off the kiss, he was slightly out of breath and his heart hammered. “You’re attracted to me,” he accused.

“Of course I am.” She sounded breathless, too. “Your features are perfectly symmetrical.”

“Huh?”

“Not to mention, you’re well above average in height, you have clear skin, a square jaw, broad shoulders, a purposeful gait, good muscle tone. And high energy.” She paused. “Let’s not forget high energy. I’d be attracted to anyone with those qualities. It’s simple biology.”

“There’s nothing simple about it.” He ran his fingers through his hair. “Look, I’ve got to go. I’ll be back as soon as I can, but it probably won’t be before midnight. Then we can hash this out.”

She peered at him through those hazel-gray-brown eyes, not saying a word. He reached across the bed, kissed her with everything he had and left the bed.

He glanced back at her when he reached the door. One of her hands covered her eyes, as though she didn’t want to face what had happened between them. When he got back from fulfilling his obligation and safeguarding his career, he would make her face it.

Five and a half hours later, Jax stood at the front desk of the Hotel Grande. He rubbed his hand over the stubble that had formed on his lower face while he waited for the desk clerk to give him the extra key to Room 414.

Things had gone well tonight, but the usual high he got from a job well done was missing. Rhea hadn’t answered the hotel room door when he knocked. He’d known she was disappointed when he left so abruptly, but, still, he expected her to answer his knock.

The clerk, a tall black man with a shaved head and a beautifully tailored white suit, moved to his computer terminal and punched a few keys. “I’m sorry, sir,” he said with the kind of impersonal inflection that told Jax he wasn’t sorry at all, “but the lady in that room has already checked out.”

Jax took a step back from the desk. He hadn’t been expecting that. But that was okay. Even though she’d booked them into a hotel, he’d gotten the impression from the way she drove through D.C. that she lived in the area. He’d simply go to her home to talk to her. “Could you give me her address?”

“Even if that information were listed here, which it isn’t, I couldn’t give it to you. The hotel has a strict confidentiality policy.”

“But we were sharing a room!”

The clerk’s eyebrows rose slightly, and Jax knew what was going through his mind. Then why didn’t Jax know where Rhea lived?

“Look,” Jax said. “It’s not what you’re thinking.”

“I’m not thinking anything, sir.”

“We were on this blind date,” Jax began. “She wasn’t saying much of anything, which is why I don’t know anything about her. But then the date, sort of, well, changed.”

“Certainly, sir.”

“And that’s why I need her address,” Jax finished.

“Very good try, sir, but the lady paid in cash and didn’t leave an address.”

“Did she leave a last name?”

The clerk’s eyebrows rose again, and Jax launched into another explanation. “She’s one of those people who prefers to use only one name in social situations. You know, like Cher. Or Madonna.”

The clerk didn’t comment, but lowered his eyes back to his computer screen. “It says here the lady’s last name is Zeus.”

“Zeus?”

“Yes, Zeus. Z-E-U-S. From Greek mythology. He was the god of the sky who ruled the Olympian gods.” He squinted at the screen. “That’s odd.”

“What’s odd?”

“Her first name is Rhea, who was the mother of the gods. If I’m not mistaken, she was Zeus’s mother.”

Unless her parents were rabid mythology buffs, Jax thought that probably meant Rhea Zeus was an alias. He remembered trailing after her in the hotel lobby, repeatedly calling out her name. She hadn’t even turned. But why would she have used an alias?”

“There’s a notation here on the computer that Ms. Rhea Zeus did leave a message.” The clerk pulled open a drawer and withdrew a crisp white envelope with writing across it. “Are you Harold McGinty?”

“Sort of,” Jazz answered guiltily.

Looking suspicious, the desk clerk nevertheless handed over the envelope. Jax ripped it openly impatiently and withdrew the contents. Inside was the key to another hotel room and five crisp hundred-dollar bills with a note clipped to them.

For services rendered
, the note read.

Jax hadn’t kept track during their sexual marathon, but he suspected Rhea, or whoever the hell she was, had included one hundred dollars for every time they made love.

The clerk was looking at him with mild concern. “Are you all right, sir?”

He waved the bills in the clerk’s face.“Apparently,” he said, biting off the words, “I was more than all right.”

Chapter 5

Two months later

Jax got out of his gleaming black Maserati in front of his mother’s house and bit back a smile. Billy, the elder of his two younger brothers, was in the driveway rubbing at a spot on the hood of his old convertible with an worn rag.

Billy’s lower lip was thrust forward, his concentration so intense he hadn’t even heard Jax pull up. His hips swayed slightly to the beat of the rock music blaring from a too-loud boom box. Jax made a mental note to buy him headphones for his next birthday.