The World is a Stage (31 page)

“I think I can safely give you that.” The low rumble in his voice was almost indistinguishable—but it was distinguishable enough. “I intend to get a lot more.”

“So this is it,” Rachel said, her legs and voice shaky. “Is this the point where you ask me to show you my room, and my mom yells up the stairs to keep the door open?”

“No. We can go now if you want.”

Her arms came up in a gesture of exasperation, though exasperation was barely word enough to describe it. It was like he was toying with her. She was the puppet on the end of a string, and he threw it around to see how she’d jerk and dance.

She didn’t want to dance—at least not like that.

It wasn’t her fault—there was just so
much
of him. Here, in front of her, strong and enticing, capable of doing things to her insides it wasn’t seemly to mention. He was everywhere she turned, a constant reminder of what her life was missing. She couldn’t show up anywhere without expecting him to be watching, waiting. She couldn’t go to sleep at night without seeing his face, smiling, as always, but also intent. Wanting her.

He
wanted
her. And, oh, how she wanted him too. “I’m not going anywhere else unless you tell me where it is—and it’s actually someplace I want to go.”

“You’re taking all the fun out of this, you know that? Go upstairs and put on something warmer. Is there food in your kitchen?”

“You want a snack? Are you kidding? We came here so I could grab a sweater and you could get something free to eat?”

Michael pointed first to himself and then at Rachel. “Me. The fun one. You. Ask too many questions.”

She hesitated, at which point he lunged toward her, the threat of Mommy Scariest and barricaded doors spilling out of his mouth.
 

“Okay, okay,” she said, laughing, heading toward the stairs. It wasn’t exactly the physical connection she’d been after, but she wasn’t ready to quit. Not yet. “But that’s not really fair. You’ve seen my biggest weakness now—you can make me do almost anything. I think it’s only fair you tell me what yours is in return.”

He paused for a moment. Because she was a few steps up, they were head to head, eye to eye. She thought he was going to make a joke, open his mouth and let the cracks fly, but there was nothing humorous about him as he replied, “That’s easy. My weakness is you.”

Chapter Twenty-One

The Expense of Shame

It was the most nauseatingly romantic date she’d ever been on in her life.

She should have known that warm clothes and snacks from her house would equal an impromptu picnic out on the range, but she was still so off balance from Michael’s stairwell confession that she saw only stars—the kind that came from a sudden blow to the head. The real tip-off should have been when Michael took one look at her fridge, saw nothing but the green olives and cookie dough that nested there, and announced his intention to hit up the drive-through at Kentucky Fried Chicken.

“A bucket of chicken?” Rachel asked. “Are you serious?”

“I never joke about fried food,” he returned.

With any other man, it would have been a farce of an outing. They sat on a blanket in a field of what he said was wheat but looked more like dirt, snacking on biscuits and diet Pepsi. The temperature seemed to be making a dramatic turn for the worse, and the heavy clouds signaled an impending rain.

But she wasn’t uncomfortable, and the charm of it didn’t feel forced. Her feet, which had been slipped out of their low-heeled, sensible pumps, rested casually in Michael’s lap, and he used a half-eaten drumstick to point out the various landmarks of the area.

“Why do you keep laughing?” he asked.

“I can’t help it,” she said, wiping at her eyes. She was giddy with chicken and freezing-cold picnics and
him
. She couldn’t remember a single time in her life when she’d been giddy. “You keep saying butte.”

His smile deepened. He ran a finger along the sole of her foot, his touch light and grazing. “That’s what they’re called.”

“I know that. But it’s funny to hear you say it.”

He went through a series of poses, each one more ridiculous than the last, each one punctuated with the word butte, which he mouthed slowly and with a mock sensuality that cracked her up every time. By the time he was done, Rachel was laughing so hard she was crying, and the entire bucket of chicken had toppled over into the wheat.

He dropped to the ground next to her, rolling onto his back with his hands behind his head. When he relaxed like that, the charming, little-boy features of his face stood out, signaling just how attractive and vulnerable he really was. She preferred this stripped-down version. No gimmicks. No false front. Just him.
 

She felt the urge to lean over and kiss him, but it didn’t seem right somehow. Almost as though she didn’t dare—without the sex jokes and invitations, she wasn’t sure where she stood.

“So what happens now?” she asked instead. It was an odd question, she knew, and one she wasn’t used to asking. But she had no idea what to expect from this man and this date, and that made her more uncomfortable than she cared to admit.

“The way I see it,” he said, not moving from his supine position, “we can either talk or we can have sex.”

She almost spit out her drink as she shot to her feet. “What is wrong with you?”

He laughed, watching her. “You asked.”

“Geez, Michael. I didn’t mean for you to just barrel in like that.”

“Yes, you did.” He got to his feet then, favoring his knee but still managing to look cool and calm as he moved. Rachel felt like a deer in headlights, unable to do much more than watch him as he loomed closer. “You like it when I’m in control, but you won’t admit it. You’re waiting for me to make my move so you can either push me away or dive right in. Well, I’m not going to give you that chance. If you want to talk about things—Molly, Peterson, your mom, me—we’ll talk. I’m a really good listener if you give me a chance.”

She felt herself stiffen, and it wasn’t from the cold. “And if I don’t want to talk?”

“Then I’m afraid I’m going to move to option B. Sex. Lots of it, right here among the buttes.”

This time, she didn’t giggle. “What if I pick option C and just leave?”

His hand came up, his knuckles tracing a pattern along her cheek. Without thinking, she turned into it, closing her eyes and basking in the seemingly innocent caress. “I think if you really wanted to leave, you would have done it already.”

She kept her eyes closed and let her lips fall open in anticipation of his kiss. After one beat too many, her eyelids flew open. He smiled down at her in that arrogant, bewitching way he had.

“Are you really going to make me say it?”

“Oh, yeah. I want to hear this.”

She could have chosen to be embarrassed, to let him win the deadlock of emotion and passion that swirled around them. But she was a classically trained actress, dammit, and words were the tools of her trade.

“Consider this a formal invitation to view my honey pot,” she said.

Michael laughed so hard he threw his head back and let out a roar. “Oh, Rachel. You are going to pay for that.”

I hope so.

Michael’s mouth on hers was everything she remembered and so much more. He wasn’t greedy, taking his time to explore her lips, to make his mark with the sweep of his tongue and a steadily increasing pressure. That same pressure was everywhere—in the arms wrapped around her, drawing her close, in his body pressing up against hers, in the pull of her belly as the kiss intensified.

He was moving too slow.
 

So many of her interactions with Michael had been filled with the promise of what he could do, how hard and how many times he could make her come. The restraint he showed now was practically killing her. She wanted the sex-dungeon master and half-naked Roman soldier. She wanted the Highland athlete and whisky-swilling barbarian.

It was almost disappointing to find he was just like every other man she’d ever slept with. Respectful and polite, ready to treat her like a lady. She didn’t want to be a lady—she wanted debasement. She wanted to be sex-slave Leia.

With a growl, she pushed him back, ending the kiss but starting a whole lot more.

“Take off your pants,” she commanded.
 

“You take off yours,” he returned.

“I mean it, Michael. I’m not out here to play games. If we’re going to do this, we’re going to do this right.” Without waiting for a reply, she lunged for the crotch of his jeans. He made a feeble attempt to keep her hands from his fly, but the moment she snuck a hand between the flat plane of his stomach and the soft cotton of his boxer briefs, all his movements stilled. She trailed her fingers lazily along the outer ridge of his lower abdomen, not stopping until she reached her goal.

Michael’s breath was sharp as she unzipped his fly and nudged the top of his jeans down his hips. Without waiting for him to respond, she slipped her hand past the smooth, hard line of his cock and went straight for his favorite—and oft-mentioned—body part. Wrapping her hands around his balls, she gave them a generous tug before cupping him, her fingers continually moving and working.

“Holy shit, Rachel,” he murmured.

She just smiled and pulled him closer.
This man and his testicles.
She could have probably used this moment to ask him for all his millions of dollars and he would have signed a check right then and there.

But then he removed her hand and pulled away, shaking his head. “Hey, now. That’s not fair.”

“How is that not fair? You want me to stop?”

“Yes. I mean, no.” He shook his head and ran a hand through his hair. “I know what you’re doing here—I know what you want.”

She stared at him, her body growing cold. What
she
wanted? After all this time, was he about to tell her he couldn’t go through with it anymore, that it was all a lie?

But then he touched her again, this time slipping a hand underneath her bulky sweater, inside the edge of her bra. His fingers moved under the thin cotton of it, not stopping until he grazed her nipple. She arched her back, begging him to take it.

He did, giving her nipple a gentle tweak, a jolt of pain and pleasure moving through her like an electric chain. “You told me once how you envisioned this. I believe your exact request was that I ‘bend you over the table, pin your wrists to the side and take you from behind’. Am I missing any of it?”

She shook her head, unable to do much while he still had her nipple between his fingers, playing with it until she was gasping with need. “That sounds about right,” she murmured hoarsely.

“I want to do that.” He leaned down and bit her shoulder where the slope of her neck met the rest of her body. His free hand wrapped around and grasped her bottom, pulling her so close she couldn’t mistake the hard need of his body. “And I’m good at that.”

“So show me,” she said. Begged, practically, but there was no use dwelling on it at that precise moment. She ran her hands up his arms, the muscles of his biceps round and firm under her touch, even through his clothes.

“I will.” He released the grip on her nipple, letting it slide slowly between his fingers, gentle and teasing. “Just not today.”

She didn’t have time to analyze his meaning, because he chose that moment to cup the full weight of her breast, his thumb tracing an agonizing pattern over the tip of her nipple. He laid a gentle kiss on her neck, continuing a path up to the jawline. Everything about his movements was gentle and soft, the caress of a lover, not just a sexual partner.

The bastard.

She was very close to backing away, telling him to stop. This was not what she’d envisioned when she imagined a roll in the hay on the O’Leary farm. This was tender and warm, and the way he moved his hands gently over her stomach filled her with a strange desire to cry. When his hand dipped down, slipping underneath the elastic of her skirt’s waistband, her senses swirled around her even more. Fiery longing urged her to press against his hand—a deeper part of her knew that things were spiraling too far out of control.

Control.
She wanted it. She needed it.

She grabbed the front of his jacket and twisted, gripping the fabric with a sense of urgency there was no mistaking. With a gentle push, she managed to get him down onto the ground and pinned him with her legs straddling on either side. He was very strong, but so was she, and she applied force with the clamp of her thighs pressed against his. Even though they were both still fully dressed, she felt wanton and powerful and
good
.

“Are you trying to have your wicked way with me?” he asked, grinning up at her.

“
Trying
being the operative word,” she shot back. “I’m tempted to leave you here with your bucket of chicken.”

“I do love chicken,” he confessed. “But even more than that, I love—”

 
She leaned down and captured his mouth with hers before he could say another word. Her legs lost all their strength, having been reduced to something gelatinous and weak, and he used the moment to roll her underneath him.