Tomorrow's Dreams (42 page)

When she'd completed that task with groin-tightening thoroughness, she slipped a finger beneath his waistband and gave it a meaningful tug. “You have one minute. Then these come off.”

“Three,” he moaned, his pelvis lurching in sizzling response to her knuckles grazing his belly. “Three … minutes.”

“The lustee wants to bargain, does he?” She slanted him a crafty look. “Hmm. All right, then. What do you intend to trade for the extra two minutes?”

Seth frantically searched his passion-dazed mind for something to offer, something she would find irresistible. Foggily recalling her material weaknesses, he bid, “A five-carat diamond necklace? Your very own pet circus elephant? A shopping trip in London? Anything!” Hell. He was desperate enough right now to give her his favorite silver cigar case if she asked.

Penelope's expression was positively wicked as she considered his proposals. Suddenly she smiled and not in a way he found encouraging. “Two extra minutes to calm yourself in exchange for two minutes of you lying unresisting while I touch you intimately … both periods to be timed by your pocket watch, mine starting when you're completely naked.”

Seth closed his eyes, groaning aloud. Didn't his lovely little haggler understand that in his inflamed state, enduring even a half minute of intimate fondling would be impossible? Suppressing a shudder at the very idea of suffering two minutes of such torment, he choked out:

“I hear Tiffany's has an emerald and diamond necklace, earrings, and bracelet set that once belonged to Marie Antoinette. Forget the two minutes of touching, and it's yours.”

Her jaw dropped at his fabulous offer. Seth mentally chalked it up as a deal, for he knew Penelope to love both emeralds and history.

However, she came back with, “Tempting, but no. The jewels I want are far more precious than anything offered at Tiffany's.” She shook her head. “Either you agree to two minutes of touching, or I remove your trousers now. We've argued for at least a minute.”

Considering the fact that he was so far gone that he would disgrace himself for sure if she so much as brushed against his sex while undressing him, Seth had little choice but to groan, “All right. You win.” Hopefully three minutes would be long enough for him to regain enough control to last during the removal of his trousers. As for the fondling, well …

Looking ready to crow her triumph, Penelope crawled over to their discarded clothes and retrieved his watch from his waistcoat pocket. Returning to his side, she dangled the timepiece before his eyes. “You have until one fifty-three to compose yourself; then I remove your trousers.”

Minutes flew like seconds as Seth lay silently reciting Tennyson's “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” in a wild attempt to distract his mind and nether regions from his over-stimulated state. Just as he mouthed, “‘While horse and hero fell, They that had fought so well,'” Penelope trumpeted, “Time's up!”

With unladylike eagerness she unbuttoned both his trousers and drawers, then moved to his feet to tug off his shoes and stockings. That chore completed, she began to draw off his pants.

Please, God, don't let her touch me yet
, Seth prayed, his belly muscles contracting and quivering with jittery expectation. Apparently God was sympathetic to his plight, for she removed them without so much as grazing his male parts.

When he lay completely naked, she crawled back to his side and picked up his watch again. “It's one fifty-eight. I get to have my way with you until two o'clock sharp.” She pried open his clenched hand and laid the timepiece in his palm. “Here. You tell me when my two minutes are up.” With that, she turned her attention to the jutting flesh at his groin.

Seth squirmed fitfully as she leaned near, tilting her head to one side as she surveyed it. Dear God! Why didn't she just touch it, and let him get the initial shock over with quickly? Couldn't she see that his erotic anticipation was killing him?

After a half minute of scrutiny, according to the watch, her hand strayed to his belly. For several seconds it lay over his navel, motionless. Then it slowly drifted downward, her fingertips lightly tracing the arrow-straight line of hair leading to the object of both their carnal fixation.

Seth's breath strangled in his throat, his stomach muscles heaved as she moved nearer and nearer. By the time she stopped just short of his twitching staff, his pelvis was bucking wildly.

Ignoring his frantic undulations, Penelope idly coiled his intimate hair beneath her finger, musing, “If my feminine parts are a rose in the garden of sensual delights, then your male ones are a tulip.” Drawing tight circles in his curls, her finger looped lower. “A very pink, very long-stemmed tulip,” she elaborated, spiraling yet closer to his source of need.

Seth sucked in a deep breath, bracing himself for the electrifying jolt of her touch. To his frustration, she veered to the right, completely bypassing him. He exhaled in a hiss. Damnation! At this point, her careful avoidance was far more torturous than any amount of fondling could be.

Penelope's hand rounded his tension-flexed upper thighs to drop between his legs. “You see,” she explained, “like a tulip, your ‘thing' springs from a bulb.” She cupped his masculine sac in her palm to illustrate her point.

A guttural cry ripped from Seth's throat, his back arching up at the resulting shock of exquisite sensation. Dear God! If his body reacted like this to her merely holding his sac, however would he survive her touching his arousal?

Handling him like fine china, she gently squeezed and caressed each taut globe, her every thrilling move wrenching him with an urgency so intense that it took all his self-control not to moan aloud; a control that shattered the moment she pressed her lips to him.

As he lay wracked with deep tremors, certain his groin would burst with her every lick and kiss, she slid her hand upward.

Sensing what she was about to do and too aroused to withstand it, Seth slapped a protective hand over himself, groaning, “No. Please. Don't. I can't take any more!”

“Ssh. Of course you can,” she crooned, prying his hand away and replacing it with her own. “There. Is that so terrible?”

He moaned and turned his face away, unable to reply in his struggle to contain himself. Couldn't the woman see how torturous this was for him? How perilously close to the brink he was?

Apparently not, because her fingers encircled his shaft then and pulled it away from his belly. As if measuring his thickness and turgidity, she lightly rubbed up and down the throbbing length, stroking the underside with her thumb as she moved. He groaned and tried to pull away, but she held firm.

“One more move like that, lustee, and you'll forfeit an additional two minutes of fondling,” she warned.

His breath coming out in ragged sobs now, Seth snatched up the watch at his side and peered desperately at the time. The big hand was just a hair away from being dead center on twelve. Just a few seconds more …

Sensation, intense and raw, surged up through his loins as her finger brushed across the delicate flesh of his unsheathed tip. His whole body stiffened with momentary shock; then a hoarse scream tore from his throat, and his hips rocked with uncontrolled violence. At her next caress, he felt a hint of telltale dampness, the warning sign that he was almost to the point of no return. Smothering a curse, he jerked himself from her hand.

“Time's up,” he growled, rolling to his side.

She laid her palm against his hip. “Seth—”

“Don't …” he rasped, squirming away. “I'm … starting to … lose myself.” This time she did as he asked, sitting quietly by his side while he lay in a quivering heap, squeezing himself hard in a desperate attempt to retard his climax.

After a couple of minutes, he felt Penelope's hand on his hip again. “Seth?”

Feeling in control again, he rolled onto his back. “Hmm?”

She bent down and kissed him. Holding him captive with her lips, she straddled his hips. “Love me,” she whispered. “Please love me.” Without waiting for a reply, she thrust down and impaled herself on him.

Seth almost screamed his pleasure as he slipped into her embracing flesh. Dear God! She felt so good, so perfect. Clutching her waist in a viselike grip, he arched up and drove himself deeper. She moaned and writhed, rubbing her core against his shaft as he pulled back to drive in again.

“You feel wonderful,” she sighed, matching her rhythm to his.

He was about to return the compliment, when a frightening realization dawned; one that made him cease all motion.

“Sweetheart,” he murmured, grasping her buttocks to still her as well. “We have to stop for a moment. It's important.”

“But why?” she groaned.

“You'll see,” he assured her, urging her resisting form off him and crawling to the desk.

She moved to his side as he began rifling through the bottom drawer. “What are you looking for?”

“This.” He pulled a small blue paper packet from beneath a dog-eared copy of
Carriage Monthly
, and handed it to her. When she shot him an inquiring look, he urged, “Open it.”

She did, her expression even more bewildered as she held up the object inside by its red ribbon ties. “What is it?”

“A condom, of course.”

She looked blank.

“A man puts it over his ‘thing' during intercourse so as not to impregnate his partner or to contract any nasty diseases. Not,” he added, “that I'm worried about you being diseased.”

She glanced from the condom to his erection, then smiled mischievously. “Oh, I see. You slide it over your ‘thing' like this,” she eased it over him. “Then you secure it with the ribbon thus.” She tied a perky bow at the underside base of his staff. Leaning back to admire her handiwork, she mused, “You do look rather dashing all tied up like a Christmas present, but doesn't being covered up like that ruin your pleasure?”

Seth stared down at his festooned masculinity thoughtfully. “I don't know. I bought them after I found out about my father, and since I haven't had relations since, I haven't tried them.”

“And I see no reason for you to start now,” she declared, untying the ribbon. “I want to feel you, not your condom.”

He stopped her hands. “You know that's impossible. We can't run the risk of having a child.”

“I've already taken precautions,” she assured him, pulling her hands from his to tug the condom off.

That bit of news gave him a jolt. “Oh? And what reason have you had to learn of such matters?” he inquired darkly.

She grinned, obviously amused by his jealous tone. “I intended to seduce you after the dance, so I discussed it with one of the saloon girls at the race today. She told me that if I put a sponge soaked in vinegar deep inside me, that I wouldn't conceive. I did so just before I got dressed this evening.”

Seth gaped at her in flattered amazement. “You went to all that trouble so you could seduce me?”

“Yes. Now, how about making my trouble worthwhile?”

She didn't have to ask twice. With one wild swipe of his arm, Seth cleared a space on the desk, sending papers, cigars, and the whiskey bottle scattering to the floor. Then he lifted Penelope to the edge. She leaned back and opened her legs in wanton invitation. Again, she didn't have to ask twice.

Hot and primed to take her, Seth thrust inside, convulsively grabbing her thighs, pulling her body hard against his. With a hunger that mirrored his, Penelope tilted her hips up and wrapped her legs around his waist, eagerly accepting every plundering inch of him. Over and over again Seth buried himself inside her, angling his body so that his shaft caressed the bud of her desire with every motion.

Penelope grasped his clenched buttocks and rocked against him, matching him stroke for thrilling stroke, moan for impassioned moan. “Seth! Oh, dear God!” she sobbed, tightening around him in an intimate embrace that almost sent him over the edge. “This is … this is … oh!”

Seth's thrusts were frenzied now, his moans escalating into hoarse cries of pleasure as they strained and arched against each other, their bodies in perfect harmony as they coaxed each other nearer and nearer to mutual bliss. Then Penelope slammed her pelvis against his, screaming her rapture.

Seth, too, lost control. His climax was like nothing he'd ever felt before: intense, electrifying; a thrilling, pulsating charge that raced up through his sex and exploded in his groin, shooting sparks of glorious sensation throughout his entire body. Strangled with ecstasy, he swept Penelope into his embrace and buried his face against her lilac-scented hair, quivering uncontrollably as he shoved into her depths one last time.

For several delicious moments they remained in that position: she with her legs clenched around his waist, clinging to his torso; he holding her suspended in air, his face pressed against her hair and his sex buried in her.

At last she tilted her head back to look into his face. Smiling the luminous smile of a woman in love, she reached up and tucked his tousled hair behind his ears. “Was it everything you dreamed?” she whispered, staring anxiously into his eyes.

He tipped his forehead against hers. “Everything and more.”

Chapter 24

His luck was about to change; he could feel it in his bones. After a night of losing, his big win was only a card turn away. All he needed was a thousand dollars for ante.

Miles crept down the hallway toward Seth Tyler's office, his body tense as he listened for signs of life behind the closed doors on either side. All was quiet. He smiled. Yes. His luck was definitely improving. None of the saloon girls were up yet, though the sun was rising steadily over the horizon.

As for the other boarders, he hadn't seen his mother since the evening before, and the rest, gamblers all, were downstairs waiting for him to produce his ante for the final poker hand.