True Colors (14 page)

She brought her hands forward and down,
resisting the urge to forge a direct path to his fly and instead
shoving his sweater upward. He leaned back far enough for her to
pull it over his head, along with the gray T-shirt he had on
underneath. He released her to free his arms from the sleeves and
tossed the garments aside. His gaze strayed past her and he
muttered, “The window.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she said, staring at
his chest. It was perfect—not too bulked up, not too lean.
Streamlined muscle, a scant growth of hair along his sternum, a
flat, hard stomach punctuated by a narrow navel framed in another
smattering of dark hair. She wanted to paint him shirtless. She
wanted to paint him naked. The hell with painting—she just wanted
him naked.

“It’s all glass, Emma,” he said, his voice
cracking slightly as she stroked her hand lightly across his
pecs.

“We’re too high
for anyone to see us,” she assured him, thinking,
I’m high on you. I’m high on this.
The loft was on the second floor, and the nearest
neighbor lived several acres away, with enough trees between the
two properties to obscure that house. If she couldn’t see it, she
assumed that no one in that house could see her and Max. And even
if they could, she didn’t care. The thought of stopping what they
were doing for the time it took to walk to her bedroom was
unbearable.

Max apparently needed little persuasion. He
yanked her shirt off and groaned as he gazed at her chest, her
breasts straining against the stretchy cups of her bra. She’d never
been one for lacy, flimsy underthings, and her bra was strictly
utilitarian. Maybe that was why Max wasted little time in flicking
open the clasp and slipping it down her arms and away. A rumble of
sound, want and pleasure and anguish, rose from his throat. “You’re
so beautiful.”

“I was thinking the same thing about you,” she
whispered, lowering her mouth to kiss one flat, tan
nipple.

He gasped, twined both hands into her hair and
pulled her head away, only to lock his lips to hers once more.
Their tongues dueled, their breaths merged. Their hands moved
simultaneously down to their slacks, Emma fumbling with the fly of
his jeans, Max deftly locating the fly of her khakis. He got hers
undone first, and she felt the fabric shimmy down her legs. He
slipped his hands under the elastic of her panties and shoved them
away, then wedged one hand between her thighs, pressing, sliding
deep, spreading her dampness with his fingertips.

She couldn’t breathe. Couldn’t think. Couldn’t
get his damned jeans off him. She was shaking, much too close to
coming.

She heard a faint laugh from him as he nudged
her scrabbling fingers away with his free hand and popped the
button of his waistband. The zipper made a hissing noise and then
he sprang free of the denim, large and hard and… God, yes.
Beautiful.

Reflexively, she arched one leg around his. He
laughed again. “Not standing up,” he whispered. “We’ll kill
ourselves.”

If they did, she die happy. But she pulled back
from him long enough to survey the loft. The table had too many art
supplies on it. The stool wasn’t stable. The canvas drop cloth was
thick and stiff and spattered with paint.

He grabbed her hand and started toward the
stairs. All right, so they’d abandon the loft, her favorite place
in the whole house, a room open to the magnificence of the
surrounding landscape, the ocean view. They’d walk down the stairs
and around to her bedroom. They’d be reasonable and civilized,
and…

No. The stairs were covered in soft carpeting.
That would do.

At the top stair, she pushed him down. With a
startled gasp, he sat, and before he could question her she
straddled him, settling onto his lap, her thighs sandwiching his
hips and his erection rising between their bodies. She bowed to
kiss his mouth.

Another sexy sound growled up from his throat,
his chest. If he’d had any thoughts of speaking, let alone
wandering through the house to her bed, he abandoned them. Instead,
he kissed her back, flexed beneath her, gathered her breasts in his
hands and kneaded them, stroking her nipples with his thumbs. He
broke the kiss and lifted her higher so he could replace his hands
with his lips, nuzzling, licking, gorging himself on her breasts.
She reached down between them, lifted her hips, guided him into
her.

They moaned in harmony. They rocked in
synchronicity. He arched against her as she pumped against him. Her
body tensed, trembled, teetered on the edge of bliss…and then
exploded in a cascade of deep, aching pulses. She collapsed against
him and he held her, panting, sighing, gradually growing still
beneath her.

For the first time since moving into this house
last autumn, Emma decided that she liked the carpeting, after
all.

He’d come here hoping for everything and
expecting nothing.

Well, in truth, he hadn’t hoped to make love on
the stairs leading to the loft—and he hadn’t expected that, either.
But he’d known Emma would be magnificent. He’d known she would be
all sweet curves and fiery hair and devouring kisses. He’d had a
taste of her yesterday evening, and once he’d had that taste, he’d
wanted the full banquet.

She felt surprisingly light in his lap, her
head resting against his shoulder, her hair spilling over his skin
and tickling the underside of his jaw. She fit perfectly in his
arms. The step he sat on was even more uncomfortable than the
stool, but he didn’t want to move. He wanted to sit exactly where
he was. With her. Like this. Forever.

That was a crazy thought. This whole situation
was crazy. He knew hardly anything about her, other than that she
was an artist and she was broke. If he were looking for a
woman—which he wasn’t—two items that wouldn’t be on his list were
“artist” and “broke.”

“Mind-blowing
sex”
would
be on
his list, however. Pretty high up on the list. And what he’d just
experienced with Emma…

Mind-blowing
was an
understatement.
Defense-shattering
came closer.
Universe-destroying
. He felt stripped
naked—not just his body but his heart, his soul, totally
vulnerable, unprotected.

Unprotected.
Shit.

“Emma.” His voice was muffled by her
hair.

She heard him, though. “Hmm,” she said
drowsily, her breath whispering across the skin of his
neck.

“Emma, I didn’t use anything.”

“It’s okay.” She leaned back slightly so she
could speak. “I’m protected. And I’m healthy.”

“I’m healthy, too,” he said. She gave him a
drowsy smile and settled back against him.

He closed his arms around her again and sighed.
He was healthy, but he didn’t feel protected. He felt altered in
ways he wasn’t sure he liked. Life was safer when he thought about
protection—not only condoms but emotional protection. He’d had bad
experiences. He’d been used. He’d been hurt. He’d been taken
advantage of. He had to be careful.

With Emma, he hadn’t been even remotely
careful, either now or yesterday, when he’d kissed her. Or pretty
much every minute since he’d sat across a table from her in that
bar and heard “True Colors” pour from the jukebox.

He was a smart
guy. He’d developed a unique computer encryption system and started
a company. He’d earned a fortune. He’d created a foundation and he
was its executive director. If someone held a gun to his head, he
could probably still play the
Theme From
Schindler’s List
on his violin. Badly,
perhaps, but he could play it.

Yet with Emma Glendon, he was someone else.
Someone he hardly recognized. Someone wild, someone utterly
reckless.

“What do we do now?” he asked. It wasn’t a
rhetorical question. He really had no idea where to go from
here.

“Well…” She traced her index finger down his
sternum, swirling it through the hair growing there. “We could make
love again, if we were sure it wouldn’t kill us. Or we could put or
clothes on and resume the interview.”

Not the interview. He’d felt profoundly awkward
discussing his dreams with her. As far as making love again, that
would be wonderful, but it wouldn’t solve his problem. It wouldn’t
transform him back into the man he’d been before he’d met Emma. And
she was right—another round of sex would probably kill him. At the
very least, he’d need to consume a few energy bars first, and maybe
a fistful of megavitamins.

“I still don’t know about your dreams,” she
said.

“One of them just came true.” His statement
obviously touched her. She leaned back and gave him such a sweet
smile, he felt his blood shimmer in his veins.

His claim surprised him as much as they
flattered her. Who the hell was this sentimental creature, this
romantic lover who knew just the right thing to say to a woman? Not
Max Tarloff.

“Another option…” she traced her finger down
his chest again, sparking stirrings of renewed lust in his groin
“…would be to get something to eat. I didn’t have any breakfast
this morning. I’m starving.”

Energy bars, he thought—enough fuel to power
him through some more epic lovemaking. “All right,” he said. “Let’s
get something to eat.”

Slowly, cautiously, she extricated herself from
his embrace without tumbling down the stairs. Like her aimless
finger trailing across his skin, her radiant smile caused his dick
to twitch back to life. But when he stood, he knew he’d need more
than her smile to get him going once more. His thighs ached and his
back was sore. He prided himself on staying in shape. Apparently he
wasn’t in the sort of shape conducive to screwing on
stairways.

Uninhibited in her nakedness, Emma strolled
across the loft to where their clothing lay in a disheveled heap.
She slipped her shirt over her head and tugged on her jeans. Then
she carried his clothing to where he stood, gob-smacked not just by
her glorious beauty but by the realization that she hadn’t bothered
to put on her underwear. More twitching in his groin. He ignored it
as he donned his own clothes. “Why didn’t you eat breakfast?” he
asked, recalling the concoction—a parfait glass dish filled with
layers of yogurt, fresh berries, and granola—with which he’d
started his morning at the Ocean Bluff Inn.

She smiled again, another blindingly lovely
smile. “I was a nervous wreck about your coming here. I was afraid
something like this would happen.” She tossed back her head and
laughed. “And it turns out I was right. Maybe I can earn some spare
cash telling fortunes and predicting the future. I could scrounge
up a crystal ball and a deck of Tarot cards and set up shop on
Atlantic Avenue.”

He remained silent, unsure of whether he should
give voice to what he was thinking: that she hadn’t needed any
skill at prognostication to know this would happen. There had been
an inevitability to it. As forceful as the song that brought them
together, their attraction simply had to travel to its final
measure—which had turned out to be hot sex on the
stairs.

She pranced down to the first floor, light on
her bare feet, and he plodded down behind her, wishing he felt as
breezy as she looked. She also looked rumpled, her lips rosy from
his greedy, devouring kisses and her hair a lush tangle of curls.
On her, “rumpled” was gorgeous.

Like her, he was exhilarated. He was exhausted
in the best possible way. But a vague foreboding gnawed at him. She
was his tenant. She needed spare cash. This was all
wrong.

And yet he wanted her. Possibly even more than
before.

He’d spent even less time in the kitchen of his
house than in the loft. Of course, he’d spent little time inside
the house at all—touring it with Andrea Simonetti and Vanessa
before he’d purchased it, wandering through it and listening to
Vanessa gush about the space, the views, the airiness of the rooms.
She’d talked as much to Andrea as to him, describing what she’d
want to do with this room, how she’d decorate that one, the updates
she was planning for the master bath: “A jetted tub, of course. And
one of those towel warmers.”

“Whatever you want,” he’d said, not really
caring about the temperature of his towels as long as she was
happy.

She’d been excited about the kitchen, and as he
followed Emma into the room he could see why. It had been updated
just prior to when he’d purchased the house, and it presented a
sleek, clean arrangement of granite counters, stainless-steel
appliances, white cabinetry and bright lighting, including a row of
three cone-shaped metal lamps hanging from a bar above the center
island. Vanessa had eaten sparingly and worried incessantly about
gaining weight, but she’d liked things new and shiny, and this
kitchen certainly fit that profile, even after Monica and Emma had
been using it for a year.

Emma glided around the room as if she actually
knew what she was doing. She pulled a carton of eggs from the
refrigerator, set a pan on the stove, and got to work breaking eggs
into a bowl. “Are omelets okay with you?” she asked as she pulled a
whisk from a drawer.