Versed in Desire (4 page)

I felt him shift to his elbows, his finger lifting the damp strands of hair from my cheeks. “Corryn,” he said.

An unfamiliar shyness kept me from opening my eyes when he spoke my name, but eventually I found the courage to meet his gaze. Sweat streaked his face, dampened his hairline. Tremors shivered through his muscles. He was riding the razor's edge of ecstasy and agony, holding back for me, something unreadable glimmering in his dark eyes.

Then we were both trembling. I brought one hand down to cup his jaw, rubbing the heel of my hand against the stubble once, twice, then I pulled his head down to kiss him. His mouth against mine, my hand on his jaw and the other at the small of his back, I lifted my hips to meet his as he thrust, intent on nothing more than making him feel good, but as long, hot minutes passed need cracked through me once again. This time I found myself sobbing into his neck before I arched into him and came apart. Panting and shaking, I dropped back into the mattress, my eyes half-open when he let out an agonized groan and shuddered in my arms. The line of his throat, so exposed and vulnerable, transfixed me as he buried himself deep inside me and came.

With a sigh he eased down against me, tension slackening from his muscles. I found the energy to kiss his shoulder, savoring the salty residue left on my lips long minutes later when he pulled away and headed into the bathroom. I curled up on my side, tucked my arm under my pillow and watched him with heavy-lidded eyes.

Completely unselfconscious about his nudity, he stopped at the foot of my bed, hands on hips, and looked at me. Three floors down the front door slammed, and two voices, one deep, the other high-pitched and giggling rose up the stairwell and continued to an upper floor. The rush of a cab, then another, as traffic noise once again registered in my consciousness. I stared back, saw Luke as I might never see him again, aroused flush fading from his cheekbones and chest, dark hair dusted over the long lines of his body.

Silence stretched between us. I felt a little sad for the women who angled to go home with Luke and lost, because Lord, oh Lord, the way he listened was nothing compared to the way he understood a woman's body. But I didn't feel
that
sorry for them. They saw a VP at an investment bank, a bonus check and an apartment in Battery Park City. I saw Luke, and that seeing made this…what?

I didn't have words for what this was. It wasn't just sex, it was a union, creating something less than two but more than one, something eternal yet ephemeral. Once again he'd left me speechless. But when he reached for his jeans I found the only word that mattered.

“Stay.”

A pause, then he dropped the jeans.

Just like that, I wasn't alone in my bed.

The next morning I sat bolt upright at 10:24 a.m. Luke didn't move. He was sprawled on his stomach, taking up most of my double bed, his face slack against the pillow, but his wasn't the only unusual presence in my personal space.

I felt like writing.

I took poetry too seriously to wait for the muse to strike before making time with my notebook. I wrote every day and I nurtured my creativity with what I knew worked—walking, knitting, exploring the city. But when she did deign to visit me, her presence felt like the steady, nurturing rains of spring that made the honeysuckle bloom vivid yellow on the exhaust-smeared granite walls of Central Park. It felt like an unexpectedly stimulating conversation, a perfect New York moment that faded only to reappear in my mind every time I performed a poem.

After scooting out of bed I pulled on a pair of yoga pants and a T-shirt, and hurried into the living room. My lap desk was tucked between the sofa and the radiator, my notebook in my purse. I curled up in the chair overlooking Avenue A and began scribbling phrases, metaphors, images, gathering them together with an ease I hadn't felt in months. As I worked I pulled the collar of my T-shirt up over my nose, with every breath inhaling the scents of sex and sweat and Luke.

The sun fell at a different angle on the page and the street noise, normally pretty quiet on a Sunday in Alphabet City, had picked up considerably before Luke woke up. I heard his bare feet scuffing against my hardwood floor, then he was in front of me, bare-chested, jeans half-buttoned. He sat down with his back to the silent radiator, and dangled his forearms across his bent knees. Red marks from the wrinkled sheets marred his right cheek and his hair stuck out in wild, random patches. He gave me a wary smile that touched down tentatively on his face before disappearing. Except for the morning stubble, he looked endearingly young.

He also looked uncomfortable.

My heart sank. In the bright light of day, I knew that while I'd had to make a choice, last night I'd made the wrong one. I should have worn sackcloth and ashes, told him to close his account at the Cupcake Café because there would never be anything between us. It was too risky, too impetuous, too emotionally dangerous to make the aftermath worthwhile because somewhere between the first party and last night, I'd fallen hard for brilliant, sexy Luke Morrison. Ensnared in the long, sweet seduction I'd forgotten that just because a man knew his way around a woman's body didn't mean he knew, or cared to know, anything more. Normally I was jaded enough to deal with this. But not with Luke.

He nodded at my notebook. “Writing?”

I'd expected
Thanks, see you Monday
. I pulled my nose from my shirt collar then looked down at the pages, covered in doodled flowers, scribbled words, arrows and crossed-out phrases, ideas with question marks around them. They'd make no sense at all to a man who lived and breathed the columns and rows of Excel. “Yes,” I said.

He yawned and rubbed his palms over his face. “Good. How does that work?”

I have no idea, but you seem crucial to the process, and you're done with me.

“Um…ideas come, images from daily life, people, emotions and…um…I get the bare bones on paper, then rehearse it as I walk.” I gave a little laugh. “I'm one of those crazy New Yorkers striding around muttering to herself, but the rhythm of my pace and my breathing help me work out the phrasing and the line breaks. I'm an urban poet so it's something about being connected to the city. Weird, I know.”

“It doesn't sound weird,” he said, but his expression was quizzical.

I didn't want to make this awkward. Survival at work, even with Luke's silence, depended on my behaving exactly as I had before, as if one night of unforgettable sex hadn't changed me.

“Don't feel like you have to stay,” I said, but at the same time he asked, “Do you want to get some breakfast?”

His expression didn't change. “Oh. Okay.”

“The thing is,” I started, then steadied my voice. “The thing is, Luke, it's best if you leave because even if you buy me breakfast I know where this is going, and I'd rather just end it now. I've done the whole casual thing where I end up a drunk-dial booty call—“

“I don't drunk-dial,” he said calmly.

“—and sometimes that's fine. But not with you. I thought I could handle it. I probably seem unhinged after six months of teasing and then showing up at Tony's party. I know—“

“Let's talk about what I know.”

His voice wasn't hard. There were no edges, hard or soft, to him. There was just Luke, so he sounded matter-of-fact, even mildly amused. I'd heard that same even-handed tone in meetings, rooms crowded with posturing men shouting to be heard as billions of dollars hung in the balance. Luke rarely spoke, just watched and listened, but when he did voice an opinion, smart, powerful people went silent. That's what I did now.

“I know you love chocolate cupcakes. I know you won't buy them for yourself so it makes me happy to buy them for you.”

I shook my head. One night with Luke had ruined me for all other men
and
chocolate, a stupendously unfair consequence I hadn't counted on when I made my choice. “Luke—“

He forged ahead. “I know that when you get a down minute you stand by the windows in Tony's office and stare out over the water.”

That shut me up right quick. I did do that, and I'd thought it was my secret. Tony had a master-of-the-universe, million-dollar view of the Statue of Liberty, Ellis Island and the convergence of the Hudson and East rivers. Looking out his window settled my mind, but I was careful not to do it when things were hopping. I had every right to be in his office, of course, but not spacing off out the window, longing for breath and pulse, for a connection to the earth.

Luke knew. He knew me.

“Oh,” I said. It was all I could say.

“I've come looking for Tony and found you in there instead,” he explained simply.

He could have seen me dozens of times, but not a word, a joke, a come-on line, a question, a demand. Not a single interruption. I felt my cheeks heat.
 
“I would have known where Tony was. Why didn't you say something?”

With a shrug he said, “Because after I saw you perform at the party I knew you needed the space, that it helped you with your real work.” He nodded at my notebook. “Writing.”

I wasn't the only one paying attention. Luke had somehow figured out what really mattered to me, how I needed the silence, the rare, open vista to combat the lack of solid ground under me and the exhausting, predatory ferocity of an investment bank.

Never
underestimate math geeks.

Before I could come up with a response, he tilted his head and considered me. “I know when you're home sick before I see your empty desk because the energy level on forty-four is one-tenth what it is normally.”

The precise fraction, so left-brain, so Luke, made me smile. “Have you measured it?”

For the first time in six months of flirting games, his dark-chocolate eyes held a tinge of nerves. “Corryn, there isn't a device in the world that can measure the life force you radiate. All I know is how I feel when you're there and how I feel when you're gone.”

Those words, soft and even, wiped the smile off my face.

“I know…” He stopped, looked between his bent knees, then back at me. “I know I didn't see this as casual six months ago and, after last night, it's anything but. I know I don't want it to end.”

Euphoria traced a finger up my spine, set my skin humming. “I'd love to get breakfast with you,” I said.

 

We showered and dressed, me in jeans and a down vest, him in his clothes from the previous night. At his request I left my hair loose. My reward was a kiss that promised a lazy Sunday afternoon in bed and his hand in mine as we walked down Avenue A to the Angelina Café, where we stood outside the patio and waited for a table. He wrapped his arm around my waist and pulled me back against him to share body heat in the brisk November air. I linked my fingers with his and watched people go by. We didn't talk much as we waited, although Luke occasionally pressed his lips to the top of my head with possessive satisfaction. As we stood together on the sidewalk, the city's contented purr rumbled up through my feet, into the bones of my legs and hips, along the curve of my spine. It melded with the beat of Luke's heart against my back, then encircled my ribs, the combined rhythm muted and as lazily fulfilled as I felt, asking me to make one more choice.

This time there was no alternative to consider, no option to evaluate. The choice was clear, the consequences predestined and right.

I chose Luke.

What She Needs

When Jack calls and tells me to meet him at the hotel bar, I know two things: he wants to sleep with me, and I will let him.

That's the rule. If I meet him, I do what he asks, when he asks. I'm free to decline his invitation, but if I accept, I'll do what I'm told.

I
always
accept.

Under His Hand

Whenever Tess Weston's Navy SEAL boyfriend, Drew Norwood, returned from a mission, their lovemaking was always hot and intense. It made Tess feel what it meant to be
female
at its most primitive. Taken. Possessed.

But Drew's latest unexpected reappearance is different. He's filled with raw need for Tess—and anger that she has left the windows open in her rough neighborhood, the one thing he made her promise never to do. Independent Tess can't believe Drew wants to follow through on his threat to spank her for defying him…but she's also intrigued. Can Tess trust him enough to let Drew dominate her body
and
her heart?

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