Wedding Series Boxed Set (3 Books in 1) (The Wedding Series) (49 page)

“Touch me, Tris. If you want to, touch me.”

“I want to.”

And from her touch, he knew she did.

He knew it was her hands that freed him, that stoked the fire so hot that he had to still them once, twice. But he wasn’t aware of stripping off the rest of her clothes and the rest of his until he was settled between her legs.

“Oh, God. Tris.”

“It’s okay. Michael.”

“Slow. Going . . . to give you . . . slow.”

The tinge of desperation in her soft laugh did nothing to cool him. “Somehow I’d forgotten you were the one saying slow.”

He eased slightly away from her, bowing his body to open his mouth over her stomach and take a mockingly gentle bite of the soft flesh there. “I meant it. Something must have made me forget that resolve—temporarily.”

He set about proving to her just how firm his resolution could be, determined to stretch their communication, their knowledge of each other. Courting familiarity by listening to her body, tuning himself to what she needed, where a touch would make her tremble, how a kiss could make her sigh. And he knew she was doing the same. She had to be, because she would touch her lips to his collarbone, her fingers to his hip, her breasts to his chest, and only then did he realize he had wanted that touch above all other touches at that instant.

The exertion of patience left its sheen on their bodies when he finally acceded to the pleas of her soft voice and urging fingers and positioned himself above her. He looked into her eyes as he gradually brought himself into her body. She lifted her hips to take him more deeply, and they stilled.

He wanted to hold this moment forever. He wanted to extract every millisecond from it. He wanted the simple rightness of this sensation to last forever. But a movement started in one of them, and echoed to the other, then back, growing stronger and faster with each exchange until there was no knowing where one ended and the next began. The movements became shudders, and then cries, and then boneless, nerveless exhaustion and small sounds of content.

Michael shifted some of his weight off Tris, but did not break their union. Time passed, but the increments weren’t important to him. She was right; what there was between them was simple, as simple as this. And she was wrong, because what there was between them was also as complex as this.

“I’m glad their flight comes in before rush hour. That way I can get off a little early to pick them up at the airport and have Grady settled at your place and Paul and Bette here, before we meet you at the restaurant for dinner. You’re sure you’ll be able to get away in time?”

“I’m sure.” He automatically shifted to one side to give her better access to the mirror as she brushed her hair.

“Did I tell you I invited Leslie?”

“Uh-huh,” he grunted as he lifted his chin to pass one end of his tie over the other.

“Seven-thirty, okay?”

“Okay.”

Tying his tie, he could still watch her, and marvel at how in the seven days since the heavens had dumped a snowstorm on Washington, D.C., they had meshed their daily lives.

In the mornings they equably shared the bathroom as they got ready for work, leaving together to walk—through snow that melted as rapidly as Tris had predicted—to the Metro headed for downtown and their jobs. In the evenings, they put together dinner from the basics Tris had on hand and some specialties one or the other of them happened to pick up during the day. And in the nights. . . ah, the nights.

Tris swung away from the mirror and headed back to the bedroom. Peering at his image as he straightened his tie and shirt collar, Michael caught a glimpse of the sly grin on his face.

The nights were what had him smiling stupidly all through the days, and thinking ahead to the time when he could go home to Tris.

Home
.

The word caught him off guard. Was he considering this narrow brick house his home? He had a key, yes. And Tris had certainly made him welcome. He’d hardly been back to the small apartment farther up Connecticut Avenue for more than changes of clothes.

But home. That implied things he wasn’t sure he wanted implied. Things like counting on permanence, like staking your future on the steadfastness of someone else’s heart.

They said the desire for a home was inbred, but he might be better off ignoring that and honing some of his other instincts. Like self-preservation.

“Michael? What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.”

He stood in the doorway and watched Tris smooth a stocking over her leg and felt the clutch of another instinct. The instinct to return her to that warm, mussed bed and use only a small slice of its wide surface.

“I wish you could come with me to the airport to pick them all up this afternoon.”

“It’s an important meeting.”

“Oh, I know. And we’ve been very lucky that you’ve had so much free time this week.” She looked up at him through her lashes as she buttoned her blouse, and he felt his body tightening, despite the shared shower—long and steamy and most satisfying—that had already put them behind this morning.

He talked to divert his mind in hopes his body would take the hint. “It’s the inauguration. Everybody has so many social obligations there’s not much time left for work.”

“I’ve heard that some senator once said it was a lot less work to govern than to inaugurate.” She fastened her skirt and pulled her shoes from the closet.

“I believe it.”

He knew what could happen. How many times had he seen his mother or father go through this euphoria with a new partner? How many times had they told him that this time, this person was really
it
? How many times had he believed them and gotten involved in their latest loves’ lives? And how many times had those people—nice people, generally, good people—disappeared along with the supposed never-ending love? And there he’d be, turning around to be introduced to someone new.

The only way he’d learned to cope was to not let the changes permeate the fabric of his life, to let them skim over him and to hold on to the certainties he did have with both hands. To cultivate those certainties, like his ability, like his regard for Joan Bradon and a few others, like his friendships with Grady, Paul . . . and Tris.

There was no way to avoid all changes, so he’d felt the pain of some, like having Laura go out of his life last year. But he knew that pain would be nothing compared to what would happen when Tris moved on. He knew—he feared—she would move on, as she had from Terrence and Grady. And he had to make sure he survived it.

“Did I give you the name of the restaurant?” she asked as she put gold hoops in her ears and reached for a gold chain.

“Yes.”

“And the address?”

He had to forcibly restrain himself from giving in to the temptation to take the chain from her hands and fasten it around her neck, knowing full well that that would lead to kissing her vulnerable, velvet nape and that would lead to so much more. “Yes. You wrote it all down, and I have the paper here in my pocket. You’re treating me like a kindergartner. You want to pin it to my coat?”

Her smile was a little quizzical and he knew his rough tone was the cause.

“No. I just want to be sure you’ll be there. I’m sure Paul and Bette and Grady and Leslie will want to see you. And I know that after twelve hours I will be more than eager to see you.” She passed him on her way out the door, pausing to brush a kiss both promising and fleeting across his lips.

“C’mon, I think we have time for one cup of coffee if we hurry.” She made the words sound like an invitation of an entirely different sort.

He clenched his hands at his sides to keep from reaching for her as they headed down the stairs.

“Michael's place is on the sixth floor.” Tris led the way into the small elevator, and caught the look Bette and Paul exchanged as she turned around to press the button. “He told me when he gave me the key,” she added.

That was true. She’d never been to his apartment, because he’d been at her house for all this short, idyllic week. She felt her stomach give a little lurch as the elevator started a sluggish ascent, but she didn’t think her reaction was to the motion.

Was the idyll over? Was that why he’d been acting so odd this morning? He’d seemed both more intense and more removed somehow. There’d been an emotion so strong in him that she’d felt its waves halfway across the bedroom. But she couldn’t define it. Wariness? Uneasiness? Perhaps those could be explained if he still had a lingering doubt about her feelings for Grady and he was keyed up by the prospect of them all being together again.

But what about the other possible labels her mind had come up with for his mood? Like fear. Or distrust.

“C’mon, Tris. We need the key to open the door.”

Shaking her head free of her questions, she followed the rest of them out of the elevator. She unlocked the door to 605 and swung it open wide. “Michael said to leave your stuff anywhere, Grady.”

Grady, followed by Bette and Paul, walked to the center of the room before thunking down his suitcase on the carpeted floor.

“Yeah, anywhere,” he muttered.

“Great decorator,” commented Paul, looking from the uncurtained windows to the bare walls to the small stack of unpacked boxes.

“His furniture hasn’t arrived yet.” Tris bristled on Michael’s behalf at the implied criticism. But a whispered question in her mind about whether the unsettled air had a deeper cause than all the time he’d spent at her house sent a shiver down her back. It almost looked as if he weren’t sure he would like the transition to D.C., and he wanted to be ready to pick up and leave, to return to where he’d been before this change in his life.

“But he did order a bed,” she added for Grady’s benefit, and perhaps, a little, to sidetrack her own thoughts.

She set off purposefully down the short hall that obviously led to the two bedrooms and bath. In the larger bedroom was a sleeping bag on top of a pallet. Tris wondered if it was her imagination that made it seem so obvious that this wrinkled arrangement hadn’t been used in a week. In the other room was the brand-new bed, the box spring and mattress still enclosed in plastic.

“Guess he hasn’t had a chance to settle in much,” commented Grady.

“It does look unlived in,” agreed Bette, innocently—too innocently. “As if he hasn’t spent much time here.”

Paul emitted a sound of choked laughter. Tris lifted her chin as she met grins from Bette and Grady. All right, so they all knew, or had a pretty good idea, where Michael had been spending his time. She wasn’t ashamed of it. Quite the opposite. And she wished like the dickens that he could be spending his time in her bed these next few days instead of returning here to be host to Grady.

“He hasn’t,” she said boldly. “And frankly, you’re all putting a definite cramp in our style.”

The easy laughter that followed her declaration seemed to wash away any traces of awkwardness in adjusting to the newness of her and Michael being more than friends. By the time they’d prepared the bed for use, stowed Grady’s belongings, then done the same with Paul and Bette’s at her house and made their way to the restaurant, Tris felt that she and Michael were accepted as a couple as surely as Paul and Bette were.

At the restaurant, she discovered there might be one exception to that. Michael.

Her heart seemed to take an extra beat when she saw him making his way through the crowd to them. He really was, in a most understated way, a hunk. And that was even with the conservative dark suit and white shirt hiding the attributes she had come to know and enjoy intimately over the past seven days.

The glance he sent her seemed a little constrained. He accepted a kiss and hug from Bette and exchanged warm handshakes with Paul and Grady. But she quickly realized that he was keeping distance—and often a couple other bodies—between the two of them, as if he were afraid that she might grab him and kiss him in front of their friends. Was he uncomfortable about their relationship? Ashamed?

The stab of hurt at that possibility weakened her enough that she’d been maneuvered into a corner seat before she realized exactly what he had in mind.

Grady sat at her right. And Michael was at the opposite corner of the table from her, as far as he could get at a cozy table for six in a crowded restaurant.

What did he think he was doing? Trying to force the clock back to twelve years ago? Was this some sort of test? Or worse. Was some part of him trying to make her return to what, to who she had been, because that was who he loved?

Wasn’t that a kick? she thought, when she allowed herself to think.

The girl Tris had thought she was in love with Grady. The woman Tris knew she loved Michael. But Michael was still caught up with the girl Tris. All it would need to be a complete mess was for Grady to fall for her, now, as the woman she was. That would make all three of them miserable.

But, despite her own troubles, Tris was observant enough to believe that Grady, long the oblivious corner of this triangle, was far from miserable when Leslie came hurrying up to the table.

At least someone was happy, she thought, with a swell of self-pity. Amid the easy banter of old friends and somewhere between the salad and the main course, anger started chipping away at the self-pity. Who did Michael Dickinson think he was? How dare he push aside the past week as if it hadn’t existed? Because it sure as hell had existed, and so did she. And she wasn’t about to let him pretend otherwise.

By the time the waiter had cleared the main course and Leslie started to excuse herself from the table, temper had enough strength to push Tris out of her chair and slap her napkin down on the table as if it were a gauntlet as she glared at Michael.

“I’ll go with you.” She had a sense that everyone looked at her a little strangely then, but the only reaction that really interested her was the startled uncertainty in Michael’s eyes. Good. Let him wonder what was going on in her mind. Let him be concerned just a fraction as much as she had been. Let him worry about how she felt about him for a change.