Amanda's Guide to Love (18 page)

She arched her neck, and he pressed
his lips to the yummy hollow at the base of her throat. He licked and kissed
her neck, moving up to her elegant jawline and sweet chin. A long moment later,
he returned to her mouth. Except this time he wasn’t gentle—he was demanding,
punishing even, fueled by his want and emboldened by her welcome. He took
possession of her lips, grazing them, rubbing them with his thumb, and sweeping
his tongue over them.

When he could delay no more, he
pushed inside her mouth and explored it thoroughly, putting two months of
pent-up desire and denial into the kiss. She tasted like heaven. A horny,
passionate heaven that had finally opened up and let him in. Through the blaze
of lust consuming his brain, he could hear the sound of her rattled breathing
and feel her hands gripping the back of his head.

He could smell her arousal.

Sweet Lord.

It nearly sent him tumbling into a
release.

He pressed his palm
into the mattress and pushed himself up, putting a few lifesaving inches
between their mouths.

Amanda gasped for air and was about
to pull him back when her mind sounded a deafening alarm:
Last chance to
make a U-turn!

She winced.

“Was I too rough?” He looked at her
with concern. “I’m sorry, ma belle. Your taste messes with my gray matter.”

“You weren’t too rough,” she said.
“And the taste—it isn’t mine. It’s the flavor of my lip balm.”

“I’m sure it’s yours.” He trailed
his fingers over her slightly swollen lips. “I ate all your lip balm off in the
first ten seconds.”

She smiled.

“And you know what?” he asked, a
glint of mischief in his eyes.

“What?”

“I love the way you taste
here
even more.” He reached down and touched his fingertips to her mound.

His touch was featherlight at
first. Tentative. She didn’t push him away. There was no more point in pushing
him away and resisting what she craved so badly. She might as well admit she’d
missed the U-turn . . . and enjoy the present moment.

He pressed harder, cupping her with
his entire palm.

God, the pleasure of it.

She wasn’t completely naked under
the towel wrapped around her. In a desperate attempt to fight the inevitable,
she’d put on her panties after she showered. But Kes didn’t try to slip his
fingers inside them. Neither did he attempt to push in through the fabric that
was now slippery with her want. He just held her with his grip firm and acutely
erotic—a harbinger of what he had in store for her.

She wanted to stay in that touch.
She wanted to shift her body so she could be in contact with even more of his palm.
More of him. They’d made love in her fantasies every night for two months now.
Amanda had become an expert at summoning up the feel of his body on top of
hers, the smell of his skin, and the cadence of his thrusts.

Ah, to experience all that again, right
here, right now in the warmth and quiet of this morning! To let him pleasure
her, encourage him to fan her throbbing need until it peaked, leaving her
boneless and sated . . . And then to do it again in the
afternoon. And at night. And the night after that . . .

Until one of them tired of the
other. Or until Kes left town.

She focused her gaze on his face.
He was staring at her, his eyes pitch black. They promised her delectable
things—things she hungered for.

Were they worth the trouble?

Was
he
worth the trouble?

“Exactly how much longer are you in
town for?” she asked, her voice coming out all weird.

“Three or four weeks.” He cleared
his throat before adding, “I’m in luck at the casino, so I’ve extended my stay,
but after a month I have to go no matter what.”

“OK.”

He gave her a quizzical look.

“I’m accepting your
new deal.” She grinned, giddy. “Let’s have the benefits, Gypsy boy.”

That’s when his fingers slipped
inside.

She reached to return the caress
and found that he was stark naked under the blanket. And oh so happy to greet
her.

A little later, he unwrapped her,
lapping up her body like a sugar-deprived kid with a gigantic lollipop. Then he
hooked his thumbs under the waistband of her panties and pulled them down her
thighs.

She quivered with anticipation.

But he didn’t seem in a hurry. He
stroked her thighs and massaged her most sensitive spot. In response, she
arched and writhed and oozed a mess down there.

He shook his head, smiling.

“What?” she grunted.

“It beats me how you could keep rejecting
someone you want so badly.”

She blew through her cheeks.
“Arrogant ass.”

“I love it when you talk dirty.”

“Ha-ha.” She hesitated. “Do you
have a condom?”

“Take a wild guess.”

“I think you do.” She smiled. “I
think you brought a whole pack of them.”

He rolled over and pulled open the
drawer to the night table.

Yep. There it was—a pack. She
grabbed the box and opened it. “We’d better get started if we’re to work
through all of these today.”

He settled on his back. “I’m at
your service, Madame Roussel.”

As she sheathed him, she wondered
if this time would be as good as in Deauville. She’d relived that weekend so
many times in her fantasies she could no longer tell which parts of it were
real and which were her imagination. What if they failed to recreate the
magical quality of their lovemaking? What if her unrealistic expectations
ruined it for her and for him?

He sat up and touched her hand.
“You’re frowning. Is something wrong?”

She shook her head. Damn the
chatterbox inside her brain. If anything ruined this for her, it would be her
own inability to stop overthinking everything.

She traced the bulging muscles in
his arms and placed her hands on his chest. Her gaze drilling into his, she
pushed gently and guided him to lie down on his back. When he did, she lifted
herself up and straddled him. Savoring every delicious second of it, she slowly
lowered herself on him and began to move.

She’d tried this position with
every lover she’d had, always hoping for fireworks and always missing her mark.
It should have been the best with the control it offered. She could set the
pace and the depth of the strokes. She could pause at will and start again
without having to ask or urge with nonverbal cues. It was perfect . . .
in theory. In reality, it was enjoyable enough, but she’d never been able to
come this way.

Not once.

She rocked and gyrated her hips,
slowly and deliberately, while her eyes feasted on Kes’s body. His torso was
magnificent beyond words—lean, tanned, and muscled. He whispered her name,
stroking her everywhere. When he reached her breasts, he cupped and fondled
them. His handsome face was flushed and his dark gaze, locked on hers. It held
passion in its bottomless depths, and something else . . . something
she couldn’t quite pinpoint.

“You’re so beautiful, my gadji,” he
said, his voice raw with desire.

Or was it emotion?

She peered at him before discarding
the daft idea. He was starved for her body, just as she was starved for his.
Emotions had nothing to do with it.

He slid his hands down to her hips,
pulled her up a little, and held her a couple of inches above him, still
impaled. She leaned forward, planting her hands on the mattress. And then he
began to hammer into her, hard and fast.

Incredibly, impossibly fast.

She gasped—and let go of her doubts.
A few more thrusts and the last conscious thought deserted her mind. The world
shrank, and soon the entire universe contracted into what was building up in
her core. She stopped seeing, stopped hearing. It was as if his frantic
pounding had torn her out of time and sent her to a place where nothing
mattered, nothing existed beyond the pleasure that pulsed and escalated inside
her.

A pleasure that grew unbearable
just before it burst, filling her body with sequins and glitter.

She cried out her release.

He came right after
her, a deep growl straining his face as he pushed her down to the hilt and held
her there.

* * *

Fourchon

~ ~ ~

A Woman’s Guide to Perfection

Guideline # 9

The Perfect Woman makes sure to be
as beautiful as her genes and pocketbook will allow.

Rationale
: Looking good is not an optional
add-on when you’re a woman. It’s a necessity.

A
word of caution
:
Good looks are distributed unevenly across the population. If you weren’t born
with the winning ticket, you can do
a lot
to improve yourself, but
please be aware of your limits and the limits of plastic surgery . . .
unless your goal is to be a walking freak show.

Permissible
exception
: You can
relax
a little
about your appearance if you (a) have a great sense of
humor, (b) are over eighty, (c) are trying to survive in the desert.

Damage
control
: There are
1,786 things an average-looking woman can do to be prettier. However, only the
improvements in the following three areas can propel her into a different
league: (a) weight, (b) skin, (c) hair. If you manage to get any two of these
three into a decent shape, you’re doing really well. If you fail on all three
accounts, we recommend you forget about the other 1,783 things and focus on
developing a great sense of humor.

Pitfalls
to avoid:
(a)
thinking that beauty is all you need to be a Perfect Woman, (b) neglecting to
wax your legs in winter.

~ ~ ~

“We
didn’t see you at the wedding breakfast,” Jeanne said when Amanda entered La
Bohème the following Monday.

“I’m so sorry. I had one of those
terrible hangover headaches . . .”

“We didn’t see your friend Kes,
either.”

Amanda racked her brain for a
plausible explanation.

“Mat has a theory.” Jeanne’s lips
twitched as she struggled to maintain a serious tone. “The poor fellow
sacrificed himself to help you nurse your headache, like any good friend
would.”

“Very funny.” Amanda sighed, giving
up. “Just, please, don’t you and Mat jump to conclusions. We’re not dating. Kes
and I, we’re not . . . an item.”

“Whatever you say.”

“We’re just friends.”

Amanda looked around, trying to
find something to do—hopefully at the other end of the room. Where was Manon
with her lists when she needed her?

“Kes and I made a deal,” she said,
turning back to Jeanne. “He agreed to be my date at your wedding, and I agreed
to accompany him to his nephew’s baptism next week. That’s all there is to it.”

Jeanne gave her a sympathetic look.
“I didn’t mean to intrude, honey. I’m going to shut up and show more respect
for your privacy.”

Thankfully, Daniela—Jeanne’s concierge
and friend—walked in with her son, Liviu, and another little boy Amanda had
never seen before. Liviu was seven or eight. His peculiar mixture of childish
innocence and emerging rational thought was most entertaining.

“What’s up, young man?” Amanda asked
him. “And who’s your friend?”

“My name is Denis,” the other boy
said.

“I’m Amanda and this is Jeanne.”

“I’m hosting a playdate this
morning,” Daniela said with an apologetic smile. “And I need some strong coffee
before I spend the next couple of hours chasing these two around the park.”

Jeanne nodded and began to pack
coffee into the filter basket.

“Are you enjoying your summer
holiday?” Amanda asked Liviu.

“I went to Romania,” he said with
pride, “to visit Grandma.”

“That’s great. Does she visit you in
Paris sometimes?”

Liviu shook his head. “Uh-uh. It’s
too far for a bus trip.”

“What about planes?” Jeanne asked.

“She can’t. Grandma has . . .”
He turned to his mother for help.

“Fear of flying,” Daniela
explained.

“Yep,” Liviu confirmed. “She’s
afraid she would fall out of the plane during tabulance.”

“Turbulence,” Daniela corrected
him.

“Orange juice or apple juice?”
Jeanne asked the boys.

While they named their preferences,
Daniela helped them climb onto barstools and stood behind them.

Amanda handed the boys their
drinks. “If you can sit quietly for the next fifteen minutes, I’ll play
foosball with you.”

“Promise?”