In Love Again (23 page)

“May I help you?” Melanie asked politely.

“Lord Wick. I have a reservation.” He didn’t look at Melanie when he spoke, but tossed the words rudely in her direction as he kept staring at the woman who looked up at him in return with blatant sexual invitation.

“Welcome to the St. Regis, Lord Wick.” It wouldn’t be the first time married people checked into separate rooms—with separate people—and it certainly wouldn’t be the last. Melanie kept her professional smile in place and did her job.

Claire’s heart pounded as Ben’s grip around her waist tightened, then softened and he began gently pulling her closer into his hold. The presence of the bellman in the elevator was maddening. The floors sped past, but not fast enough. They finally reached the private ninth floor and were led into a large suite that looked far more like a Manhattan apartment than a hotel room.

“Would you like me to show you around the suite?” the bellman inquired politely, after setting down Claire’s tote bag.

“No,” Claire and Ben answered in unison.

The three of them smiled at each other for a brief moment, and then the bellman bowed quickly and was gone.

Ben released his hold on Claire and walked back toward the door, bolting it and turning slowly to face her. She had started taking her coat off, undoing the clasps slowly while she watched him walk toward her. She turned to the closet in the small hallway and reached for a hanger to put away her coat and was startled when he grabbed her wrist.

“Nefarious, remember?” He tore the coat from her hold and tossed it across the room, following it quickly with his own.

She became more arch in the face of his aggression, taunting him with her haughty disinterest. “Really Dr. Hayek, I have no idea what you’re talking about…” Her words trailed off as she slowly undid the tiny pearl buttons of her blouse.

His mouth went dry watching her long elegant fingers methodically unbuttoning, then separating the front placket of her yellow silk top. She reached for his tie, loosening the knot and focusing on her fingers as she worked the silk. He stared at the golden strands of hair that had come out of her professional chignon at the base of her neck.

“Oh, Claire…” He reached up to touch the tender skin just below her ear and marveled at how she sighed and warmed to his touch.

She kept her eyes on his tie until she’d finished getting it undone, then proceeded to undo each button on his dress shirt while he caressed her nape and the turn of her shoulder, her jaw. “I think I love everything about you. It’s almost debilitating,” she said. Her eyes closed, and she leaned in to kiss his exposed chest. “I love this part of you…” She kissed him again on his stomach. “And here…”

He snapped out of his reverie, hauled her up into his arms, and carried her the short distance to the bedroom. She burrowed into his neck, kissing him along his jaw, then nibbling at his ear. “And here…and here…” she whispered, continuing to enumerate the tender kisses.

He laid her down on the bed and slipped off her blouse as he did. She was wearing a pale yellow lace bra he’d bought her a few weeks ago. “How does someone working in the coal mines afford such expensive lingerie?”

She squirmed on the bed, watching him remove his shirt and unbuckle his belt. “My lover buys them for me.”

He smiled at her, with a devilish gleam in his eye. “He sounds generous.”

She shimmied out of her skirt and tights and lay there in nothing but the bra and matching lacy boy shorts. “He is. Incredibly generous.”

By then, Ben was naked and stalking up the length of her body, until they were face to face and he had her lovingly trapped beneath him. “Is he generous in bed?” he whispered.

She swiveled her hips against his. “Very…very…generous…” She kissed him between each word. “But sometimes he talks too much.”

Ben growled and plundered her mouth with a forceful kiss. She battled his tongue with hers and arched her body up into his.

“You’re going to pay for that…” he whispered when he pulled away to catch his breath.

Claire was already slipping into that dreamy place Ben always took her, somewhere between profound need and the blissful knowledge it was about to be met.

“Oh, really? Promises, promises.” She loved when he was rough with her body. The way she responded so eagerly to his more forceful lovemaking had been a surprise to them both.

Initially, he’d taken a little convincing. They’d had their first real fight when she accused him of being too careful with her, of that being one more example of him putting her up on some unrealistic pedestal instead of just loving her full stop.

“I’ll be right back,” he said, then continued in a deep, commanding voice. “Take everything off the bed except the fitted sheet,” he ordered as he stalked out of the room, stark naked and glorious.

She smiled as she leapt from the mattress and began tossing all the pillows and bedding onto the floor. Moving quickly, she was slightly winded when he walked back into the room a few minutes later. He stopped by the door and stared at her. She was holding a king-size pillow in her arms, and the white mattress was an empty canvas between them. He was holding his tie in one hand and her red scarf in the other.

“We’re going to need to improvise.” His smile was deadly and Claire nearly shrieked in delight, but it came out as part-moan, part-cry.

Once Ben had overcome his hesitance, they both thrilled to the extremes of their passion, agreeing that it was the final expiation of everything that had held Claire in purgatory for most of her life: the delicacy, the perfection, the caution. When he tied her to the bed or took her from behind or grabbed her hair in a greedy tug, Claire felt a sense of elation and freedom she never could have imagined.

“Drop the pillow.”

It fell from her arms before he finished saying the words.

He narrowed his eyes, contemplating her. The flush of pleasure spread across her chest and up her neck as he stood there watching her, rubbing the silk tie absentmindedly between his fingers. Her gaze dropped to the movement of that hand, and her pulse raced.

“Ben…” she said, turning his name into a plea.

“Eyes up here,” he snapped.

She took her time, appreciating the power of his erection, the turn of his hip, the hard ridges of his stomach, the dark hair on his chest, the straining muscles in his neck, then looked up at his gorgeous green eyes, dark and menacing, clouded with desire.

“Feeling leisurely, are you?” he asked.

She nodded and smiled.

“Very well. I’ll be taking my time then.”

Her stomach flipped with joy and anticipation and a heavy pressure settled low in her belly.

“Sit at the end of the bed.”

She did as he said, knees together, hands folded primly in her lap.

“Spread ’em.”

She huffed out a sigh of delight and slowly spread her knees a few inches apart.

He shook his head and furrowed his brow in mock disappointment. “All the way.”

She looked at the ceiling and spread her thighs until the outsides of her calves were pressed back into the mattress. The move caused a wonderful hint of straining muscles to shoot up the inside of her legs.

“Eyes.”

Her head came back down so she was facing him.
Damn him
. He was touching himself. He’d dropped the red scarf and put the tie loosely around his neck. Taking his time, all right. He was stroking his length as if he had all the time in the world. Claire could feel the evidence of her own desire saturating the confining yellow lace between her legs. She reached to touch herself—

“Don’t even think about it.”

She should have known he’d want to torture her. Beautiful torture. She moaned as she continued to watch his hand. He was leaning against the wall by the door staring at her, his right hand firm and sure around his cock. Long, powerful strokes, over and over. Her breasts felt like they no longer fit into her bra. Her underwear was a wet mess.

She tried to tilt her hips to see if she could sneak a little contact with the lacy fabric against her throbbing center.

“Nice try.” He pulled at his balls and took a deep, thoughtful breath. “If you’re having trouble sitting still…”

She moaned again as he removed the tie from his neck and walked slowly toward her.

“Ben…”

“Yes, darling…” He was on his knees in front of her, his face scant inches from her needy core.

She kept her lips pulled between her teeth while he knotted one end of the tie around her ankle and attached the other end to the leg of the bed.

“One down…” he said, looking up at her and leaning in close to inhale her, but never touching her.

“You are a devil,” she cried.

He looked up at her with a grin that proved her right. “If I am, it’s because you made me one.”

She reached for his face, and he let her touch him, briefly, then he set her hand back on the mattress.

“No hands.”

“I hate you so much right now.”

He laughed and stood up. “Your body tells a different story, sweetheart.”

He retrieved the red scarf and attached her other ankle in the same way.

“Very resourceful,” Claire complimented.

“Eagle Scout, that’s me.”

She stared down at him, desperate to touch him, but bunching her hands into tight fists instead.

“Feeling a little antsy, are you?” He trailed a single finger up her calf, and she moaned at the contact. By depriving her, even for a few minutes, that single touch sent a fire deep into her.

Her eyes slid shut.

“It’s a shame about your underwear.” He leaned in and kissed her through the lace and her hips pitched involuntarily off the bed.

“Oh god,” she cried through clenched teeth. She could feel the vibration of his rumbling laughter as he kissed and sucked and nipped at the fabric covering her swollen center. “Ben! Please!”

“Patience, Claire.”

She felt so raw and exposed, nothing to grab, nothing to bury her face into. Her breasts were heavy and desperate for the weight of him.

He licked the inside of her thigh, then rubbed his rough cheek against the spot. “What to do? What to do?” He kept rubbing against her like that while he weighed his options. His warm exhalations were a maddening reminder of what she was not getting.

“Me,” she whispered.

He smiled and looked up at her. “What’s that?”

“You asked what to do, and I answered. Me. Do me.”

He burst out laughing. “Claire. You have no idea what it does to me to hear your aristocratic voice wrap around the phrase
do me
.”

She smiled. “Please.”

He didn’t say another word as he tore off the yellow lace and pressed his hands with near-painful firmness on her upper thighs, effectively pinning her to the bed. The first slow lick sent wild shocks through her and forced a scream from her throat. Within seconds, she was quivering and shaking on the edge of release.

He stopped and looked up at her and shook his head once, the silent command reminding her that she was to hold off as long as she could.

She took a deep breath, and he started again. The long, slow strokes of his tongue followed by that delicious thing he did with his lips, then more tongue and a bit of teeth. The teeth were going to be her downfall.

“Ben!” she cried out. “I can’t!”

“You can,” he finally whispered. “Go.” Releasing her at last, he sucked so hard, she exploded into a million pieces, her hands flying to grip his skull, holding hard and fierce, as wave after wave crashed over and through her and her screams of joy pierced the air around them.

They stayed in bed all day Saturday, ordering room service, watching movies, rolling around, touching, laughing. Most of the time, Ben kept a hand resting on Claire’s lower belly, talking to the baby like he or she was in there with an old fashioned telephone pressed to its little baby ear.

“It’s like the size of an apple seed. You know that, right?” Claire pointed out as she sipped a milkshake in bed on Saturday afternoon.

“Apple seeds need love too.” He leaned down and kissed the gentle slope of her stomach. She reached her fingers through his short dark hair. He’d had it cut recently, and she loved the combination of bristle-soft silk against the hard turn of his head beneath. He moaned into her touch and turned his head to look at her. “Do you want to find out if it’s a girl or a boy?” He rested his cheek on her thigh and then began toying with the hair between her legs with one hand.

“What are you doing?” she asked slowly.

“Nothing,” he said with wide-eyed innocence.

She adored him like this, utterly languid, touching her almost thoughtlessly. Slurping noisily on the last drops of chocolate milkshake, she kept looking into his eyes. She set the glass on the bedside table and turned on her side and patted the pillow. “Come up here.”

“Okay!” he answered enthusiastically, as if she’d just suggested a round-the-world cruise, leaving in five minutes.

She laughed and pulled him in for a kiss, tracing her fingers slowly along his neck and his hairline as her lips molded to his. They paused, facing each other on the same pillow, their limbs entwined. “We can find out if you want.” She gave a small shrug. “I’m just going to be happy no matter what. I already am.” She laughed out the last few words.