Invitation to Seduction: Open Invitation, Book 1 (13 page)

Just as she’d thought. Maybe he was looking for a younger woman. She wouldn’t be
young
for much longer. She couldn’t bear another man turning from her. She’d rather lose him now. “I know you think that we’ve revealed so much in our emails. And we have. But people can...edit what they say. They edit their feelings so that you won’t have a bad opinion of them.”

He turned his head, viewing her through only one eye. “Is that what you did? Edit yourself right out of every email you sent me? Did you edit yourself when you held me in your arms and told me you loved me?”

Her heart rose to her throat. “I wanted the fantasy.”

He turned back to the window and whatever was so fascinating out there. “So you lied.”

“No. It’s what I felt at that moment.” She believed he’d felt it, too. Still, she was old enough to know lust and love were two different things. No matter what he thought he felt.

“You think my saying that I love you was just some orgasmic release?”

Yes. If she said that, though, he’d only deny it. He’d even believe it was true love.

“I’m not your husband,” he said, facing her, forcing her to see the stark pain in his eyes and riding the planes of his face.

“I know that.”

His eyes were dark, intense, unfathomable. “Do you even know what I mean?”

“No,” she admitted.

“I’m not going to lose my desire for you. I’m not going to stop loving you. I’m not going to get tired of you.”

“Stephen—”

He cut her off. “Not after a year. Not after fifty years. Not even the day I die.”

She drew in a breath, drawing his words deep inside her. They were the words of her fantasies. She wanted them to be true so badly she felt tears rise once more.

“Have you ever been married, Stephen?”

“No. That doesn’t change how I feel about you.”

“Everything dies, Stephen. Desire and passion can’t live forever. Feelings change as you change, as you grow older. I’ve been married fifteen years, Stephen, and I—”

“Stop saying my fucking name like that.” After the outburst, he faced the window, his jaw clenching.

“I’m trying to get you to see.”

“You’re the one who doesn’t see. For
some
people, desire dies. But not for everyone.” He shoved his hands in his pockets. “Leave him. Be with me. I’ll show you it’s true.”

What if it wasn’t? What if five years from now he was the one turning the volume up on the TV? She couldn’t stand that. If she’d thought she was dying now, that would kill her. At least now, she didn’t have a dream to watch die. She had security and...she closed her eyes. She had something she’d been living with a long time. She’d proven that, as much as it hurt, she
could
live without a man’s passion.

Stephen was the unknown. He offered, but he couldn’t guarantee.

“I can’t,” she whispered.

He laughed, a harsh sound, rolled his head on his neck, then straightened and looked at her. “So you’re going to drive off to The Sex Club when you need to get laid. Or better yet, fuck yourself all alone in your bed while you fantasize.”

Her nose tingled, her eyes pricked, and she bit her lip to stop the trembling.

He was at her side in the time it took to blink away the tears, but he didn’t touch her. “I’m sorry. That was shitty. You don’t deserve that.”

“I’m not going back there. It was a mistake to go in the first place.”

He touched her then, a finger trailing down her arm until he grasped her hand in his. “It wasn’t a mistake.”

She couldn’t look away as he raised their clasped hands to his lips.

“Why did you call me Stephen?” His words were nothing more than a breath.

She swallowed and closed her eyes so that she couldn’t see the need straining his face. “I don’t know.”

He tugged on her fingers. “You do know. Tell me.”

“I wanted a fantasy.” She opened her eyes. “And you happened to be it for the moment.”

“You’re lying.”

“I was just needy because it had been so long since someone touched me.” It wasn’t admitting anything she hadn’t already admitted to him at the club.

“It was because you felt something even through all our emails. Just the way I felt something.” He stepped closer, his body flush with hers, the tips of her breasts to his chest. “Long before you ever saw me, you knew me. And I knew you.”

“No. It was make-believe.” But her heart was racing.

His fingers tunneled beneath her hair and curled around her nape. “It was real.” He kissed every tear track along her cheeks. She couldn’t breathe. Her hands fisted in his shirt, holding herself upright. Then he took her lips, and she opened. She couldn’t help herself. She wanted, God, how she wanted.

“You touched yourself,” he whispered against her mouth, “and you wanted it to be me. No one else. You called me Stephen at the club because I was the one you needed.”

“No.”

“Yes.” He took possession of her mouth once more, before she could utter another denial. “You still need me,” he murmured. “And I need you.”

He branded her with his lips. He tasted of mint and spice and man, and yes, he was everything she wanted.

He backed her up to the wall. “Say it,” he whispered. “Say you need
me
.”

Then he was all over her, demanding capitulation with his kiss, devouring her, sucking away her will. A hand on her breast, possessing her nipple, sending lightning strikes deep inside. His cock hard against her, pushing her thighs apart, finding that special, soft, needy spot and rubbing it to an ache. Then he held her chin in his hand and forced her to look at him.

“Make love with me.”

She wanted it more than anything, yet it was so damn wrong for her. She had a husband. She couldn’t be with Stephen. She shoved at him. “No. I can’t do this.”

He stood before her, his breath harsh, his eyes dark, compelling, and she knew if she let him, he’d carry her away. And she wouldn’t know up from down or right from wrong. This couldn’t go on between them. She’d been able to fool herself into accepting what she’d been doing when it was at The Sex Club, but this was something else entirely.

She made a move for the door, almost making it before he grabbed her arm. This time he crowded her face first up against the wall, pressed his body to her backside, and pulled up one side of her skirt until he caressed her hip.

His breath heated her nape, his cool aftershave and hot male scent swirling around her. “No one else will ever touch you the way I can.”

He forced a hand between her body and the wall and stroked her to total wetness. His fingers slipped beneath the elastic edge of her panties, then he plunged deep into her, the heel of his hand massaging her clitoris. His touch drove her to the edge, his words wrapped around her heart. He sucked on her neck and raised her skirt to her waist, then a moment later, after the rasp of his zipper, she felt the warm, hard slide of his cock against her backside.

“It’s just sex,” she whispered, as if the words would keep her safe.

He tore off her panties, the flimsy material giving way easily, then hitched her back into him, his knees spreading her legs. “It’s more than sex, godammit. It’s us. Together.” He bunched her hair in his fist and pulled her head back. “I’m like a drug in your veins. I make you crazy. You’ll never get enough of me.”

He ripped her blouse open, the buttons flying, then wrenched her bra up over her breasts until she spilled into his hands. “You can keep your back to me while I make love to you, but you are going to face how much you need me.”

A moan rose up from up her throat, and God yes, she did need him.

His fingers and his cock caressed her. “Say no,” he whispered. “All you have to do is tell me to stop, and I will.”

She had a chance to put an end to it. To stop herself. But she couldn’t seem to force that one word
no
past her lips.

“You can’t say it. I know you can’t. You don’t even want to.” He rocked against her, caressing her rear cleft with his cock and her clitoris with his work-roughened fingertips. “I want you without a condom. With nothing between us.”

The moment she left the house, she’d regret letting this happen. But he was right. He was her drug, and she wouldn’t stop him now. She braced against the wall, pushed back and rotated her hips against him, begging without words.

He buried his face in the hair at her nape, parted her for his entry, and bent his knees. She cried out with the first thrust. Hot, hard flesh, like silk, individual ridges and textures caressing her, stretching her. One hand on her hip, his arm wrapped below her breasts, he carried her along with his need, heat, friction, on her skin wherever he touched her, deep inside where he claimed her. He wasn’t gentle, he was consuming, his body pounding, his cock reaching straight up to her heart. She braced herself against the wall and met each stroke.

Colors kaleidoscoped across her eyelids. She harbored every sensation, the roughness of his chin against her neck, the sweet smell of his skin, the musky scent of his sex, and the throb of his cock inside her. He dropped his hand to her clitoris, swirled her own moisture over the hard nub, and she was lost.

Her body spasmed around him, heat rose, shimmered like hot sun on concrete, then slammed down to their joining, and she screamed. When the hot flood of his semen filled her, she came again.

It was riotous, explosive, elemental. But she’d been right, the moment her head cleared, she hated her weakness for him.

* * * * *

He was wrapped around her, and her scent played havoc with his mind. Aftershocks twitched through his limbs, and his breath stirred harshly against her hair.

Then she slipped away, the loss of her body warmth chilling him straight through to his bones. Reaching for her mangled panties, she stared at the torn material, then crumpled it in her fist. And he knew he’d lost her.

“Don’t walk away from what we have, Debbie.” He zipped his jeans, buckled, watching her distance herself with every rustle of their separate pieces of clothing.

“I’m married.” She didn’t look at him but down at the missing buttons on her blouse. There were two left, just enough to hold it together.

“And I love you. Walk away from
him
.” The bastard had left her emotionally a long time ago. Stephen held his breath. His head pounded.

If she’d continued to stare at the carpet, fiddled with her blouse, or employed any other delaying tactic, he would have had a chance. Instead, she snared his gaze. “No.”

That was it. Flat. Final.

She crossed to where she’d flung her purse, its contents spilling, and shoved everything back inside.

“I think you’re afraid, and you’re using your marriage vows as an excuse not to fix what’s wrong with your life.”

“Don’t be cruel, Stephen.”

He felt cruel. He felt angry. He felt abandoned.

Before he could bring an apology he didn’t mean to his lips, she closed the distance between them and put her hand on his chest. “I don’t want to fight. All those times with you made me feel like a desirable woman. I’m grateful for that.”

He wanted to howl. She was fucking
grateful
? Rather than rail at her, he held her fingers to his heart. “It doesn’t have to end.”

“Yes, it does.”

Then she was gone. Only a wisp of her scent remained and the warm impression of her hand on his heart.

Holding her, he’d told her the truth. He needed her now. He would need her for the rest of his life.

And he would go on loving her until he died.

Chapter Eleven

In the three weeks since she’d seen Stephen, life had returned to normal. Minus her daily emails to him. Though she wasn’t sure what normal was anymore. That day in the house, she’d been so angry, so hurt, feeling violated in some weird way. Those emotions had died away. She was left now with the knowledge that he was a kind, caring, and passionate man.

He had changed her in some indefinable way. He’d been her weakness, yes, but he’d somehow given her a strength she hadn’t had before.

At work, she didn’t take the blame so easily. Instead of keeping her mouth shut in meetings, she gave her opinions, threw her ideas on the table. The more she expressed herself, the easier it got. Even her boss started coming to her to solicit her view on issues.

When she looked at her stained glass, she didn’t need to be told she’d done a good job. She could see the beauty in what she’d created. Though she couldn’t have explained that to a soul, she could feel adrenaline in her veins and a strange sort of giddiness. She no longer worked endlessly on a piece. She simply knew when it was done.

Stephen’s voice in her head said, “That’s perfect.”

Late at night, alone in the bedroom, wanting to touch herself but never quite being able to, the TV blared, and anger replaced the pain that had torn her apart for so many years. Why couldn’t her husband
try
? Why couldn’t he go to a doctor and ask for a little pill? That’s all she wanted. The effort.

Her husband had stolen even her ability to masturbate, even that minuscule relief.

Or had she lost that to Stephen, knowing that nothing could replace his touch, not even her own?

After the anger died, her thoughts remained on Stephen. How he made her feel that she was his total focus. Of all the things he’d done for her, all the ways he’d touched her. The one she kept playing over and over in her mind was the night he’d danced with her. Of course, she’d told him that in a weak moment, but he’d catered to her fantasy, given her what she needed. How many other things had she revealed without knowing it? With all those emails she’d written, then deleted, how much of her heart and soul had still slipped through anyway?

Maybe he did know her better than she’d ever thought.

And his next to last words to her still haunted. Was she really using her marriage vows as an excuse not to fix what was wrong with her life?

* * * * *

Stacy didn’t ask her about Stephen. Debbie didn’t tell her anything. Not until her third nail visit. Stephen had neither called nor emailed. But he’d given her several referrals. Each time she met with a client, she felt closer to him, as if he were some angel sitting on her shoulder. Her knight in shining armor. That sense made her feel strong enough to finally ask Stacy the questions that burned in her.