Just the Man She Needs (12 page)

He put her away from him, though with care. “Do you want me?”

“Yes,” she whispered.

“I don’t want you to regret it tomorrow, Felicia.”

“Will you regret it?” she asked him.

“Never!”

“Then neither will I.”

He’d never been nervous about making love with a woman, but he hadn’t ever loved one as he loved Felicia, and he wanted desperately to make her happy. “Where’s your bedroom?”

“Down the hall on the left.” He lifted her and, as he knew she would, she advised him that she could walk there.

“Not now, you won’t. You are in my care, and if you do as I ask, neither of us will ever forget this night. Do you trust me?”

She rested her head on his shoulder. “I trusted you even when I thought you were a professional escort. There’s something about you.”

He placed her on the bed and pulled off her shoes. Then he undressed her down to her bra and panties. Gazing down at her body, he whispered, “My God, you’re beautiful.” Within seconds, he stripped down to his shorts.

“Let me,” she said, rolled his shorts down to his knees, leaned forward and kissed him.

“Hold it, baby. I’ve been celibate since the day we met, and anything will tick me off.”

She lay back, raised her arms to him and sent frissons of heat racing through his body. He calmed himself and leaned over her, intent upon kissing every inch of her. He sucked her right nipple into his mouth, paying homage to his ally and, within minutes she began thrashing for relief. He twirled his tongue around the diamond in her belly button while his fingers tortured her breasts. She swung her hips up to him, but he ignored the offering. She was a feast, and he meant to dine on her.

Ashton didn’t know her well enough to expect that she’d go after what she wanted if she didn’t get it soon enough. As his tongue caressed her belly and the inside of her thigh, she had the feeling of a mountain climber reaching for the summit without a pickax to help her. “Aren’t you going to get into me?” she asked him. “I’m on fire for you.”

“I am. That’s just the way I want you, hot and eager.”

“Now,” she said, and reached for him.

“Not until I get what I want.”

He spread her legs, plunged his tongue into her and licked, nipped and sucked until she howled for relief. She’d never felt anything like it. He brought her to the edge time and again, but wouldn’t let her explode.

“Honey, please. I need to burst.”

He raised his head. “But is it good to you? Do you like it?”

“I love it, but you won’t let me…Oh, I think I’ll die if I don’t burst wide open.”

“You will. Tell me you love me.”

“I do. You know I do. Get into me. I want to feel you inside of me.”

“All right, sweetheart. I’ll give you what we both want.” He moved up her body. Slowly. Tantalizingly. “Look at me, love. This can’t happen to us but once.” He kissed her nose and nearly drowned her in the sweetness of his smile. “Take me.”

She held him in her hands. Hard, big and velvety-smooth, and raised her body to meet his thrust. Slowly he moved, but she couldn’t wait, so she forced his entry.

“Ow!”

He stopped. “Easy, sweetheart. Did I hurt you?”

“I don’t care. I’m just a little surprised. Please don’t stop.”

It wasn’t her first time, but he was a big man. She swung her body up to him, closed her eyes, pressed his buttocks and took him into her. He kissed the tears that flowed from her eyes.

“Is it all right? Have I hurt you? How do you feel?”

“Wonderful. I’m…I’m happy, Ashton. I’m so happy.”

“I’m happy, too,” he said, and she knew his kiss sealed a new beginning as he started to move within her. She could hardly bear the pleasure he gave her, the massaging of her live-wire nerve ends, the merciless pumping and squeezing of her vagina, enslaving her until she erupted around him.

“You’re mine. Do you hear me? You’re mine, Felicia,” he said as he spent himself and collapsed in her arms.

His lips adored her with soft kisses on her eyes, neck, cheeks, nose and chin. Then he suddenly gathered her up in his arms and hugged her. “You said you loved me. I know passion can overwhelm a person and cause you to say things that you regret. But we’re calm now. I love you. Did you mean it when you said you loved me?”

“I love you, Ashton. I don’t know what triggered it or when it happened.”

A half smile floated over his face and he pressed his lips together as if he were suspended between amusement and incredulity. “You got to me the minute I saw you. You don’t know how happy I was when you told me there was nothing else I could do for you that night. It may have seemed crass of me to ask you if you wanted anything else—considering what that implied in the circumstances—but I had to know what kind of woman you were.”

“That didn’t tell you much.”

“But what I learned was important. Where do we go from here? I want to see you on a regular basis. Is there another man in your life who matters?”

“Only my brother. Listen, Ashton, I’ve finished that story and tomorrow I’ll fax it to you, but I don’t promise to take your suggestions. We may have our first fight.”

He looked down at her and grinned. Did this man know how drop-dead gorgeous he was? “Whatever it is, we’ll work it out. You’re not slipping away from me.”

“But what if you don’t like what I wrote?”

He cradled her to his body. “You already know whether I’ll like it. If I don’t, I can’t promise to be sweet about it. I have a Republican acquaintance who’s been married to an active Democrat for about twenty years. If they can get along, so can you and I.”

Actually, she saw nothing in her report that would rile him, but the day might come when words under her byline infuriated him. She couldn’t resist testing the water. To his credit, she thought, he didn’t ask her about the content of her story while they were intimately locked together.

“I don’t want to leave you,” Ashton told Felicia. “I could stay right where I am indefinitely, but I didn’t tell Teddy that I wouldn’t be home tonight. Furthermore, I don’t know what kind of neighbors you have, and I don’t want to embarrass you. Perhaps we can spend a weekend together someplace. Would you like that?”

He had begun to understand that she didn’t varnish the truth in order to make it palatable, and she didn’t do that when she said, “I’d love to wake up in your arms, but before we plan a tryst, let’s see how we get along.”

He separated them and fell over on his back, but he held her hand. “All right. Now you’re the one who wants to go slow. Will you at least agree not to see other men?”

“I agree, but that means you don’t see other women.”

“I won’t. I’m not seeing anyone now other than you, and I haven’t since we met. I’m straight, Felicia. I don’t like games, and don’t have time for them. As far as I’m concerned, you and I are a couple. I’m your man, and you are my woman.” He turned on his side, facing her, and rubbed down the bridge of her nose with his right index finger. “I’ll trample any other bear that tries to dip into my honey.”

Her mouth became one large O, and her eyes got bigger. “You what?”

He leaned over, flicked his tongue over the seam of her lips and worked his way into her mouth where she welcomed him. “You heard me. I was only half joking.”

“I said I wouldn’t see other men, so don’t worry about the honey.”

It surprised him that she didn’t smile when she said it, and he realized that she took his comment seriously. “I’m known for a weird sense of humor, sweetheart. I surprise myself sometimes. Lord, I hate to leave you. It’s been years since I had such a feeling of contentment. But I have to go. Kiss me?”

With her arms around him, she pulled him onto her and took him into her body. He thought his insides would come out, and that his mind was deserting him, for she loved him wildly, wantonly and sweetly, however it suited her, loved him until skill and reason left him and instinct alone powered him. He gave her all that he could, and then she stripped him of his essence, and he cried out, “Love me. Love me,” and came apart in her arms.

Later, sitting in his car, too poleaxed to drive, he wondered why he’d bother to try slowing down the momentum of their relationship.
What a woman she was!
She had sheared him of his reserve and he’d bared his soul to her. Had he thought he could end it? He’d been so enamored of her that, like a teenager, he found ways to see her and to be with her surreptitiously, as if she weren’t intelligent enough to know that running into him three or four evenings a week at various affairs couldn’t be accidental.

He hadn’t meant to fall in love with her or with any other woman, and he didn’t know where he was headed with Felicia. He did know that he wasn’t calling the shots, a strange feeling for a man who, for years, had set the time and the program for practically everything that involved him. Yet, he was not upset; she said she loved him and, if he was impressed with anything about her, it was her honesty. He turned on the ignition, moved away from the curb and headed home. For the first time in years, he didn’t feel as if going home was his only choice.

Felicia pulled the sheet tight around her body, fell over on her belly and buried her face in the pillow. Who was this woman who went wild beneath Ashton Underwood, exploding in orgasm time and again, telling him what to do to her and how to do it? What in the name of kings came over her? She didn’t think she could face him again. She wrapped her arms around her middle and hugged herself.

“Thank God I never knew loving could be like that, because it would probably have gone to my head, and I’d be a street woman.” She rolled over on her back, giggling almost uncontrollably as she envisioned herself in that role, the sound of her laughter adding to her joy. She dragged herself out of bed, showered, slipped on a lavender-colored lace teddy and crawled back into bed. In a fit of loneliness, she rubbed her nose in the pillow on which his head had lain, kissed it and hugged it. The smell of their sex lingered, arousing her libido, and she got out of bed.

“He’s gone, so I can’t feast on him, but I ought to find a tuna sandwich in here,” she said, exasperated at herself as she headed for the kitchen. She ate half a sandwich, drank a glass of warm milk and went back to bed.

The next morning at work she faxed copies of her story on Dream to Ashton and Cade, and got to work on her column, the first completely political column she’d ever written. Fortunately the local Democrats and Republicans eased her problem with the brickbats they had started slinging at each other. By lunchtime, she had a first draft.

“Hello?” she said when her phone rang minutes before she would have left for lunch.

“This Ashton Underwood. May I please speak with Ms. Parker?”

“Hello, Ashton. This is Felicia. How are you?”

“Pretty good. I’ve always said you’re a fine writer, and I definitely like what you did with this. I think Cade was too caustic, but I know you didn’t misquote him because it sounds like him. Your history of Dream is accurate and appealing. If Cade hadn’t done his thing in your interview with him, I’d probably be dancing. This is a fine job.”

“Thanks. Did you speak with Cade about his quote?”

“For what? He meant it, which means he wrote it in stone. That’s the way he is. I hate the thought of Mrs. Smith learning about her husband’s infidelity at the same time that her friends read about it.”

“Is that your main concern?”

“Actually, it’s my only concern. She’ll be devastated.”

“Probably, but not because she doesn’t know it. Any woman would know if her husband had a mistress, especially one forty years her junior. I’m sorry about it, but my editor will get it as soon as I hear from Cade.”

Minutes after they said goodbye, she answered the phone and heard Cade’s voice. “Great job, Felicia. It’s perfect.”

“Cade, Ashton has some misgivings about your quote. He said it’s too caustic and that Mrs. Smith will be devastated.”

“That sounds just like my big brother. He’s a sweet boy, and I love him, but my quote stays.”

She thought she heard laughter in his voice. “Are you meddling with Ashton?”

“Ah, Felicia. Ashton’s a gentleman, and he insists on thinking and behaving as one. That can get in the way of real life.”

“Are you saying you aren’t a gentleman?”

“No, I’m not saying that, but if you’re in a nudist colony, for Pete’s sake, pull off your damned clothes. Get my drift?”

Laughter poured out of her. “I get it, all right. Something tells me you’re odd man out in your family.”

“Not quite, but I don’t dance to anybody’s tune but my own.”

“Really? Wait till you fall in love. I’ll mail you a copy of tomorrow’s paper.”

“That won’t be necessary. I subscribe to it. Thanks for everything. By the way, how
is
my brother?”

Fishing, was he? Well, she’d give him something to fry. She crossed her knee and leaned back in her chair, prepared to enjoy the effect of her sally. “When he left me last night, he was in a great mood.”

His whistle reached her through the wire. “Way to go. Be seeing you.”

Felicia gave the report to her secretary. “Take that to Ray, please.” If the report satisfied her editor, maybe she’d get a raise, but the least she expected was a chance to write more columns that had nothing to do with who was who, when and where. She’d begun to suffocate beneath the weight of bloated egos. She would have left the office early if she hadn’t been waiting for Ray’s views on her column. She wanted to write reports in which she took pride, stories that made a difference in the community if not in the country.