Stranger in my Arms (10 page)

Movement behind her caught her attention. She smiled when Merrick leaned over to press a kiss on the nape of her neck. He'd elected to wear a charcoal-gray suit in a tropical linen fabric with a pale gray finely woven shirt with a banded collar.

“You look and smell wonderful.” She wore a perfume with sensual musk and woodsy notes.

Her smile widened.
“Gracias, mi querido.”

He straightened, unable to believe Alex could improve on perfection. Her short hairstyle and youthful-looking face made him feel as if he were robbing the cradle, when there was only a six-year difference in their ages.

She rose gracefully from the stool and reached for his hand. “I'm ready.”

His gaze lingered on her smoky lids and lush mouth with the glistening lip color. There was a mysterious gleam in her eyes that made him want to strip her naked and take her back to bed. But he knew that wasn't possible because attendance at her professor's house was mandatory.

Merrick thought that after making love to her once he'd be able to rid himself of strong physical urges that came when he least expected. However, having her within arm's reach hadn't permitted him to exorcise the licentious images of what he wanted to do with Alexandra Cole.

What had shocked Merrick was that her libido matched his, and he wanted to demonstrate other positions and techniques, but decided to wait for another time; perhaps when he returned to Mexico she would feel more comfortable with other than traditional lovemaking.

Holding her hand, he led her out of the bathroom. She gathered her purse and a silk shawl in a pale shade that matched her silk-covered sling backs. They took the curving staircase instead of the elevator to the opulent lobby, not seeing the surreptitious glances directed at them.

The taxi Merrick had requested had arrived. He helped Alex into the vehicle, then ducked his head and sat beside her. He gave the driver the address before he settled back to enjoy the ride to Coyoacán and the delicate body beside him.

 

Hernando Rivera's home was in an area with a number of museums and art galleries and was within walking distance of the homes of several noted deceased inhabitants: Frida Kahlo, Diego Rivera and Russian revolutionary Leon Trotsky.

Alex walked into a brightly-lit courtyard while Merrick lingered behind to pay their driver. Long tables groaned with food and a portable bar was doing a brisk business, as evidenced by the number of people milling around holding glasses of tequila cocktails. Mariachi music blaring from hidden speakers added to the festive mood.

Moira came over to greet her. A black tank dress in a Lycra fabric hugged her lithe figure like a second skin while a pair of four-inch strappy sandals put her at the six-foot mark. Her pale hair was piled atop her head in tousled, sensual disarray.

“Where's your gorgeous friend?” she whispered.

Alex couldn't stop the wave of heat stealing across her face. “He'll be here.”

Moira took a deep swallow of her drink. “Now he's someone I could get my freak on with.” She'd had one too many margaritas to see Alex's scowl. “But I know he's off-limits, because I'd never make a play for a friend's man.”

Forcing a smile that she definitely did not feel, Alex said, “That's good to know.”

“Señorita Morris, I'm honored you've graced me with your presence.”

Alex turned to find her host grinning at her. He'd forgone his conservative black suits for a white poet's shirt with matching linen slacks and tan sandals. She didn't know why, but he reminded her of cartoons in which the cat had swallowed a bird. “But, Professor Rivera, wasn't it you that said attendance is mandatory?”

He waved a hand, his dark gaze moving slowly from her face to her bare brown legs and her feet in the light-colored heels, then back again to her feathery hairstyle. “I always tell my students that, but there is no way I can enforce that rule. Field visits yes, my home no. Please come into the house to see the exhibit before you get something to eat and drink.”

“Thank you, but I'd like to wait for my guest.”

His black eyebrows lifted, reminding her of hash marks of birds in flight. “You came with someone?”

Alex wanted to laugh when she saw his stunned expression. “Yes, I did.” The confirmation had barely left her lips when she detected the scent of Merrick's cologne. Turning, she smiled at him and extended her hand. “Darling, I'd like for you to meet Professor Rivera, who teaches design and art of ancient cultures. Professor Rivera, Merrick Grayslake. Merrick, Professor Hernando Rivera.” The two men exchanged polite greetings and handshakes.

Hernando, having recovered from seeing Alexandra Morris in a dress that revealed more flesh than he'd ever seen on her, shifted his gaze to the tall man with her. “Grayslake,” he said softly. “Are you Yaqui?”

A muscle jumped in Merrick's jaw. “I wouldn't know.”

“You speak Mexican Spanish and your features are a blend of African, Yaqui and European. I suggest you explore your roots. I'm sure you didn't come to engage in an anthropological discussion. Come see the exhibit, then eat and drink.”

Alex felt the muscles in Merrick's arm bunch up under his jacket's sleeve. If her teacher had been able to identify Merrick's racial designation from looking at him, then there was no doubt he'd spoken the truth.

To say the professor was a brilliant art expert and anthropologist was an understatement. The first day of class he had everyone stand up and introduce themselves, and within minutes he'd identified their Spanish dialect. Alex had held her breath when he announced that based on her speech patterns and physical looks she was of African and Cuban ancestry. He'd astounded her with his accuracy, and in the following weeks Professor Rivera used his vast knowledge to subjugate
and
intimidate any student who attempted to challenge him.

Those who came to class unprepared were forced to undergo a tongue-lashing that usually went on for at least ten minutes before they were asked to leave and not return until they'd completed the assignment. The trustees of the
universidad
permitted Professor Hernando Rivera to conduct his classes like a despot because museums and art institutes the world over were vying for his attention.

They were shown into a room in Hernando's house that doubled as an art gallery. Alex couldn't believe the artifacts on display targeted for donations to local museums. There were fragile wooden, leather and clay masks from Puebla, Guerrero and Michoacan, a funerary mask from Teotihuacán and exquisite silver pieces from Oaxaca. The piece that captivated her was a Zapotec jade bat-god pendant. She thanked Hernando for permitting her to see the priceless artifacts, then returned to the courtyard with Merrick.

Smiling up at him, she noted his solemn expression. “It's over, darling.”

He lifted his eyebrows as he met her amused gaze. “It really wasn't that bad. I believe hanging out with you has given me a healthy respect for art.”

“Does this mean you're going with me to the museum tomorrow?”

“No, it doesn't. We have one more day together, and I don't intend to spend it in a museum.”

She gave him a sidelong glance. “What have you planned?”

A knowing smile softened his firm mouth. “We're going to spend the day in bed.”

Alex squeezed his hand. “You keep it up and I won't be able to walk.”

Leaning down, he pressed his mouth to her ear. “I said nothing about making love, but if that's what you want I'm willing to accommodate you, because for some reason I can't get enough of you.”

“Glotón.”

“No lie,” he drawled, grinning. “Now let's get something to eat and drink so that we can appear socially acceptable, then blow this joint.”

Vertical lines appeared between her eyes. “I'm not ready to go back to the hotel.”

Merrick gave her a long, penetrating look. “Where do you want to go?”

“The others are going to a club near the Zona Rosa. If you don't want to go, then I'll meet you back at the hotel.”

“If you think I'm going to let you out of my sight looking like you do, then you're crazier than I am.”

She glanced down at her dress. “What's wrong with the way I look?”

Pulling her closer, he dropped a kiss on her fragrant hair. “There's nothing wrong, baby. You look delicious.”

She gave him her trademark dimpled smile.
“Gracias, mi amor.”

Merrick returned her smile.
“De nada, mi querida.”

M
errick sat in the corner of a noisy, crowded club with flashing colored lights watching Alex dance. He'd begun drinking beer, but after the second bottle he switched to water. At first he'd found the pumping baseline beats infectious, but after three hours of nonstop music and the differing scents of cologne and perfume on sweaty bodies he was ready to find the nearest exit.

Resting an elbow on the small table, he cradled his chin on his fist. He hadn't flown to Mexico to see Alex and then share her with people she saw every day. But seeing her laughing and dancing tempered his selfishness because it was he, not some other man, who would share her passion.

Merrick had tried and failed to analyze what it was about Michael Kirkland's cousin that affected him wherein he was now willing to forsake his reclusive lifestyle to consider returning to the CIA as a bureaucrat. Instead of being briefed for covert missions he would become a trainer as an intelligence research training specialist. He'd had experience when he facilitated advanced training courses at Quantico for DEA agents. Yes, he would go back as an intelligence training specialist, secure his relationship with Alex and retire.

The driving rhythms slowed to a seductive ballad and Merrick stood up when he spied Alex coming in his direction. Reaching for her purse and shawl, he took several steps and curved an arm around her waist.

Her dewy face shimmered like brown velvet under the psychedelic lights. “Dance with me, Merrick.”

He shook his head. “Not now,
querida.
We'll dance together at the hotel.”

Her brow furrowed. “What's the matter?”

Pulling her closer, he shouldered his way through the throng on the dance floor. “The matter is I was ready to leave two hours ago.”

“Why didn't you say something?”

“I didn't want to stop you from enjoying yourself, Ali.”

“I enjoy myself even when I'm not dancing.”

“What's going to happen once you start your career?”

“That shouldn't change anything. I'm not going to be working 24/7. Speaking of careers, I went online last week and applied for a position with the National Trust for Historic Preservation's northeast region. And if I'm hired, I'll be responsible for historic districts in New York, New Jersey, Vermont, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Connecticut, Delaware, Massachusetts and Maine.”

Merrick noticed she hadn't mentioned any state south of Delaware. “Do you plan to relocate?”

“No. I like living in the D.C. area, and I love my condo. There may be a problem when I have to do the fieldwork.”

“What, Ali?”

“There's a family mandate that I'm not permitted to take a commercial aircraft.” She told him about how her uncle Martin's daughter had become a kidnapping victim forty years before, and since that time anyone who claimed Cole blood or married into the family was prohibited from flying on commercial carriers.

Merrick wanted to tell Alex that making arrangements to travel up and down the eastern seaboard was the least of her worries. Hadn't she realized she was a wealthy woman, and what would've become prohibitive for the normal working-class person was readily available to her?

“If you're hired, then how are you going to travel?”

“If I'm not able to secure a seat on the ColeDiz G4, then it will have to be a private jet. The money I spent on hiring private jets I could donate to my favorite charity.”

They stepped out of the air-cooled club and into the unusually warm winter Mexico City heat that lingered even after the sun had set behind the mountains. All of the upscale shops were air-conditioned, but once anyone stepped outdoors onto the overpopulated streets with the smog and thermal inversion, many found breathing normally difficult.

Merrick startled Alex when he whistled sharply through his teeth for a taxi. A late-model colorful car skidded to the curb. The driver stepped out, rounded his vehicle and opened the door with the arrogant aplomb of any major city taxi driver. She got in, followed by Merrick. The driver closed the door and then took his seat behind the wheel.

“Ca dónde la, el señor?”

“The Four Seasons Hotel en el Paseo de la Reforma 500.”

The driver took off in a burst of speed as Merrick settled against the leather seat, his arm going around Alex's shoulders. Minutes into the ride, she rested her head on his chest. Twenty-four hours. That was all they had left before he flew back to the States.

 

Alex shifted into a more comfortable position between Merrick's legs as an unconscious moan slipped past her lips; the cramping in her lower belly and a dull ache in her lower back were indicators that she would see her period in the next day or two.

“What's the matter, baby?” Merrick asked, his moist breath sweeping over her ear.

She moaned again. “Premenstrual cramps.”

Merrick gently lifted the damp strands clinging to her scalp. They'd returned to the hotel and instead of Alex taking a bath and him a shower, she'd invited him to share the oversize tub.

“Is this the time of the month when you turn into a witch?”

Peering at him over her shoulder, Alex wrinkled her nose.

“Don't tell me you've got sexist jokes.”

Merrick's expression was one of unadulterated innocence. “No.”

“Have you had a lot of experience with women who become viragos when they're PMSing?”

“Even if I have I'm not going to tell you.”

Alex shifted until she straddled Merrick, the pulsing jets from the Jacuzzi adding to her buoyancy. Leaning forward, she pressed her breasts to his hair-matted chest. “Why won't you tell me?”

He stared at her under lowered lids. “I don't kiss and tell, Ali. The women in my past are just that—the past.” He kissed the end of her nose. “That is a topic I will not discuss.”

Alex affected a pout. “I told you about the men from my past.”

“You told me not because I asked but because you wanted to. You know who and what you are, and because of that you're open and spontaneous, while I've lived my life speculating whether I'm African or Native American, and wondering if I father children whether they'll inherit a gene abnormality from an ancestor.”

“What do you say you are?”

A wry smile touched his mouth. “I say African-American because unconsciously that's what I feel. And if my biological father is European or Native American, then I assume he'd slept with a black woman. Or it could be vice versa. You have a large family connected by blood and marriage, and because I don't know my parents I'll never know if I have a brother or sister, nieces or nephews.”

Burying her face between his neck and shoulder, Alex closed her eyes. She felt the strong, steady pumping of his heart against her breasts. “Have you thought of trying to find your birth mother? There are Web sites and agencies set up to reconnect children with their birth parents. It shouldn't be too difficult for you because you know your mother's name.”

“I did check a database for Virginia Gray or Grayslake and came up with more than nine thousand nationwide.”

Alex opened her eyes and pulled back, meeting his intense stare. “Did you contact any of them?”

He nodded. “After the first thirty I decided to let it go. Each time I got a
‘No, I'm not your mother'
I found myself overwhelmed with feelings of abandonment. It'd begun to affect my job performance, so I decided to let it go. Uncovering who my mother is or was is no longer a priority.”

Looping her arms under Merrick's shoulders, Alex brushed a kiss over his mouth, feeling his pain as surely as if it was her own. It didn't matter who he was because he was the man with whom she'd fallen in love; he was the man she would love forever.

“I love you.”

Merrick went completely still, certain Alex could feel the blood rushing through his veins. He was hot, then cold, confused, then clear-headed as her confession filled him with a sense of power, a strength that vanquished the lingering pain of abandonment that had become an emotional impediment to marriage and fatherhood.

“Let's get out of this tub,” he said, recovering quickly.

Merrick anchored a hand along the shelf of the tub and came to his feet, bringing Alex up with him. He stepped out and reached for a bath sheet on a nearby table. Wrapping the velour fabric around her body, he lifted her gently from the bathtub and carried her into the bedroom, placing her on the bed.

None of his movements were rushed as he blotted the moisture from her satiny body, lingering over the curve of her breasts and hips. It no longer mattered that he would leave Mexico and Alex in a little more than twenty-four hours, because he had the rest of his life to share whatever he had and whatever he'd become with her.

Time seemed to slow down for Alex as she languished in the gentleness of her lover's touch. He dried the front of her body, turned her over and then repeated the action.

Then, without warning, his mouth replaced the towel, tracing a sensual path down the length of her spine, lingering at the indentation separating the globes of flesh defining her buttocks.

Heat, chills and undulating waves of ecstasy swept over her as she tried, and failed, to keep the moans from escaping her parted lips. His hands searched areas known only to her, his mouth exploring, and tantalizing, searching, savoring every hollow, dip and curve of her from head to toe.

Merrick couldn't get enough of Alex. His hands and mouth mapped every inch of flesh he could see and reach. Her smell, her essence, lingered in his nostrils and on his tongue. His passions rose quickly, and he released her, pausing to slip on a condom. It was as if time had stood still until he looped an arm around her waist; she knelt with her back to him as he pressed his groin to her buttocks. In one, sure motion, he eased his erection into her, both gasping from the unexpected joining of flesh against flesh, man against woman.

Merrick cupped her breasts, alternating squeezing with rubbing his thumbs over the pebble hardness of her distended nipples. The kneeling position allowed him deeper penetration, maximum pleasure. The sensual beauty of her naked limbs, her feminine fragrance mingling with the rising scent of their lovemaking threatened to take him over the edge where it would be over much too soon.

Withdrawing, he reversed their positions. Merrick lay on his back, arms anchored over his head, as Alex straddled him. He knew he would never get used to her sensual expression in the throes of lovemaking: flushed skin, dilated pupils, parted lips, flaring nostrils and heaving breasts. And her bubbly spontaneity out of bed became an uninhibited smoldering passion that stripped him raw wherein he was unable to hold anything back. Alexandra Cole claimed what he'd been unable to give anyone—all of himself.

Alex's gold-brown gaze met silver-gray. Her gaze inched down to the firm muscles under the brown arms in the diffused lamplight. Tufts of straight reddish hair grew out from his armpits, a lighter shade than the crisp, curling strands covering his chest that tapered down to a narrow line that spread out in an inverted triangle to coarser, tighter curls at his loins. Everything about her lover was a visual banquet. Merrick's deep drawling voice, powerful masculine presence and compelling, magnetic eyes held her captive in an abyss of loving and longing she never wanted to end.

Anchoring her palms on his shoulders, her gaze meeting and fusing with his, she lowered her body over his rigid flesh, making them one with each other. Simultaneous audible moans of satisfaction matched the rush of moisture bathing the pulsing area between her thighs.

The world as Alex knew it ceased to exist. All that mattered was the man offering her the most exquisite passion she'd ever known. What had begun as friendship was now a full-blown love affair, and she realized what she'd felt and shared with her art professor had not even come close to what she felt with Merrick. The pulsing grew stronger, becoming contractions that gripped his hardness before releasing it, then began again.

Heat rippled under Merrick's skin, became hotter, more intense each time he thrust upward. They had ceased to exist as individuals, separate entities. He was so attuned to the woman rising and falling over his throbbing erection that he felt the spasms that seized her, followed by a primordial scream that made hair stand up on the nape of his neck. Before the next spasm and Alex's next outburst of ecstasy, he had her on her back, feet anchored on his shoulders. He didn't want the pleasure to end—not yet. He wanted it to go on—forever, if possible. But it was not possible when he lowered his head, closed his eyes and enjoyed the most extreme physical gratification he'd ever experienced.

When it was all over he lowered her feet, then collapsed heavily on her smaller frame, waiting for his heart rate to return to a normal rhythm.

He loved her. He loved her more than anyone or anything.

Alex struggled to catch her breath as the pressure from Merrick's greater weight prevented her from moving. “What are you doing to me?” she whispered.