Sweets to the Sweet (11 page)

It was then Owen noticed that her hands were trembling. Another glance told him that her lower lip was trembling, too. And that behind the sizzle in her eyes lay a huge well of emotion she was trying very hard to hide from him.

Owen was perplexed, but he also relaxed.

Not so Laura. “Owen, we’re going to have a little talk,” she said firmly.

“It’s past time,” he agreed.

“We’re going to talk about kidnappers. And men who drug helpless women with chocolates. And men who take babies to candlelit dinners. And men who totally desert women, leaving them for two days on their own—”

“Laura, about the last two days—”

“Out.” With a severe expression, Laura motioned him into the other room. The towel still draped around his waist, Owen obediently trailed into the bedroom, taking one short detour to make sure the door was locked. She pointed to the bed. He sat.

At that point, Laura would have lost courage, if he hadn’t been sitting there with a love glow in his eyes. Instead, the longer he looked, the more momentum she gained. She moved closer, much closer. Close enough to breathe the scent of him, close enough to see his eyes turn pure dusky pewter in reaction to her nearness, close enough to slowly unknot the towel at his waist. When he was naked, he tossed the towel to the other side of the room.

“Two can play this game, you know,” he remarked.

“If I were in as much trouble as you are, I wouldn’t be talking,” she advised.

Mute, he leaned back on the bed like a man very sure of who he was and what he wanted…and of what she was going to do next. Pagan gods should look so damned sure of themselves. And that wouldn’t do at all, Laura thought fleetingly. Maybe he’d caught on that she was a little nervous? She could have sworn it didn’t show.

“Come here, love,” he whispered.

“I’ll come, but don’t touch,” she warned. “Agreed?”

His smile held both amusement and surprise, but he nodded, staring with undisguised interest as she pulled off her sash, then slowly peeled the dress over her head. When the garment was a puddle on the floor, he was no longer smiling. She wasn’t wearing anything beneath it.

“Come here,” he repeated.

She shook her head. “Only if you promise not to touch.”

“I’ll promise anything you want. Just come here.”

He still didn’t understand. He certainly thought he did, because when she knelt on the bed, he tried to reach for her. She had to firmly motion his hands away. “Please?” she said softly.

“Laura—”

“Just lie back.”

When he pushed a pillow behind his head, Laura knelt next to him. He’d taught her any number of things the night they’d made love. One was that one could make love with eyes alone, and her eyes were brazen, intimately lingering over his legs, his hips, his furred chest, the slope of his shoulders.

Owen stayed still, watching her face. A faint breeze stirred the draperies at the window, catching a strand or two of her hair, curling it around her flushed cheeks. He was more than willing to play any game she wanted to and make love any way she wanted to, yet after a time he felt the unfamiliar tension in his limbs, a sweep of color on his skin. He’d never had a modest bone in his body, and—although he knew he was fit—no vanity about the way he was built.

As Laura studied him, he suddenly became conscious of his body in a different way. He’d sought pleasure in simply looking at her, but it was oddly unnerving to have her seek it the same way. He felt vulnerable. Not a word he accepted easily for himself. “Laura.”

She leaned forward. Her fingertips stroked first; her caress was light and those fingers trembling. Her hair swung in a curtain around her face as she learned his skin, learned what made his pulse quicken, his flesh darken, his body tense with desire. She learned Owen as a woman has a right and a need to know her mate.

Her touch changed. She used her palms to stroke from his throat to his shoulders, down his thighs and calves. She tried friction and then softness, kneading and then slow, teasing caresses.

And then firmly put Owen’s wandering hands back at his sides.

Seducing, she was discovering, took the utmost concentration. Owen wasn’t an easy man to reduce to Silly Putty. She wasn’t surprised at that, but she hadn’t counted on him becoming more tense instead of less.

She tried her tongue. His nipples hardened like tiny little knots when she licked them. His naval contracted, and when her tongue made a loving circle lower, she discovered that Owen, with startling speed, went totally out of control.

Again, she pushed his hands back to his sides and raised her eyes to his. “I want you to relax,” she chided softly.

“Honey, there isn’t a prayer of that. You’re no longer,” he said thickly, “shy.”

“I’m afraid I was never shy,” she admitted.

Her smile was pure wicked temptress one instant, as innocent as a child’s the next. He felt the full force of woman turned on him, from the sway of her breasts to the soft darts of her tongue to her whispered breath deliberately teasing him. She knelt over him, brushing her breasts over his chest, touching nipple to nipple. She tried her teeth, taking small nips from his shoulder and throat.

Pleasure skidded up and down his bloodstream. Desire heated his skin. He wanted to give; she was forcing him to take. The sensation was new and almost…frightening. Laura had powers over him he’d given to no other person, powers he was just beginning to understand. Powers he was afraid she understood all too well.

“Laura…” He reached for her again, but this time she was already there, her softness curled around him, her lips hovering over his.

“You taught me honesty,” she whispered. “But it has to be the same for both of us, love. I need you, Owen, I freely admit it. But I have to know you need me, too. I don’t want a hero to slay dragons for me. I want a man who’s as vulnerable in love as I am.”

“You doubted that?” Rapidly, with infinite gentleness, he switched positions so she was pinned beneath him, her hair fanned out on the pillow. His fingers reached out to touch the silky strands, lingering there. “I’ve been scared as hell from the moment I met you. How could you not know? I’ve never needed anyone the way I need you.” His fingertip traced the shape of her soft, warm lips. “Be with me,” he said huskily. “Love with me, live with me. Fight with me, I don’t care. Just don’t leave me…”

Her eyes closed, with kiss after kiss. Darkness spiraled around her. His body was trembling, dampness making a satin sheen on his shoulders and chest. She had a crazy image in her head of a thousand swallows set free from a church belfry. Love was exploding inside her, soaring high, and that sky was so big and blue.

She shouted his name.

He whispered hers.

“Owen?”

“Hmm?”

“There’s no possible way I can sleep with your hand there.”

“Are you sleepy?”

Her lashes fluttered open. The room was dark except for the rays of a pale moon in the window. And the dark glow from Owen’s eyes just above hers. “You
must
be tired.”

“I am. A little. But I want my yes.” He brushed kiss after kiss on lips that were already swollen and tender.

“A yes to what?” she murmured in surprise.

“To marrying me.”

“I certainly thought I made it very clear how I felt about spending my life with you.”

“Not clear enough.” He slid his palm down under the sheet again. “You’re not going to sleep until I have a very clear black-and-white yes.”

“You have no intention of letting me sleep anyway.”

“True.” He looked down at her for a long time, at her cheeks and chin and nose and brows and lips. Each feature was perfect. “I didn’t expect to find you,” he said gravely. “I’ve always been alone; I’ve never been afraid of being alone. I thought I was happy until I met you, Laura. I don’t need anyone to serve me dinner or put up with my temper or dust my house. I need you to come home to. I feel free to be honest with you, to show you the faults as well as the good stuff. I need you while I grow and change, and maybe falter and fail. With you I can be vulnerable now and then—you used that word. I
need
you, love.”

His eyes were a sheen of silver. Her own were blurred with tears. “I thought you’d changed my life,” she whispered. “But that wasn’t right, Owen, because real change has to come from inside, and it’s a lonely process. I want you there, as I change. I want your children. I want to grow old with you. I want to be shy and wanton, self-sufficient and insecure, business lady and sultry temptress…with you…”

He trapped her in a tangle of arms and legs, leveling a kiss of love on the perfect mold of her lips. “Say it, love.”

“When they said you were a tyrant, I never believed them—”

“If you ever want a chocolate again as long as you live—”

Her eyes widened.
“Yes. Yes. Yes.”

A long time later, she murmured in his ear. “You know, it has nothing to do with chocolates.”

“I know.”

“But whatever you do, don’t let your sister talk you into going into the shoe business.”

Owen burst out laughing.

“You think that’s funny?”

“I think—” sleepily Owen pinned her closer “—you’re looking for trouble again.”

“I couldn’t be. The sun’s nearly up. We
have
to get some sleep.”

“I love you, Laura.”

She reached for him. “We can catch up on our sleep next year,” she agreed.

Jennifer sold her first book in 1980, and since then she has sold more than eighty books in the contemporary romance genre. Her first professional writing award came from RWA—a Silver Medallion in l984—followed by more than twenty nominations and awards, including being honored in RWA’s Hall of Fame and presented with the RWA Nora Roberts Lifetime Achievement Award. Jennifer has been on numerous bestseller lists, has written for Harlequin Books, Avon, Berkley and Dell, and has sold over the world in more than twenty languages. She has written under a number of pseudonyms, most recognizably Jennifer Greene, but also Jeanne Grant and Jessica Massey.

She was born in Michigan, started writing in high school, and graduated from Michigan State University with a degree in English and psychology. The university honored her with their “Lantern Night Award,” a tradition developed to honor fifty outstanding women graduates each year. Exploring issues and concerns for women today is what first motivated her to write, and she has long been an enthusiastic and active supporter of women’s fiction, which she believes is an “unbeatable way to reach out and support other women.” Jennifer lives in the country around Benton Harbor, Michigan, with her husband, Lar.

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