Tender Deception (2 page)

“You don’t owe me anything,” she said proudly, her delicate chin rising. “I came here because I wanted to.”

His hand rested on the top of her head, feeling the luster of the raven hair. With one finger he touched her uplifted chin. “Okay, I don’t owe you anything. But how about dinner? Because I’d love to have you join me.”

Her lips curled into a radiant smile. “I love Chinese food,” she ventured shyly.

“Good,” he chuckled. “We seem to have a lot in common.” He didn’t really have any devious plans, but he was allowing his fogged mind to rationalize as he never would under normal circumstances. She had come to him, she was certainly of age, she was stunningly, intoxicatingly sweet…

He was gallant while they ate, entertaining her with tales from his days in the service and at Florida State. He kept her wineglass full, and continued to drink heavily, convinced he could hold his liquor. And he could, physically.

She was gratified, thrilled, and uniquely happy because he was happy. He was laughing again. He had forgotten the foul trick played upon him that had ruined his chance at stardom. And all because of her. She had done it. She had created his wonderful metamorphosis back to the gracious charmer whom she loved. The tender, satisfying sensation was overwhelming. She felt every inch a woman, totally feminine, and divinely powerful. The power was wonderful. Their knees touched beneath the small table, and as they would talk, his foot would tease along her calf, making her incredibly dizzy. She knew his every breath, each nuance, each movement. Lovingly she absorbed him, fascinated by the subtle things—the thin blue veins in his long, tanned hands; the short, clipped nails; the half curl of his lips as he spoke; the thatch of golden hair falling over one eye. The wonderful way his features split into charming lines as the blue eyes sparked into dazzling laughter. It was young love, her first love, a special love offered completely, without guile. Never would she be as acutely aware as she was this night, as sensitive to each new beauty.

And she knew that he watched her, his attraction growing as she was sure he began to realize how very much he cared for her too. All he had needed was this night, this wonderful, magical night to see her as the woman she was.

She was a better actress than she knew. Her touch, her words, her sensuous, sultry eyes…Yes, he saw her as a woman, one who knew exactly what she was doing.

But as all lovers fantasize, she was easily able to imagine at that moment that he loved her, only her, with the same fervor that came from her tender, young heart. The mood was drawn; it was more beautiful than anything she had ever known. They were an island that night, so very, very absorbed. The surroundings of the cheap efficiency apartment were nonexistent; they might have been in a castle of her fairy-tale dream-making. The boxed Chinese food might have been the most elegant of gourmet meals. And the rumpled cotton sheets on the bed might have been sheerest silk.

It was the most natural thing in the world for both of them to carry their wineglasses to that bed, to lay back together, and to talk, casually beginning to touch, to tease. It never occurred to her that his mind might be hazy, or that her own was far from lucid. The wine had been magnificent. It had stripped her of her shyness; it had numbed her inhibitions. When he touched her hair, she touched his, pushing that straying lock back over his forehead, marveling at the feel of it. It was thick, unruly, healthy-clean. It had the virile scent of him, so totally male. A scent that stayed on her flesh when he finally kissed her, that permeated her lips. A scent so deliciously him that she would remember it forever.

She was light, on a cloud, floating in an endless sea of mist, but poignantly aware of every sensation—the feel of his tongue plundering her mouth, that of perfect, hard white teeth scraping against hers in demand, filling her with innocent awe. The all-inducing touch of his mouth—alive, vibrant—moved with a sensuous command that electrified as it enmeshed her as surely as quicksand into a world that was totally him, totally sensuous. An unprotesting world of increasing joy. She didn’t know what she was doing; she never bothered to think or worry. She just responded to his leads, unskilled, but achingly receptive. His kisses moved down the length of her throat; his hands sought her breasts beneath the silk, his fingers searching out the rim of her bra to rub her firm young nipples until they rose in jutting peaks.

And for him that wasn’t enough. The soothing comfort she had brought him flash-fired into intense heat. He simply discovered her exquisite desirability. Longing constricted inside him with a primitive agony. Under no circumstances could he have thought rationally, and he wasn’t going to try now.

He was knowledgeable; he was innately a tender if demanding lover. He divested her of the silk dress with seductive expertise, slowly sliding it from her shoulders, allowing it to shimmer as it fell along her skin. There was nothing hurried to his actions; he was crystallized into enchantment as he uncovered the purity of her beauty. He didn’t consciously think; he didn’t plan. He savored this exotic gift from the heavens unquestioningly. His mind was whirling in heady, undeniable sensation.

She was in his arms when sure fingers found the single hook that held her blue lace bra. He discarded the garment without a fumble, his lips finding the mounds of pure sweet cream that trembled for his touch, arched with youthful pride. She whimpered as his tongue flicked lightly over her nipples; she cried aloud when his mouth moved over them heatedly tasting, then suckling with rough demand. Her fingers dug furiously into his blond hair.

It was as if a switch had suddenly been turned on. Her body was illuminated, filled instantly with a light of blue fire. A bittersweet mixture of unknown ecstasy and gnawing pain radiated from deep within the core of her lower abdomen to enflame throughout her with the wildness of a brush fire. She was amazed, delirious, stunned, and then incredibly lost, aware only of her drive to have more of him, for him to fill the wonderful, aching void that this beautiful new experience was evoking. There was craving, wanting, needing, desperate needing. All else was obliterated.

Her fingers were clamped so tightly in his hair that he had to release them gently before shifting to roll her stockings from her legs and fit his own fingers into the elastic strings that held her bikini panties. Even her feet were beguiling—small, smooth, the toenails glazed in a delicate pink. He kissed each one…

Rising in sudden haste, no longer able to control the terrible urgency to have her, he threw his robe aside, watching her face, dimly aware that she had blanched, and that her eyes were wide, dilated. He eased his length upon her, shuddering with new, torturous delight as naked flesh met naked flesh. Holding her face, he kissed her again, drawing from her lips as a bee seeking nectar. Her arms wound slowly around his neck, and she clung to him, demanding that the torrid kiss be plundered to its depths. His hands left her face; they savored strongly the slender curves of her body to her hips where they clamped firmly. His weight pinioned her, his hips and thighs upon her until his knee opened the final barriers to sweet consumption.

It was as he probed for that access that she was thunderstruck with a horrible moment of lucidity. The truth, the seriousness, of what she was doing came stridently home to her.

“Wait…” she breathed, twisting and writhing in unwitting assistance. “Please! Wait…stop…” she wailed, bringing balled fists against the golden expanse of his chest. The effort was pathetic, as useless as her attempt to grip her fingers into the rock-hard biceps that pinned her to the bed. “Wait!”

He was not a cruel man, nor had he ever been in any way forceful. But his need for her now was as deep and fervent as the despair she had driven from him. She would have been pleased to know that he had never wanted a woman before with such an undeniable urgency. He simply wasn’t in his right mind. He wasn’t even filled with delusion. His mind, in fact, had nothing to do with it at all.

“You little tease!” he uttered harshly, the memory of another betrayal at the hands of a woman erupting inside him. His blue eyes burned with a fire that was deadly heat and frigid ice. “Too late to back out now, lady temptress, way too late.”

And it was. He was young, he was virile; his desire throbbed against her with a tortured fever that commanded all else—seeking, finding, penetrating.

She fought him furiously for brief seconds of wild, shooting pain. Then she lay still, shocked.

He very dimly knew what he had done, but the thought was far from his consciousness. Nothing but culmination and her surrender could quench the delicious hunger of the raging passion she had elicited. Yet as she went pliant, he found a certain control and brought his demands from a hectic to a fluid rhythm, cajoling with each stroke, determined to please as he was pleased. He lulled her with his hands, with soft, soothing whispers. Slowly, slowly, he brought her back to him.

The pain receded; the glowing heat of that wild, craving desire usurping discomfort until it ebbed away entirely. She was swept into his wooing rhythm, gradually becoming as voraciously thirsting as he, demanding in return, greedily arching to claim his every thrust.

Her protests had been so ridiculous. There had never been such wondrous, awe-inspiring, shuddering bliss. She could spend her life in his arms, drowning, dying, loving, giving in this divine ecstasy. And he was hers. Completely. Never could two people come together like this—this closely, this thoroughly—without becoming one, without tenderly giving of their hearts. She had him in the oldest way known to woman. She could never belong to anyone else, never, never, and neither could he.

Thoughts of love stopped. He had brought her so high, so high that she could barely breathe. Every nerve, every movement, every fiber of her being—sight, sound, feeling—all were devoted to the frantic crescendo of the exquisite symphony his masterful rhythm had created. She was crying his name, shuddering convulsively, holding him, needing him, bursting into a brilliant white glory of sensation so beautiful it could never be imagined, only lived. He guided her through that mindless pleasure, groaning himself with the tremendous satiation of the devilishly sweet intensity of their mating.

He smiled at her with a mingling of tenderness and something that might have been surprise. Then, amazingly, he rolled from her, dead weight. She lifted the arm that still cradled her midriff. It fell to his side with a flop. His energy expended, his physical needs gratified to ultimate contentment, he had fallen asleep, simply passed out.

Tears of happiness hovered on her eyes as she watched him with a loving emotion that rose from and filled her breast. Her lips curved into a gentle smile. Even the wine she had consumed could not make her sleep; she was too riddled with wonder and excitement. She lay beside him, oblivious to time, softly stroking the lines of his magnificently sculpted back, positive that heaven itself could offer no greater reward than that of being loved by this man. She was giddy, smug with her love, satisfied, and fulfilled. She had truly become a woman in his arms. He cherished her.

He twisted suddenly in his sleep, reaching for her to nestle comfortably to his form. He mumbled drowsily.

Puzzled, she leaned closer to his lips, rubbing her soft cheek against his shadowed rough one.

“What, my love?” she whispered with all the newfound joy and tenderness of their union. “What?”

“Love you,” he murmured, and she ached with the bliss of his words. But he twisted restlessly and kept speaking as he stroked her with an absent hand. “Love you, Lenore.” His hand stopped, and he flopped back into a sound, stuporous sleep.

Lenore? Lenore? The name blazed across her mind like a skull-splitting blow. She was stunned, too stunned for a moment to assimilate the awful agony. Then it rained down upon her like the icy dagger thrusts of a hailstorm. She was mortified, crushed; she would have happily and simply died. Her naiveté was washed cleanly and completely from her mind. He didn’t really care for her at all; she had deceived herself with a pathetic false confidence and a longing to make real what wasn’t. She should have known. If he was in love with anyone, it was the lost Lenore, no matter what she had done.

But she—blind, innocent idiot that she was—had literally thrown herself at him and gotten exactly what she deserved. God, why was it all so clear with hindsight? How could she have been such a foolish dreamer just a few short hours ago…a few short minutes ago…

With tears streaming down her face she rose and dressed in silence. The truth had been a cold, cruel, vicious slap in the face. She would never be the same. The night had aged her in a way that years never could. Seconds of harsh reality had really made her a woman.

Grabbing her handbag, she tiptoed unnecessarily to the door, but paused with perplexity as she noticed the telltale sheets. She slipped into her heels and began the mental process which would eventually become a shield over her heart. She wiped her stained cheeks and sighed over the loss of innocence and dreams and withdrew to the safety of being frozen and numb. The pain would come to her again—she had yet to know how viciously—but now she had to think. She would have to face him again.

She looked dispassionately at his rugged features, at his golden hair, at his beautiful body. He would remember tonight, but what would he remember? A brief span of physical respite. A night like so many others he had experienced. A night that meant nothing. He would have to think it had meant absolutely nothing to her too. She would never allow him to humiliate her again. All he could offer was kindness and compassion—and maybe a coldblooded bodily desire, none of which she wanted from him.

She’d be damned if she’d have him know he had taken from her the most precious gift a woman could offer. He could wonder, but she would deny for an eternity that he had taken her virginity. He could think he was crazy. That would be preferable.

Grunting as she strained with all her strength to pull his muscle-bound weight about, she managed to strip the bed. He would have a good hangover in the morning and he deserved to wonder what the hell he had done with the sheets!