The Satin Sash (11 page)

He broke away. “Open to me.” She tensed as his hand brushed up the length of her bare thigh, his expert fingers sliding under the hem of her dress.

His thumb skated across her cleft, and she turned her head to his shoulder, burying her face there with a wanton whimper. “People can see.”

“Nobody’s looking at you but me and Heath.”

She muffled her haggard breaths in his collar, helpless against the delicious, tight press of his thumb into her clit.“Take me someplace else.”

Where he massaged the hardened clit through her panties, the tissue flared. She clamped her thighs together and gritted her teeth to fight the soaring sensations.

But he would not take no for an answer, his hand digging into the crevice of her legs with single- minded purpose.“Let me in. Let me touch you. Show me how wet you are.”

His words vibrated through her in a lust wave, and she pulled his head down to her lips and plunged her tongue into his ear.“I’m drenched. So drenched.”

He dropped his head to her shoulder as though he couldn’t hold it up anymore, reverently saying, “Baby.”

And just like that her thighs spread apart, craving what he would do. Once he found the source of her moisture, he tugged the fabric aside and eased his longest finger inside the welcoming sheath. She felt her spine arch against the backrest, her entire body wanting to buck up for more.

Their booth was mercifully secluded, but she occasionally caught sight of busy waiters that passed. Thoughts of being seen like this had her coiled like a spring.

The ruthless, powerful thrusts of Grey’s finger triggered a chain reaction in her, sent her galloping to the very peak of bliss.

His stubble chafed the skin of her throat as he rubbed his jaw against her like a lion, breathing on her, licking. “Ask me for what you want, Antonia.”

Stubbornly, she didn’t. His finger left her weeping cleft, and she dazedly brought her head up. Grey pushed his finger into her mouth. “Suck. Taste yourself. Tangy. Sweet.” She tasted, felt his groan vibrate around the booth.“It tells me all I need to know,” he rasped through his throat, “but I want your mouth to say it. I want to hear how hot, how wild, my lover is.”

Oh, god. She was wild. Unashamedly wild. “Why?”

“It turns me on.”

His devastating words, combined with the knowledge that the mouthwatering Heath Solis was watching, caused fire tornadoes all over her. It took all her effort to squirm away from her blatantly tempting lover, struggling to compose herself. “This isn’t the place for this.This is . . . We came here to eat and . . . talk.”

Yes. Eat and talk. Like civilized people who did not do . . . threesomes.

“No, we didn’t.” Grey leaned back in his seat, his jaw set at an obstinate angle, his breathing not quite back to normal as he searched inside his pocket. “Heathcliff?”

“Grey?”

Grey slammed his palm on the table, his long, tanned fingers sliding across the linen, up to the center. The startling second he uncovered the shiny red sash tightly balled beneath them, her heart flew up to her throat.

Her eyes flicked up to Grey’s, and her chest hurt so intensely she thought she’d expire. “Why are you doing this?” she whispered.

She thought he wouldn’t answer. He stared at her lips, and she expected him to kiss her, but instead he quietly raised his eyes. What she saw in them made her heart leap. “You want it. And I want to give it to you.”

The words blasted into her mind, shocking the breath out of her. Words unspoken between them, but a fulmination in his eyes, rushing with his touch when he ran his knuckles down her cheek. Her insides jelled, the muscles in her body quivering.

“You want it,” he repeated, his voice throbbing with emotion.

Toni’s heart vaulted in her chest. He was in love with her. He
was
. Somehow she had slipped into his heart; that cold, hard heart to which her own seemed to beat. The knowledge burst through her in an explosion, beautiful, earth-shattering.

She jerked her eyes back to the sash and sent her hand flying. She crushed the satin under her palm, reclaiming it as hers.

A cryptlike stillness spread.

And Heath. Wicked, sinful Heath Solis set his enormous, callused hand over hers. “Toni.” He stroked the back of her fingers with his and her pulse hitched. “Grey wants this. I want this. You want this, too.”

She looked into his eyes.The dark eroticism in his gaze skimmed through her blood. Oh, god—she wanted sin, ecstasy, bliss. She wanted Grey; she wanted Heath. A part of her demanded that she clutch her sash protectively to her chest, and a part of her wanted Heath to have it.The part that screamed,
Yes, yes, you’re a hot, wicked devil of a man and I’m not in a coma, and I want you
and
my luscious, delicious lover to take me until I scream.

Her mind raced. She hauled her gaze back to the molten gold of Grey’s. She wanted a bedroom. A closet. Somewhere she could tear off the dress chafing her skin, rip the clothes off Grey. Heath. She would scream when they entered her. She would feel relief.

When she spoke, her voice hummed with arousal.“You’ve done this before, haven’t you? Threesomes?”

Grey seemed ready to smile. “I have.”

Her lungs hardened like stones in her chest as she pictured him with two beautiful women. “With whom?”

“Heath.”

A shock of excitement burst through her. The image of these two breathtaking men, naked and surrounding fortunate little her, made her insides knot. But she could still not seem to let go of her sash. “Heath, and who else?”

“Women.”

Of course.

Toni would not expect a handsome, successful, powerful man like Grey to have the sex life of a choirboy, but the realization, the reminder, of how experienced, how worldly he was made her stomach grip.“How many women?”

“At a time? One.”

“And overall?” Three? Ten? Fifteen? Why did she feel like her heart was being wrung?

“Many,Toni.”

Many. Her lover had had—her lover had
shared
—many women with Heath. “Ten?” she ventured.

“I didn’t count.”

“At least ten,” Heath offered.

She didn’t turn, instead studied Grey with the same intensity with which he seemed to be gauging her reaction. In a quiet, cottony voice, she asked, “Did they like it?”

He reached for her mouth, this time running the pad of his thumb across the quivering flesh of her lower lip. “They loved it,” he said in a thick whisper.

The idea of Grey with those women, with anyone but her, had an unprecedented jealousy surging through her. Violent. Painful. She fisted one hand tightly on her lap. “Did you care for them?”

If he said yes . . .

Damn him if he said
yes.
. . .

A fierce, eerie light flashed in his eyes, and she thought he would say something about his feelings for her. Three full heartbeats passed.Then she realized it was too much to ask of Grey. He gave her anything. Everything. Except that.

“No, I didn’t care for them. And I was a boy, Toni. Now I’m a man.”

My
man,
she thought furiously.

She let go a shaky breath, but it was as though nothing could pull their gazes apart.

Her voice dropped to a whisper. “And did you enjoy it?”

He nodded.

The gesture built a staggering, overwhelming desire in her to override all those many others from his mind, drive him out of control, out of his mind, as madly and deeply in love as she was. The words screamed in her head.
Thrill him. Excite him. Surprise him. Make him
love
you.

Arousal swam in her veins . . . tantalizing thoughts of Grey loving her with his hands, his hungry mouth . . . Heath inside a moist, throbbing part of her . . .

Raising her free hand, she cupped the thick back of Grey’s neck and drew him forward. “Come here, baby,” she pleaded, amazed when he easily complied.Against a mouth that was opening to take hers, she sensually whispered, “I’m going to drive you wild, Grey Richards. So wild that you will think of nothing else, no one else, but Toni Kearny.”

He groaned into her mouth, not a groan of protest, but a gruff animal sound emitting his approval. And he closed the hairsbreadth between them and took her mouth voraciously.

Voyeurism had never been Heath’s thing. He was either an active participant or not interested. Not that a kiss could be considered voyeuristic. But then that was one hell of a sensual kiss.

From his seat across the table, he tightened his hold on Toni’s hand as she continued kissing Grey. No way in hell would he release it.

He wanted that sash, and she was holding it.

The restaurant continued to move in the slow, discreet way fancy places did. Waiters passed by the secluded booth. No one gawked or paused. But Heath could not drag his eyes away.

No wonder Grey didn’t want him to kiss her. The delectable Miss Kearny was eating Grey up with that killer mouth, and damn, Grey was worked up in a way Heath had never seen him. If that man opened his jaw a fraction more, it would crack.

His hands were guiding her face, tilting her this way and the other, and their kiss was so mouthwateringly sloppy it was painful to watch. If Heath were closer, he had a mind to push his head in there and find a spot for his own tongue somewhere deep in the recesses of Toni’s mouth.

The kiss tingled across his entire havoc-wreaked body. It made him ache in his seat. He’d never thought a man as unmoved, as impenetrable as Grey could ever be so hungry. Hell, he’d never thought
he
could be so hungry. For a kiss. A woman.

With that beguiling combination of innocence and sex, the sound of her name screamed in his head like a siren call. Damn, he was almost tempted to beg her to make that same husky vow to him, too.

He’d heard this from a retiring construction worker who spent his lunchtimes with a book.

Heath had snorted.
I’m it, buddy. Lunchtime is over.

He didn’t like emotional entanglements and he didn’t like messy good-byes, which made his relationship with Grey so easy. Grey wasn’t sentimental; his partner was forthright and the most level-headed man Heath knew.They worked. Heath elbowed him. Grey let himself be amused sometimes.They were themselves.

Heath pretty much didn’t give a shit about anything else.

But watching Grey and Toni kiss . . . fuck, just the way they stared at each other . . . damn, even watching Grey fondle her little hand . . .

Some kind of creepy, unwelcome loneliness gripped at his chest. Maybe the knowledge that his partner and best friend was as emotionally isolated as he was had kept the feeling at bay, kept him from feeling like an oddity. But something in Grey had cracked, and something in Heath envied it.

He was torn with wants. He wanted to rise from the table and find something to do other than watch them. And he wanted to slide up to crowd her from behind and plunge into her silken depths. Most of all, he wanted to bend her over the table and fuck her until they both passed out.

Instead he raised his wine—the Hermi-whatever—and tossed back the liquid. He desperately craved a beer. Once they drew apart, Grey left Toni’s hair in a delectable, thoroughly touchable mess, and she brought a pair of glazed forest green eyes to Heath’s.

His mouth ran dry. He’d never seen a more kissable, more fuck able pair of lips, no bullshit. Her pupils were dilated with arousal. The black almost swallowed the gold-speckled green of her irises. Sweat glistened across her small forehead, and that fine- sized chest of hers rose and fell heavily with each breath. She smelled of woman in heat, and if he didn’t have her soon he’d . . . he didn’t know. But it wouldn’t be good.

“This fire . . .” he gruffly told her, caressing the inside of her wrist as he turned her hand to stroke its smooth center with his thumb. He liked that part of a woman, the dent in her palm, and he liked fucking it with his thumb. Slowly and sinuously, until the meaning of what he was doing became clear.

Her eyes widened almost imperceptibly.

“This fire isn’t just Grey’s.”He watched the color rise in her cheeks as her lust heightened.“It’s mine, too. I fed it and stoked it, and I want it.” In a bold, unequivocal move, he brought her hand under the table and almost groaned when she held him.“This one’s for you.”

Beneath the light touch of her palm, his crotch was rock. Fire. Hot male dick pulsing against her—
for
her. “That’s your fire. And I promise you no one’s putting it out but you.”

He’d tried, and nope. He wanted Toni.

Withdrawing her hand with notable hesitation, she gave one last wistful look at her sash.

And Toni pursed those pretty lips just so, and he could see the steel in her eyes when she swung her gaze to his. A challenge.The sweetest challenge he’d been issued in his thirty- five years.To take that shimmering red material. And then her body.