The Stud (14 page)

At first, aside from the quickening of her breathing, she was still. She didn't move her mouth, didn't move her body. He imagined she wanted to stop him but couldn't work her way through the pleasure she felt to do it. So he kept the pleasure going—it was easy enough to do, his heat was rising—made his kisses progressively deep and long. He slid both hands into her hair and tipped her face higher. He teased her tongue with his, then withdrew and dragged his mouth over her cheeks to her eyes, which he kissed closed. The brush of her lashes teased him, so whisper light against his skin that he began to shake with a greater need. Her lips were open when he returned to them, and with his hungry reclaiming, he felt her first, tentative response.

That response, so new and shy and sweet, brought him to near-full arousal. "Ahh, angel, " he moaned against her hair, and lifted her into his arms. He carried her into the bedroom and pulled back the spread, then set her on the sheets.

She sat right up. "I... the bathroom. "

"No, " he whispered. Bracing himself on a knee, he caught her mouth and held it in a suctioning grip while he started unbuttoning his shirt.

"I want, " she managed breathlessly, "my nightgown. "

Tossing the shirt aside, he buried his face against her neck. "No, angel. I want to feel you. "

But she slid out from under him, and was halfway across the room before he could reach her. Telling himself that there would be other times when she would be naked for him, he got rid of the rest of his clothes. He was waiting at the door to sweep her up again, nightgown and all, when she left the bathroom.

"So macho, " she whispered.

But her arms were around his neck, and if she minded his gesture, she didn't let on. Nor did she object when his mouth covered hers before she hit the sheets, or when he made an immediate place for himself between her legs, or when he filled that part of mat space with his hand and brought her to a heated climax. Her insides were still pulsing when he entered her, and if the white nightgown was any obstacle to pleasure, Spencer would have been hard put to say it, because, in exchange for leaving the garment on, she began moving her hands on his body. She had never participated quite that way before. Her touch was light and shy, with such devastating effect that his own climax came nearly as quickly and every bit as powerfully as hers had.

Then she slept in his arms as though it was the most natural thing in the world to do, as though there had never been talk of separate bedrooms or separate sides of a king-size bed or, heaven help them, his using the sofa. True, when she awoke to daylight the next morning, she slid away, but he understood that Relatively speaking, she had come a long way. If he was patient, she would come another long way yet. And he could be patient. For a treasure, he had all the patience in the world.

Jenna knew she was falling in love with Spencer. The knowledge hit her hard on Sunday morning when, after a late brunch in bed, he rented a car and drove them to visit friends of his in Virginia. Sitting in the passenger's seat for a two-hour blend of easy conversation and companionable silence, she had time to reflect on the previous day. She'd had a wonderful time with him—she couldn't deny it—and that included what they'd done in bed. Yes, what they'd done in bed. As a lover, Spencer was masterful. He had her wanting him the way she had never wanted another man, and it kept getting better and better. The wanting was with her even now. No matter that they were in bucket seats, separated by a storage bin and the gearshift, she felt his presence as though they were still in bed, nestled against each other, sleeping—or pretending to.
He
had been sleeping; she had heard the evenness of his heartbeat by her ear; but she had found something so pleasurable in lying with him that she hadn't wanted to miss it by sleeping for long.

Vividly she remembered the softness of his chest hair against her cheek, his clean scent, the firmness of his torso against hers, the length of the arm that circled her and held her in place. She remembered the way her leg had curved naturally over his, and the way he had slept with his face buried in her hair.

Oh, yes, she was falling in love. Try as she might to find things to hate about Spencer, she couldn't She supposed she could take that as a tribute to her own judgment, that the man she had chosen to father her child was as close to perfect as a man could be. But it didn't bode well for her future, in which Spencer had no role at all.

So what was she to do? Was she to go back to pushing him away and trying to keep their lovemaking as uninvolved as possible? That made sense. At least if she could keep reminding herself of the reason they were together, she had a chance of keeping her feelings for him within bounds. The problem was that when she was with him, when they were doing things together, she had trouble thinking straight.

It was a good thing she didn't have to remember to use birth control, she mused. She'd be pregnant for sure then.

"What is it?" he asked, darting her short, repeated glances.

"What?"

"You chuckled. "

She hadn't realized it. Blushing but unable to help it, she said, "It was nothing. A Murphy's Law kind of thing. "

He reached over and took her hand. She liked it when he did that. His hand was large and strong, and made her feel protected. This time he anchored it to his thigh—clad in jeans today—and held it until they turned in at his friends' farm.

Jenna liked his friends. Spencer had gone to school years earlier with the female half of the couple, and he and the male half had subsequently become friends. The couple raised horses. Jenna, who had always wished Rhode Island were lush enough for that, loved seeing the stables, the paddock, the pastures. Though she had never ridden a horse previously, she was eager to try—then proud when she held her own on the albeit gentle mount they gave her. Spencer stayed by her side for all but the brief periods of time when he gave his own horse free rein. She didn't begrudge him those times. He needed the freedom himself, and besides, he was a heart-stopping sight on a horse.

It was dark before they left Virginia. Having slept only intermittently the previous night, Jenna managed to stay awake during the drive back, but she was in bed and sound asleep by the time Spencer returned after disposing of the car. She woke up several times during the night to an awareness of the warmth of his body beside her and, selfishly, didn't fight its pull. He would be gone soon enough, she knew, but before he left, she wanted the closeness he was so willing to offer. Somehow that didn't seem wrong.

So she curled against him in defiance of the fact that he was Caroline's brother, that he was a world-renowned adventurer and author, that he would be back to his own life before long. If nothing else, she reasoned, he would know that his baby's mother was a woman worthy of warmth and affection.

Spencer was in pain. The last thing he wanted to do was to climb out of bed on Monday morning, and it didn't have to do with the soreness of his thighs, but rather what lay hard and heavy between them. Morning desire had always been a problem for him, but waking up to a snuggling Jenna made the problem ten times worse. He shifted her in his arms and rubbed his lips against her forehead, then lay for a while wondering how much more he dared do. She wasn't a daylight lover. He would make her one yet, but he couldn't rush her. She was still thinking of the baby, and had her mind set on the night.

The night.
That
night. He wasn't sure if he could wait. Closing his eyes, he took a tortured breath.

"Spencer?" came a whisper from his chest.

"Umm?" He was afraid to say much, lest she move away.

"Are you okay?"

"Just fine. "

"You sound uncomfortable. " Before he could explain that the discomfort was a sweet agony, she rolled out of his arms and sat up on her side of the bed. Her hair was a tangle around her head. She pushed it back with a hand, sat that way for a minute, then freed herself of the sheet and swung her legs to the floor.

In her innocent white gown, with her slenderness apparent and her hair a dark, seductive cloud, she looked as exotic as the most delicate of South Seas beauties. Spencer would have given his right arm to lunge for her and drag her back to bed.

In a moment of pique that was directed as much at his own damnable self-control as at her, he said, "I wasn't just uncomfortable. I was—am—in excruciating pain. "

She looked back at him in alarm, but the alarm faded when she caught sight of the shape of the sheet "Oh, " she said, and blushed.

He laughed in spite of himself and rolled away. "I would suggest, " he called over a shoulder, "that we get dressed and out of here fast. Anything else, and I can't promise I'll behave. " The next thing he heard was the soft click of the bathroom door.

Fifteen minutes later, she emerged fully dressed and ready to let him take his turn, and that too, was torture. The bathroom was filled with the lingering warmth from her shower and the scent of her body lotion. He had to ran the water at its coldest and stand under it for a bone-numbing ten minutes before he was finally under control.

They ate breakfast in the hotel dining room. Then Spencer set out for the Smithsonian. He asked Jenna if she wanted to come, but she was intent on museum-hopping, and it was just as well. He needed a break. She was a temptation to look at He prayed that out of sight would be out of mind.

For the most part, it was. He spent the day poring through ancient records of vessels that had sailed at the time of his Spanish galleon. He traced their routes on yellowed maps and made notes of their cargo, as recorded in crude journals that demanded his close attention. There was referencing and cross-referencing to be done, papers of earlier researchers to study, and he found it all as intriguing as he'd known it would be. Then the mustiness of the air got to him. His mind slowed and started to wander. He felt not so much bored as drained of energy.

The office he was using was in the basement of one of the lesser buildings of the Smithsonian, and wasn't far from where the records he needed were stored. He had given Jenna the number of the room and told her that he would be there at least until six, and that if she finished early and wanted to join him, she could. By midafternoon, he was listening for her footsteps in the hall.

Shortly before six, he heard them. When she knocked on the door and poked her head in, he felt a return of the energy he had been lacking. He also felt a return of the desire, which, in his enervated state, hit him all the harder. Hoping action would diffuse it, he rose from the desk and quickly gathered together the books he'd been using.

"I'll wait if you want to work more, " Jenna said, but he simply handed her a book to carry.

"I've had enough. " He pushed his notes into a pile and put them in his briefcase. "If I were superstitious, I wouldn't be touching these records. The court still has to rule in my favor. " He put the books on top of his briefcase and lifted the lot. "Let's get these returned. " He shut off the light, locked the door and started down the hall. "How was your day?"

"Fun. "

"Which museums did you hit?"

"The Portrait Gallery and the Hirschorn. I had lunch on the terrace at the Botanic Garden. "

"You went to the Botanic Garden without me?" The Botanic Garden was his favorite. Being there was the next best thing to being on a tropical island.

She smiled him an apology. "Sorry. But I couldn't resist. I love that place. "

"You should've saved it. You should've gone shopping, instead. That's what most women would have done. " His words were gruff, offered in jest, but they made him think. Jenna wasn't like other women. He was just coming to realize that. She didn't follow a crowd, didn't cling to tradition for its own sake, didn't run from new experiences. She had walked all over Washington with him, had ducked into a movie theater on the spur of the moment, had bravely climbed up on that horse. She had decided that she wanted a baby, so she'd set out to get one. He respected that.

Now she sent him a chiding look, but it was no harsher than his tone had been, and he was struck once again by how pretty—no, how beautiful she was with her dark hair and her pale skin, how sweet and innocent, how sexy.

"Here we go, " he said in a thick voice, and separated a key from the others. After using it, he shouldered open a door that took them out of the dimly lit hall and into a pitch-black storage room. He hit a switch with his elbow to give them light, dropped his briefcase on a table by the door, took his books and Jenna's and returned them to the shelves from which he'd removed them several hours earlier.

Jenna was leaning against the table by his briefcase. Her eyes smiled when he emerged from the stacks, and he felt a little flip-flop inside. From nowhere came a naughty thought. Actually it wasn't from nowhere; he'd been thinking naughty thoughts all his life. This one, though, he immediately pushed from mind. Jenna wasn't the type.

Then he remembered what he'd been thinking about her, that she wasn't any "type, " and the naughty thought returned.

Pushing at the light switch, he plunged them into darkness, but it was Jenna he reached for, not the door. "I missed you today, " he said, and brought her close. "Did you miss me, too?" His head was already descending, and before she could answer, he covered her mouth with his.

It was supposed to be a mischievous kiss, stolen in the black belly of the Smithsonian, but within seconds, it erupted with the hunger he had been feeling so strongly that morning. She tasted faintly of coffee and smelled of rare flowers, both of which pleased him, but it was the stealth of her arms winding around his neck that pleased him most of all.

He kissed her deeply, using his tongue to its utmost, but that wasn't enough. He caressed her back, brought his hands forward and caressed her breasts, but that wasn't enough, either. So he bent his head to her neck and planted wet kisses down that slender column to where the slim strap of her sun dress lay on her shoulder.

Her arms were coiled around his neck. Taking encouragement from that, he reached behind her and unzipped her dress.