Excerpt from Dear Rita
Have you lost your sanity? You’ve done nothing all day but plot and plan how to throw yourself at this man. The only thing you haven’t done is wriggle out of your slip and wave it under his nose like a red flag. “Are you nuts?”
“Hmm?” Dorian’s voice was in her ear, his lips pressed against a few loose strands of hair. Music dripped from the CD player, but she barely heard a note. Had she spoken out loud?
She rushed to cover up her lapse. “Nothing.”
“I thought you said. . . .”
“I didn’t say anything. Forget it.”
He was happy to forget it, and she was happy he did, because it meant he wouldn’t have to let her go, to pause for an explanation. Although she would admit an explanation—a complex, embarrassing explanation—would soon become necessary. Because the way he was touching her, and the way she was touching him back, told her the evening was whirling toward its inevitable finale. If it did—when it did—would she have the courage to say something?
Dorian had had enough of letting her take the lead. He’d given in to her guidance when it came to dancing, but to call what they were doing dancing was like calling Godiva chocolates a little snack. His body was as hard as hers was soft, as unyielding as hers was pliant, and the arm around her waist pulled her closer, until her breasts were in contact with his chest, her hips with his. Reason took a hike.
He kissed her. He’d kissed her before, once or twice every time they’d gone out. But never like this. Once, and then again, his tongue requested entry. Permission granted. She opened her mouth and he invaded her defenses. As their teeth made contact, there was a muted clink, the sound their wine glasses had made earlier when she’d proposed a toast. He sipped their own private brand of wine from her lips, her neck, and from that hollow at the base of her throat. Every touch made each tiny hair along her skin go mad, snapping into erection like sensitive plants under the curious touch of a child.
Her breath came faster and heavier. His hands sliding up and down her back robbed her of speech.
Dorian had plenty to say. “I’ve kissed you before,” he mused, “how come you’ve never tasted like this?” Soft fabric rustled, and up came her blouse out of the waistband of her skirt. His hand slid under it. His exploring fingers skimmed the lace cup of her bra, until he found the hard bump of her nipple. He ran the tip of his finger in circles around it, making her want to yelp, bite, pull away. Anything to stop the sensation. “I’ve touched you before. How come you’ve never felt like this?”
“You’ve never touched me quite like that,” she managed to point out.
“That makes me a fool.” All pretense of dancing was abandoned. His body still moved, as did hers, but they were hearing their own internal music, sweet and heady, beckoning to them in the way the bottom of a well beckoned to someone looking into it, or the ground to someone leaning over the balcony of a tall building. Beguiling and dangerous. Seductive. Scary.
Say something.
She remained mute.
Her arms rose in compliance as he eased her blouse over her head. It fell at their feet. His fingers found and undid the catch on her bra without him having to look. That, too, fell.
Tell him.
If the color of her skin had allowed it, she would have turned red. As it was, there was merely a darkening, a tint that spread across her skin in waves, from the inside, deep in some hot spot in her tummy, out to her navel, and then up to her breasts as they suffered under his black gaze.
She wished he’d say something, anything, recite his grocery list, anything to minimize the impact of the shattering seconds as he simply looked at her.
She put her hands up over her pebble nipples.
“Don’t cover yourself. You’re amazing. I’m sorry I stared. I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable. It’s just that. . . you’re. . . ” He floundered, trying to find the right word, but, for once at a loss, settled for the one he had used before, “. . . amazing!”
His kisses went lower, leaving her jealous mouth and neck for her breasts. There it was: that urge to scream again. To silence it, she wrapped her fingers around his head, feeling the roughness of his freshly cut hair. Her hands slipped lower until she could feel each vertebra in his neck and between his shoulder blades, like large beads strung together.
He began to undo the buttons on his shirt. The floor was becoming littered with abandoned clothing. “Touch me back.” His voice was as raspy as a cat’s tongue.
She wanted to, and that unfamiliar desire almost knocked her flat. She put her hands up between them, palms out, like someone feeling her way across a darkened room. Under her fingers his skin was hot, and under that skin, a wall of hard muscle rose and fell. His nipples were like dark, flat old pennies, but when she scraped them lightly with her fingernails he had to grit his teeth to keep a groan from escaping.
Power. What awesome power. To be able, with just one finger—no, just one fingertip—to force this large and powerful man into submission. Experimentally, she probed his nipple again, this time with her thumb, and was surprised and delighted when he cursed and tried to wrench away, as if the sensation was too much to bear. He called her a name that wasn’t very complimentary, but he smiled when he said it. “You’re trying to kill me,” he accused her.
“No,” she said, half in wonder, “I’m learning.”
