Page 56 of Drop Dead Gorgeous

I felt his response deep inside me, a flexing, a seeking. His arms tightened around me and he sank one hand into my hair, cradling my head as he fused our mouths together, his tongue moving, probing, taking. And I took him too, took his mouth, his breath, while deep inside I tightened and flexed muscles that held him, massaged him, drew him groaning to the brink of climax.

He left my mouth and all but attacked my neck, his hand in my hair holding my head arched back so he had complete access. The fierce throb of pleasure that shuddered through me almost took me all the way, almost, so close the first hot flare shot along my nerve endings.

“Don’t move,” he groaned against my neck. “Don’t move.”

I wanted to move, I desperatelyneededto move, to rise and fall on his penetrating flesh and end this exquisite torture. I would need only one thrust, just one…and yet, because the torture was exquisite, I didn’t want it to end. I wanted to quiver here, just on the edge, and feel the shudders rippling through his big body as he struggled with the same need.

“No moving,” I whispered back to him, and desperately he grabbed my bottom.

Our bodies were hot, steamy. Where our skin was plastered together we sweated, but the cold air of the air-conditioning washed over my back like the breath of frost. He was kneading my bottom in his big hands, the motion pulling, opening me so that I felt the chill touch damp places that were normally protected. The contrast between hot and cold was disorienting, sending my senses spinning. His fingers slid along my bottom, down, down, until he stroked the tightly stretched skin where he entered me.

I would have screamed, tried to scream, but my throat balked at the effort and refused to work. I tried not to move. I quivered and shook, my head falling to the side while his mouth worked my neck. I clenched him, hard, trying to hold him and take him deeper, and he quivered, too. I loved feeling that, feeling all of his hardness and strength responding to me. I loved the piercing expression in his green eyes, the way he watched me, the complete and utter abandonment of all defenses as we strained together.

And then I broke, shuddering, crying, my entire body in motion as I rocked against him in the most total dissolving of sensation I’ve ever felt. The spasms were like waves spreading through me. Ifelthim groan, felt the vibration through his whole body, and just as I collapsed bonelessly against him he turned us, pinning me to the mattress beneath him as he broke, too.

We slept like that, without turning off the lamp, without getting up to wash. And if I dreamed, I didn’t know it.

In the morning, we made love in the shower, which, yes, we both needed. We practically had to unglue ourselves with the aid of warm water. As intense as the night’s lovemaking had been, the morning’s was playful, at least until the last minute or so. I was glowing when I bounced down the stairs.

I always took longer getting ready, of course, so he already had breakfast started. He turned his head and winked at me as I headed for the coffee. “Do you think you can eat real food today?”

I took the first swallow of coffee, considered, then rocked my hand in a “maybe, maybe not” motion.

“Oatmeal it is, then,” he said. “Don’t try anything that’ll make you cough.”

I had tried to talk, of course, and could actually make sounds this morning. Unfortunately, the sounds were those of a dying frog. Just being able to whisper, though, was an enormous relief, because I had a busy day ahead of me.

While we were eating he said, frowning, “I can’t stay with you today, so your first stop is for a new cell phone. Got it? You can’t be out of communication.”

I totally agreed with that.

“You gotta tell me what happened to your old one, though.”

Just because I could whisper didn’t mean I should. The less I used my voice, the faster I’d get it back. So I pantomimed beating the cell phone against the window.

“That’s what I thought,” he said after a moment, his tone strained.

You’d think no one had ever broken a cell phone before.

“Now. What I want you to do today is stay out of work. Don’t go to any of your usual places, places where she could expect to find you. Don’t go to your parents’ house. Don’t go to Siana’s. You have a lot of shopping to do, so do it. I’ll take you to a car rental agency and you can drive something completely different from that little eye-catcher out there in the garage.” He was all cop now, his eyes narrow, his mind working. “I’ll have the Mercedes collected, and we’ll put one of our blond female officers in it and have her cruise around—to Great Bods, to your bank, to wherever you usually get lunch. This woman may be lying low for a while, a day or so, but eventually she’s going to come after you again. But itwon’tbe you. There’s no negotiation on that.”

I reached for the notebook and scribbled,I have no problem with that.Yeah, if I’d been able to get to her the night of the fire I was so mad I’d have gone vigilante on her ass, but in the light of day my head was cooler and a big reality was staring me in the face: I needed to get this wedding taken care of, and I couldn’t let there be any more delays. Tonight, even if I had to write every word, Wyatt and I would have that conversation I’d been putting off, but I couldn’t afford to wait even until then.

Thanks to JoAnn’s promising skill behind the desk, she and Lynn could handle things until this nutcase was taken care of. I, in the meantime, would be racing the clock to get my wedding organized. How many days had I already lost because of this woman, assuming she was also the woman who had tried to run me over in the parking lot? She might not be, but hey, she was available to blame, so I blamed her.

I would feel perfectly safe in an anonymous rental car, going to Sticks and Stones to face Monica Stevens in her den, shopping for my fabric, shopping for new clothes—at a different mall, though—going to see Sally. None of that was my usual routine, and I was starting out from a completely different place, a safe place. She didn’t know where I was or how to find me, and it felt great.

After breakfast, Wyatt took me to get another cell phone. To my surprise, he didn’t take me to my cell service provider, but to his, and added me to his account. I kept my same number, of course, but combining our accounts felt startlingly…permanent.

That reminded me of other details I had to attend to, such as canceling my home utilities. I was pretty sure both the phone company and the cable company would continue billing me, even though no home existed there now. And I would need to get an inventory to my insurance company. Man, I’d thought I had my day mapped out, but more and more things were cropping up to eat into my time.

Our next stop was close to the airport, where all the car rental companies were. I got a Taurus—they have nice suspensions—but guess what? It was white. White seemed to be the predominant color for rental cars. I wasn’t entirely happy with white, but Wyatt was totally against the apple red. “Too noticeable,” he said.

I guess.

Then he kissed me and we parted company for the day.

It was just nine a.m., too early for Sticks and Stones to be open. With time to kill, I went to another fabric store. No luck. That was discouraging, but by the time I’d searched the store over, I’d killed almost an hour, so I drove to Sticks and Stones.

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