She hoped he wouldn’t ask her the number because she had no idea. The personal research she’d done had centered on his medical records: low cholesterol, twenty-twenty vision, no family history of chronic disease, only a variety of orthopedic injuries that were of no concern to her.
“I should kick your ass out of here.”
Despite his words, he didn’t move, and as she felt him pressed hard against her thigh, she knew why. “But you won’t.”
For a long moment, he said nothing. Then he reared back, releasing her shoulders. “You’re right. I guess I’m drunk enough to forget that I gave up groupies years ago.”
He moved to the side of the bed and shucked his jeans. With the bars of moonlight falling across his body, there was something primitive about him and elementally male. She looked away as he tugged on the sabotaged condom. This was it, then.
Her mouth went dry as he turned back and reached for the snap that held her jacket together. She flinched and made an instinctive grab for his hand.
He clenched his teeth in something that resembled a snarl. “Make up your mind, Rosebud, and do it fast.”
“I want to… I want to keep my clothes on.” Before he could respond, she gripped his wrist and shoved his hand under her skirt. Once she’d done that, she released him, because if he couldn’t take it from there by himself, she was doomed.
She needn’t have worried.
“You sure are full of surprises, Rosebud.” He stroked up the length of her stocking, then moved higher, tracing the path of the garter to the point where it met the lacy belt. Now he knew exactly how little she had on beneath her skirt.
“You don’t believe in wasting any time, do you?”
She could barely force the words through the constriction in her throat. “I want you. Now.”
She willed herself to open her legs, but the muscles in her thighs were so rigid, she could barely force them apart. He stroked them, soothing her as if she were a cat with an arched back.
“Relax, Rosebud. For somebody who wants it so bad, you sure are tense.”
“An—anticipation.” Please give me my baby. Just give me my baby and let me out of here.
His fingers brushed the soft hair at the juncture of her thighs, and she wanted to die from the embarrassment of it. She winced as his touch grew more intimate, then tried to turn the sound into a moan of passion. She had to relax. How could she possibly conceive when she was so tense?
“Am I hurting you?”
“No. Of course not. I’ve never been more aroused.”
He gave a snort of disbelief and began to push her skirt to her waist, only to have her grab it at the top of her thighs. “Please don’t do that.”
“I’m startin’ to feel like a sixteen-year-old again, makin’ out in the alley behind Delafield’s Drugstore.” His voice had a husky sound to it she hadn’t heard before, giving her the impression that he didn’t find that particular fantasy entirely unpleasant.
What would it have been like, she wondered, to be the teenage girl making out with the town football hero in the alley behind the drugstore? When she had been sixteen, she was in college. At best, her male classmates had treated her as a kid sister; at worst, they had made snide remarks about “the little bitch who broke the grade curve.”
He trailed his mouth over the bodice of her jacket. She felt the moist heat of his breath on her breast, and she nearly leaped off the bed as his lips found the bump of her nipple.
A hot rush of desire, as unexpected as it was overwhelming, rushed through her. He closed his mouth over her nipple and teased it through the silk with the tip of his tongue. Sensation flooded through her body, waves of it, crashing in on her.
She fought against what was happening. If she permitted herself to derive even a moment’s pleasure from his caress, she would be no better than the prostitute she was impersonating. This had to be a sacrifice, or she could never live with herself.
But Craig had always ignored her breasts, and the sensations were so sweet.
“Oh, please… Please don’t do that.” Desperately, she reached out for him and tried to draw him on top of her.
“You’re mighty hard to please, Rosebud.”
“Just do it. Do it, will you!”
She heard something that sounded like anger in his voice. “Whatever the lady wants.”
His fingers opened her. And then she felt an awful pressure as he pushed himself inside. She turned her cheek into the pillow and tried not to cry.