Fanta C

Chapter 8

"Thank you again, Adam. I had a wonderful time."

"The pleasure was mine. Good night, Elizabeth. I'll see you soon."

He brushed his lips across her forehead. She gave him one last smile, then slipped through the front door of her house. The living room was dark. She took several groping footsteps toward the nearest lamp, but before she found it, Thad's voice lurched at her from out of the darkness.

"Have a good time?"

"Lord," she exclaimed, "you scared me to death." Switching on the lamp, she found him sprawled in the corner of her sofa. He'd taken off his boots; they were on the floor. The sport coat he'd had on earlier in the evening was lying across the arm of the easy chair. His shirt was still tucked in, but barely, and it was unbuttoned to his waist.

"Have a good time?" he repeated through lips that barely moved.

Idle curiosity hadn't prompted him to ask. Not even polite interest. His voice was only a hair breadth above a growl. In her present mood, Elizabeth took offense. Her ego had been bruised, but she would be damned before she'd let him know it. Not that her personal life was any of his business in the first place.

Flashing him a dazzling smile, she said, "I had a marvelous time." For emphasis, she executed a delightful little shiver which won her his glower. "What are you doing sitting in the dark?"

"What's wrong with the dark?"

"Nothing. But why aren't you in the den watching TV?"

"I didn't feel like it."

At the moment she didn't like him very much. She took exception to his casual slouching on her sofa, and to his open shirt, but especially to what was resting on his flat stomach. A highball glass.

He caught the direction of her gaze and tilted the glass toward her in a mocking salute. "Care to join me in a nightcap?"

"No."

"I hope you don't mind that I helped myself."

She did mind. Not that he had poured himself a drink from her small stock of liquor. What she minded was that he wasn't being his normal, nice self. He was being as surly as a street thug. And why? Was he regretting having baby-sat for her? What she minded most, however, was that he was still attractive in spite of his belligerence. Maybe even more so.

She tossed her purse down on the hassock in front of the chair. "No, I don't mind that you helped yourself to a drink. Did the children give you any trouble?"

"None at all. Did you give Cavanaugh any?"

She glared right back at his censorious blue eyes. "I don't like your tone of voice, Thad."

He rolled off his spine into a sitting position and placed his glass on the coffee table with a solid thud. His shirt fell open, revealing that muscled, hairy chest that she was trying to keep her eyes away from. "Well, that's just too damn bad, Elizabeth. Because this is the tone you're gonna get tonight."

"Wrong. I'm not going to listen to you at all." She drew herself up straight. "I appreciate the favor you did for me tonight. Thank you. Now I think you'd better leave."

Reaching the front door and dismissively holding it open for him was her goal. She never achieved it. No sooner had she given him her back, than he sprang off the couch as lithely as a panther and grabbed her upper arm. He spun her around to face him.

"Do you know what time it is?"

His rough treatment stunned her, so for a moment, the question seemed out of context. But then it dawned on her that it was rife with nasty implications. "Close to one-thirty, I believe," she replied sweetly. "Why? Is your wristwatch broken?"

His jaw knotted with fury and a muscle in his cheek twitched dangerously. "Why are you coming home so late? What were you doing all that time with Cavanaugh?"

"Having dinner."

"For six damn hours?"

"Be quiet. You'll wake up the children."

He lowered his voice, but repeated his words in an accusing hiss. "I never had a meal that took six hours to eat."

"After dinner we went dancing." One dance around a postage-stamp-sized dance floor hardly constituted "dancing," but out of sheer spite, she wanted Thad to think that Adam and she had cut a swath of gaiety through the city's nightclubs.

He sneered. "Dancing?"

"Yes, dancing. Adam likes to dance as much as I do."

"And after that what did you do? Where did you go?" Deliberately she lowered her eyes, trying her best to look discomfited by the question. "You went to his room, didn't you?"

"Room? Ha! That word falls short of describing the penthouse on the top floor of the Hotel Cavanaugh."

The taut skin across his cheekbones stretched even tighter. His eyes were cold with rage, yet hot with jealousy. They narrowed on her face as he said sibilantly, "You slept with him."

She wrested her arm free. "You are my neighbor, Thad, and up until a few minutes ago, I thought you were my friend. You have never been my father confessor." She drew a shaky breath. "Now kindly leave my house."

She didn't even wait to see him out. After picking up her purse, she turned her back on him and marched upstairs. She tiptoed into each child's bedroom and was relieved to see that they had slept through the shouting match.

The instant she entered her bedroom, she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror and noticed how rosy her cheeks were. Thad's accusation hadn't brought color to her cheeks because it was so close to the truth, but because it was so far from it.

She stepped out of her shoes and took off Lilah's suit. She hung it on its padded hanger, placed it in her closet, and finished undressing. After dropping her nightgown over her head, she moved to her dressing table and gazed at her reflection. She said to it, "You're quite a siren, Elizabeth Burke."

Her nightgown matched her mores; it, too, was from another era. Made of white cotton, it had a wide scooping neckline and sleeves that ended in gathered ruffles at her wrists. There was a deep eyelet flounce on the skirt. Old-fashioned and quaint… just like her, or so everyone apparently thought.

Smiling wryly, she picked up her hairbrush and used it to destroy the thirty-dollar hairdo that was so out of character. As she did so, she began laughing softly to herself, recalling how her feet had floated over the carpeted floor from the private elevator to the etched glass doors of the penthouse.

She had been thinking that at last she was going to live one of her fantasies. She'd been a virgin when she married John Burke. He was the only man she'd ever slept with. Even her own sister would find that hard to believe, but it was true.

Tonight, she had thought, why not join the rest of the human race? Why not take an opportunity when it was offered? No exercising sound judgment. No consideration for the consequences. Just going with the flow. Just enjoying a sexual encounter for no reason beyond the physical pleasure it would bring. "Good-bye to Sandra Dee." Isn't that how the song went?

Sandra Dee was tedious. Elizabeth was ready to be the bad girl for a change. They had all the fun. She was sick of being Miss Goodie Two Shoes because Miss Goodie Two Shoes was dull, dull, dull. Every day she handled merchandise that catered to romance, but it was always for someone else's romance, never her own.

The only time she ever shed her inhibitions and her stifling cloak of morality was in her fantasies. As a result, life was passing her by. The years would slip away. She couldn't think of a more pathetic picture than that of an old lady lost in her fantasy world and having nothing else to sustain her, not even bittersweet memories of actual love affairs.

So when Adam Cavanaugh had opened the doors of the penthouse and ushered her inside, she had virtually drifted in, willing to taste the forbidden fruit of modern sexuality.

But the joke had been on her.

Adam had been passionate, all right. Passionately excited… about the new hotel he was building in Chicago. He had led her into the bedroom, his eyes sparkling with promise… to show her the scale model of the new hotel. His voice had trembled with desire… to see this model become a reality. He'd been orgasmic… about what this latest addition could mean to his fleet of hotels. Afterward, they had talked shop over Danish and coffee which he'd had room service bring up.

Smiling wistfully over her own naïveté, Elizabeth laid her hairbrush down and turned away from the mirror. As she did so, there was a soft tap on her door. "Come in, darling," she said.

Thad Randolph stepped across her bedroom threshold and closed the door behind him. The latch clicked shut. Elizabeth stared at him, aghast.

"Who were you expecting? Cavanaugh?"

Rapidly recovering from her shock, she snapped, "Actually, I was expecting one of my children. I didn't think you'd be rude enough to go creeping through my house in the middle of the night, especially after I ordered you to leave."

"I hadn't said everything I wanted to say."

"Well, I'd heard everything I wanted to hear."

"Like how irresponsible you're being? I would have expected more out of a woman like you."

"Expected more of what? And what do you mean, 'a woman like' me? What sets me apart from every other woman?"

"Discretion. Decency. And intelligence. You know that Adam Cavanaugh is a playboy, don't you? You have no business messing with a smooth operator like him."

"He's not a smooth operator. He's a gentleman in every sense of the word."

He advanced into the room. Elizabeth got the impression that he was keeping his voice low only for the sake of the sleeping children whose rooms were at the opposite end of the hall. She also detected the smell of liquor on his breath. Apparently he'd spent his time downstairs fueling his anger with another drink.

"If he acted like a gentleman, it was only because he knew that's what he'd have to be to get you in his bed. But the only thing that separates him from the sharks who cruise the streets picking up girls is the price of his suit. Or is that what has you so starry-eyed? His money?"

"Absolutely not! I like him. He's interesting and — " It suddenly occurred to her that she didn't have to justify anything she did to Thad Randolph. One arranged date to an elementary-school Fall Festival was hardly tantamount to posting banns. She placed her hands on her hips. "What gives you the right to cross-examine me, Mr Randolph?" Then, assuming the provocative posture of a coquette, she angled her head to one side and batted her eyelashes Southern-belle style. "Or are you concerned for my virtue? Are you lecturing me for my own good?"

She had never heard spoken aloud the word he said then. It singed her ears. The vulgar expletive was particularly paralyzing coming from soft-spoken, kind Mr Randolph. That's why she was rooted to the floor with amazement when he lunged forward and caught her shoulders between his hands, shaking her slightly.

"Dammit, Elizabeth, you wouldn't know what was good for you if it walked right up and… and… oh, hell."

His mouth came down hard. It was a fiery, possessive, savage kiss that enraged her. She raised her hands to his chest and disconcertingly encountered bare skin. Despite the initial shock, she gave a mighty push.

But he wouldn't be budged. Nor would he be denied. When she tore her lips free of his and tried to avert her head, he sank all ten fingers into her hair and held her head a helpless, immovable captive between his strong hands.

"Kiss me back, damn you."

He thrust his tongue into her mouth, swiftly and surely. The violation was so absolute, so irrevocable, that it was like experiencing the breach of virginity all over again. Reflexively she arched against him. Her fingers curled inward, but barely dented the solid muscles beneath them. Her nightgown was sheer, a negligible shield against his virility. All his anger and frustration seemed to be concentrated in his thighs and lower body. They were rock-hard and unyielding as they pressed into her softness.

But more distressing than his possessiveness was her reaction to it. A wildfire of sensation radiated from the tops of her thighs to the tips of her extremities. She struggled against this involuntary response. "Stop this, please, Thad."

His answer was to sweep her up into his arms and carry her to the bed, where he unceremoniously tossed her down. This reversal of his benign personality astounded her so much she couldn't move. She lay there and stared up at him with incredulity as he angrily shoved off his shirt and went for his belt buckle.

"What are you doing?"

"That should be obvious." He unbuckled his belt and unzipped his pants, but didn't remove them. Instead he sauntered toward the bed. Fighting the urge to stare at the wedge of dark hair his open trousers had exposed, Elizabeth shrank from him and cowered against the headboard. Grinning triumphantly, he reached down, grasped her wrist, and hauled her to her feet so abruptly that her teeth clicked together.

He planted the heels of his hands at the small of her back, curved his fingers down over her derriere, and jerked her against him. Lowering his head, his mouth sought her evasive lips once again. When she failed to comply to his silent demands, he brought one hand around and squeezed her jaw between his fingers. His lips forced hers apart.

She moaned, first in outrage, then in helpless surrender, as his tongue slid in and out of her mouth in so sexual a cadence she felt her bones melting.

He recognized her capitulation within a heartbeat. His tongue ceased to be a plunderer and became a lover, stroking her mouth to ecstasy. By slow degrees, her struggles ceased, her body relaxed and became pliant, molding itself to his, reshaping itself to fit his steely contours.

"Elizabeth." He groaned. "Dear Lord, Elizabeth."

His open mouth moved down her neck. His hand searched for and found the buttons on her gown, but they stubbornly refused to come undone. Arousal gave him superior strength, which the daintily tucked and pleated bodice couldn't withstand. The sound of tearing cloth joined that of their ragged breathing. The nightgown dropped to the floor, creating a puff of air when it landed around her ankles.

His parted lips followed the curve of her breast. Then he lifted his head and visually devoured her nakedness. He cupped one breast in his hand and played with the dusky crest until it became stiff. Growling with gratification, he ducked his head and whisked it with his tongue, again and again, until Elizabeth clung to him for support.

He swept her into his arms. Only this time, when he deposited her onto the bed, he did so with gentleness. His eyes were alight with passion, not anger. His face was taut with desire, not enmity.

She stared up at him with wide-eyed misapprehension as he backed off the bed and removed his trousers and a pair of jockey briefs. When he lay down beside her, he was naked. And warm. And hairy. And manly. And wonderful.

He raised her hand to his lips and kissed the palm, then carried it down to his sex. He acquainted her with the dimension, the power and strength, of his desire for her. "This gives me the right to ask, to know. Did you sleep with Cavanaugh tonight, Elizabeth?"

"No. Of course I didn't."

He stared deeply into her eyes, searching for signs of mendacity, but saw only leaping arcs of desire. He impressed a hungry, twisting kiss on her receptive mouth. His sex became even fuller within her caressing grasp. He nudged her knees apart and settled himself heavily within the cradle of her thighs.

In one long, slow plunge, he imbedded himself between the stretching walls of her body. Elizabeth, thrilled with his magnificent strength, brought her knees up to accommodate him. He moaned with supreme satisfaction and buried his face in the perfumed cloud of her hair which was spread out on the pillow.

Though it seemed impossible, he delved deeper into her with each rhythmic push. She felt those supple contractions against her hands which greedily drew him closer, higher. He kissed her ears, her throat, and, as his thrusts accelerated, her mouth.

After several moments she clasped his head and held it away from her. Her breath was choppy; her flushed breasts rose and fell with each shallow pant. "You don't have to wait on me, Thad."

He looked surprised, then smiled tenderly. "Yes I do."

"No, really. You don't have to do that for me."

"I'm not," he said hoarsely. "I'm doing it for me."

She gave a joyful little gasp when he slid his splayed hands beneath her hips. He rubbed his face against her nipples, once, twice, letting her feel his cheeks, chin, nose, and tongue against them.

With his next deep thrust, her neck involuntarily arched and she lost herself in this splendid mating rite. Her hips responded to his clenching fingers. She ground her body against his, wanting more, always more.

And when she was seized by a rush of sensation so intense she couldn't contain it, she bit her lower lip to hold back a scream of pleasure. The immensity of it was compounded when she felt, deep inside her, the staccato spasms of his release.

Neither knew if it was seconds, minutes, or eons that they lay in a state of complete exhaustion. Thad was the first to move. He propped himself on one elbow and gazed down at her.

"You're beautiful," he said, still breathing unevenly.

"You think so?"

"Oh, yeah," he drawled, smiling and nodding his head.

His unhurried caresses matched his inflection. He drew his index finger across her chin, down her throat, and then continued across her collarbone. From there it meandered over her breasts, following the high curves and dipping into the shallow valley between them. He traced a faint white stretch mark.

"I've been a mother twice," she reminded him apologetically.

He only growled with pleasure. "You certainly have."

Leisurely he circled each nipple with the tip of his finger until they both responded prettily. Lowering his mouth to one, he flicked it with his tongue, then closed his lips around it and sucked gently. Elizabeth made a whimpering sound.

"You like that?" he asked, moving his lips over the glistening bead of flesh.

"Yes."

"Good. So do I. Very much." He covered her other nipple with his mouth and rugged at it hard enough to give pleasure, but temperate enough to prevent pain. He raked his teeth against it and plucked at it lightly with his lips. "I was dreaming of this when you woke me up the other day. I was making love to your sweet breasts."

"You said as much."

"I've had some wonderful dreams about you lately, but you never felt this good against my tongue in any of them. And nothing I've ever dreamed of tasted as good as this."

She had thought that John Burke was a romantic man. But compared to her late husband, Thad was Cyrano de Bergerac. He had the soul of a poet, but the carnal appetites of a sultan.

"You're quite a lover, aren't you, Thad?"

He raised his eyes to hers, at first thinking that she was teasing. But when he saw that she was serious, he answered in kind. "I've had very few complaints from the women I've been with."

"And how many is that?" Regretting the words the moment they were out, she turned her head into the pillow. "I'm sorry. Forget I said that. I have no right to ask."

After a lengthy pause, he said softly, "I bought the teddy for you." Her head came around and she stared up at him, speechless with surprise. "That's right. For you. There is no other woman right now." He reshaped the underside of her breast to fit his hand and fondled her as he spoke. "When I got back from Vietnam, my fiancée ditched me for another guy. Actually, she had ditched me long before I got back but she was kind enough not to write and tell me so.

"Since then, I've kept my relationships brief. I took what I wanted from them, gave back only enough to salve my conscience, then split while lust was the only thing the woman and I had in common. I'm not a saint. Never pretended to be. So, yes, I've been with a lot of women.

"But I never allowed myself to focus on any one woman because, frankly, I liked being single. And," he added, with a shrug, "I guess maybe I was afraid to fall in love and be jilted again. Anyway, I liked my life the way it was.

"Then I moved here. Your kids were so damn cute, I began to have second thoughts about my lifestyle. Every now and then I got a hankering to have kids of my own."

He drew a deep sigh. "And then, of course, there was you. I'd catch myself peering through trees more often than not when I heard your car pull into the driveway. Whenever you came into the backyard I made up reasons to be outside myself just to get a glimpse of you, to see if you were as pretty as you looked from a distance. But you never initiated a conversation, so I left things alone. When I got lonely, I told myself that I was lucky and damn clever to remain unentangled.

"I thank providence for stranding that kitten up in the tree. It gave me a reason to come close." He ran his finger down her cheek. "The instant I looked into your face, the top of my head blew off. And every time I've seen you since then, I've wanted to be in bed with you, doing this."

His voice lowered to a seductive pitch. "That night I caught you by the water hydrant, I barely stopped myself from taking you against the wall."

"Why didn't you?"

He registered surprise. "Would you have let me?"

"I honestly don't know. Why didn't you at least try?"

His eyes looked turbulent, as though he were wrestling with the decision of whether or not to tell her. Finally he met her gaze squarely and said, "Because I thought then that I only wanted to have you sexually. And you deserved better than that."

Her gaze flickered away from his. His blunt honesty was unnerving. "So why did you come into the shop the next day?"

"I couldn't stay away. I wanted to get another look at you in the daylight, to convince myself that you were real. You were." He bent over her and planted a solid, hot kiss on her mouth. "Were you ever."

After another deep kiss he said, "So there I was in Fantasy, damn sure I wanted you, but unsure how you felt about me. I decided to test the waters by trying to make you jealous."

"That was a sneaky, rotten thing to do."

He smiled mischievously. "But it worked, didn't it?" She clamped her lips shut and refused to answer. "Come on, now. I made an ass of myself tonight when you came in from your date with Cavanaugh. Can't you admit to even a trace of jealousy?"

"All right, a trace. I thought it was extremely unchivalrous of you to come into my store to buy a scandalous piece of lingerie for your mistress."

"Mistress?" he echoed, laughing at the old-fashioned term. "Feel free to come over and slip into the teddy and stockings any time." He murmured the words against her throat. "They're still wrapped up in pink tissue paper, even though I've taken them out and played with them a few times."

"How perverted."

"Hmm. I imagined your breasts filling up those lace cups. Your nipples straining against them."

He kissed her thoroughly. His hand sawed back and forth in the hollow of her waist, then flattened against her stomach. He slid it down to cover the triangle of tawny hair. Elizabeth flushed with embarrassment when he ended their kiss so he could watch as his fingers explored. He let the pale curls ensnare them.

"So pretty," he whispered. "So soft and sexy." And that was only the beginning.

"Is this… what you, uh, had in mind… when you put this… hmm… this hammock here?"

"Can you think of a better use for it?"

She sighed. "No."

Half an hour earlier he had said, "Walk me home."

She had thought the idea was crazy, but since she was reluctant for this night to end, she'd consented. She slipped on her ripped nightgown when he tossed it to her after retrieving it from the floor.

He'd stepped into his slacks… nothing else… and carried the rest of his clothes. They had crept out of the house, careful not to awaken the children, and left by way of the back door. Neither of them had noticed before how loudly its hinges squeaked until they pulled it open.

Laughing, and feeling wonderfully, naughtily adolescent, they had tiptoed across the cold, damp grass toward his house. Along the way, they stopped several times to kiss and caress. He had suggested that they try out the hammock he'd hung so well between the two trees. Elizabeth had made a bawdy crack about everything he had being well hung and he'd laughed and hugged her and told her she was an adorable, delightful contradiction.

So now they lay in the hammock. They should have been cold, but they weren't. Elizabeth was oblivious to the chill, even though the long skirt of her nightgown was bunched around her waist. She wasn't cold because Thad was lying on top of her… and inside her.

The arches of her feet, they had discovered, fit his calf muscles perfectly. That's where she rested them, when she wasn't reaching down to the ground to give the hammock a gentle push with the tips of her toes. The hammock's rocking motion was lazy, but heightened their sensations of each other a thousandfold.

"I didn't know you could — I mean, it's been — How can you stay — "

"Hard?" he asked. "How can I stay hard for so long?"

"Yes." She groaned as he pressed higher. "It's nothing short of a miracle?"

"It's nothing short at all." He bobbed his eyebrows and grinned devilishly.

She laughed. The delicious vibration caused him to wince with pleasure. "We've been here for… what? Ten minutes?"

"Yeah, but that's nothing," he told her around a kiss. "I've been hard for almost two weeks."

"What?"

"Ever since I put my hands around your waist and lifted you out of that tree. The top of my head wasn't the only thing that nearly blew off."

"My composure slipped too. Even though you treated me with the respect befitting a neighbor widow lady. Nothing at all like the furious man who almost raped me tonight."

"Admittedly, I was furious. I didn't hurt you, did I?"

"No," she replied, touched by his concern. "I wasn't afraid you'd hurt me. But I didn't know you could be so aggressive."

"Only when sorely provoked and slightly drunk."

"Why were you sorely provoked and slightly drunk?"

"Because I couldn't stand the thought of you doing this with Cavanaugh. With anybody but me."

His honesty disarmed her. "Are you always so candid?"

"To a fault."

"I'm glad you don't play games. I admire straightforwardness."

His eyes turned dark with renewed desire. "Do you?"

"Yes."

"So if I wanted something," he said huskily, "you'd rather I come right out and ask instead of beat around the bush?" He dusted her lips with his.

Her heartbeat speeded up with excitement. "Yes."

"Lower the top of your nightgown," he whispered.

She hesitated for only a moment, then slowly raised one hand to the lacy, elastic edge. Her breast swelled creamy and smooth above it as she gradually pulled it down. Thad groaned when the lace skimmed her nipple, caught on it, and drew it even more erect. At last her entire breast was revealed and she made to withdraw her hand.

"No, leave it there. Right there. Oh, God."

Staring fixedly at her hand and the idle movements of her fingers, he began to lightly grind his body into hers. Then not so lightly. The rotations quickened and her hips rose to meet them. Seconds later it ended in a frenzy of simultaneous explosions.

It took a long time for them to garner enough energy to leave the hammock and walk to his back porch. Holding the screen door open, he leaned out for one last, lingering kiss during which his tongue made sweeping, swirling motions inside her mouth. "I wish I could sleep with you," he said when they finally drew apart.

"So do I."

"Let me."

"I don't want the neighbors to see you sneaking out of my house at daybreak. Or let my kids find you in bed with me in the morning."

"No, I guess not."

"Please understand, Thad."

"I do." He lifted her hand to his mouth and kissed it. "But I'm inviting myself to breakfast. What time should I be there?"