“Oh, I see. Are you flying home to Montana, or to Wyoming to report to Adam?” Hannah’s expression didn’t alter by even a shadow. She looked as she had the first time he met her, mildly interested but cool and composed. Detached.
Justin felt a wrenching disappointment. He knew, better than anyone, that beneath her facade of cool, composed detachment, a spark lay in wait to blaze into roaring flames of passion.
Dammit to hell! Why was she in hiding from him? For she was in hiding. He had sensed it the minute she had stepped from the elevator and had seen him by her door.
“To Wyoming to confer with Adam, then back to Montana,” he said, working hard to control the anger and frustration building inside him.
“So you’re driving back to Baltimore tonight…or have you booked a hotel here in the city?”
Justin couldn’t read her expression, as she had raised her cup to her mouth, concealing the lower half of her face from him. But her voice was even more detached, cooler. The distant sound of it fanned the flame of his anger. What was she playing at, looking, speaking as if they were nothing more than casual acquaintances, when it had been less than a month since they had been passionate lovers?
Well, Justin decided, getting to his feet and circling the table to her, he wasn’t about to play along. He had been missing her something fierce from the moment she had driven away from him in Deadwood.
Hell, he had tossed and turned every night, even dreamed about holding her, caressing her, kissing her. Damned if he was going to walk away without tasting her.
Coiling his hands around her upper arms, he drew her up, out of her chair, pulling her body against his.
“Justin…what…” Hannah began, her voice no longer cool, but surprised by his action.
“I think you know what,” he murmured, sliding his arms around her to bring her to him, and lowering his head to crush her mouth with his.
He had meant it to be a forceful kiss, but the instant his lips made contact with hers, he gentled, drinking in the taste, the scent, the feel of her. It was like coming home, where he belonged.
The alien sensation rattled Justin deep inside. After the blow Angie had delivered, he’d never believed he would feel such a way again.
Justin was on the point of lifting his head, breaking his near-desperate contact with her mouth, when Hannah curled her arms tightly around his neck and speared her fingers into his hair.
Needing to breathe, Justin raised his head just far enough to gaze into Hannah’s eyes. “No, I am not driving back to Baltimore tonight, nor have I booked a room here in the city,” he said between quick indrawn breaths. “I was hoping you’d let me spend the night here. With you. In your bed.”
“Justin, I…I…”
Her eyes were warm, almost misty, the way they had looked every time she was aroused. Hannah wanted him, maybe almost as much as he wanted her. Justin knew it. Relieved, he silenced her with the brush of his mouth, back and forth over hers.
“Hannah,” he whispered against her parted lips, into her mouth. “I’m on fire for you. Come to bed with me.”
“Justin…”
He silenced her again, damn near terrified she was going to refuse. He ached, not only from the steadily growing, hardening of his body, but inside. He stifled a groan when she pulled her head back.
“Justin, wait, listen,” she pleaded, her fingers tangling in his hair, hanging on as though she was afraid he’d let her go. “We haven’t cleared the dinner things away-or had dessert.”
He laughed, because it sounded so…Hannah. And because the exultation filling him had to escape.
He smiled and rested his forehead against hers. “It wouldn’t be the first time, sweet Hannah. As we did before, many times before, we can clean it up later. And we can have the dessert for breakfast.”
“Dessert for breakfast?” She pretended shock.
Laughing softly, Justin began an exploration of the fine, satiny skin of her face with his lips. “What I brought will do fine for breakfast, or for dessert after breakfast.”
Laughing with him, in a sure sign of her surrender, she tickled his ear with the tip of her tongue. “I have never heard of dessert for breakfast.”
Justin’s body nearly exploded at the moist glide of her tongue into his ear. “Errr…Hannah,” he said in a rough croak, “You’d better lead me to your bedroom before I lose control and take you right here and now.”
“As if,” she retorted, grinning as she pulled away from him, grabbed his hand and started through the living room to a short hallway. “You’ve never lost control.”
“There’s always a first time, sweetheart,” he said, raising her hand to his mouth to press his lips to her fingers. “And I’d sure hate to embarrass myself in front of you.”
Entering her bedroom, Hannah turned her head to give him a wry glance. “That…or are you possibly afraid your loss of control would give me a sense of womanly power?”
“Oh, sweet Hannah, you have no worries in that department,” Justin said, shutting the door behind him and twirling her around into a tight embrace, letting her feel her power in his hard body. “You’ve got womanly power to spare.”
Minutes later, their clothing tossed in all directions of the room, Hannah lay naked, eager, in the center of the queen-size bed that had felt so large, cold and empty for weeks. Also naked, Justin stood next to the bed, tall and proud and magnificent, his turbulent gray eyes watching her as she watched him sheathe himself in delicate protection.
The image would haunt her after he was gone. She knew it, would pay for it, but for now, Hannah could think of nothing except having him beside her, inside her, loving her…if only for this one more night.
She held her arms up to him in invitation. He came to her, stretching his long body next to her own. His mouth hot on hers, his hands implements of exquisite torture.
He couldn’t wait, and with a murmur of need he slid his body over hers, settling between the thighs she parted for him. She couldn’t wait, either. Wrapping her long legs around his waist, she raised her hips in a silent plea.
Justin’s possession of her was fast and hard, exactly as she needed it to be. Their zenith was reached in shuddering, spectacular unison. Though Hannah wouldn’t have believed it possible, the climax was more intense, more thrilling than any previous one she had experienced with him.
She loved him, loved him with every living cell within her, as she would love his child, their child, after Justin was gone. For then, weeping silently, Hannah decided she would never again be a receptacle for his convenience. She just couldn’t bear to be one of the women “the bad boy” visited every so often.
Holding him to her, inside her utterly satisfied body, Hannah drifted into the deepest sleep she had known since leaving him in Deadwood.
Ten
Hannah woke up at her usual time. A creature of habit, she needed no alarm. She was still tired. She really hadn’t slept very much. She ached, but pleasantly so. Twice more during the night, she and Justin had made love.
It had been wonderful. No, it had been more than wonderful. It had been heavenly. Between periods of short naps and long, slow indulgences of each other, they never found time to venture out of the bedroom to clear away the dinner clutter.
Yawning, Hannah pushed back the covers Justin had haphazardly drawn over them after their last romp, and moved to get up. A long arm snaked out to curl around waist, anchoring her to his side.
“Let me up, Justin,” she said, trying to pull back. “I still have to clear the kitchen table, eat something and get ready to go to work.”
His arm held firm, and he rested his cheek on the top of her head. “Take the day off.” His voice was low. “Stay with me until I have to leave for Baltimore.”
Hannah was tempted. Lord was she tempted. But mindful of the vow she had made to herself after their first frantic bout of sex-for that’s all it had been, at least for him, she reminded herself-she steeled herself against his alluring suggestion. “I can’t.” She shook her head and pushed his arm away. “I can’t leave my assistant on her own today.”