Her dress slipped to the floor. She picked it up and wandered toward the closet, her slim form clad in a pale blue satin slip. Behind the closet door, she slipped off her heels and pantyhose, and then peered unobtrusively around the edge of the door.
Craig’s shirt was already draped over a chair, and he’d removed his shoes and socks. He was still wearing pale gray pants and his eyes were waiting for her and she loved him totally. They’d had four days to renew loving. They hadn’t wasted a single moment.
“Come out of there.”
“You’re exhausted and you know it. Quit sounding…impatient,” she ordered him.
“I am impatient.”
“You couldn’t be. We were darn near late for the plane because of you!”
“That was hours ago.”
“Honestly. A teenage boy at a drive-in movie has more control than you do.” Sonia emerged from the recesses of the closet wearing her best prim and proper expression.
It was difficult to hold the pose when Craig all but tackled her. His arms snatched her high, like booty; an instant after that her spine bounced on the mattress and Craig followed, his weight unmercifully heavy on top of her.
“Up, you oaf,” she ordered breathlessly.
Craig shifted his leg, the one that was in danger of cutting off the circulation in her thigh. His head dipped down, his lips nuzzling at her throat. Just between her collarbones was a little private hollow where her pulse beat out a rhythm when she was aroused.
She was aroused. He was aroused.
It was all her fault. He thought he’d had it all. He hadn’t, obviously. Sonia had turned into an irresistibly uninhibited, wanton vixen the past few days. He had the feeling she’d planned some farfetched seductions when she’d signed on for that little cruise, but there was no real explaining the explosive lovemaking that had erupted between them. There was something faintly sinful over falling in love with his wife again after all this time. Particularly when he’d never fallen out of love with her to begin with.
His teeth nipped at her shoulder. “You called me an oaf. Sweetheart, you’re going to pay for that.”
“Darn,” she said with mock unhappiness.
“You’ll be sorry,” he assured her.
He uncurled one leg from her, simply because he couldn’t get her slip off otherwise. He hadn’t seen her so burdened with clothes in days. There was still more. One lacy pale blue bra that was see-through, he noted as he held it up to the light. Then one pair of pale blue panties that were also see-through, and had a ribbon in the silliest place.
Sonia snatched the panties from him and tossed them on the floor. “They were on sale.”
“An X-rated sale.”
The only way to wipe the smile from his lips was to unsnap his pants. He darned well made the zipper impossible to undo. He just refused to get out of the way; his lips were pressed full on hers and both his palms were trying to claim her breasts, and those breasts were already painfully swollen…
There was something sinful about falling in love with one’s husband again when one had never fallen out of love with him to begin with. Sin was so nice.
And Craig was the devil. He’d always been an imaginative lover; somehow he’d managed to drag out of her the most liquid, new, almost frightening responses…
His lips tugged on one nipple, and then he left her. Standing next to the bed, he shrugged off the rest of his clothes. He took endless more seconds crossing the room to turn off the light.
“Craig-”
He turned the light back on. “All of a sudden, you have to see every little thing,” he complained. “Who’s going to have the energy to turn off the light afterward?”
“You will.”
“We won’t argue about it,” he said amicably.
He dropped back on the mattress, but it was a big mattress, and for the moment he didn’t touch her. For the moment he just took in the fevered brightness in her eyes, the glow of lamplight on her bare skin, the rapid rise and fall of her breasts. Those breasts tapered to such a tiny waist. Legs stretched endlessly from there.
He knew every inch of the territory. He knew the quiver that touched her spine when his lips pressed against her thigh; he knew the sudden restlessness that ached through her body when he held her against him, length to length. He knew the tension that gripped her like strange fever when he pressed his arousal against her, announcing his intention. His intention was to take her. To claim her. To possess her. Hard and fast.
When he got around to it.
Sonia was perceptive, and gentle and passionate and loving. The past few days he’d willingly forgotten the ghosts that had haunted him. Sonia was a delightful ghost chaser. Whatever had possessed him to think he could not make love with his wife hadn’t stood a chance.
In another realm, though, their renewed physical relationship had only intensified certain feelings he had. He loved her, coveted her, cherished her. His protective instincts were ten times more acute than they had ever been. He wanted to weave a silken web around her, to protect her laughter and her softness and the brimming happiness on her face…
Sonia trembled, feeling his arms reach for her, enfold her, wrap her up against his hard, taut body. Her breasts pressed into his chest; her legs tightened around him. He murmured soft love words in her ear; she couldn’t hear over the wild, sweet thundering of her heart. As he shifted over her, she welcomed him into the core of her, her body surging to meet his with supreme urgency. So rich, so rich…
Nothing could mar it. She felt the incredible power of woman within her, the power to snare her mate, the richness of giving him back the power of manhood. She felt full to brimming, sexually climbing still higher on one level, lovingly soaring past endless skies on another.
He exploded within her only seconds after she’d reached the same delicious release. The silence afterward was like the sweet tumbling down of a soft spring rain, all hush and peace. He held on, staying inside her, as her arms remained wrapped around him.
Her damp cheek rested in the curve of his shoulder. Her husband, her lover, her mate…The world was fine, she knew she would sleep well tonight. Brimming with well-being, she pressed a smile on his chest as a kiss. A stranger had frightened her those long weeks past. Not a man in a park from a forgotten night, but her husband.
He was a stranger no more. She felt secure and safe and sure again.
“Sonia?” He tried to shift; she wouldn’t budge. He pressed a lazy kiss at her throat. “I’m too heavy,” he murmured.
“You just stay right where you are,” she murmured back.
Chapter 14
“Have you seen Marina?” Sonia asked her friend’s secretary cheerfully.
The blonde shook her head with a rueful smile. “She’s been everywhere this morning. You could check downstairs-one shipment was all mixed up-dammit. I know she was expecting you, Mrs. Hamilton…”
“That’s all right.” Sonia swept past, turned the corner into Marina’s office and viewed the turbulent chaos with an affectionate grin. After plopping a half dozen fabric samples on the floor, she found a seat; after plopping another dozen files neatly next to them, she established a footstool, and settled back in comfort with a magazine.
A five-foot whirlwind wafted in shortly thereafter with cinnamon hair wisping wildly around her face and glasses propped on top of her head. Marina took one look at Sonia and groaned. “God, take that glow off your face. I can’t stand people looking that happy anywhere around me. I take it the vacation was a good one?”
“Terrific.” Sonia chuckled. “Where’s your coffee machine?”