When she opened them again, Griff was standing over her. There was a jackhammer pulse in his throat as he watched her. She had no idea how long he’d been there. A pale towel was draped around his hips, and his silver-blond hair had a slick sheen; she knew he’d showered some minutes before. He said nothing for a moment. Only played a thousand and one intricate little games with those dark sensual eyes of his resting on hers in the semidarkness.
He could see her skin, all white satin beneath the water in the aquarium’s glow, breast and stomach and thigh. By contrast, he stood in the half-dark, just the gleam of that leonine head and the expressive eyes glinting. His broad shoulders were all in shadows…and distinctly bare.
“I was afraid you’d fallen asleep,” he said quietly.
She shook her head, instinctively leaning forward and drawing up her knees. He chuckled, almost an imperceptible sound, as if he had read the wild fantasy in her head-that he was a pirate, that she was defenseless. “What did you think I was going to do?” he whispered.
“Nothing.” She leaned her chin on her knee, her eyes never leaving his. “It’s not possible, Griff.”
“What isn’t?”
“Stop thinking it. We’d both drown.”
“What on earth makes you think you know what I’m thinking?”
“I know. Behave yourself.”
The towel dropped just that promptly. She should have known better than to issue a challenge. Or anything he could have taken as a challenge. He stepped into the huge, claw-foot tub with her, sat down and slid his legs under hers, pulling her close. Neither of them was comfortable. Griff’s brows furrowed together, and Susan smiled. He rearranged her legs until they were stretched out behind him and she was straddling his hips; then the furrow left his forehead, and she was no longer smiling. Her skin, like damp silk, took on an erotic flush at the intimate contact. Water now lapped at her nipples instead of her throat; her breasts were displayed like white satin orbs in the water, less than inches from the damply curling hair on his chest. Her bottom was possessively anchored between his thighs, and she couldn’t possibly ignore the portion of his lower body that was like steel beneath the water. Silk steel. He fooled no one by picking up the soap. They were both already clean ten times over.
“Griff, you’re crazy,” she whispered helplessly. “The tub isn’t big enough…”
He drew a circle around her breast with the edge of the soap. Then the other breast. He rinsed both off with his hands. “You are,” he said thickly, “a uniquely beautiful woman.”
“Griff…”
Not so very long ago, she’d been very shy where intimacy was concerned. But shyness was useless around Griff. He set the soap aside and leaned back for a moment, deliberately not touching her. Her flesh became almost painfully sensitive as she felt his eyes possessively sweep over breast and thigh and velvet triangle, then meet her eyes with a lion’s hunger. And a man’s need.
Shyness left her, and a surge of love took its place. The shadowy glow from the aquarium illuminated the brawn of his damp shoulders and hair-roughened chest, the power and almost savage intentness in his features. Ripples of erotic awareness hurried her heartbeat, yet that wasn’t all that made up that sweet rush of love.
She’d loved watching him with his son. He’d never asked Tiger how he’d been doing, but in the course of the afternoon he’d managed to ferret out the incident where Johnny Baker had kicked Tiger in the shin, what kind of lunches the school served, what Tiger did after school, that Mrs. Redding was probably the most beautiful teacher in the entire world. Sensitive to his father’s moods, Tiger had grown tense and unhappy when he perceived Griff’s displeasure over Sheila’s manipulations. Griff didn’t subdue his emotions for his son-neither his anger nor his love. He kept in touch, physical touch, with the boy-a hug here, an easy brush of hand to shoulder there… The shared laughter had rung out in the yard, as Griff had turned boy to match his son’s enthusiastic bug catching.
Susan knew the love Griff felt for Tiger equaled his feelings for Barbara and Tom. This afternoon had just been special, a chance to really see Griff love his role as father, to see how very much he really enjoyed his son.
But there had been more, something subtly different about Griff all afternoon, something beneath the laughter with his son. A fleeting flash of sadness and guilt in his eyes, as well as the openly expressed anger. For a man who usually showed his emotions, he kept the sadness and guilt well hidden…but then Susan had been an expert at hiding emotions all her life. His pain was simply something that she couldn’t stand, all the more because he didn’t even know those big dark eyes of his were haunted with it.
But less so. Less haunted now, as he touched her. She leaned over to press a kiss on his chin. “Griff.”
“Mmm?”
“What are you doing?” Her eyes danced up to his, amused that he was doing such a good job of soaping her fingers for the fourth time.
“The cooties. That’s what we used to call them in fifth grade. When you had to touch a bug-” He watched her face color, and chuckled. Laziness had overtaken that first intense surge of passion; he was glad. Susan was too much fun to play with to hurry anything. He could easily spend a year discovering the feel of her flesh under water, reveling in feminine slopes and hollows, in the way her soft lips parted just so…when he touched, just so. Those fish of hers, that halo of blue light illuminating her expressive features…
Griff had treated her to the McDonald’s take-home dinner they had planned for themselves and Tiger so he could chat instead of cooking. As it was, Susan had spent the saved time hovering over Minnesota Insects, to Griff’s thorough amusement. He knew damn well she would be bringing home The Care and Feeding of Hamsters from her store on Monday.
That, too, was Susan-not just the water nymph who was taking her turn at teasing now, brushing her heavy, warm breasts fleetingly against his chest as she scrubbed his very clean shoulder. He took the washcloth from her hand, dropped it and gently draped his arms around her neck. “Susan. No one is expecting you to be den mother of the month, love.”
“I didn’t-”
“You were perfectly super with him. He’s adored you from the first minute he laid eyes on you.” Griff’s lips twisted. “Naturally. He’s my son, he has good taste. But don’t think I didn’t have the urge to land a solid hand on his backside during the rumpus over the red alligator shirts.”
“Yes. I’ve noticed your tendencies toward violence, Griff,” she said wryly. “You have a mean streak a mile long. Tiger’s just terrified of you.”
He took a nonviolent nip out of her shoulder as punishment for her teasing. Or maybe as punishment for other things. She was driving him out of his mind with her subtle little shifts and movements. Her slim thighs cradled his hips; his flesh was already hot from the silken water, yet the heat in his loins was a different quality entirely.
“I know so little about children, Griff.”
“You know everything about loving people. A four-foot-tall boy is no more sacred than a six-foot-tall man, Susie.” He tilted her chin up. “Listen to me. I love you…for understanding. For being willing to have the kids with us. I want you to love them. But they’re not perfect, no more so than any other children. And I don’t want you to be afraid to tell me your feelings, or to be angry with them-”