elegance, his air of sensitivity. So different from the stolid Frederick, just the thing to soothe her braised romantic sensibilities.
But the moment to consummate their passion was never quite right for Juan Carlos. She'd been patient with his reluctance, coaxing and reassuring him, bolstering his ego. Finally he confessed to her that he suspected he was gay.
That summer she forged a deep and lasting friendship with him. He credited her for giving him the courage to confront the truth about his sexuality, which was all very well and good; she loved him tenderly and wished him happiness with all her heart. But it left her exactly where she'd been before. Restless and confused. Climbing the walls.
Shortly after that summer, the tombstone dream began to intensify. Her pent-up sexual energy was promptly relegated to second place on her list of problems, and then forgotten altogether.
Until now. It had made a spectacular comeback, at the worst possible time. It was maddening. All her life she had been buffeted about by external events that were hopelessly beyond her control. Now she was buffeted by internal forces that were even more frightening. Her fears, her dreams, her pulse-pounding reaction to Seth Mackey.
She took off her jacket and hung it up. Fear could be faced and overcome, she told herself bracingly, as she unhooked the skirt. She was doing her best to deal with the dreams. And as far as Seth Mackey was concerned, well, that was beyond fear. He belonged to the realm of unicorns and centaurs, demons and dragons. Where even she might find herself magically transformed.
She unbuttoned her blouse and threw it onto the chair, staring into the mirror as she pulled the pins out of her hair. She really should try not to lose more weight. She was starting to look puny. Tomorrow she would put more cover-up on her undereye circles, and deepen the blusher. She shook her hair out of the braid, began to yank off the stretch lace chemise—and stopped. She tugged it back down into place, and thought about Seth Mackey's eyes. Heat rushed up into her face. There was going to be no need for blusher tomorrow.
She smiled a sultry, inviting smile into the mirror. She leaned over and tousled her hair, teasing volume into it with her fingers, and flung it back over her shoulders, letting a few locks tumble across her face. The untamed “queen of the jungle” look. A little lipstick would help, maybe. Something glossy and moist She pouted her lips out as she pulled up the chemise, wriggling sensuously as she tugged it off. She held it out, let it dangle from her fingertips and drop to the carpet.
Now the pantyhose. They were all wrong. She needed thigh-high gartered hose, so she could sit on the edge of a chair, unclasp her stockings and slide them slowly down over her thighs while the pirate watched, his eyes tracing lines of sweet fire across her skin.
As it was, she had to bend over and peel them off, trying not to trip as she tugged them off her ankles. Probably a more experienced woman could make that look sexy, but not her. And her lingerie was tragically dull. Her generous breasts had always made her self-conscious, so she used minimizing underwear bras that made her feel more contained and less conspicuous. For the first time, she wanted something deep-cut and frilly, with lots of cleavage popping out.
Oh, well. She was new at this femme fatale business. Like any other skill, it was bound to take some time to perfect.
She cupped her breasts in the mirror, imagining Seth behind her, his hands sliding over her belly, then cradling her breasts, feeling their softness and heft. She imagined the heat of his bream against her throat, the rasp of his beard stubble as he kissed and tongued her neck and shoulder. Then
It was so vivid. The scene unrolled behind her closed eyes with an almost lurid brilliance. She could actually hear his growl of appreciative pleasure, she could feel the heat and suckling wetness of his mouth as he kissed and licked her, his tongue swirling and tasting. His mouth fastened over her nipple, no longer pale pink, but flushed to deep raspberry, and hard. She wondered what kind of lover Seth was. Slow and languorous, or passionate and urgent. She wondered if he would do to her any of those things she had only read about in romance novels and erotica.
She pushed off her panties, letting them fall to her ankles. Her hand slid between her thighs as the fantasy swirled on, unstoppable; him sinking to his knees in front of her, nuzzling her navel, pressing his face against her mound. Breathing in her scent. Hot and sweet, like a flower in the sun, he had said. The words echoed in her mind, making her sigh with longing.
She touched herself, following her dream lover's movements. His hands teasing, insinuating themselves into the humid folds of slick, hot female flesh. Circling his tongue around the stiff, engorged bud of her clitoris. Her eyes popped open with a startled gasp. Usually her fantasies were rose-tinted and tenderly indistinct, but this one was urgent and hungry and explicitly detailed. It had a will of its own, and she followed it helplessly, staring at herself with wide, frightened eyes. Her face was bright pink, her lips red and parted, eyes shadowy and dilated. She looked wanton, with her panties around her ankles, one hand caressing her breasts, the other cupping her sex.
She looked like a woman half-desperate with desire.
She kicked off her panties and walked carefully on rubbery legs to the bed. She was almost frightened by the restless ache between her thighs, the wild, whimpering frustration. Need pulsed in her body, heavy and hot. She fell back against the pillows and writhed against the velvety flannel sheets, rubbing her sensitized skin eagerly against the caressing nap of the soft fabric.
Her legs fell open, and her fingers slid eagerly into the moisture between her legs. She imagined a barrage of sensual images, all the possibilities, all the positions. Maybe he would open her legs wide and press his face against her sex, sucking her clitoris with slow, tender skill. Maybe his tongue would slide up and down the soft folds of her labia, and then thrust deep into the hot, quivering core of her.
She saw him mounting her, felt the heat, the weight of his hard, graceful body pinning her down. She imagined him entering her with one swift lunge, and then the glorious friction as he slid slowly in and out of her. She would clutch his shoulders and cling to him as he thrust deeper and harder, his steely arms holding her tightly, his eyes gazing into hers, seeing her soul unveiled, incandescent, utterly his.
That pushed her over the top. She arched on the bed with a sharp cry, and came; an endless, shivering cascade of sensation, more intense than any orgasm she had ever experienced. She tugged the sheet across her limp, trembling body and slid into an exhausted sleep.
That night she dreamed once again that she was swimming naked in the glass aquarium. Her hair swirled around her, bright and luminous. But the dream changed before her eyes. The walls of the aquarium dissolved, colored pebbles became glittering sand, fake coral sprigs became huge, towering structures that glowed in the underwater gloom. The plastic castle was gone, but the sunken galleon was real, encrusted with algae and barnacles.
Whatever protection those glass walls had afforded her was gone. She'd wanted to swim with the big fish, and her wish had been granted. The feeling of limitless freedom that swelled up inside of her almost made up for the looming sense of danger as she swam deeper into the fathomless depths of the ocean like a tiny, flickering beam of light.
Chapter 4
It was pure dumb luck that Seth was all alone when he watched the sex show. If any of the McCloud brothers had happened to see it, he would have had to kill them.
She'd been asleep for almost an hour, but still he stared at the screen, his eyes still wide and burning, his cock as hard as granite. If he hadn't personally installed all the equipment, if he hadn't had reason to be almost certain that his surveillance was undetected, he would've concluded that the whole scene had been staged deliberately for him. Why else would she perform in front of the camera in a way precisely calibrated to drive him out of his fucking mind?
Except for the fact that he would bet body parts that Raine Cameron didn't know how to fake. That orgasm
