accident. “I hate hot dogs,” she said.
He looked at her and his grasp tightened a bit. “How could you hate hot dogs? You’re American.”
“I ate too many of them growing up.”
“Faith was crazy for hot dogs back then.”
Faith’s breath caught in her chest and she couldn’t respond. She took a bite of salmon but had a hard time swallowing. Especially when his thumb brushed across her leg back and forth. She gave up trying to eat and reached for her wine.
“Is something wrong with your food?” he asked her.
“No.” She looked into his eyes, at the fiery blue lust and need staring back at her, and she wanted more. More of the hot flush and warmth pooling in her belly. She wanted to fall headfirst into more. Into him. She was a thirty- year-old woman who hadn’t felt the irresistible tangle of lust and need pulling her under in a very long time and she wanted to go. She wanted him to take her there, and she slipped her hand beneath the table. She ran her fingers down his forearm, over his rolled-up sleeve until her palm rested on the back of his hand. His grasp tightened, but instead of removing it, she licked her dry lips and slid his hand between her thighs.
“I think we should all go dancing after dinner,”
her mother suggested. “Faith was always a good dancer.”
Through the linen of her dress, Ty squeezed and she closed her legs around his warm hand. “I have an early morning,” he said.
“I’m tired.” Faith looked at her mother and yawned. “But you two can go ahead. I can take a taxi home.”
“I’ll take you.”
She looked at Ty and said, just above a whisper, “That might be inappropriate.”
“The things I’m going to do to you are very inappropriate.” He lowered his mouth to her ear. “You should probably be afraid.”
“Are you planning anything illegal?”
“Not the first two or three times.” He shrugged. “I’m not sure
Chapter 13
It’s kind of empty,” Faith said as she stood in the center of the darkened solarium. Overhead, stars crammed the clear night sky, and she felt like she was floating twenty-eight stories above Seattle. “Virgil and I didn’t stay in the city very often, so I never got around to doing anything up here. I always pictured lots of plants and cane furniture. Maybe a tiger, like in
“Are you nervous?”
The heels of her hot-pink Chanel pumps tapped across the tile floor as she moved to the edge and looked out. “Can you tell?”
“You talk a lot more when you’re nervous.”
She put her hands against the glass and gazed at the Space Needle, all lit up like a giant flying saucer. On the way home from the restaurant, they’d stopped at a pharmacy and he’d run in and bought condoms. Magnums. “You make me nervous.”
He moved close behind her. “Why?”
Several reasons. Starting with, “Were those magnums necessary?”
“I like ’em snug.”
Oh God. And ending with, “It’s been a long time for me.”
He bent his head and asked close to her ear, “A long time since…?”
“I was with anyone.”
He placed his hands on her hips and pulled her back against his chest, nestling her behind against his erection. “Anyone but Virgil?”
She looked into the shadowy outline of his watery reflection. So tall and powerful and ready. “Virgil was good to me and I loved him, but we never…” She couldn’t say it. She couldn’t betray him even though he was gone. “Our marriage wasn’t about that.”
His hands touching her hips and stomach stilled. “You never had sex?”
She didn’t answer.
His barely visible gaze met hers in the glass. “Not even with someone who could?”
“Of course not.”
“How long were you married?” He sounded incredulous.
She turned her head and looked back over her shoulder into the variegating light touching his face. “Five years.”
He was silent for several heartbeats. “You haven’t had sex in five years? A woman who looks like you?”
“Why’s that hard to believe?” Quiet laughter escaped her lips and whispered across his chin. “You said I was ugly.”
“I think I said unattractive.”
“That’s right. You don’t go ugly just to get laid.” She lifted her face and kissed his jaw. “Should I stop?”
“No. Tonight I’ll take one for the team.” He slid his palm up her stomach and he said next to her ear, “Sometimes being the captain is a burden.” His hands slipped up the slopes of her breasts and he cupped her through the pink linen dress and her white lace balconnet bra. “I’ve had a hard-on for you since that night of the photo shoot.”
Her nipples tightened beneath the brush of his fingers. “That night you made me feel things too.” She arched her back and pressed her bottom into him. “Things I haven’t felt in several years.”
“Then it’s past time to do those things,” he said as his mouth came down and opened against hers.
Against her behind he was hard as a club. He fed her hot kisses as he rocked his hips and slowly thrust against her. She didn’t think she’d ever wanted anything in her life like she wanted this. This warm, inviting flush tightening her chest and flooding the apex of her thighs with aching need. He softly squeezed and kneaded her breasts. She opened her mouth and devoured his kiss. Everything about her life was chaotic, but this wild, forbidden moment felt right. Like something she needed and wanted and desperately had to have. She stood on top of the world surrounded by stars and light and thin air, and Ty was the only thing that felt solid.
She raised one hand behind his head and held his mouth to hers, and the heat of his kiss spread outward, across her shoulder, and down her chest. Her heart pounded and swelled, and she leaned back into the solid, warm comfort of his embrace. Breathing the scent of him into her lungs as his fingers worked the buttons closing the front of her dress until it lay open to her waist.
He raised his head; his heavy lids were lowered to half-mast, and even in the darkness, there was no mistaking the desire burning in his eyes. No mistaking the long, hard length of it pressed into her behind. He slipped his big hands inside the collar of her dress, his fingers slid across her shoulders, and he pushed it down.
She lowered her hand from the back of his head, and her dress slid down her sensitive skin and fell to her waist, and she stood in front of him in her white bra, matching thong, and her pink pumps. His fingers brushed across her stomach and she placed her hands on top of his and moved them back to her breasts. “Touch me,” she whispered and pressed her smooth behind into the rougher texture of his wool pants and his huge erection.
“Here.” Through the stretch lace of her bra, his thumbs brushed across her nipples until they got tighter, harder, more painfully sweet. “You like it when I touch you here?”
She moaned, “Yes.”
“I’ve thought a lot about touching you here.” His right hand slid down her stomach to the top of her panties. “And here. Do you want me to touch you here?”
She nodded. “All over.”
His fingers slipped beneath the lace underwear. “You still shave.”
“Does that bother you?”
He shook his head and lowered his mouth to the side of her throat. “It’s all I think about.” His fingers slid lower and parted her flesh, touching her where she craved it the most.
Her knees buckled and he tightened his hold to keep her from falling to his feet. The heavy ache between her
