intent on accompanying him, she felt very brave, like Wonder Woman in full regalia. Maybe proximity to Carey Fersten promoted bravery. She'd jettisoned her prudence that summer she'd spent with him before her wedding, too. “I'm sure I'd only be in the way.” Unclasping her hands, she laced them on top of her head, immediately distracting Carey from his apprehension over her abrupt capitulation. Her breasts swelled in lush provocation above the bodice of the green flower print dress.
“I don't suppose,” he murmured, his eyes narrowing against an invisible wind, “we could close off the front with the girls up there. What would they think?”
“They might think we wanted some privacy. I don't suppose they'll die of shock.”
“In that case, some privacy would be real high on my list of priorities, Ms. Darian.” His gaze traveled slowly up her slender body, lingering gently on the rise of her breasts, then languorously lifting to meet her eyes.
“Let me take care of this, Mr. Fersten,” Molly said, delight in her voice. “How long do we have before we reach your father's?”
Glancing out the window, Carey replied with a heated glance, “Three and a half hours.”
“How nice, since I feel a sudden fatigue. I think I'll tell the girls to keep down the giggles; we're going to take a nap.”
And when she did, Carrie turned around, pressed her nose against the glass divider, and said, “Sure, Mom, I know what you guys are going to do. You're going to kiss.”
Under his tan, Carey flushed to the roots of his hair.
“You're blushing,” Molly whispered.
“She's my daughter,” he whispered back. “I'm embarrassed.”
“She's only teasing. Relax.”
“Sure?”
“I'm s-o-o-o tired,” she breathed, running her fingers down his muscled arm.
“See that we're not disturbed, Jess,” he said crisply. Shutting off the intercom, he pushed the control that slid solid divider panels over the glass partition. Turning back to Molly, he murmured, “Have I told you how sexy you look when you lift your arms in that dress?”
“Like this?”
With another swift gesture, he flipped the switch controlling the window tint, and they were shut off from the outside world behind black glass. “Exactly,” he whispered, touching the soft fullness rising above her strapless top. His bronzed fingers drifted over the satiny mounds, back and forth with a delicate languor she could feel warming her blood. His hands slid down the deep vee of her cleavage, and then further still until they slipped under her breasts and lifted them free of the constraining top. “I'm so glad you decided to take a nap.” His voice was velvet, like his touch.
“A three and a half hour nap,” Molly whispered. “I hope you don't mind.”
“Oh, I don't mind, Ms. Darian,” he murmured, bending low to caress the tip of her nipple with his tongue. “I've always found long naps fortifying.”
“Like Ovaltine,” she whispered, tremors of desire racing downward from his teasing mouth and lips and tongue.
“Not exactly,” he breathed, and gave her a small bite.
She trembled, shivers of pleasure fluttering down to her toes and stirring the first small flame of passion deep inside. She'd never last three hours; she responded to him too readily, too extravagantly. Her nerve endings would be flayed in an hour, charred beyond recognition.
“Slow down, Honeybear,” Carey whispered, unzipping her dress, replying to her as if he could read her mind.
“Yes sir,” she murmured back. His hands were like heated promise on her skin, teasing and stroking as he stripped her dress away and then her panties. Her desire soared recklessly, immune to words or censure.
But his own libido repudiated delay, and he quickened with scorching haste, responding to her fiery ardor. His own pleasure was intensified by the opulent readiness under his fingertips, as though he only need touch her lightly here and softly there and kiss her thus and she was open and wet and ready for him. She was the most passionate woman he'd ever known, he thought with a flaring excitement. “You're way ahead of me, sweetheart,” he murmured, sliding his finger over the dampness between her legs, stroking the slick entrance, slipping his fingers inside her heated wetness slowly at first, and then suddenly deeply so she cried out in pleasure.
“Good,” she whispered when she'd caught her breath, and he smiled.
“Greedy.”
“You betcha,” she said, leaning back into the seat corner, her smile the equivalent of a feline purr. And her husky words were followed by her hands, sliding down his chest lazily to the buttons at his waistline. She unbuttoned and unzipped with seductive slowness. With her he was always in love for the first time, his mind clearly operating in a dimension over which he had no control. He waited for her small hands to touch his arousal, quivering with the rare magic of anticipation. Her fingers stroked the thrusting, pulsing tip, and his erection grew. When she clasped him in a slow rhythm, his eyes shut with the tide of pleasure flowing through his senses.
“Now, now… now,” she breathily ordered moments later, lifting her hips to reach him, her hands clasping his shoulders.
He took her the first time with his clothes still on because he couldn't wait any more than she. But later, when she was straddling him and moving gently above him in mellow contentment, he found time to pull his shirt off. “Nice muscles,” she said, watching the ripple down his torso as he tugged the shirt over his head with both hands.
“I've been staying in shape for my Honeybear,” he replied, his smile pure happiness.
“You don't feel weak, then?”
“I don't know,” he said with a grin, “what do you think?” And he lifted her with his hips.
She didn't speak until the stabbing pleasure subsided. “Arrogant man,” she said, though her sultry voice tempered her rebuke.
“Not me, ma'am,” he drawled in western parody. “I follow your orders right ready. But, sweet missus, when you'all get tired of taking command, it's my turn.” His grin was full of wickedness.
She lay in his arms the last half-hour, their clothes restored, the windows half-open to let the summer breezes alter the cool, air-conditioned scent of lovemaking and feverish bodies. His car was equipped with a small bar so they'd washed simply with lemon flavored Perrier-“like a camping trip”-Carey had said with a grin.
“I adore wealthy young men with soft leather backseats and discreet chauffeurs,” Molly murmured, flushed with pink touches of color on her cheeks, her blue eyes luminous with impish cheer.
“I adore sexy young moms who adore wealthy young men.” His golden hair blew a little in the window breeze, and his smile was lavish.
Carey was humming a romantic fifties ballad from one of those technicolor spectaculars MGM used to make. Feeling very much in love, he realized he'd like to have Molly with him on his search for Egon, if it were only a matter of sleuthing down his hidey-hole. Unfortunately with Rifat in hot pursuit, the risks were considerable. And when the shooting started, he wanted to be able to react without worrying about Molly.
“Why does that sound familiar?”
“It was the theme from the late movie last night, and at the moment I wholeheartedly agree with the cloudless lyrics.”
“We have everything, don't we?”
“That's a fact.” His grin was wide and sunny. “I think my luck's changed.”
“How much do you believe in luck?”
“Not exclusively, but I won't turn it down, either. And your stopping at Ely Lake Park that Sunday was one hundred percent bona fide luck, as far as I'm concerned. I didn't even know where to begin looking for you.”
She felt the solid warmth of his shoulder beneath her head, the pleasant weight of his arm across her stomach, the pleasure in his wanting her. “Happy?”
“Damn right.” And he hugged her closer.
Bernadotte's home was large, built of pale local fieldstone and reminiscent in both its size and sprawling central courtyard plan of a medieval monastery. How appropriate for a hermit, Molly thought. And how inappropriate
