He pressed her body closer under the sheltering blanket, his movement more fevered. Through their clothing, the thud of his heart pounded against the fluttering of Amanda’s. Their bodies seemed to blend. Amanda flowed into his embrace, allowing herself to be taken. She held him tight, taking him.
His hands touched her face. He framed her flushed cheeks with his strong palms and held her firmly to his mouth, drinking her in. Inhaling her.
A flash of lightning strobed the sky, shocking Amanda’s eyes open. The streaking raindrops froze, the glittering trees showering them from their overburdened leaves were outlined with slashes of white. She waited for the crash of thunder, her arms around his neck, her fingers tangling the neatly combed hair. The distant rumble rolled nearer and nearer, more ominous, then faded.
She felt his assertive hands slide to her back, holding her close, gliding quickly from one position to another, impressing the shape of her body into his palms and arms. They moved around to her breasts, circling tentatively, stroking gently over the soft mounds, his fingers exploring the soft flesh.
His heart was pounding, his breath coming in raspy gasps.
Amanda forced herself to pull away from Marc’s encompassing lips. She inhaled cold, fresh oxygen hoping to bank the fires raging through her body. His scent almost shattered her resolve. He buried his face in the crook of her neck, brushing her hair aside with his fevered cheek, stroking the moist skin with his tongue. Sparks raced around her scalp setting off an explosion of nerve endings that ignited throughout her body.
She must give him some indication that this could not go on…
Thank God his exploring hands had stopped setting fire to her. His breath came in short gasps against her cheek. His body trembled with the force of his self-control. Reluctantly, he forced himself away from her.
In the darkness, she could make out his questioning eyes, his face frozen in a hard, contemplative look. The heat in Amanda’s body chilled as the rain drummed on the protective carriage overhang and the distant thunder grumbled farther and farther away.
His look softened and turned inward, his chest rose and fell more evenly.
He looped his arm over her head and pulled her tight against him again, possessively territorial, tucking the blanket protectively around her. She leaned her moist brow against his hot cheek. He pulled a long, deep draft of air into his lungs.
“You smell like spring.”
The ache in Amanda’s heart was palpable. She felt empty. As though she had been presented with a precious jewel that had evaporated in her grasp.
“It’s that wet dog smell. Gets ‘em every time.”
“Got me.” She could hear the smile in his voice.
The ache began to ease. The outline of the jewel began to re-emerge, tentative, making an effort at reformulating itself. She curled her hand into his comfortable grasp as she fitted her body more firmly against his chest.
Her lips felt bereft.
She turned her face to his. His pupils were black and bottomless.
“You think we could do that first part again… now that we know where to stop?” In her head she had intended the quip to be joking, worldly, sophisticated. In the harsh reality of sound, fighting to be heard over the crunch of the wheels against the wet asphalt and spattering raindrops and the drown of distant city traffic, the words came out more plaintive than she had intended, more tremulous.
She frowned and turned her head away.
His breath was hot against the delicate skin behind her earlobe. His tongue traced the shell of her ear and then the line of her chin until it found her lips and once again they were passionately savoring each other.
The line had been drawn and he wasn’t stepping over it. Just as she had asked. The perfect gentleman. He, too, seemed to have realized…
His lips were like nectar, his embrace totally comforting. Just what she had decreed.
And her warring inner voices were total silent. Both satisfied.
Then why was she able to feel so wonderfully blissful and yet at the same time so terribly frightened she might have just made one of the biggest mistakes of her life?
Chapter 9
AT THE midtown gym, Marc grabbed the barbells, lay back on the incline bench and began to do free weight chest exercises.
His young trainer mumbled something about form and glazed over until he could be of more use to his morning client.
Marc glumly raised the barbells from a wide horizontal, spreading his broad chest to a vertical lift, tightening his pectorals and repeated the circuit.
Over and over.
The tension in his body began to slowly ebb.
One good thing about exercising, which he used to hate with a passion, was the almost zen-like concentration it forced him to maintain.
The first, about his genes: not having to devote himself to the kind of concentrated pain that forced muscles and tendons to grow in a pattern to which they weren’t predisposed. It was just a matter of doing the work and having his muscles respond.
The other extraordinary luck was meeting her.
Marc glanced at his trainer, leaning back against a metal contraption of weights and pulleys, casually chewing gum, his eyes blandly scanning Marc’s body, checking to see that the right fiber packs were contracting, the right bundles of tissue elongating. Simple life. He was proud that none of his “guys” had ever sustained a “major setback”.
He wasn’t used to waiting to be given the go-ahead. That wasn’t the way he usually worked his women.
He sat up in a sweat.
“Gotta cramp? Ya got another set t’ go, y’know.” Chad shoved himself erect, blinking, like a dully grazing stud whose interest was suddenly caught by an interesting movement at the other end of the field.
Marc nodded numbly and lay back. He forced himself to think only of the effort he was expending on the lifting and lowering of the barbells. Something he could control.
Not her.
Amanda was not to be manipulated or controlled.
She had her own agenda.
He finished the sets, took a breather to swig some mineral water and lowered himself prone on the bench again. Chad passed him a bar loaded with heavy circular weights for the chest presses. The trainer brightened. Now he was working. He had to watch his client closely, adjust his form, assist him with the bar, be prepared to grab the weight if he faltered. He was working. He nattered on.
Marc relaxed at the background of piped-in pop-rock and his trainer’s babble. The famous Fonda “burn” seared his chest and arms. Sculpting flesh, as Michelangelo had sculpted stone.
