The handle of the whip was leather, and still warm where Joseph had gripped it. She slid her hands along the heated leather, taking courage, buying time.
What in the world was she doing? Why wasn’t she taking the fastest exit? Joseph was letting her off easy.
He sat on the edge of the bed, not speaking, not moving, but watching her with an expression as distant and inscrutable as the moon. From the time Maxie could walk and talk, she’d depended on her instincts. People called her madcap and spontaneous and sometimes things not so kind, but what they didn’t know was that she always did what her instincts dictated. She didn’t try to analyze, didn’t sit down and think things through, didn’t weigh the pros and cons, didn’t make long lists like her sister and then spend days revising them. Right or wrong, good or bad, Maxie did exactly what her instincts told her.
Sometimes she regretted her actions, as she did with Joseph’s bedroom. Just as often she was thrilled, as she had been when she’d left Atlanta and set up her own firm. A rash action that appeared wrongheaded at the time had led to the establishment of Magic Maxie’s.
She didn’t know what today’s rash action would lead to. All she knew was that she had to follow her instincts. And they all led straight to Joseph.
She popped the whip lightly along the side of her hip. “Why, Joseph?”
“Just leave, Maxie.”
“No. Not without answers.”
“I don’t even know the questions, let alone the answers.”
The muted whisper of leather against flesh competed with the sound of music, filling the silence that stretched between them. Mirrored tiles in the ceiling caught them in poses of indecision, frozen mere inches apart from each other, paralyzed by emotions too raw, too wild, too new.
From somewhere deep in the house a grandfather clock struck the hour, and outside a sliver of a moon floated above the oak tree and hung there, suspended on branches green with spring leaves.
Maxie put one foot on the path, then the other. Joseph sucked in a sharp breath. Blindly, following instinct, Maxie moved irrevocably toward the bed, toward the unknown.
On many nights such as this they’d played games, they’d teased and taunted each other into a sexual frenzy, they’d found release via the telephone. But every time they were together, an invisible wall appeared between them. They moved toward the brink, and pulled back.
“Maxie.” Joseph’s voice held a warning.
“Don’t you dare say it. Don’t you dare tell me to stop.”
“No more games.”
“You’re right.” Maxie threw the whip and it landed with a loud clunk on the floor. “This is not a game.”
She advanced until she was standing directly in front of him, knees touching. Body heat radiated from him, warming her, giving her courage.
“Look at me.” Slowly she unfastened the last of her buttons. “For you,” she whispered.
He caught her around the waist and held her back. “Don’t tempt me, Maxie.”
“Why not?”
“Don’t ask.”
She covered his hands and wove her fingers between his. “All right, then. No questions, no answers, no more talk.” Kneeling in front of him, she unzipped his pants. “Just sex.”
“Maxie... my God.”
She held him tenderly, in the way of a woman who loves a man. The knowledge flashed through her like a comet. She loved this man. She’d loved him from the first moment she saw him, months earlier, standing in the midst of Tupelo’s elite with his fiancee at his side. Mr. Perfect, she’d called him. And he was. No matter his flaws, no matter hers.
And now it was too late, too late for tender words, too late for proclamations, too late for commitment, too late for anything except good-bye. Maxie was determined to make it a good-bye worth remembering.
Still on her knees, she bent her face toward the dark mysteries she’d uncovered, bent her face toward the sweet, secret warmth and touched him tenderly with her tongue. The shiver started in his legs and stretched upward, to his chest, his arms, his hands, his face, even his hair. Maxie felt this power she had over him and smiled, not with wicked glee, not with triumph, but with a sadness that came from knowing she’d made a remarkable discovery too late, far too late.
“This is madness, Maxie.” Joseph caught her face between his palms and tipped it upward. “Stop now, before it’s too late.”
For an instant he circled his thumbs on her cheeks, then he circled her waist, pulled her upright and held her at arm’s length.
“It’s already too late, Joseph. Don’t you know that?”
A muscle in the side of his jaw ticked. She could almost see the workings of his mind, could imagine him turning over all the possibilities of her statement. He was too smart not to know what she was talking about.
It was too late for them. They had nothing left to lose.
“Button your blouse, Maxie.”
“You unbuttoned it. If you want it fastened, you’re going to have to do it yourself.”
He towered over her, his face a thundercloud. There was no gentleness in his movement as he reached for her blouse.
“First the bra,” she said.
“What?”
“You also undid my bra. You have to fasten it back first.”
“Be careful what you ask, Maxie.”
“I’m never cautious. Don’t you know that by now? Good, bad, or indifferent, I always do and say whatever occurs to me at the moment.”
She was talking to fill up time, talking to cover up her own nervousness. Now that she had committed herself to this course of action, she was having second thoughts.
“Live for the moment,” Joe said. “I’ve never been an advocate.” His eyes swept over her, lingering on her naked breasts. “But if any woman could convert me, it’s you.”
In a swift unexpected move that took her breath away, he bent down and laved her nipple with his tongue. She wound her hands in his hair and pulled him closer,
“Maxie... Maxie...”
His mouth covering her, his tongue hot on her skin, he devoured her. Weak-kneed she grabbed his shoulders and hung on.
He moved from one breast to the other, leaving a trail of hot kisses across her chest. The room became a kaleidoscope of sounds and colors and textures—his dark hair against her creamy skin, his deep-throated murmurings and her soft keen of pleasure, a flash of lightning in the darkened sky followed by raindrops tapping at the window, the whisper of clothing, the bright pink of silk pooling against the carpet, the plush feel of velour as Joe lowered her to the bed.
Kneeling over her, he studied her eyes.
“Are you sure this is what you want?”
Maxie wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of thinking he’d triumphed over her, that he’d won an easy victory, or any victory at all, for that matter. Nor did she want him to think that she was asking for things she knew they would never have.
“Yes, as long as you understand that this is nothing personal.”
His eyebrow quirked upward. “Nothing personal?”
She lifted her stubborn chin. “Absolutely not. You started something and for once you’re going to finish it. That’s all.” She wet her lower lip with the tip of her tongue. “This is purely sexual. Nothing more.”
Instead of answering he pressed his hips into hers. She could feel the power of him, the heat, the overwhelming passion.
“As long as you understand that,” she whispered. “Agreed?”
“I’ve agreed to nothing, Maxie.”
Using the tip of his finger, he drew a line from the center of her lips to the tiny pulse point in her throat.
Shivers raced along her spine, raised the hair on her arms and along the back of her neck. She lay perfectly still, not daring to move, hardly daring to breathe lest the spell be broken.
With maddening deliberation he drew tiny erotic circles at the base of her throat, then moved downward, into the valley between her breasts. Her skin heated up, her face flushed, and she wondered if he could feel the galloping rhythm of her heart.
“You like that, don’t you, Maxie?” She decided silence was her best defense. “You don’t have to answer, your body says it all.”
He dragged his fingertips along the crests of her breasts, pausing to tease her nipples.
“Say it,” she whispered. “Say this is nothing except sex, pure and simple.”
His mouth turned up at the corners in what might have passed as a smile if she hadn’t known him so well. There was no light in his eyes, no mirth in his face, no sense of joy in the quick harsh bark of laughter.
“You’d like that, wouldn’t you, Maxie? You’d like to have what you want, then walk out of here with no residual feelings. No guilt, no remorse, no thought to consequences.”
“Yes.” She felt as if her blood were on fire. If Joe didn’t do something soon, she’d scream. “Just say it... say this is sex, pure and simple, and be done with it.”
“I would be lying. There’s nothing at all pure about my motives.”
He peeled her skirt down her legs, then hooked his thumb under the waistband of her panties. Gazing deep into her eyes, his thumbs pressed hot circles on her skin.
“When I make love with you, Maxie, it will not be simple.” He stripped her panties off, his eyes glowing like hot coals. “It will not be simple at all.”
He stared down at her as if he were trying to decide whether to eat her or truss her up and burn her at the stake as if she were one of Salem’s witches. Then, lion-like he crouched over her and buried his face in her mound of soft dark curls. She burned, she soared, she trembled.
His name was on the tip of her tongue, but she was too full to speak, too full of burning pleasure, of vaulting freedom, of volcanic passion. She tangled her hands in his hair, weaving her fingers through the dark strands.
“You taste the way I imagined you would, like some exotic fruit,” he said.
“Don’t talk.”
She arched toward his questing tongue, caught up in a hurricane of passion that swept her into another realm.
“This is not enough,” Joe murmured. “Not enough.”
He shed his clothes in swift, efficient movements, then lifted himself over her, as magnificent as any man she’d ever seen.
“Say no,” he said. “Tell me to stop.”
“I can’t... I won’t.”
He entered then and she knew that no matter what happened in the days and weeks and years to come, Joseph Patrick Beauregard would always have a part of her, the best part.
She wanted everything at once, the long, slow strokes, the hot, hard pounding. She wanted his mouth and hands all over her. But most of all she wanted the strong silent lover who carried her on a journey that she would remember forever.
The mirrored ceiling captured the reflection of two people, arms and legs entangled, locked forever in the slow, sweet dance of love.
Her hair was like flame on the jungle-animal coverlet, like fire shooting from her head, and she felt as if her entire body had ignited. I don’t want this ever to end, she thought, but she could not say the words aloud, would not say them aloud.
An old adage her grandmother had taught her played through her mind: Pride goeth before a fall. Maxie knew it was true. Both she and her sister had experienced it firsthand many times. “If there is one thing I’ve tried to teach you,” her grandmother used to say, “it’s not to be too prideful, too willful. Lordy, lordy, it looks like I’ve failed.”
B. J. had finally learned to swallow her pride, and look at the prize she won: an adoring husband and an angelic baby.
But Maxie knew she could never swallow hers. If she thought about that too hard, if she thought about the price she was paying, she might start crying.
“Don’t think,” she told herself. Don’t think about anything except this man who filled her heart, body, and soul.
He was a silent lover. She didn’t know whether that was his usual way, or whether his silence was only for this night, for this brief encounter that served as both a beginning and an end.
They tangled the covers around them, then kicked them free again, never stopping their heady journey, never pausing in the hot, headlong rush toward the stars. Tension gathered in her, twisted her inside out, built until it was an explosion that wrenched cries from both of them. Sweat-slick and sated, she clung to him, breathless. He buried his face in her hair, still silent, and when she saw his reflection on the ceiling, it looked as if he were praying.
She wanted to comfort him, to murmur words of reassurance, to whisper words of love and commitment. Her hands hovered inches above his head, suspended in the heavy silence of that exotic room where two bodies still lay joined.
With a groan Joseph stirred. He gripped her close, fiercely, then pulled away. Maxie felt bereft.
For one brief, shining moment he had been hers, all hers. Her body would carry his imprint for the rest of her life, and at night when she lay in her small empty bed in her little yellow house on Maxwell Street, she would think of this moment, of the two of them together.
Joseph reached for his clothes and Maxie reached for hers. They didn’t look at each other, didn’t speak. What was there left to say?
She heard him in the bathroom, the sound of running water, the flushing of the toilet. Small, everyday things.
“Life goes on.” Another of her grandmother’s sayings. Maxie hoped it was true.
The beaded curtain rattled, parted. Joseph looked untouched by what had occurred on the bed.
“I’ll take you home,” he said.
Maxie nodded. She didn’t know whether home meant her house or her car. She didn’t care. All she knew was that she had to get through the rest of her life, one moment at a time.