Chapter Thirty-Two

 

 

 

It felt like ages before everyone left them alone. Cookie fed them a quick late lunch of kung pao chicken, stuffed them with homemade raspberry sherbet and sent them off to ‘rest,’ with just a twitch of a smile shared by V and Dillon as they said their goodbyes. Kelly was walking now, albeit with a stick, leaning heavily on Lex, which delighted everyone almost as much as it did him. He didn’t bother with taking her to the Meadowlark suite. She could go there later if she really wanted to, but he hoped she wouldn’t.

“Would you like to lie down?” he asked after a long pause in which the two did little but glance at each other nervously and shuffle their feet.

“That would be nice,” she said.

He settled her onto the bed and helped her off with her shoe. The badly sprained ankle was covered only in a soft wool sock in variegated blue, which Lex suspected Greta had quickly knitted especially for that purpose. Once he’d eased her back onto the pillows, careful of the cracked ribs, he sat for a moment just taking in the fact that Kelly Blake was in his bed. Then he asked, “Can I lie with you?” Christ, he sounded like a real idiot. Strange that he suddenly felt so shy.

“I was hoping you would,” she said, patting the mattress next to her. “Besides, it is your bed.”

He kicked off his shoes and settled beside her, touching her with his body everywhere that he could, feeling the curve of her hip, the rise and fall of her strapped ribs as she breathed, the touch of her fingers in his hair. “How am I ever going to get used to this feast of the flesh?” he said, smiling down at her from where he had settled on one elbow.

She raised his fingers to her lips and kissed them. Her eyes sparkled in the late-afternoon light. “Well, for starters, I suggest you go exploring. I’ll guide you.” She kissed his open palm and placed it on her breast, her nipple rising instantly through the thin fabric of her T-shirt. He raked his thumb over it, and she caught her breath in a little gasp and arched up against him. His cock stretched in his trousers, already anxious to play.

“Can I undress you?” he asked, then he chuckled softly. “God, that was a question I never thought to be asking a woman who I wanted to make love to.”

“And the answer from the woman who wants you to make love to her is an unequivocal yes,” Kelly said.

Careful not to force her to move, he slid the shirt up and helped her lift her shoulders until he could get it off over her head. She wore a pale lace bra that did little to hide the peaking of her nipples, and to his delight, the clasp of it was in the front. She watched as he unhooked it, a smile breaking on her face at his sigh, at his dizzy pleasure as she guided both his palms to cup her.

“Christ, woman, I’m never going to make it long enough to enter you, when it’s all I can do to keep from coming just from touching you like this.”

“You’ll manage,” she reassured him. “We’ll go slowly, and if you come, we’ll rest and start again. Besides, we have all evening and all night, don’t we? I can’t imagine Cookie would let us starve if we don’t make it down for dinner.”

“Not much chance of that,” he said. “And I did promise you a party.”

She pulled his head down so that he could kiss and suck her breasts in turn. In his enthusiasm, he pulled nipple and areola into his mouth as deeply has he could, feeling her moans and sighs vibrating against his lips, feeling her swell to impossible heights against the rake and swirl of his tongue. Knowing that it was all in response to his touch made it even better.

“Are you wet?” he asked, pulling away just enough to speak.

“Why don’t you find out?” She guided his hand down to the waistband of her jeans. When he struggled with the button, she opened it for him and helped him with the zipper, then, holding his gaze, she eased his hand inside the elastic of her underwear, down over her soft pubic curls, shifting her hips until her bottom was almost off the bed, until she gave a little cry of pain from the pressure on her ribs.

“Shh! Lie still. Let me do it,” he said. With just a slight cupping of his hand and a stretching of his middle and index fingers, he found the swell of her, folds heavy and splayed, all ready for him, and it was his turn to gasp. “You’re right, you’re nothing like a pear. Jesus Kelly, you’re so soft down there, and so warm.” He caught his breath again as she arched up onto his fingers. “And so slippery.”

“Mmm.” Her voice was a little cat purr as she began to rock and grind against his stroking. “Your cock will be very happy for that. I know how big you are, Lex, and I’ll need to be good and slippery if I’m going to accommodate you.”

Then she gave a little jerk and a gasp, raked her teeth over her bottom lip and sighed. “I see you’ve just found the Tic Tac.”

“That’s a big fucking Tic Tac,” he said, stroking the round wet pearl with his thumb, thrusting and scissoring, circling and probing, just the way she liked it, thrusting in deeply to bring her moisture up and around the swell of her, making her ready.

“The pear was nice,” he said, “but I want to taste the real thing.” He eased her jeans and panties down over her hips, peeled them off her legs and tossed them on the floor, all the while she writhed like she couldn’t lie still.

“It won’t be like the pear, Lex,” she said. He thought he could see just a tiny bit of fear in her eyes, fear that he wouldn’t like the taste of her, or the smell. He’d read enough about women’s attitudes to oral sex to know that for some men it was an acquired taste, but for him it was a no-brainer. It was Kelly, it was the most intimate act of pleasure he could give her. He knew he would love it, even as the seashore scent of her tantalized his nostrils and made his mouth water the way the scent from Cookie’s kitchen did when she baked trout. Only this was better, this was messy and slippery and so responsive to his touch as he buried his face in the depths of her. The salty sweetness of her dripped over his tongue and down his chin with his saliva and, she was right, he felt the tremors of her orgasm clench and release as she bucked against him, fingers curled tightly in his hair as he eased away just enough to see, just enough to watch the clench and release, the spasm and jerk of muscles darkened and wet with arousal, arousal that was because of him.

“Oh, dear God, Lex, I’m in heaven. I’m in fucking heaven,” she gasped. Then she added around efforts to breathe, “Take your jeans off. I want to see your cock. I want to see your lust for me before you put it in me.”

He sat up between her legs and wiped his face on his T-shirt. Then he wriggled out of his jeans in record time, his cock at full attention, saluting Kelly, delighted to be the focus of her desire.

“Come here,” she said. “I want to return the favor.” When he was at a loss, she motioned him up her body. “Straddle me, that’s right. Now come closer, up above my chest so that all I have to do is open my mouth, and you can put your cock right in for me to taste and suck.”

“I’m not sure that’s a good idea,” He gasped, holding his cock protectively.

“It’s the best idea ever. Trust me, and if you come, well, don’t be so naïve as to think this will be the only orgasm either of us will get tonight. I’ve had so many fantasies about you, Lex Valentine, and masturbated so many times with the thought of this moment, this time when you could touch me, when we could touch each other. Trust me, the night won’t be anywhere near long enough to quench the fire.”

So he did as she asked. Her words alone were practically enough to send him over the edge, but he was determined this time, his first time, he would make it good for both of them, and he would come inside her just like he’d dreamed about. That determination wavered sharply, though, the moment she took his cock deep in her throat and cupped his ass to pull him still deeper. It took every bit of control he had not to shoot his wad on the first stroke of her tongue along the underside of his shaft. He bit his lip hard and tasted blood. That was just enough of a distraction, albeit an accident, to give him the second he needed to regain control.

“Christ, Kelly! Holy God in heaven, that’s…that’s…” He forgot how to string words together in a sentence. He forgot how to speak at all other than the odd gasp, followed by an expletive or two. Then, as the haze of arousal parted just enough for him to take in the fullness of what was happening, he noticed that she was rocking and shifting her hips against the bed.

“You’re ready for me, aren’t you?” he managed.

“Way ready,” she said, pulling away from his cock with a wet slurp. She helped him into a condom he’d fumbled from the bedside table then she curled her fingers in his hair, drew his face up to hers and kissed him. “I’ve been ready for you since the moment I first saw you, Lex Valentine, so don’t keep me waiting any longer.”

Careful to hold his weight on his elbows and off her injured ribs, he eased back into position, finding that she had beaten him there, holding herself open with one hand and guiding him home with the other. One small shifting of her hips and a little upward thrust from him, and he was in. Dear God, he was inside Kelly Blake! He was actually making love to her. With a little moan of pain that she dismissed with a shake of her head, she lifted her legs to circle his ribs, then it was all happening at once. They found each other’s rhythm. The give of the mattress beneath them aided Kelly in her wounded condition, and it was a delicious stretch of time that couldn’t have been more than a minute or two. They were both too close to the edge to linger. But it was the exclamation point at the end of the sentence, the reward waited for, the exquisite pleasure of pleasuring the one he loved. When she cried out, at first he thought he’d hurt her, but then he felt it. He felt the tremor and grip, tremor and grip of her body around his erection. He’d done that to her. Fucking hell! He’d made her come like that! And that was all it took to send him over the edge, as though he had totally succumbed to the seashore of her, drowning in wave after wave, spilling himself into her body. Dear God, he’d waited a lifetime for this, and nothing he’d ever fantasized could have prepared him for it. He came until he thought he’d pass out, but always he felt the tremor and grip of her around him, and he had done that for her, he had made her come with his body.

When at last they collapsed next to each other on the bed, gasping for oxygen that suddenly seemed scarce in the Sunrise suite, it felt like the whole world had shifted on its axis, and he supposed that was exactly what had happened. His life had certainly shifted. Careful not to hurt her, he eased Kelly into his arms, feeling the solid weight of her head against his chest, and the press of her heavy nipples against his ribs. This was the way he wanted to fall asleep and wake up for, oh, possibly the next fifty years or so.

 

* * * *

 

They both must have dozed. Kelly woke with him stroking her hair and the occasional kiss on the top of her head. “Did you sleep?” she asked.

“A bit. You did, I know. I’ve been watching you, making a list of all the ways I would touch you once you woke up.”

She smiled and turned her face enough to kiss his nipple, resulting in a sharp inhalation of breath. “I have a list of my own for how I want to touch you,” she said, “so don’t go away.” She eased herself up off the bed. “I have to pee. I’ll be right back.”

When she returned, he had pulled himself into a sitting position against the stack of pillows. Clearly, he was deep in thought. For a moment, she stood and just watched him, completely naked and completely at ease in his nakedness, nakedness she could seriously get used to seeing on a regular basis. “Penny for your thoughts,” she said, settling herself with a careful grunt on the bed next to him.

He pulled her hand to his lips and kissed her ring finger, just above the sapphire he’d placed there only four days ago. “I was thinking, I like the way this ring looks on your finger, and I like the way you look in my bed. Do you think maybe we could consider fooling the press for a little bit longer?” He offered her a quirk of a smile. “Like maybe, I don’t know, fifty years or so.” Then a bright blush crawled up his face. “If you’re okay with that.”

She looked down at the ring and sighed. “Well, I really do like sapphires and I was thinking I’d hate like hell to have to give this little beauty back, and your bed.” She gave it a little bounce. “To be honest, it’s considerably more comfortable than mine. Then there’s Cookie.”

He nodded his agreement. “I pride myself on comfortable beds, and well, who wouldn’t want to stick around at a place where the head cook moonlights for the Avengers? Of course,” he added, “at some point, the press might catch on if we just…you know…stayed engaged for fifty years of so. They might wonder why such a long engagement.”

“I see you what you mean,” she said with a sage nod.

“We might want to consider, if this plan is to work, and we want to keep the press in the dark…you know…getting married at some point.”

“Might do,” she said. “I look good in white, or so Myrna tells me.”

He felt like his smile would certainly split his face as he pulled her close. “I think we might have a plan then. Agreed?”

“Agreed,” she said. Then she straddled him, and it was much later before they talked about anything else.

 

* * * *

 

When she woke again, it was not quite dusk, and Lex was nowhere to be found. With unease rising in her chest, she dressed as quickly as she could under the circumstances, grabbed her stick and headed down the stairs. Dillon was just coming in from the drawing room. He offered her a knowing smile. “Lex is in the studio,” he said. “I think Cookie just filled the cookie jar with snickerdoodles.”

She thanked him and made her way along the garden path and out to the studio, which glowed with light from every window and the big garage door was open to let in the lovely summer evening.

She heard the chink, chink, chink of chisel against stone long before she entered his workspace. She followed the sound back into the main studio to find a corkboard full of sketches of her in different poses and Lex, stripped to the waist, as he usually was when he worked, chipping away. He smiled up at her when he saw her.

“Are you all right?” she asked.

“Never better,” he said. “I had a dream.” With the wave of a hand he, dismissed her look of concern. “Not a bad dream, a really good dream, an inspiration for the Cascadia Hospital sculpture. If it’s okay, I’ll have you do some poses later, but I had to get started. It felt right.”

She looked at the rough sketch on the easel in front of him. It was of a woman standing a bit like Da Vinci’s Vitruvian Man. One upturned palm held the earth above her head, while the other arm cradled an infant to her chest. “It’s beautiful,” she whispered. “And it’s perfect.”

He laid down his tools and slipped into the hoodie. “I suppose it’s the future I have to look forward to now that the nightmares are gone, making love to my wife and having inspiring dreams that drive me from our bed to my studio in the middle of the night.”

“Art’s a harsh taskmaster,” she said.

“Speaking of which, Myrna tells me your agent is after you to write some story about a haphephobic artist who’s saved by the love of a good woman.”

“Myrna told you that?”

“The woman sees all, knows all.”

She told him the story that Alexander Valentine had inspired long before she’d actually met and fallen in love with the real Alexander Valentine, and he listened and nodded. “Well, I for one, think you should share Tom and Sharon’s story with the world.” He gave her a crook of a smile. “If you don’t, Gale Ann Spaulding might just be tempted to.”

“Ah, but hers would probably be a horror story,” Kelly said.

“You two up for dinner or are you just going back to the bedroom?” Dillon appeared in the doorway with a broad smile on his face. “Enquiring minds want to know.” Then he shrugged. “Actually, Cookie just wanted to know how many steaks to throw on the grill tonight. I told her, whether you joined us or not, that you two would probably be ravenous enough to eat half a cow.”

They both nodded.

“It all depends upon what the future Mrs. Valentine wants to do,” Lex said.

After a couple of well-disguised fish gasps that ended in a face-splitting smile, Dillon asked, “And just what exactly does the future Mrs. Valentine want to do?”

She squeezed Lex’s hand and returned Dillon’s smile with a twitch of mischief. “Well, what the future Mrs. Valentine wants to do will definitely be enhanced by a steak dinner in Cookie’s kitchen.” Then she narrowed her eyes at him. “What’s for dessert?”

“Raspberry pavlova, I’m told.”

“We’ll be there,” both Lex and Kelly said at the same time.

Dinner was not without a sense of celebration, especially once the news was out about their long-term plans to fool the press, though no one actually seemed too surprised by it. Kelly didn’t miss the knowing look that passed between V and Dillon. She figured there had been some scheming between those two, but then she figured both she and Lex were pretty used to scheming friends by now, and as she thought of Myrna and Terry and the kids, whom she had broken the news to just before they came down to dinner, she decided she liked that just fine. She took Lex’s hand under the table, and he gave her fingers a squeeze, lingering over the sapphire before guiding her palm to rest on his thigh. Sometimes, she decided, when scheming friends had your best interests at heart, the wise decision was just to stay out of the way and let them get on with it.