“I never came close to fainting.”
Matt suppressed a smile, watching Annie from beneath partially lowered eyelids. He was sprawled on a blanket spread on the grassy banks of the Chattahoochee River. She was kneeling a foot or two away from him, searching through the contents of a nylon knapsack.
Despite her contentious tone, Annie looked radiantly relaxed. Hours of rafting beneath an August sun had given her skin an apricot glow and added scattered glints of bronze to her wind-ruffled hair. While her attire—an oversize work shirt, trim denim shorts and ancient canvas sneakers—wouldn’t win any fashion awards, it suited her tomboyish litheness perfectly.
“You simply had an irresistible urge to collapse onto the nearest sofa and put your head between your knees, hmm?” Matt queried mildly, scratching his chest. He wondered, not for the first time, whether his companion was wearing a bra. The loose fit of her pale blue top made it impossible to be sure. But every once in a while, a breeze molded the wash-faded garment against her upper body in a way that suggested there was little, if anything, between it and naked skin.
“You were the one who forced my head down,” Annie reminded him, pulling a bottle of sunscreen from the knapsack and setting it next to her. “I’m surprised I didn’t need a chiropractic adjustment after you got through with me.”
“Sorry,” Matt returned, unrepentant. He shooed a pair of flies away from his nose with a lazy wave of his right hand. “I guess I overreacted to seeing your face go white and your eyes roll up. Next time I’ll just let you keel over.”
“There isn’t going to be a next time.”
“Then you admit you almost passed out.”
The assertion earned him a sharp, sideward glance. “I admit nothing. Ever.”
Matt released the grin he’d been holding back. For three weeks, Annie and he had been bickering about her response to his confession that she was his dating ideal. Although he recognized he was using the snappy give-and-take as a means of buffering himself against the full implications of his admission, he still found the exchanges exhilarating. He suspected his partner in repartee felt much the same way.
The dispute over her near-swoon aside, there was no doubt that Annie had been stunned when he’d revealed the emotional reality he’d finally faced up to after seeing her with Trent Barnes. That she’d very much wanted to believe what he was telling her had been obvious to him. He’d seen it shining in her eyes. He’d heard it singing in her voice.
That she’d been wary—even afraid—of believing what he was telling her had been obvious, as well.
“It goes back to what I said before, Matt,” she’d declared earnestly, her face still paler than normal. “You have to give this some time. These women you’ve been going out with are...are...well, they’re new to you. You’re not used to them. But I’m familiar, you know? I mean, we’ve been close for more than three decades. So what you think you’re feeling toward me—” she’d gestured “—may be the result of our being comfortable with each other.”
“Comfortable?” he’d repeated, sitting down next to her. “Annie, if ‘comfortable’ is how I’ve felt around you during the last two months, God save me from ever feeling awkward or uneasy. I don’t think I could survive the experience. More to the point, I don’t think I’d want to.”
Annie’s expression had changed then, with wonder beginning to win out over wariness. A hint of color had returned to her cheeks. Her lips had parted. After a moment she’d veiled her eyes with her lashes as though sensing how revealing the look in them must be.
“I thought it was just me,” she’d said, as much to herself as to him. “When you started acting differently toward me after we kissed, I thought it was because I was being, uh, well...” She’d gestured as she had before, her slender hands trembling ever so slightly. “You know.”
“Oh, yes,” he’d affirmed feelingly. The need to touch her had welled up inside him. He’d succumbed to it after a brief struggle. Shifting his weight, he’d slipped an arm around her. She’d resisted for the space of a heartbeat, then melted into his embrace. “I very definitely know.”
Except for a tender kiss exchanged on the threshold of Annie’s front door many hours later, that cuddling had been as intimate as their physical contact had gotten that night.
This wasn’t to say that Matt hadn’t wanted to make love with Annie. He had. Desperately. His body had thrilled in response to her nearness. His brain had flooded with a rush of erotic images. Yet something deep within him had made him hold back.
Something deep within him was still making him hold back.
Matt had thought a great deal about exactly what this “something” might be during the last twenty-one days. He’d come to the conclusion his reticence was rooted in a sense that there was no question of if Annie and he would become lovers, only a question of when. The conviction that desire deferred was not the same as desire denied seemed to have imbued him with the patience to savor the unique pleasures of each incremental move toward passion’s ultimate destination.
But there was another element to his holding back—an element that had cost him a great deal in masculine pride to acknowledge. It was an element he doubted he would ever be able to admit to anyone, including Annie.
To put it bluntly, he was insecure about comparisons she might make once they finally made love.
He’d only slept with one woman in his life. And while he and Lisa had found great happiness in each other’s arms, their union had been more a matter of sweet completion than shattering climax. He couldn’t help wondering whether Annie might find him wanting in terms of—
“What’s that?” he questioned suddenly, propping himself up on one elbow. He was more than willing to have his previous train of thought diverted onto a less disturbing track.
“This?” Annie uncapped the spray can she’d just taken out of the knapsack. Aiming the container in his direction, she pumped its nozzle several times. “Guess.”
Matt took a whiff and grimaced. Ugh. The stuff stank, pure and simple. No wonder the can’s label bore what looked like a skull and crossbones!
“Whatever it is,” he declared, “it ought to be banned under the Geneva Convention against gas warfare.”
“It’s insect repellent,” she informed him with a laugh, snapping the cap back into place and returning the can to the knapsack. Her lips curved into a mischievous smile. “I heard you had a little problem with mosquitoes the last time you took a ladyfriend shooting the Hooch.”
The tone of this comment was so blandly offhand that it took Matt a moment to absorb the implications of what had been said.
“How did—” he started to ask, then broke off as he realized what the answer to his inquiry had to be. He levered himself into a sitting position. “Eden’s been talking, I take it.”
Annie picked up the bottle of sunscreen and opened it. “She mentioned something a while back about bloodsucking bugs, poison ivy and, er, hickeys.”
“You can thank my big brother for that last bit.”
“You, Rick, and hickeys?” Annie eyed him quizzically, her brows lifted. “I think I may have underestimated the kinkiness of your sibling relationship, Matt.”
“Oh, yeah.” A rueful chuckle. “Right.”
There was a pause. A gentle breeze rustled the lush green foliage of the nearby trees. Overhead, a raucous pair of blackbirds traced circles against the cloudless blue sky. A group of adolescent rafters floated by, calling out an unintelligible but unmistakably friendly greeting as they passed.
Matt watched as Annie rubbed her lightly tanned arms and legs with protective lotion. While her movements were easy and economical, he thought he detected a hint of self-consciousness about them. She knew she had his attention, he decided, and she was enjoying it.
His breath caught in his throat as she began to undo the top buttons of her work shirt. “Can I help?” he asked after a moment.
The offer netted him a smile. It wasn’t flirtatious. Just intensely feminine.
Matt felt the muscles of his lower body contract. Sweet heaven, he thought. How could he ever have categorized this woman as “genderless”?
“Thanks.” Annie extended the bottle of sunscreen. She shrugged the work shirt off her shoulders. “You can do the upper part of my back.”
Matt smoothed the lotion on with slow, careful strokes. Annie’s skin was warm and soft beneath his fingers. She sighed at one point, her head dipping toward her chest. Her glossy brown hair parted on either side of her neck, swinging forward to reveal the vulnerable curve of her nape.
“Have you told anyone about us?” he eventually asked. Although he and Annie hadn’t spent the last three weeks skulking around in back alleys, they really hadn’t gone public with their decision to start dating “for real,” either. It wasn’t a subject they’d sat down and discussed. It had just worked out that way. And all things considered, Matt was glad it had. For all its intensity, what was happening between him and Annie was still new—still very fragile. It needed to be carefully nurtured.
He wondered fleetingly what their friends and families would say if they learned what was going on.
Annie shifted restively. Matt strongly suspected that she, too, was speculating about other people’s responses to their burgeoning relationship.
“Not exactly,” she replied after a brief hesitation.
His hands stilled for a moment. “What exactly does ‘not exactly’ mean?”
“I, uh, mentioned our practice dating to Zoe.”
“I see.”
“I...told her you’d kissed me.”
Matt began stroking her shoulders again. “Nothing about your kissing me back?”
“That, too.”
“Ah.”
There was a short silence.
“Do you think I should?” Annie finally inquired.
“Do I think you should what?”
“Tell people about us.”
Matt massaged the nerve-rich spot at the top of Annie’s spine with the balls of his thumbs. “I suppose that would depend on what you wanted to tell.”
“Hunh.” The inarticulate response suggested that the issue of what she wanted to “tell” was very much unresolved. “Have you?”
“Told anyone?”
“Uh-huh.”
“No.” He slid his hands up and over Annie’s shoulders, palms curving, fingers splayed. He felt a new kind of tension seep into her muscles.
“Do you want to?”
“Not really.” He eased his hands forward a few inches, his fingertips coming to rest on either side of the hollow at the base of her throat. The throb of her pulse was a provocation. So was the sudden hitch in her breathing. “Do you?”
“No.” Annie twisted around to look at him. There was a soft flush of color in her cheeks.
“Not enough to tell, hmm?” he asked, conscious that the previously snug fit of the chopped-off jeans he had on was beginning to feel uncomfortably tight.
“Not...yet.”
Matt read promises in Annie’s dark eyes when she said this.
He tasted more of the same on her trembling lips when he tilted her chin up and kissed her.
* * *
Ten days later.
To Annie’s intense disappointment, a torrential downpour had washed out her plans to take Matt to the second game of a doubleheader between Atlanta and St. Louis. After consulting the newspaper and determining that there was nothing at the movies they particularly wanted to see, they’d opted for a quiet evening of TV viewing.
The venue for this viewing was Matt’s one-bedroom apartment in midtown Atlanta. He’d moved into the place, which was located in a building overlooking Piedmont Park, about nine months ago.
Annie’s first impression of the rental unit had been that its spartan simplicity was very different from the English Country coziness of the house that Matt had shared with Lisa during their marriage. She’d experienced a curious sense of relief because of this. A sense that maybe, just maybe, her grieving friend was beginning to look ahead instead of back.
But then she’d spent some time in the apartment. Her hopeful assessment of Matt’s state of mind had yielded to the unsettling recognition that his hold on the past—and the past’s hold on him—was still very strong.
Her evidence?
A silver-framed photograph that had been taken on a blissfully happy wedding day.
An exquisite piece of coral that had been brought back as a memento of an apparently perfect honeymoon.
A slim, leather-bound volume of inspirational poetry that had been a gift from a heartsick husband to a dying wife.
And so on...
And so on...
Annie’s sensitivity to Lisa’s presence in Matt’s ostensibly bachelor apartment had become increasingly acute during the past month. Because of this, she’d considered suggesting that they do their TV watching at her place rather than his. However, the memory of unwashed dishes sitting in the sink and unread newspapers piling up on the floor—to say nothing of the realization that she couldn’t recall how much lingerie she’d left hanging in her bathroom, or whether she’d had time to make her bed that morning—had prompted her to reject the notion.
It wasn’t that she was hiding anything from Matt, she’d assured herself. He was well aware of her deficiencies as a housekeeper. Nonetheless, she found herself reluctant to expose him to the two weeks’ worth of dust she’d allowed to accumulate in the nooks and crannies of her home.
“Top Hat—again?”
Annie looked away from the TV screen—where a debonair Fred Astaire was melodiously informing a jodhpur-clad Ginger Rogers that it was a lovely day to be caught in the rain—and up at Matt. Setting down the remote control device she’d been toying with, she accepted the popcorn-heaped wooden bowl he was holding out to her.
“I was channel surfing and discovered it was on,” she explained, scooting over to make room for him on the low-slung sofa on which she was ensconced. She settled the bowl of popcorn on her lap. “You don’t mind, do you?”
Matt sat down, leaned back and stretched his long legs out in front of him. He was clad in a Georgia Tech T-shirt and a pair of form-fitting jeans. His sandy brown hair was slightly mussed, his feet were bare. “Well, since you ask...”
“Hey, wait a second,” Annie objected, stealing a quick glance at the television. Fred and Ginger were dancing around the gazebo in which they’d taken refuge from a sudden thunderstorm. “Did I utter a word of complaint last week when you wanted to watch 2001: A Space Odyssey for the eighteenth time?”
“A ‘word’ of complaint?” Matt made a show of considering the matter. “No. Not that I remember. On the other hand, I do distinctly recall your making this huffy little nosie—”
Annie expelled a breath.
“Yep. That’s the one. You always huff when you’re really annoyed but pretending not to be.” Matt flashed a smug grin, then helped himself to some popcorn. “Anyway. Seeing 2001 eighteen times is nothing. You’ve got to watch it...mmm...at least two dozen times before you can begin to appreciate the nuances of Stanley Kubrick’s cinematic genius.”
“Two dozen times?” Annie rolled her eyes. “Puh-leeze, spare me. If I never see that whoozie-whatsis astronaut guy again—”
“Dmph.”
“I beg your pardon?”
Matt took a moment to chew and swallow the popcorn that had been clogging his speech. “Dave,” he enunciated. “The ‘whoozie-whatsis astronaut guy’s’ name is Dave, Annie. He was played by Keir Dullea.”
“Thank you, Mr. Trivia.”
Her snippy comment drew a roguishly challenging glance. “Would you like me to list the performers who played the apes in the prehistoric sequence with the big black monolith from outer space?”
“Thanks, but no thanks.” Whether Matt was able to do what he was offering, Annie didn’t know. But if she’d been forced to bet on the matter, she would have wagered that he was. “And forget about reciting the scene where Dave disconnects poor, misunderstood, uh, Harvey. I already know it by heart.”
Now it was Matt’s turn to release his breath in an irritated huff. “HAL,” he corrected, very precisely.
“Hmm?” Annie kept her expression bland, pretending to be totally engrossed in the sight of Ginger’s character—who was laboring under the misapprehension that her erstwhile suitor was her hostess’s hanky-pankying husband—slapping Fred’s character across the face. She was perfectly aware of the name of the dangerously omniscient computer in 2001. She simply wanted to jerk her companion’s chain a bit. She owed him for acting like such a know-it-all.
“Dave the astronaut disconnects HAL,” Matt informed her with a trace of asperity. “Harvey is the invisible rabbit in the movie with James Stewart.”
Annie turned her head and fluttered her lashes. “Why, Mistuh Powell,” she cooed, thinking of Honeychile Reeves. “How evuh do you manage to keep so many vitally important facts straight in that handsome head of yours? I swear, mah l’il ole brain positively aches just thinkin’ about it.”
Matt blinked, then obviously realized he’d been tricked. He started to laugh. Annie joined in. While her best buddy tended to take certain classic science-fiction films a tad too seriously, he’d never been inclined to do the same with himself. She’d always found this to be one of his most endearing qualities.
“Keep that up, Hannah Elaine,” he said, flicking her nose with the tip of one finger. “And more than your ‘l’il ole brain’ will be aching.”
“Threat?” She tossed a kernel of popcorn at him.
He caught the tidbit and disposed of it in a single crunching bite. “Promise.”
The conversational impulse seemed to ebb at that point. About the time Ginger’s character went winging off to Venice with Fred’s character in hot pursuit, Annie felt Matt ease his body closer to hers. A few moments later he brought his left arm up and draped it around her back. His fingertips played lightly across the curve of her shoulder, moving in sync with the film’s sophisticated musical score.
She leaned her head against his chest, breathing in the clean masculine scent of his skin. She could feel the warmth of his firmly muscled flesh through the stretchy fabric of his T-shirt. She stroked her fingers slowly down his torso, savoring the sinewy ripple of response her touch evoked.
That she and Matt were going to become lovers seemed obvious to Annie. Still, she felt no compulsion to rush toward consummation. No need to hurry the inevitable along. Why this was, she wasn’t really sure.
Her attitude was uncharacteristic, to say the least. She’d always been assertive and impatient. An instigator, rather than a take-life-as-it-comes type. While others might find great pleasure in anticipation, she’d never performed well in the “expectant” mode. And yet with Matt...
Was it because she’d been so close to him for so long that physical intimacy almost seemed incidental? she asked herself, frowning. Was that why she was content to wait?
Maybe, she conceded after some reflection. Although it was difficult to believe that the sweet, hungry heat she felt each time Matt touched her presaged an experience that could be dismissed as “incidental.”
Then again, maybe not. Because for all Matt’s familiarity, there was no denying that her feelings toward him had undergone a radical transformation in recent weeks. Indeed, since the night she’d learned that her attraction to him was anything but unrequited, she’d found herself responding to him as though he were...well, not a stranger, exactly. But certainly as though he were a very different person from the one she’d always known!
And unless she was very much mistaken, he’d been responding to her in much the same way.
So. Perhaps her passivity was the result of uncertainty, not an acceptance of some comfortable vision of what was bound to be. Perhaps she really wasn’t absolutely sure of what was going to happen between them. And perhaps she was afraid—
“That’s some outfit Ginger’s wearing.”
The wry observation startled Annie out of her reverie. She blinked several times, registering that she was no longer sitting beside Matt. She was now sitting on his lap.
She had no memory of having shifted her position.
Nor of having had it shifted for her.
Annie looked toward the TV, forcing herself to focus on the black-and-white images on the screen. Astaire and Rogers—he in white tie and tails, she in a swirling, feather-trimmed gown—were dancing cheek to cheek.
“I think I read they had some trouble with this sequence because of it,” she commented. “The, uh, dress, I mean.”
“I’ll bet.” Matt nuzzled her ear. The caress of his warm breath sent a cascade of pleasure spilling down her spine. “Ginger looks like she’s molting.”
It took Annie a second to realize that her screen idol’s favorite partner had just been insulted. “Molting?” she echoed indignantly, shifting away from the television set.
“Yeah.” An odd expression settled on Matt’s face. His features tightened. His blue-gray eyes narrowed. “I don’t think Fred likes the dress very much, either.”
Annie studied her longtime friend for several seconds. He looked...well, he looked as though he were in some sort of pain.
“Actually, Fred wasn’t crazy about it,” she finally conceded, making a squirming adjustment in her position. “The marabou trim kept shedding. He ended up with a mouthful of fluff during a couple of takes.”
“Oh—” Matt cleared his throat “—really?”
“Of course, it wasn’t as bad as the movie where Ginger accidentally smacked him across the face with a heavily beaded sleeve,” she noted, warming to her subject. “The cuff must have weighed at least three or four pounds. She whirled around like— “
“Annie.” Matt’s hands closed over her hips as she started to demonstrate. His tone was urgent. “Please. Don’t.”
It was then that Hannah Elaine Martin understood the reason for Matthew Douglas Powell’s peculiar expression. She flushed hotly, suddenly becoming aware of the potently masculine contours of the body on which she was perched.
“I—I d-didn’t...” She swallowed, feeling the color in her cheeks intensify. There was a quickening in her stomach. She drew a shaky breath. “I’m sorry.”
Matt’s fingers tightened like a vise, keeping her exactly where she was. “No apology necessary.”
There was a pause. During the course of it, Ginger’s character slapped Fred’s character again and the nature of Matt’s hold on Annie’s body altered considerably.
“But if...if you’re, uh, uncomfortable...” The quickening in Annie’s stomach had become a wild fluttering. She discovered she was plucking at Matt’s T-shirt, trying to free it from the waistband of his thigh-hugging jeans. She angled a look at him from under her lashes.
“I can live with it, Annie.” His eyes sparked with a sapphire flame. His palms stroked upward from her hips. “Believe me.”
She whispered his name. At least once. Perhaps twice.
Did Matt initiate the kiss that came next, or did she? Annie neither knew nor cared. All that mattered was the meeting of their lips. The blending of their breaths. The tangling of their tongues.
Clinging...
Questing...
Craving...
The bowl of popcorn crashed to the floor in a blizzard of fluffy white kernels.
“I’ll clean it up later,” Matt promised thickly, pressing his mouth to the side of her throat. He began undoing the buttons of her blouse, his movements more determined than deft. His fingertips brushed against bare flesh now and again, igniting tiny bonfires just beneath her skin.
Annie shuddered, her breath escaping in a groan. Her head fell back. Out of the corner of her eye she saw dozens of elegantly garbed dancers whirling across the TV screen in a huge production number. She wondered if any of them felt as warm as she did. Or as dizzy.
“M-Matt?”
“Mmm?” His teeth closed on her left earlobe with exquisitely calibrated pressure.
“We’re missing...the g-grand finale...of the m-movie.”
No sooner did she finish speaking than Matt’s telephone began to ring.
The caller was his late wife’s mother. From what Annie gathered from Matt’s end of the conversation, Loretta Davis wanted to invite her widowed son-in-law to Sunday brunch to introduce him to a “very nice” young woman.
* * *
Annie forgave him.
Quickly. Completely. Or so it seemed.
This surprised Matt as much as it relieved him. Because in all honesty, he didn’t think he would have been as understanding had their positions been reversed.
Once his surprise at Annie’s forgiveness had faded, Matt started wondering whether she might not have welcomed the ill-timed interruption by Lisa’s mother. He started asking himself whether her shaky observation that they were missing the movie’s grand finale might not have been code for “Take it easy, hotshot.”
The possibility troubled him. While Matthew Douglas Powell laid no claims to personal perfection, he’d never numbered sexual selfishness among his faults. Had he been so caught up in his own needs that he’d given short shrift to his partner’s?
Annie had wanted him. That much, Matt wasn’t going to question. But whether she’d wanted him as fast and fierce as he’d been careering toward bestowing himself on her was another matter entirely.
He knew her so well, in so many ways...
But as a woman? As a lover-to-be?
Matt’s mind darted back to the telephone conversation they’d had before their first practice date.
Don’t contemporary single guys cop feels? he’d teased.
Not unless they want to be accused of sexual harassment, Annie had replied.
Oh.
Modern men are expected to ask permission before they start groping.
Annie had been kidding, he realized. To a degree, at least. He didn’t think for a second that she wanted to reduce male-female intimacy to a politically correct series of oral contracts. In fact, he was inclined to think that any nineties-style male who asked her if he might put his hand on her breast was likely to be told, “No, buddy. You may not.”
So, what did Annie want?
Good question, Matt acknowledged.
Maybe if he paid close attention, he’d be able to figure it out.
* * *
“Annie?”
“Hmm?”
They were in the kitchen of her condominium, cleaning up after chowing down on take-out from a nearby Chinese restaurant. Matt had just finished unloading the dishwasher. Whether he’d put everything away in its proper place, he couldn’t say. Annie had a rather ad hoc storage system.
“I still feel like a jerk about what happened Tuesday night,” he admitted, dropping a handful of forks into what he assumed was her silverware drawer. He tried not to speculate why there was a mousetrap sitting amid the jumble of cutlery. He assumed that if he asked, Annie would have a dazzlingly logical explanation for its presence. She’d certainly been quick with an answer when he’d inquired as to why she had three pairs of panty hose tucked between a carton of chocolate-chip ice cream and a box of croissants in her otherwise-empty freezer.
“So you’ve said,” came the serene reply. “But as much as I enjoy having you at a disadvantage, I think three days of apologizing for something that wasn’t your fault is enough. It’s not as though you asked Lisa’s mother to phone.”
Matt shut the drawer and turned. Annie was leaning against the counter between the stove and the sink. She was eating plum sauce from one of the small plastic packets that had come with their meal. He watched as she squeezed a dollop of the sauce onto the index finger of her left hand, then carefully lifted the finger to her mouth and sucked it clean.
Matt felt his center of gravity shift. He’d seen Annie perform this little routine before, of course. But up until this moment he’d always found it more amusing than arousing. He experienced a flash of the same sense of disbelief he’d felt on the banks of the Chattahoochee. How in the name of heaven could he have been oblivious to Annie’s sensuality for nearly all his adult life?
“If I’d switched off the phone,” he said after a few moments, “everything would have been fine.”
“You think so?” An expression he couldn’t put a name to flitted across Annie’s creamy-skinned face.
He frowned, recalling his previous anxieties about the precipitousness of his passion. “Don’t you?”
“What I think—” she paused, squeezing out the last of the condiment “—is that second-guessing can drive you nuts.” She held up her left hand, index finger crooked. “Want a taste?”
Matt hesitated, then crossed to where Annie was standing. She lifted her finger to his mouth. He licked. The sweet tang of plum sauce flooded his tongue.
“Good,” he murmured.
There was a pause. During the course of it, Annie’s gaze disengaged from his.
“You know,” she eventually began, focusing on his chest. “Switching off the phone Tuesday night would have indicated a certain degree of, well, expectation on your part.”
“Would that have bothered you?” Matt placed his hands on either side of her body, palms pressed against the edge of the counter. His breathing had become deeper and more deliberate.
“Not...necessarily.”
“I wanted you, Annie.” He could smell the clean, floral scent of her perfume. And beneath that, the feminine muskiness of her skin.
Her eyes swung back up to meet his. The look he saw in their depths increased his internal temperature by several degrees.
“Past tense, Matt?” she challenged.
“What tense would you prefer?”
“I...” A convulsive swallow.
“Future? Subjunctive? Pluperfect?” He waited a beat. “Present?”
Annie moistened her lips. Finally she lifted her chin a notch and asked, “What would you do if I told you I’d switched off my phone when we came in?”
Matt’s pulse scrambled. His breath seemed to clot in his chest. He couldn’t speak.
After a few seconds Annie uttered his name on a questioning inflection. There was a faint quiver of apprehension in her voice. Her eyes flicked back and forth, scanning his face.
Matt dragged some air into his lungs, struggling for control. Then he eased his hands inward and clasped Annie at the waist. “I’d react,” he whispered, drawing her against him and lowering his head, “with great expectation.”
* * *
There’d been an instant when Annie had feared she’d gone too far—appeared too forward—with her question about switching off the phone. Matt’s eventual response had assured her that she hadn’t.
She’d experienced another surge of anxiety—a stab of panic honed by years of listening to admonitions about what “nice” girls allegedly did and didn’t do—a few minutes later when she’d mentioned that she had condoms. Matt had flushed at the word. Genuinely flushed. She’d sensed he was embarrassed. Perhaps even a trifle shocked.
But then he’d recovered his sangfroid and produced a smile that turned her knees to jelly. “If it’s all right with you,” he’d said quietly. “I’ve got my own.”
* * *
They were standing in her bedroom, facing each other, a few feet apart. Annie was clad in a lace-trimmed ecru bra and matching panties. Matt was down to a pair of cotton briefs, the tanned, hair-whorled skin of his chest sheened by the illumination from the lamp on her night table.
“The last time we took off our clothes together we were—what?” he asked, his eyes bright. “Five? Maybe six?”
“‘I’ll show you mine if you’ll show me yours’?” she quoted softly, thinking back.
Matt studied her intently for several long moments. His steady, blue-gray gaze lingered on her breasts, as tangible as a touch. Annie bit her lower lip.
“There’s more to yours—” he gestured eloquently with cupped hands “—than I remember.”
She resisted an impulse to shield herself from his arousing assessment. Glancing at the bulge in his briefs, she murmured throatily, “There seems to be more of yours, too.”
Matt gave a ragged laugh. The sound lured Annie’s gaze back to his face. “I’ve been known to get bigger,” he said.
“Really?” His expression—combined with her own imagination—sent a distinctly feminine tremor running through her.
“Absolutely. Although I occasionally need a little...mmm, encouragement.”
“Oh?”
“Care to lend a hand?” Matt’s light brown brows rose. His voice descended into a deeper, darker register. “Maybe...two?”
Just as the question of which one of them had initiated the kiss in his apartment three nights ago had faded into insignificances, the issue of whether it was he or she who chose the distance between them stopped mattering once they were in each other’s arms.
Annie’s lips parted beneath his. Yielding. Yearning. She winnowed her fingers through his hair. His tongue slid sinuously over hers. Inviting. Inciting. She heard someone whimper. After a moment, she realized it must have been her.
Matt kissed the corners of her mouth, then nibbled a path along her jawline and nuzzled against her ear. “You’re trembling, Annie,” he whispered huskily.
“So—” she drew a shuddery breath as he licked her skin “— are you.”
They kissed again. Languidly. Luxuriously. As though they had all the time in the world and intended to make use of every single second.
Her bra came off and fluttered to the floor. A moment later Matt took full-palmed possession of her naked breasts. His touch was gentle, almost reverent. She felt her nipples contract into tight rosettes in response to his tender caresses.
Annie lifted her arms, hooking them around his neck. Her head was swimming. She closed her eyes, clinging to him, giving herself over to the sensations he was evoking.
He swept her off her feet—literally—and carried her to her bed. After lowering her onto the quilt-covered mattress, he stretched out beside her. It seemed to her that the air around them had started to shimmer and hum.
Matt began to explore her. Slowly. Oh, so slowly.
From ankle to thigh...
He cupped her calves, massaging them gently with the faintly callused pads of his thumbs. Eventually he slid his hands higher, mapping the fine crease marks at the backs of her knees with feathery touches.
From thigh to breast...
He charted the curving shape of her hips and spanned the narrowed indentation of her waist, making her giddily conscious of the femininity of her shape. Letting his fingers drift inward, he delved into the shallow dip of her navel. After many breathless moments he stroked upward to map the contours of her rib cage.
From breast to lips...
He teased.
He tantalized.
He tasted.
Annie was quivering, damp and urgent, long before he was done.
“Please,” she panted. “Oh, please.”
Matt shifted his position, sliding down her body. He sought and found the plush tip of her right breast and drew it into his mouth. He suckled deeply, triggering a roiling spasm low in her belly. Annie curved upward toward the source of the almost painfully sweet sensation.
His name broke from her lips on a shattered gasp.
She gave. He took.
He offered. She accepted with all her heart.
“Now,” she pleaded, running her hands up and down his slick, suavely muscled back. “Now.”
He asked, wordlessly.
She opened, willingly.
Matt stole the cry of stunned delight she gave when he entered her, absorbing the sound with a passionate, possessive kiss. His tongue delved into her mouth, underscoring the completeness of their joining. She lifted her hips to take him deeper within herself, then used her arms and legs to lock him close.
Annie heard him groan against her lips. The sound seemed to erupt from the core of his soul. She could feel him straining. Shaking. His spine bowed tautly as he stroked forward a few critical millimeters.
Her vision grayed. The universe began to spin out of control. The possibility of rational thought shattered into a million shards of ecstatic sensation.
“Matt.”
“Sweetheart. Oh...oh, sweetheart!”
They found release in the way they had done so many other things in their lives.
Together.