Chapter 7 #3
“Oh Lord,” Peter whispered. Pressing his forehead to mine, he dragged in a harsh breath.
My own breath was coming in short, sharp gasps that had as much to do with my arousal as with my frustration at having been interrupted. I didn’t let go of his hair.
The knock came again.
Peter let out another, “Oh Lord.” Pressing a light, moist kiss on my lips, he dragged my hands from the back of his head down his shoulders and over his shirt.
He flattened them on his middle. “Later,” he whispered, and his luminescent green eyes held the fire that promised more, far more of what we’d just shared.
I was thankful to be leaning against the door, because that look did nothing to still my quivering thighs.
If anything, the fire inside burned hotter than it had before that kiss.
My own look must have told Peter as much, because he swore softly, squeezed his eyes shut and bowed his head.
After several seconds of utter silence, he straightened, bodily removed me from the door and opened it.
“Is Jill all right?” Moni asked. “I saw her head this way.”
“She’s fine. Just needed a break.” He turned to me and asked in a low, gritty voice, “All set?”
With a nod I let him return me to the party, but I didn’t let him move far from my side. He’d made me a promise behind the closed door of that office, and I intended to make him keep it. That knowledge was the only thing that made the burning inside me bearable.
Nine o’clock was forever in coming. I should have enjoyed those moments of glory, and if the circumstances had been different, I might have.
People complimented me on my work, on my suit, on my choice of gallery, on Moni, and while I hadn’t become a potter with an ego trip in mind, I wasn’t immune to flattery.
Nevertheless, I couldn’t appreciate it or anything else in that gallery except the tall, lean, hard-muscled man who stood by my side.
So the minutes crept. I couldn’t eat; I couldn’t drink.
I nodded and smiled and carried on chit-chat, but all the while my mind raced ahead to the satisfaction that waited.
There were times when my cheeks grew crimson with my thoughts, and times when the cause for my smiles would have shocked those who received them if they’d known the truth.
Every so often I was so distracted that I missed a question.
Peter helped me out then, providing the answer requested while he warned me awake with a touch to my arm, my waist, my hand.
Of course, those touches were counter-productive; they only sent me off again. But the effort was sweet.
He apparently had greater self-control than I did, though I suppose that was imperative. The male of the species had it harder—no pun intended. If he was aroused, it showed.
Conversely, I could be—and was—in a state of sexual readiness with no one the wiser.
No one could see that my insides were hot and achy, or that the sensitive flesh at the apex of my thighs was moist and swollen.
Peter knew, of course, and that turned me on all the more.
The minutes dragged until we could be alone.
Nine o’clock found us talking with a trio of latecomers. I was ready to swear they’d shown up purely for the sake of the wine and hors d’oeuvres; they didn’t seem particularly interested in my work. But then, I wasn’t particularly interested in my work, either.
Peter looked at his watch.
I smiled at the trio. “Will you excuse us?”
They did, of course. I led Peter through those others of the guests who lingered. When I found Moni, I leaned close and without pretense asked, “When can we leave?”
She shot a glance at Peter, then eyed me smugly. “I’d be in a rush, too, if I had him.”
I bit my lip. I didn’t want to be rude, but the hunger within me had reached a fever pitch. Having struggled to cope for the better part of the evening. I’d just about run out of smiles.
Mercifully, Moni seemed to realize that.
But her smugness gave way to the concern of a friend.
“Will you be okay?” she whispered. She didn’t look at Peter again, but I knew she was thinking that she’d been the one to urge me to come to New York for the show, and in that sense I was her responsibility.
I didn’t want to be anyone’s responsibility but Peter’s. “I’ll be fine,” I whispered back. I squeezed her hand and turned to leave, but her hand did a turnaround on mine to stay me.
“Are you sure?”
“Very sure. Very sure, Moni. I’ll call you later tomorrow.” This time she didn’t hold me up. Peter went for my coat, while I said goodbye to Bill and Celia as graciously as I could in as little time as possible.
Moments later, Peter and I were half-walking, half-running toward Park Avenue, where we caught a cab.
“Your place or mine?” he asked in a thick voice.
I leaned toward the cabbie. “The Park Lane, please.” As I sat back, Peter’s hands framed my face—not so much to hold me still, I felt, but to anchor himself—and his mouth covered mine.
A single touch was all it took. Like an explosion waiting to happen, a myriad of sensations rocked my body.
I gasped into his mouth, then choked out a tiny cry when he filled mine with his tongue.
Needing an anchor of my own, I pushed my hands inside his coat, inside his suit jacket and, palms flat, over the firmly muscled planes of his pinpoint-cotton-covered chest. I ended up clasping his sides for the support that I needed. The world seemed to be spinning out of control around me.
We kissed with the desperation of lovers who needed to be naked and in bed, not fully dressed in the back seat of a cab.
I wanted Peter to touch me, to touch me all over, but not once did his hands fall farther than my neck.
It occurred to me that he did it deliberately, knowing that he’d lose control if he allowed himself greater liberty.
But that reasoning was small solace for the parts of me that ached.
Freeing one of his shirt buttons from its hole, I slipped my fingers inside and rubbed their backs against the soft hair of his chest. Then I freed a second button and slid my whole hand inside.
This time, I moved my palm over his nipple.
When I felt its sharp rise, I substituted the pad of my thumb for my palm.
He bit my lower lip sharply, then soothed the bruise by sucking it into his mouth, but if he’d meant the injury as a warning, I ignored it.
In fact, the tiny pain heightened my pleasure.
I wasn’t sure if that made me perverted, and I didn’t care.
The only thing I cared about was pushing the pleasure as far as it would go so that I could reach the pot at the end of the rainbow.
I wasn’t going to reach it with a kiss. I knew it, Peter knew it, and the cabbie knew it.
“Almost there, folks,” he called back with a trace of dry humor.
I gave a soft, choked cry of frustration and sat back against the seat.
Not about to stand for that, Peter drew me to his side and held me tightly.
I could feel the tremors that shook his large frame, could see the way he shifted against the bulge in his pants, but the fact that he was as uncomfortable as I was didn’t ease my ache.
I tried tipping my head and opening my mouth on his neck, but the male tang of his skin and its faint roughness under my tongue only tightened the knot in my belly.
I tried shifting position, sliding one of my legs between Peter’s, but he wouldn’t help me enough to give me the right leverage.
This time he closed his teeth on my ear, but instead of sucking to soothe, he whispered, “Hold on, babe. We’ll be there soon.”
“I’m on fire,” I whispered back.
“Me, too. Soon. Soon.”
“I can’t wait,” I cried softly. That was when I felt him slip a hand between my legs. It climbed the length of my stockings and spread over the warm, soft skin of my thigh before fitting itself to the hot delta that craved it.
A tiny animal sound slipped from my throat, followed by a long, broken breath that grew even more ragged when he began to stroke me.
His fingers were on silk; his thumb slipped beneath.
Then he seemed to lose patience, because with a single sharp pull he released all four of the small snaps at my crotch.
His fingers found me, touched me. I heard him moan against my temple, and in the wake of the moan came sweet, low, sexy words of praise. I wanted to tell him that I needed more, but I’d momentarily lost the capacity for speech. All I could do was to shift my thighs to offer more of myself to him.
That was when the cab came to a jarring halt at the hotel.
“You owe me four-eighty,” the cabbie called.
I nearly screamed in frustration. I would have paid him ten times that amount to keep on driving, but that would have been short-sighted of me.
We’d reached a haven. Privacy awaited. While Peter paid the cabbie, I dug my room card from my purse.
Peter took it from me as he helped me from the cab, and, hand in hand, we all but ran into the lobby.
The elevator took forever to arrive. Impatiently we waited with our teeth clenched, our hands tightly locked and our heads tipped back to monitor the car’s progress.
Years before, I’d waited nearly as impatiently for an elevator, only that time my father had been the man with me, and I’d been dancing from foot to foot.
I had no intention of entering the bathroom this time, unless Peter wanted to make love in the tub. I was game for that. I was game for most anything, so desperate was I to feel him inside me.
The elevator arrived. We stepped inside and pressed the proper button, but just as we were turning to each other, two young boys skidded breathlessly into the car.
I told myself that that was just fine, that a public elevator was no place for hanky panky, that I’d just stand quietly strangling Peter’s fingers with mine until we reached my floor.