Chapter 7 #5
“Nowhere.” He took one of my legs, put my foot flat against his belly and ran his hands up the slender length of dark blue silk. When he reached my garter belt, he unfastened its hook, released the stocking from its hold and slowly rolled it down.
I was fascinated. When I’d bought the lingerie, it had been with the wearing in mind. I’d been feeling sexy and wanted to feel even sexier. On some level, I must have wanted Peter to see it and think it as sexy as I did, but through all my fantasies I never pictured him removing it.
Maybe that was why I found it so exciting. Watching him so intent on his task, though his skin barely touched mine, I felt my heart begin to pound.
When he finished with the first stocking and dropped it to the floor, he gently shifted that leg aside and took up the other one.
He repeated the unsheathing process, revealing more and more pale skin.
Again, when my leg was bare, he dropped the stocking to the floor.
This time, keeping my foot flat against his middle, he bent my knee out and ran his hand all along the inside of my leg.
With one leg on the other side of him and my knee as he’d bent it, I was completely exposed to his gaze.
I found that, too, exciting. He made me proud of my body, proud to be a woman.
When, of their own accord, my breasts began to swell with that pride, Peter looked their way.
His gaze rose higher to my face, fell back to my breasts, then lowered to the most private of my feminine parts.
His thumb touched me, then his fingers. He opened me, stroked me, teased my secret flesh until it was hot and moist. By this time I’d turned my head against the intensity of the pleasure. When he suddenly slid his hands under me and up my back, then lifted me to face him, I opened my eyes.
“Hold on,” he instructed in a whisper as he draped my arms around his neck.
For a minute we sat there, locked eye to eye. I knew the story my face told. My eyes were bright, my cheeks pink, my lips moist, parted and inviting.
Peter’s face held tell-tale signs of its own. His skin was damp, his eyes intense. Small brackets on either side of his nose told of the self-control he was exerting. And his mouth was open to allow the free passage of what was very close to heavy breathing.
Looping my arms loosely around his neck, I held on. I watched him, watched him closely.
Reaching behind me, he unhooked my garter belt.
It fell aside to leave me totally bare from the waist down.
Peter looked at my stomach, looked at his hands on my stomach, looked at the gentle movement of my flesh when he began to lightly knead it.
His fingers slipped lower, seeming irrevocably drawn to the pale nest between my legs.
But at the first small gasp I gave when he drew me open, he moved his hands higher again.
They didn’t stop this time until they cupped my breasts.
With a care that was in sharp contrast to the frenzied way we’d made love earlier, he took hold of the bunched hem of the teddy and drew it over my head.
I had to release his neck to free my arms, and before I could grab onto him again, he threaded his fingers through mine and held my hands off to the sides.
For the first time, I felt shy. I wasn’t sure whether it was my total nudity, or the shameless way I was sitting, or the intentness with which Peter studied my body, but at that moment I would have given anything for a sheet to draw up.
“Don’t look away,” Peter whispered just as I realized that I had.
“You are—” he paused, as though seeking the words “—the realization of a fantasy. I’ve been thinking about just this, imagining it since the first time I saw you.
” Placing my hands at the back of his waist, he drew me onto his lap.
As my body came into full contact with his, I forgot my shyness.
For one thing, he was magnificently aroused and made no attempt to hide it.
For another, the sense of homecoming was stunning.
We fit perfectly. My head found its niche on his shoulder, my breasts nestled gently against his chest, my thighs framed his hips. I felt comfortable and content. I felt protected. I felt whole.
Which wasn’t to say that I complained when Peter tipped his head to nibble on my neck. Or that I fretted when he began to play with my breasts. Or that I raised a fuss when the magic of his fingers stirred up new yearnings between my legs.
This time there was tenderness. We explored each other more slowly, savoring all the little things we’d missed in the savagery of our first joining.
But where I’d thought nothing could match the explosiveness of that first time, I was wrong.
The slow rise, the gentle savoring, the feint and parry, the holding back—all led to a wildness that was every bit as combustive as savagery.
This time when we lay in the aftermath of orgasm, our limp bodies slick with sweat, our hearts pounding against each other, I couldn’t deny the fact that Peter did to me what no man had ever done. I’d thought it earlier, now I thought it again. He made me feel whole.
Peter took it one step further. When he’d recovered enough to speak, he raised himself on an elbow above me, pressed a gentle kiss to my lips and said, “I love you.”
I hadn’t expected that. I didn’t want it. The words were too strong, too soon. They suggested and demanded. They evoked thoughts of things I wasn’t ready to face.
He must have seen the panic in my eyes, because he ran his tongue over my chin, ending in a feather-light kiss, and said, “I’m not asking you to love me back.
Not yet. All I want is time together to see if it’s real.
There’s been something between us from the start.
Part of it’s physical, and that physical thing builds when we’re apart, so we come together and think of nothing but sex. ”
Cupping my throat, he looked me straight in the eye.
“But there’s more, Jill. There’s a whole lot more.
I know you don’t want it to be there, but it is—just like when we first met, you didn’t want there to be anything physical, but you reached a point where you couldn’t deny it.
You’ll reach that point about the rest. I know you will. But we need time together for that.”
I didn’t want to think about love. I couldn’t think about love. Neither, though, could I think about walking away from Peter. I’d come to New York to see him. I wanted to be with him. If he wanted to think about deeper things, that was fine, as long as I could just enjoy him in the here-and-now.
“Time, Jill,” he repeated, pinning me with a pale green stare. “Can you give me that?”
“On one condition,” I whispered. “You’ll have to feed me. I’m starved.”