Susan Phillips - Nobody’s Baby But Mine

“It’s too dark,” he muttered. “I still can’t see you.”

She stroked the contours of his pectorals and trailed her thumb over the hard point of his nipple. “Go by feel,” she whispered.

He did better than that. He went by taste, and she thought she would die from this pleasure she had dreamed of but never experienced.

“You don’t-” She gasped. “You don’t have to do that.”

His chuckle wasn’t altogether steady, and she moaned when his hot whispery breath fell on her. “Mind your own business.”

Once again he dropped his head, and she felt as if all the parts of her were unraveling. She banged her elbow against the steamy window when she gripped his bare, damp shoulders. He swore and bumped against the seat as he shifted his weight, but none of it mattered.

It was too exquisite, too miraculous. She climbed and spiraled, but just as she felt herself beginning to slip over the edge, he drew back. “Oh, no, you don’t. Not without me.”

She lay open and vulnerable before him. His breathing came fast and heavy. “God, this was a stupid idea. We should be doing this in the bedroom where we can see each other, but I can’t wait that long. I need you now.”

She reached for the snap on his jeans and felt the hard, thick shape of him. His breath caught on a hiss as she took her time unzipping, exploring until his restraint broke with a hoarse exclamation. “No more, Rosebud. I can’t take anymore.”

“Wimp.”She dropped her mouth to his chest and licked a special trail all her own.

He gave a sound that was part chuckle and part moan. At the same time, he leaned back and lifted her so she straddled him. She had lost all of her clothing except the blouse that hung open from her shoulders. He had only lost his T-shirt. Although she had freed him from his jeans, the space was too confined for her to remove them completely. His chest was bare, however, as bare as her bottom, and she nipped him with her teeth.

He uttered a strangled exclamation, but she loved her position of supremacy, and she had no pity. Even though her feet were wedged awkwardly against the back of the front seat, she didn’t let that prevent her from kissing him how and where she would.

While darkness deprived her of sight, her other senses grew more acute, and she suspected from his touches, tastes, and deep, intimate caresses that it was the same for him.

The faintest thread of moonlight caught a glimmering rivulet rolling down the steamy windows, and the sweat from their bodies was slick on her palms. He cupped her bare bottom in his big hands and lifted her. “Now, sweetheart. Now.”

She moaned as he guided her down upon him, but her body accepted him without question. She gave a sob and pressed her breast to his mouth. He caressed her with lips, teeth, and tongue until she had to draw back and move on him before she went crazy.

Even as he grasped her hips, he didn’t try to force her into his rhythm but let her find her own. She raised and lowered herself upon him, rubbing the tips of her breasts against the soft hair of his chest and returning his deep, devouring kisses. She felt strong and sure as she met his passion. Sensation built upon sensation until reality slipped away and she felt as if she were being hurled through a supercollider, flying past the speed of light through a narrow underground passage toward the place where everything came apart.

And then she cried out as all the molecules that made up who she was fragmented: atoms dissociated, nuclei detached, everything broke open, shattered, and, at the end, left her more complete than she had ever been.

He went rigid with her cry. His teeth sank into the side of her neck, not hurting her, but holding her as he spilled himself within her depths. For a fraction of time she felt his utter defenselessness, and she sagged forward, protecting him as he found his ease.

Their hearts thundered together, one pressed against the other. She turned her lips to his hair.

Finally he stirred beneath her, a shift of his hand, a movement in his leg. Only gradually did she grow aware of the strain in her splayed thighs and the cramp in her calf. The air inside the car was so thick with heat it was hard to draw breath, but she didn’t want to move. This intimacy was too precious to her.

“What am I going to do with you?” he muttered against her breast.

You could try loving me.

The unspoken thought jarred her, then filled her with dismay. Was this the destructive path her subconscious was taking? She wanted him to fall in love with her? When had she lost touch with reality? What made her entertain, even in her fantasies, the notion that this man who wanted no attachments could love her, especially when no one else had ever been able to?

“You’re going to take me home,” she said briskly. “That was quite pleasant, but I have a great deal of work to do tomorrow, and I need my rest.”

“Quitepleasant?”

It had been earth-shattering, but she could no more confess that to him than she could explain how their coming together had given her an entirely new understanding of high-speed subatomic particle collisions.

God. Why was she thinking of that now? Everything people believed about her was true! She was a complete geek.

She reached for her clothes. Her panties were lost somewhere in the dark, so she drew her jeans on without them, pulling them up over her wetness.

He threw open the door, and as the dome light flashed on, she drew her blouse across her breasts. He glanced down at her as he zipped his jeans. “You’re not bad, Professor, for someone who isn’t a big-time player.”

His casual dismissal of what had been so important to her made her want to weep. Fool! But what did she expect? Did she think he was going to declare his undying love for her simply because she’d finally given him what he must have known he’d get all along?

They rode home in silence. He went into the house with her, and she felt his gaze as she climbed the stairs to her room.

She hesitated, then looked down at him watching her from the foyer below. “Thank you for a lovely evening.”

She’d meant to sound brisk, but her words had a wistful quality. She didn’t want the evening to end this way. What if she held out her hand and invited him into her bed? The idea chilled her. Was that the only way she could keep him at her side?

He slouched against the front door and looked bored. “Yeah, it was great.”

He couldn’t have found a clearer way to tell her he was finished with her. With a man like Cal Bonner, she realized, the game was everything, and once it was over, he lost interest. Heartsick and angry, she turned and headed for her room.

Moments later, she heard him drive away.

P leasant! She’d said it was pleasant! Cal sat at his favorite table in the corner of the Mountaineer and brooded. Usually there weren’t any empty seats around him, but tonight everybody’d seemed to realize he had a giant mean-on, and they’d given him wide berth.

No matter how easily she’d dismissed what had happened between them, he knew Professor Rosebud had never had a better lover than she’d had tonight. There’d been none of that nonsense they’d gone through before, with her pushing his hands away. No, sir. He’d had his hands all over her, and she hadn’t uttered a single protest.

But what stuck in his craw-what really stuck like a big old chunk of hard-boiled egg-was the fact that he’d just had some of the best sex of his life, and he’d never felt more unsatisfied.

Maybe it was his fault for getting cute. Why hadn’t he just grabbed her right there in the house, carried her upstairs, and romanced her in his bed with all the lights on and that big mirror overhead? He could have done his best work there, not that he hadn’t been pretty damn good tonight, but if they’d been in his bed, he would have seen everything he wanted to see. In duplicate.

He reminded himself this was the third time the two of them had gone at it, but he wasn’t any closer to seeing her naked now than he’d been that first night. It was getting to be an obsession. If only he hadn’t turned off the dome light, he could have looked his fill, but despite that sassy mouth of hers, he’d known she was skittish, and he’d wanted her so much he hadn’t been thinking straight. Now he had to face the consequences.

He understood his nature well enough to know that the only reason he found himself thinking about her a few thousand times a day was because he still didn’t feel as if he’d really made love to her. How could he when he didn’t know what she looked like? Once he found out, it’d be over. Instead of growing stronger every day, this attraction he felt toward her would disappear, and he’d be his old self again, ready to roam the fertile fields of dewy young females with flawless faces and sweet temperaments, although he was giving serious consideration to raising his minimum age requirement to twenty-four, since he was getting tired of everybody baiting him.

His thoughts strayed back to the Professor. Damn, but she was one funny lady. Sharp as a tack, too. Over the years, he’d developed a certain smugness about the fact that he was smarter than most everybody else, but that razor-sharp brain of hers made it hard to sneak much past her. Instead, she marched right alongside him, her brain cells clicking away, matching him step for step and move for move. He could almost feel her peering into every dusty corner of his mind and making a generally accurate assessment of whatever it was she found there.