side of the bed, her body arching and as supple as a willow branch.
She let her arms fall over her head where her fingertips brushed the floor. Her strong legs gripped his back and she met him thrust for thrust.
His fingers grasped her thighs. Still, he moved, deeper and deeper, and her body accepted his as though made for him.
The room grew warm and fragrant with Laura. The scent of her sex mingled with the incense. In the flickering candlelight, she looked like Woman, surrounding, taking, swallowing him until all there existed was Laura.
He touched the perfect aroused nub of her sex and she cried out. Crooned. Purred. Her muscles contracted around him and he came with her.
He shuddered, continued to come, hissed and held her still when she tried to move.
When he got his breathing back, he pulled her up into his arms and fell onto his back, taking her lush body on top of his, panting as though he’d run a marathon.
He smiled, slowly. The only other time in his life when sex had felt so good had been with Laura.
Her hair fell across his face, soft and fine like spiderwebs. Her body still held him, her lips moist against his groin. He softened and slipped out of her.
She sighed, long and sweet, as though peace were settling through her.
Tenderness flooded him.
He laughed and took her face in his hands, kissed her and laughed again, happier than he’d been in years. She kissed his laughing mouth and then pressed her hands into the mattress and arose onto her arms to look down at him, her smile satisfied and smug.
Her lips shone in the candlelight. Her breasts hung like ripe fruit, tempting him, and he took a nipple into his mouth.
She stiffened. Not pleasure.
Something felt wrong. Had he hurt her?
He pulled away to look at her.
She stared at something beside the bed. Her expression changed, joy flitted away replaced by concern, worry. Horror.
He turned to see what had caught her attention and got a kick in the gut.
His condom sat on the bedside table. Unopened. Unused.
He’d lost control. He never lost control with a woman, had never once in his life. Before tonight. Before Laura and her tempting body. She’d made him lose control.
You owe me. Was she really that driven, that selfish and underhanded? Today is the perfect day. She was ovulating.
The look he turned on her could freeze hell. “You did this to get your baby.”
She’d taken from him, had stolen from him. Robbed him of choice.
“No,” she whispered. “No,” she yelled. “No, no, no. Not like this. Not now. Not with you.”
He grasped her arms and squeezed. “How could you do this to me?”
She fought out of his hold and jumped from the bed. He chased her down the hall.
“You can’t get away that easily.”
In the bathroom, she turned the shower on full blast and stepped inside.
“What are you doing?” She was splashing water into herself. She soaped up her hands and shoved her fingers into her channel. The room filled with steam.
“Trying to get rid of your semen.” She sounded desperate, looked a little sick.
“Why?” he asked, suspicion high. What the hell was going on? “You wanted a baby. You asked me for a baby.” He was just starting to get to know his daughter and now there might be a baby?
Water streamed over her head. Her hair hung in wet strings around her face. She stared at him, shattered. Broken. “That was temporary madness. My fiancé had just broken up with me. I was desperate.”
He reached behind her and turned off the water.
“Are you crying?”
She shook her head. “I don’t cry.”
“You’re a real piece of work.” And the best damn actress he’d ever come across.
“Me? Why did you ask me to dinner? To seduce me? To see if you could do it again like you’d done once before? To make a fool out of me again?”
“You were giving me those little lost girl looks in the cemetery. I felt sorry for you.”
She turned on him, her face flattened into shock. Disgust. “That was a mercy screw?”
He stalked back to the bedroom and gathered his clothes, dressing in the room that twenty minutes ago had felt like a sensual paradise, the sexiest room on the planet. His hands shook and he fumbled, but managed to get the job done.
He left without another word, without another glance in her direction, and crossed the street to the B and B where he showered in the hottest water