Pink Satin

Chapter Eleven

The minute Ray was gone, Greer pushed the lock button and then fumbled frantically to hook the chain. The room was so silent that she should have felt relieved. Instead, her limbs started trembling as if she’d just been tossed into the Arctic Ocean.

She couldn’t get warm. She ran her hands up and down her arms; it didn’t help. Her teeth were actually chattering. She walked to the bathroom, turned on the hot water and splashed some on her face. He’s gone, the voice in her head assured her. She was safe.

Only her heart couldn’t seem to stop pounding, and when she turned off the water, her white face stared back at her from the mirror. She winced, seeing the top button gone from her blouse, her skirt askew, the sick glaze in her dark eyes.

She turned away from the mirror, hurrying out of the blouse and her skirt, bundling them both up in her hands. A moment later, she was under the pelting spray of the shower, turned on as hot as her skin could take it. It warmed her up, but when she stepped out, she grew cold again.

She’d brought a cotton robe with her to the conference, and after she wrapped that around her, she dragged the blanket from the bed, draped it over her shoulders and curled up in the chair. If there was a thought in her head, she couldn’t bring it into focus. If she could just get warm… She doubted she would ever be warm again. It seemed the only thing that mattered.

When she heard a quiet knock on the door, her whole body went rigid.

Another knock.

When she didn’t answer, Ryan’s jaw tightened. “Greer. It’s Ryan, and I know you’re in there. Open the door.”

“Ryan?”

He waited, an endless period of time. He was pushing his hand through his hair for the dozenth time in the past three hours when the door finally opened.

He’d never seen such a fragile smile in his life. Her hair was damp and had the look of having been rapidly finger-combed. She was wearing a pink cotton robe that buttoned to the neck. Her face was pasty white, with twin spots of color in her cheeks, and he didn’t wait to see any more.

He bolted inside, slammed the door behind him and gathered her immediately in his arms. She was tense and cold, and suddenly her whole body was shuddering.

“I could hardly believe-what on earth are you doing here? How did you even know where I was? And why-”

“Hush, honey.” Her violent shuddering tore at his heart. His palm cradled her head, pushing her cheek to his shoulder. His other hand gently caressed her shoulders and back, kneading, massaging those terribly tense muscles. Finally, some of that shaking stopped, and she lay quiescent against him.

“Greer.” His voice was quiet and infinitely tender, but there was unquestionably a demand for an answer in his low, vibrant tone. “Did he scare you? Or…hurt you?”

“No, nothing like that. I…” Greer lifted her head to stare at Ryan. If she could just stop feeling so terribly disoriented… Ryan looked exhausted. Taut furrows of strain aged his features; lines seemed embedded on his face that hadn’t existed days before. His striped shirt was wrinkled; he was wearing suit pants but no coat. He was beautiful. And she was so desperately glad to see him that she could hardly think of anything else. Confusion suddenly darkened her eyes. “You’re over the flu? I was so worried.”

A fleeting look of surprise and almost humor touched his eyes and then his eyes skimmed past her and around the room. His jaw clenched when he saw the covered dinner cart, and his arms first tightened, then soothed. She felt the gentle sweep of his hand, pushing back her hair, combing through it. “Would you mind not worrying about me for the moment?” he murmured.

He planted a single kiss on her mouth. A firm kiss, which seemed to bring a troubled world back into focus again. And when he lifted his head, she found herself inches away from clear blue eyes, blue like ice, blue like fire. “You knew!” she whispered suddenly. “When you just asked me if I was scared, I…how could you possibly have any idea what just happened?”

“I’ll explain everything in a little bit. Just tell me what did happen first.”

He didn’t let her go. He moved her determinedly away from the door, but he kept an arm around her shoulder, and he paused more than once to press his lips on her forehead, her neck, anywhere he could reach. His hands went to her waist, lifting her.

She’d thrown the blanket on the bed. He took it, covering her even as he half carried, half propelled her down onto the pillows. He reached down to push off his shoes, and then came to her.

“I was so frightened…” Her voice seemed to be coming from miles away.

“Yes.” He wound his arms around her and just held her. If he could have wrapped her up in his body, he would have. She’d stopped trembling, and there were suddenly tears.

“I have never in my entire life behaved like such a fool.”

He didn’t contradict her. He didn’t do anything to stop the tears or to still the suddenly frantic rush of words. He slid his arm under her waist, covered her again with the blanket and lay down next to her.

“You don’t understand,” she said frantically.

“Tell me.”

“We were getting along so well. We never had. I thought if I tried to be more understanding-and it was working. I mean, he made sexual remarks all the time, but I never paid any attention. He knew I wasn’t interested in him; he had to know.” Images flooded her mind and then receded. “I don’t see how he could possibly have misinterpreted anything I’d said or done.”

“Greer…”

“No. It must have been my fault.”

“It was not your fault,” he said emphatically.

“It was. So stupid,” she said incoherently. “From the time I was a kid…you can’t possibly understand. I just hated it. I grew up faster than the other girls; they all resented me, but the boys started getting interested in me. Dammit, that’s where it all became so confused, and it wasn’t something I could talk about with anyone. I didn’t want all that attention just because I filled out a bathing suit.” She looked at Ryan fiercely, through blurred eyes.

His thumb gently brushed away that film of tears.

“I figured it was my fault,” she said softly.

“Nothing,” he repeated, “was your fault.”

“I figured I’d invited it. So I stopped…feeling. It was supposed to be a protection, only it didn’t protect me at all. I swear I never felt anything for Ray.”

“I know that, love,” Ryan murmured.

“This evening,” she said. “You can’t possibly know how I felt. It seemed as if something inside me snapped when he grabbed me. I don’t know how to explain. He didn’t hurt me. He didn’t even touch me intimately. But after blaming myself for so long, I realized suddenly that I wasn’t responsible. Except for pretending Ray wasn’t a problem. I’d pretended that as long as I didn’t feel anything, I was safe. If I’d just opened my eyes, I might have seen what was coming…”

He grasped the essence of her pain. It took a long time, because she wasn’t talking coherently and because the source of her pain had never been clear to him before. It wasn’t just Ray she was talking about, but herself and the whole gamut of pent-up feelings she’d experienced: She resented being desirable. She’d run an emotional gauntlet all her life because she was sexually attractive to men who were too insensitive to care about her as a person. She’d felt she had to separate love from sexual feelings.

For the first time in his life, he felt helpless. He’d taken off from work for the past few days, using the excuse of flu, but the virus hadn’t actually kept him in bed. He’d been a busy man. He’d been determined to find out the identity of her caller, and he’d accomplished exactly what he’d set out to do, but the only thing that mattered now was Greer. He had to be careful; in no way must he hurt her more.

He listened awhile longer and then leaned over her to switch out the light. Her voice had faded to an exhausted murmur, dropping off completely when darkness covered them. No matter how tired she was, he knew she wasn’t even close to sleeping. He could feel the tension in her body even through the covering blanket. And his eyes didn’t have to adjust for him to find her mouth in the darkness.

His lips pressed gently, insistently, on hers. His tongue stole between her teeth, filling the moist hollow of her mouth, infusing her with his taste, his warmth, his love for her. His hands swept along her back, outside the blanket that covered her, and he could feel her whole body suddenly grow still.

“Ryan-”

“You don’t want this,” he murmured, guessing her words before she said them.

“I just…”

“Want to know something, love?”

He raised himself up on an elbow, releasing the buttons of his shirt as he looked down at her. Greer could barely see him in the shadows, but she had a fleeting feeling that he’d catch her if she tried to run. “What?”

“I want to hold you more than I want to make love to you. Now, that hasn’t happened often since I met you,” he whispered wryly, but there was no smile on his mouth. Just those bright eyes of his burning on hers in the dark. “But we’re going to have to make love, Greer. Not for me, love. In fact, I think we’ll just forget all about what I want or need. This one’s all for you, and you need to understand that ahead of time.”

“Ryan-”

“You are beautiful, Greer. Your feelings are beautiful, too, and it’s time you believed that. Actually, it’s a perfect time, because you’re absolutely sure you’ll feel nothing, aren’t you? You aren’t in the mood; you’ve been frightened to death; and maybe you’d even like to curl up in a corner, honey, but that’s not the way.”

His shirt dropped to the floor in a gentle whoosh. His belt followed. Greer swallowed. “That’s just it,” she said hesitantly. “I really…not now, I-”

He pushed aside the blanket and drew her to him. Blood pulsed in the vein in her throat, in her temples. He was bare from the golden slope of his shoulders to the iron wall of his chest. The room was not so dark now. Her eyes had adjusted, and faint city lights glowed through the windows, illuminating the distinctive shape of a man looming over her.

A very determined man. A few hours earlier, another very determined man had tried to hurt her, but the association was entirely different. This was Ryan. There could never be a comparison. She felt weak inside, unable to stop him or even try, yet suddenly a thousand times more vulnerable than she’d ever felt with Ray or any other man. Ryan’s chest with its mat of hair pressed against her as he leaned closer, his mouth claiming hers, stealing her breath, stealing her will to think.

At first her lips only reluctantly returned the pressure, and then, suddenly, fiercely molded themselves to his, her throat arched back to ensure that the bond wasn’t broken. When he heard the sudden, uneven rhythm of her breathing, he slowly raised his head. His eyes searched hers. Without looking down, he gently undid the buttons of her robe, from her throat down to her thighs. Just as gently, his hands parted the material. She felt air on her breasts, an awareness of her nakedness, a catch somewhere deep inside her.

Finally, his eyes released their hold on hers and skimmed slowly over her dusk-tipped breasts, the hollow between, the satiny flatness of her stomach. When she raised a hand to cover herself, he held that hand and drew it back to her side.

“You’re exquisite,” he whispered.

She flushed.

“And that’s all we’re going to do, honey. Teach you what a beautiful body you have and how beautiful your feelings for me are. No one’s going to use you, Greer. Do you know what I want you to do?”

“Ryan-”

“Do you know what I want you to do?” he demanded.

“What?”

“Lie there. That’s all. You can think about every damn man who’s tried to use you, if you want to. You can repress every sexual feeling you’ve ever had. And it’s still going to happen, love.”

He was so serious-and then not. His sudden smile distracted her. She wasn’t expecting…play. He was most insistent on teaching her that play was part of loving. She couldn’t anticipate where he was going to touch next. One moment his lips were tugging at her breasts, his tongue swirling her nipples into swollen arousal. The next moment he was trailing kisses up and down her thigh, and then he moved up, as if he’d completely forgotten the hollow spot in her neck and was making amends.

He turned her over. He kissed her ankle, the back of her knee, the soft flesh of her thigh. He nipped at her bottom, and his tongue laved a long trail up her vertebrae. When he shifted her to face him after that, he was more than content to discover her body was becoming Silly Putty for him. That she sounded breathless as well was its own reward.

It seemed a good time simply to kiss her senseless. She murmured something against his mouth, but he didn’t pay any attention. Her limbs were trying to wrap themselves around his; that was message enough.

He took a moment to remove the rest of his clothes, and when he lay back down on the bed he didn’t touch her at all but just looked at her, from the crown of her head to the tips of her toes. Moonlight turned her ripe curves to silver, and her eyes looked as soft as lake water. So vulnerable. “Listen,” she murmured. “I’m not sure. I warned you, I…”

But he’d been listening to Greer for weeks. He wasn’t interested in listening any longer, nor did he want to play. He had other things to show her. Leaning over her, he pinned one of her legs with his, loving the feel of his muscular thigh against her softer one. She had incredibly beautiful breasts, full and plump and satin smooth. With infinite slow care, he circled each with a fingertip, then with his tongue. Her breasts were oh-so-sensitive; he’d discovered that before. The limits of that sensitivity were what he needed to know now.

Her nipples were dark brown pebbles. He rolled each tenderly between thumb and forefinger, then bent to taste the right one, teasing it with his tongue, then very gently applying his teeth.

She convulsed, her spine arching for him. He held her closer, allowing her less movement, pinning her hands to her sides. The other nipple he gave different treatment. He laved it to a swelling erection, blew on it to cool it, took it in his mouth to gently suckle.

Greer’s thighs tightened around his. He could feel her fingertips pressing down on his spine, but he paid no attention. He pressed her breasts together and kissed the cleavage he’d made. He kneaded the flesh, then massaged it, then traced fingertip patterns over and over those soft, swollen orbs. When he got around to it, he raised his eyes to hers again.

“Damn you, McCullough,” she whispered.

He smiled. “I haven’t even started, sweet.”

She wanted him. She wanted him in the most wanton way; she wanted him as she’d never conceived of wanting anyone. It wasn’t…nice. He was clearly determined to drive her out of her mind, and if he’d just let her touch him in return…

Her hand slid down his stomach, finding him. Ryan just that quickly removed her hand. “Not this time,” he murmured. “I’m a little too susceptible to being touched right now, love. Particularly to your touch. And there’s no way I want to be distracted from just…loving you. Not this time.”

She raised her hand again.

He said roughly, “No.”

He looked so fierce. And his fingers drew such delicate patterns over her ribs, down her stomach. A finger traced the soft curl of hair between her thighs; she shivered helplessly. His mouth came up to hers, softening her unwilling cry as his finger probed her flesh. One finger, then two.

It wasn’t what she knew of loving, that fierce almost angry need. It was frighteningly full, consuming. She’d denied it for so long; she was burning with it, moving against his hand, feeling his palm against her softness, his finger relentless inside her.

A flame burst, then another. She buried her face in his shoulder, her lips pressed fiercely into his flesh. “Enough,” she whispered.

He stopped after a time-only, really, to smile at her. “You have miles to go, if you think that’s all there is to pleasure, love,” he murmured. “Honey, I think you have to accept that you aren’t going to get any sleep tonight.”

“Greer.”

“Hmm.”

“You’re not going to sleep yet.”

Ryan watched her open one sleepy eye, lift her head to look at him vaguely and then let her cheek flop back onto his chest.

“Ryan. I am asleep. You make a very good mattress,” she murmured.

“Thank you.”

“Am I cutting off your circulation?”

“Sweetheart, you cut off my circulation around three hours ago.”

“You should have said something.”

“Why? I want you just where you are.” His palm trailed a lazy path down her bare spine. “Now, don’t drop off again. We have unfinished business.”

The woman sprawled across his body like an abandoned waif had been exactly the sensual lover he’d known she could be. Actually, she’d proved an incomparable hedonist. She loved touching, and being touched.

But she certainly didn’t wake up easily. Even when his finger trailed up her side and she jerked away from his tickling, all he got was a momentary dour scowl and a sleepy yawn. “Business,” she echoed vaguely. “Actually, we do have business, don’t we? You never did say how you happened to be here. How you knew about Ray, why you drove all this distance-”

“Not that kind of business. We can talk about all that tomorrow. I meant important stuff.” Locking his arms around her, he rolled her over and stole the pillow from behind her head, tossing it on the floor.

Her eyes looked up at him disbelievingly. “You can’t still have the energy.”

“I didn’t hear you say it.”

“Say what?”

“I want to hear you say how beautiful you are. I want you to say, ‘Ryan, I am a very sexy lady and I’m not embarrassed about it.’” His lips brushed hers fleetingly. “You are beautiful, you know.”

“Ryan.”

“The thing is, I need to know that you feel beautiful about yourself.”

She parted her lips and then hesitated, her eyes luminous on his, fully awake. “It was you,” she whispered. “It’s the way you make love to me, the way you make me feel.”

He shook his head. “Nice. Not good enough, but nice.” His palm cupped her breasts, then slipped down her stomach to the parting of her thighs. She responded immediately, her arms sliding around him, pulling him closer. “Are you going to say it for me?” he whispered.

“I can’t say something like that. I’d sound like an egotistical maniac.”

He sighed. “In some ways, you’re an extremely slow learner. You’ve obviously completely missed what I was trying to teach you. We’ll have to try again.”

“Will we?” she asked wryly.

“And you’re not going to get any sleep tonight until you tell me how beautiful you are.”

“I haven’t gotten any sleep so far. There doesn’t seem to be a great deal of difference,” she whispered wryly.

She was wrong, she discovered very quickly. Ryan had made love to her in ways she’d never thought of, seeking ways of giving her pleasure that had left her breathless, and tearful, and exultant. Her body seemed to belong to someone else. She was sensitive where she hadn’t known she was sensitive, responsive in ways she’d never believed she was responsive.

He hadn’t once claimed his own satisfaction. In some mystical way, as he knelt over her, as he probed that core of her in the timeless way of man and woman, she looked into his eyes and knew he still wasn’t claiming her for his own pleasure.

She forgot the thought for a minute. He felt infinitely good inside her. She shuddered everywhere, within, without, all over, as he slid in and out in a slow, lazy rhythm. A rush of sweet yearning started to build, and his rhythm changed, quickened, feeding the greedy sensuality he’d taught her earlier.

“Tell me,” he whispered.

He lifted her closer to him, his palms on her bottom encouraging a deeper fit. He filled the hollow inside her, a hollow that seemed to reach as far as her heart.

She’d already discovered he was a man without mercy, but this time she also discovered that Ryan could be a heartless tease. The pleasure he’d given so freely he now withheld. He touched with love and he touched with tenderness, one moment claiming her as a pagan would claim his captive after battle, the next soothing her with a sensual serenade in which his movements were the rhythm and his whispers were the melody. He urged her to feel. Everything.

She felt. Everything. And he would completely withdraw just when she was certain the pinnacle loomed before her. Her body grew as slippery as his, feverishly hot, yet the man refused to yield control.

“Tell me,” he whispered.

“I’m beautiful,” she hissed desperately.

“Exquisite.”

“Exquisite.”

“Incomparably sensual. And loving it.”

She gathered she was supposed to repeat that, too. She raised her head, sealed his mouth closed with her own and sent her fingernails running down his spine.

After that, there wasn’t much talking.