Werewolf in Las Vegas

Chapter 12

Luke knew he should be embarrassed for losing control, but holding Giselle felt so damned good that he was willing to deal with the embarrassment. And as his grief eased, he felt cleansed, as if he’d stepped out of a clear mountain waterfall into a bright ray of sunshine. What a gift she’d given him.

He relaxed against her, loving her combination of strength and softness. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.” She continued to comb her fingers through his hair. “I think you needed that.”

“Guess so.” He drew in a breath. “I’m okay now.”

“You’re sure?” She eased back to gaze up at him.

The light wasn’t great, but he could see the shine of her glorious eyes and the outline of her lush mouth. “Yeah.” He should release her and step back, but he kept looking at her mouth.

Then the most amazing thing happened. She braced her hands on his shoulders, stood on tiptoe, and pressed that velvet mouth against his.

For a moment he stood there in shock, unable to register that she had kissed him. What’s more, she wasn’t being very quick about it, either. She stayed right there and increased the pressure.

What he’d thought would be a fast, over-before-it-started brush of lips was turning into something quite different. The tip of her tongue slid over his mouth. His pulse went crazy.

Still, he didn’t believe it. He lifted his mouth a fraction away from hers. “Giselle?”

“Don’t say anything. Just kiss me back.”

“What about Mr. Right?”

“He doesn’t exist.”

That was all he needed to know. He settled his mouth over hers. He’d suspected that he’d like kissing her. He hadn’t known that he’d love it. He could devote hours to kissing Giselle. Her lips fit against his with the kind of perfection he’d only dreamed of.

He shifted his angle to see if it would lessen the pleasure. Nope, perfect that way, too. And this way, and oh, God, when she began to heat up, and their tongues were involved, he lost all sense of time and place. Kissing was supposed to be a prelude to more intimate activities, wasn’t it? Yet he couldn’t imagine what could be more intimate than this—breath linked with breath, mouths seeking and finding, soft moans so alike that he was no longer sure which of them had created the sound. He was so absorbed by the wonder of her kiss that he didn’t realize she’d unbuttoned his shirt until her palms flattened against his bare chest.

Ah, that felt good. She stroked him and toyed with his nipples as she continued to devastate him with her hot mouth. Pressure built in his groin, and her breathing grew as erratic as his.

Things became a little crazy after that. She seemed as eager as he was to get rid of their clothes. He couldn’t remember ever finding himself naked and rolling around on top of his bed that fast, but there they were, and she seemed to want him as desperately as he wanted her.

But he wasn’t so far gone that he forgot about condoms. Leaning over her, he reached for the handle on the bedside table drawer.

“You don’t need those.”

“Yes, I do.”

“You don’t. I can’t get pregnant, and there’s zero chance of disease.”

Bracing himself on his forearm, he gazed down at her. “That’s the kind of speech an irresponsible guy makes because he doesn’t want to use a condom.”

“Use one if it makes you feel better, but I’m telling you, you don’t need it.”

He quickly calculated why she’d say that. If she couldn’t have children, that was the obvious answer to the pregnancy issue. And if she claimed to be healthy, he was inclined to believe her.

Who was he to argue when he had a warm, moist, and exceedingly willing woman in his bed? And he intended to enjoy every second of this experience. “Thank you for being here,” he murmured as he lowered his mouth to hers.

Her soft moan of pleasure and the arch of her body against his filled him with wonder. She felt so damned right in his arms. He knew exactly what to do, how to touch her, how to stroke her.

When he pressed his mouth to her soft skin, she gasped out his name. He loved hearing her say it, loved having her acknowledge who was caressing her and making her pant and beg for more.

“Please, Luke . . . please!”

“Yes. God, yes.” With a groan of ecstasy, he sank deep and thanked whatever twist of fate had brought him Giselle Landry in his hour of need.

She rose to meet him and gave him as good as she got. This wasn’t going to be long and languorous. She urged him to be wild, and he didn’t need much urging. He’d been sweeping emotions under the rug for months, and now they came pouring out.

They rocked that king-sized bed. As they did, he took a moment to celebrate the wonders of making love to a woman without wearing a condom. Being a responsible man in an enlightened age, he’d never done that before. And he’d had no idea. No. Idea.

They were so in tune with each other that they even came at the same time. He’d tried to orchestrate that with other women and had failed to do so. But with Giselle, it happened naturally, as if that was the way things were meant to be.

They lay in the semidarkness holding each other, and he wondered if that would be it. This might have been a gimme on her part because she’d felt sorry for him. If so, he’d take it and be glad. She’d started them in this new direction, and he’d take his cues from her.

She rubbed his back and arched against him. “That was terrific.”

“Yes, and you deserve the credit. I would never have—”

“I know. I was dead set against this, but . . . you’re worth it, Luke.”

That comment sounded slightly ominous, but he chuckled, as if she’d cracked a joke. “I hope you’re not about to get in trouble. Will someone come after us?”

“No. It’s a personal thing. Don’t worry about it.”

“As mellow as I feel right now, I’m not sure I could worry about anything.”

Well, she’d done it, and the world had not come to an end. Giselle had expected to feel guilty afterward, but, like Luke, she was too mellow to work up a decent case of guilt. If she wanted to drum up excuses for herself, she could always blame Luke’s obvious grief.

But that wouldn’t be fair. She’d been edging toward this ever since she’d met him. Something about him—his quick grin, his blue eyes, his devotion to his sister, his willingness to take a joke—had told her that Luke Dalton was her Waterloo.

Ha. That was funny, in view of the water-related pranks going on. Bryce would get a kick out of that if she ever told him, which she wouldn’t. She’d done this thing—had sex with a human male—but that didn’t mean she’d take any more steps down that dangerous path.

Well, she needed to modify that statement. Luke would be her one-and-only adventure in human sexuality. But as long as she’d gone this far, she couldn’t see wasting the chance to explore the issue for as long as they had time to do that. Maybe she could consider it research. How could she counsel female Weres to avoid sex with humans if she had no knowledge of the temptations involved?

With those thoughts in mind, she lifted her head and murmured in Luke’s ear, “Can we do that again?”

He lifted his head and gazed down at her. “Oh, thank God. I thought maybe you felt sorry for me, and you’d think one time was enough to express your sympathy.”

She started to laugh and couldn’t seem to stop. “Sorry.” She tried to catch her breath. “But that’s hysterical. FYI, that’s not normally how I express my sympathy for someone’s loss. Ordinarily I send a card.”

He snorted. Then he laughed. Before long they had to break apart because they were both laughing so hard they needed extra room to roll around.

Finally, gasping, they lay on their backs on his bed.

“The answer to your question,” he said, “is yes, we most definitely can do this again. But I’m warning you, once we turn on the lights, you’ll see that this is a very white bedroom.”

“So?”

“No, I mean everything is white. The walls, the curtains, the sheets, the comforter—everything.”

“Why?”

“Because it was the easiest way to match everything.”

“Oh.” She was silent for a minute. “You have a ton of money, right?”

“I suppose.”

“So why didn’t you hire an interior decorator to fix up your bedroom so it wasn’t all white?”

He sighed. “You’re not the first person to ask me that, but you’re the first person I’ll answer honestly.”

“Oh, good. I love secrets.”

“Was that sarcasm?”

“No! I do really like them! Please tell me, Luke. I promise I won’t laugh.”

“Oh, that’s reassuring. You’re expecting you might want to laugh, aren’t you?”

“Sort of.”

“All right. I didn’t hire an interior decorator because this is my bedroom, the most intimate place in the house, and I figured that the person who chose the color scheme should be me.”

“A decorator would let you choose.”

“Yeah, but they’d be putting in their two cents’ worth. I wanted it to be all my idea.”

“So it could reflect your personality?”

“In a way.”

“So your personality is plain vanilla?”

“I knew I shouldn’t tell you.”

She rolled to face him. “Yes, you should, because I won’t breathe a word of that to anyone. Trust me. I know how to keep a secret.”

He reached over and touched her cheek. “I’ll bet you do. I’ll bet you plan to keep what happened here a secret.”

“I do, and I’d appreciate it if you would, too.”

“I will, Giselle. But that answers another question I had running around in my brain. Looks like what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas.”

“It’s for the best, Luke.”

“And you swear that you don’t have some guy waiting for you back in ’Frisco? You can tell me if you do. I won’t judge.”

“I don’t.” She held his hand against her cheek. “You don’t know me well enough yet if you’d even ask that.”

“I’m sure I don’t. And once you leave, I probably still won’t. But whatever happens, I will be forever grateful that you’re here with me tonight.”

“You’re welcome.” She caught his hand and placed a kiss in his palm. “So you never really grieved for your father?”

“Stupid, isn’t it? We’re given so many opportunities. At the deathbed, at the viewing, at the funeral, at the graveside, after the funeral. But all those occasions were so public. I’m a macho guy. I’m not supposed to start bawling in front of all my friends and family.”

“I’m honored that you trusted me enough, then.”

“You didn’t give me much choice. I tried to escape, but you came after me. I’m so glad you did.”

“So I could deliver my sympathy card.”

“Exactly.”

He tried to remember if he’d ever lain in the dark talking to a woman this way. He couldn’t remember a single instance. He’d heard people rave on about soul mates and had never believed in the idea. But he’d never met someone like Giselle, either, a woman he’d felt at home with from the beginning, despite some of the prickly comments she’d made to him. She was so easy to get along with that he was considering turning on the light and letting her see his white bedroom, even though she’d already made fun of it.

But lying in the dark and talking was fun, too. They had their own private world right now, where no one besides them knew that a special connection had taken place. He gave her hand a squeeze. “Tell me what you were like as a little girl.”

“Bossy.”

“I can believe that.”

She kicked him, but her bare feet tickled more than hurt.

“Tell me more.” He admitted to being fascinated by the subject of Giselle, maybe because she hadn’t given him much to go on. “Did you have pigtails? Did you play with dolls?”

“Yes on the pigtails, no on the dolls. I had a brother just two years older, and I thought he and his friends were so cool that I tagged after them. We built forts and ran races and staged elaborate battles.”

“Sounds like fun. Cynthia was eight years younger, so we never really played together. She was like . . . a little doll.” As he said that, he realized how it sounded. “Don’t jump on that, Giselle. Don’t read too much into it.”

“How can I help it? That statement illustrates the problem perfectly. You have to stop thinking of her as your doll-like little sister and think of her as an adult who is capable of taking care of herself.”

“I’m trying.”

“I know.” She reached out and brushed his hair back from his forehead. “I see that you are, and that’s fantastic.”

He lay there quietly and let her comb her fingers through his hair again. He couldn’t believe how much he loved having her do that. “So you were a rough-and-tumble kind of kid who liked to build forts and stage battles, right?”

“That’s right.”

“Did you ever play in the mud?”

“All the time. San Francisco has a moist climate. There’s always some mud around somewhere.”

“So you like the concept, then?”

She stopped combing his hair. “I did, when I was a kid. I can’t say I go out and roll around in it now that I’m an adult. Is there a point to this conversation?”

“There is.” The more he thought about it, the more he liked it. “It’s time to turn on the lights and let you see what sort of all-white environment you’ve stumbled into.”

“If you insist.”

“I do. Cover your eyes.” Reaching over her, he turned on the bedside table lamp nearest to him. One thing he hadn’t counted on with his all-white color scheme—white reflected light like crazy. There was a reason they used it in operating rooms. It made everything so much brighter.

In a bedroom, though, where he wouldn’t be doing surgery, it could be a mistake. He was beginning to realize that, but as long as he had the white going on, he might as well find a way to exploit it.

Giselle continued to hold her hand over her eyes. “Can I look now?”

“You can, but try not to be blinded.”

She uncovered her eyes slowly and gazed around the room. “You weren’t kidding, Luke. This is white.”

“Technically, it’s called linen, but I won’t quibble. It’s very white. Too white. I realize that now. Everything has to go.”

“No, it doesn’t! Keep the white comforter and put on different sheets. Leave those gorgeous pictures on the walls, but paint the walls a different color. White’s a perfectly fine choice in moderation.”

“Maybe, but are we agreed that the white sheets are history?”

“That would be the least expensive change to make.”

“Then, before they go, I want to give those white sheets a walk on the wild side. And since you once used to love playing in the mud, I’m hoping you’ll play along.”

“I hope you’re not planning to bring a vat of mud into the penthouse, Luke.”

“No. Mud is for kids. Grown-ups play with chocolate mousse.”