Who's on Top? Read online

  He’d teased her, yes. He’d promised to get his revenge upon her. But he’d punished her with pleasure only, never malice. Not once had he been rough. He’d even asked her to tie his hands so that he couldn’t get carried away. He’d given up control, put machismo aside in the one arena where an insecure man would never do so—in the bedroom.

  Dom wasn’t insecure in the least. He had no problems ceding power to a female, as Arianna said.

  Great, Jane. So when Arianna demands to see your documentation, you’ll just tell her all of that, right? Log it down for the corporate records: Sayers is phenomenal in bed. Provides multiple orgasms. No problem with women on top.

  Yeah. She could see that statement getting her a lot more work. Referrals, so to speak…

  But you don’t owe him anything, whispered her old success-at-any-cost demons. He’s not happy at Zantyne. He’ll probably leave anyway, because he can’t stand Arianna DuBose, and you’ll have lost a huge consulting contract for nothing.

  The success-at-any-cost demons were only partially right, however. True, she didn’t owe Dom anything—except her honesty and her professional best.

  If she stacked the facts against him, she was no better than one of those “experts” for hire in legal proceedings. The ones whose testimony regarding the “truth” changed according to whomever was paying them, prosecution or defense.

  She did not want to work for Arianna at the price of her integrity. And she did not want to see Dominic after tonight—for fear her heart would begin to crave him as much as her body. She needed a controlling alpha male in her life as much as she’d needed those hot-pink sandals.

  But tonight—tonight she planned a memorable evening. She’d let him play her like a violin and then take back her power when she left the bedroom in the morning.

  17

  DOMINIC HUMMED AS HE GOT ready for his first official date with Jane. Knowing that she wasn’t planning to trash his character and aid Arianna in firing him made her even more attractive in his eyes. Go figure.

  And he’d found her damned attractive before…irritating as that had been.She was dedicated and thorough—she’d done her homework. She was smart—she’d seen through Arianna. She was sexy beyond belief. She was beautiful. And that hot-pink thong and the repartee were just the cherry on top.

  Damn, I think I’m half in love with her. Maybe even two-thirds.

  “Hey, Rusty,” he said to his cat as he finished shaving. “The hot babe who shared our bed last night? How’d you like to see a lot more of her?”

  Rusty meowed.

  “I’ll bet she’d give you tuna if you were nice to her.”

  The cat rubbed his head against Dom’s legs and purred. He wasn’t particularly nice to anyone but Dom. In fact, he’d been known to hiss at women visitors and bat at their ankles.

  He hadn’t hissed at all at Jane. Just gave her the unblinking hairy eyeball. That was a true thumbs-up from Rusty, despite the fact that he didn’t have any thumbs.

  “You even shared my shoulder with her, didn’t you, little dude?” The cat rolled to his side on the fuzzy blue bathroom rug, digging fast at it with his back claws. Dom always thought of The Flintstones when he did that, since the legs of the cartoon characters started rotating before they moved.

  Just like Fred and Wilma, Rusty didn’t move an inch, but his back legs whirred like an eggbeater. Finally Dom clued in to the non-verbal feline communication. “So you dig her, huh, little guy?”

  Rusty went still and pricked up his ears.

  “First one in a long time. I almost got sued when you bit Brianna in the calf.”

  The cat grinned at him for a moment, before the grin morphed into a large yawn.

  “Yeah, you rabid little turd. No biting Jane. You leave that up to me.”

  HE PICKED HER UP AT HER apartment. The smell of burned nylon no longer permeated the air, which was a blessing. Jane herself smelled like jasmine and vanilla and oranges when she opened the door. He wanted to bury his face in her hair and lick her from ears to heels. However, that could wait until later.

  “Hi,” she said.“Oh, yeah.” He couldn’t help his response. She’d piled her hair on top of her head, leaving dark tendrils curling in front of her ears. Tonight she had pale, sheer, shiny lips, and her smile rose over a lemon-yellow cashmere sweater. The infernal, torturous arrow rode in her cleavage again, amply displayed by the V-neck. She wore faded jeans and electric-blue toenail polish on her bare feet. Pantsuit Jane was nowhere in sight.

  Impossible, but she looked even sexier than she had last night. Softer. More lush.

  “Come in,” she told him.

  He followed her like a dog.

  “Would you like a beer before we go?”

  At his nod, she pulled two from her refrigerator and popped their caps off. She handed him one and raised hers in a toast. Clink.

  “To you,” he said. “You never fail to surprise me.”

  She colored faintly and drank straight from the bottle like a good Northern girl. He did, too.

  She gestured toward the living room and he took a good look around this time, since he’d really only seen her hallway and laundry closet this morning. She had sturdy, comfortable furniture: an overstuffed cream couch upholstered in cotton duck; a faded blue chair that had seen a lot of years and held a lot of behinds by the looks of it; a lovely old mahogany coffee table, scarred from use. Magazines, books and newspapers everywhere—in towering but tamed stacks, neatly categorized.

  Jane had a small television, circa nineteen-eighty-something. A stereo system of about the same age. CDs overflowed the mantel, displaying her eclectic musical tastes—everything from The Doors to Benny Goodman, from Mozart to George Clinton. At the moment Ella Fitzgerald sang moodily, throatily about love.

  Above the row of CDs hung a modern painting of a woman with dark hair a lot like Jane’s. Laughter filled her expression, her head thrown back, as she played a huge lime-green baby-grand piano. The dusky blue figures of two men and a woman lounged next to the piano, their mouths open in song. Yellow lamplight bathed the whole scene, and the woman playing the piano wore an orange dress with the sixties lines of young Jacqueline Kennedy.

  “My mother,” Jane said.

  “Does she still play?”

  “No. We lost her twelve years ago. Breast cancer. They found it too late.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks. It’s been a long time.”

  “How old were you when she died?”

  “Nineteen. Sophomore year in college.”

  “You were so young to lose your mother.”

  Jane’s eyes darkened. She shrugged. “You know, I don’t think it matters how old you are. You can be seventy-four and it’ll still just about kill you to lose your mom.”

  His hand tightened around his beer bottle, but he said nothing.

  “You lost yours earlier than I ever lost mine, Dom. In all the ways that count.”

  He said nothing, just walked to her built-in bookshelves and studied various titles, as well as the photographs in front of them. Her taste in books was as eclectic as her taste in music.

  “Do you ever see her?” Jane’s voice was tentative.

  Dom’s shoulders tightened and knotted just thinking about it. “My grandmother sees her more than I do.”

  Jane sat down on the squishy cream sofa and gestured that he should join her. “What’s your grandmother like?”

  He smiled. “Tolerant. Serene. Sees the best in everybody—even her crazy daughter. Has the same hairstyle since 1959, a fondness for blue gingham and still not a clue that those five-leafed plants in my mother’s terrarium weren’t going to bloom into tulips one day.” He shook his head.

  “She’ll take homemade muffins to her daughter, and when they end up being thrown at her, one by one, her only comment is that they don’t make nearly the mess that the little banana custards do.”

  Dom took a long pull from his beer and started to laugh. “She still says her pr
etty little girl is just headstrong and willful. She took up with the wrong people, you know?”

  Jane looked appalled.

  “It’s okay. Really. I didn’t pull the wings off butterflies or shoot dogs with my BB gun. I damn sure didn’t get into drugs or alcohol—I’d learned that lesson. I just avoided going home. I practically lived at a friend’s house, and his mom treated me like a second son. I lost myself in heavy metal and played bass—horrendously—in Andy’s garage.” He smiled at the memory. “If you want to hear the worst rendition of ‘Wild Thing’ ever recorded, I still have our demo tape. The one that was going to get us a recording contract.”

  He looked around at Jane’s living room again and decided it was neat, practical and interesting, just like her. He wanted to see her bedroom—and not for salacious purposes. He wanted to see where Jane slept, the place where she ditched her gray and beige suits and put on hot-pink thongs and blue toenail polish instead.

  “What’s with the blue toenail polish?”

  She grinned. “It’s me, isn’t it?”

  “Er, no.”

  “Influence of my friend and business partner, Shannon. She’s very L.A.”

  “Ah.”

  “I borrowed the polish because it just so happens to match…something else I have on.”

  “Is that so?” Dom drawled.

  “Yep.” She set her beer bottle on the coffee table. “We’ve just been waiting for my toes to dry.”

  “So the beer and hospitality were for cosmetic reasons? I’m hurt.”

  “Yeah, yeah. Where are we eating? I’m starved.” She retrieved a pair of shoes and slid them on.

  Dom finished his own beer. “We’ve got reservations at Vito’s on the Square.”

  FOR THE FIRST TIME, JANE marveled, she and Dom were having a normal conversation that didn’t involve one of them trying to mock, best or outwit the other. She let wine and laughter slide down her throat while relaxation drifted lazily over her. They shared the best sautéed calamari to be found in Connecticut. They shared a green salad, too. And for dessert, cappuccinos with mouthwatering tiramisu.

  When they returned to her apartment, she no longer cared about pride or who made the first move or who was on top. Neither one of them wore the pants, figuratively speaking. They shared the pants—and they took them off together.Jane put on some slow, mellow jazz, and Dominic snagged a bottle of lotion from the bathroom counter. He coaxed her down to the rug and rolled her so she lay on her stomach with her head on a cushion.

  She seemed uncomfortable and tried to tug his discarded shirt over her rear end. He pulled it off and she murmured a protest, covering it with her hand.

  “Jane, silly, I can’t give you a full-body rub that way.”

  She murmured something and blushed. The words he caught were big and butt.

  He took a playful bite of the body part in question and she squealed and wriggled. He wouldn’t let her go. “Stop,” he said. “You have a wonderful, generous, delicious bottom. And if you insult it again, I’ll have to smack it!”

  Jane muttered something about political correctness and patronizing males, and he kissed her on the ear and told her pleasantly to shut up.

  He smoothed the cream over her back, massaging it in wide, soothing circles, while she forgot to be outraged and sighed in pleasure. He rubbed at what seemed like multitudes of knots and tense areas, kneaded each one until it submitted and relaxed under his hands and she could have passed for a woman-shaped Jell-O mold.

  He smiled and took full advantage of her lethargy, sliding his slick hands down to the small of her back, then the cleft of her buttocks and farther still. He spread them a little and worked his thumbs inward to her mons, circling and rubbing until she arched her back and moved against him shamelessly.

  The sight of her that way was so hot, so erotic, that he hardened instantly. He replaced his thumbs with the fingers of his right hand and played her as she rocked and moaned.

  “I want you,” he whispered. “I want you now.”

  “Yes,” she gasped.

  He didn’t need a written invitation. He quickly made use of a condom, then grabbed her hips from behind and drove into her with almost desperate urgency. She was tight, wet and matched him stroke for stroke. Neither of them could get enough, it seemed. He rode wave after wave of taunting pleasure, tension spiraling and building, coiling just out of reach.

  Incredible, he thought. And then, I’m not sure I’ll live through this one….

  Beneath him Jane let out a low, sobbing moan and exhaled. “Oh, yes…” She arched her back in an almost violent spasm, then reached through her own legs to caress the root of him as she continued to orgasm.

  Dominic jolted at the extra contact and spun instantly into his own climax, spilling heart and soul—and probably mind, as well—into the woman beneath him. With a weak, helpless curse he collapsed over her, careful not to crush her beneath him.

  When they’d caught their breath, Dom nudged her onto her back and kissed her lips, then each breast, then her belly. She smiled and stroked his hair back from his forehead.

  “You do things to me…” Her voice trailed off.

  “And you do things to me,” he replied, kissing her again. “I think you’re going to kill me. But I’ll die a happy guy.”

  18

  MUCH LATER, AS THEY STILL stretched naked in front of the fire, Dom rolled to look again at the painting of her mother. “Tell me about her. Tell me about the rest of your family. It’s your turn to open up.”

  “What do you want to know?”“Everything. And I promise not to file a report about it.”

  “Low blow. That’s my job.” But she said it with a smile, and he took it with a smile. He stroked her cheek.

  “My dad and my brother live together near Glastonbury, on about four acres. My dad’s depressed and my brother can’t keep a job. I try to whip them into shape when I go for Sunday dinners over there. Dad should be on antidepressants and Gilbey…” She blew out a frustrated breath. “Gilbey builds strange things out in the barn. I don’t know what they are, but they’re really cool. Beautiful. He says they’re sculptures. Anyway, every couple of months one of my loser cousins shacks up with them, too, and mooches until I come kick him out. I’m not too popular with the cousins, but they’re a bunch of potheads and I don’t care. Dad and Gilbey have enough problems without taking care of them. And I can’t deal with Fred’s drinking problem, Bill’s fourth bankruptcy and Chuck’s child-support dodging on top of everything.”

  “These are three brothers? What’s wrong with them?”

  “Nothing. They just need to grow up. But they all hang out and underachieve together, so it seems normal to them.”

  “And your brother’s the same way?”

  Jane hesitated. “Nooo. Gilbey works hard. Just not at any paid job. He always gets himself fired from those, no matter what I line up for him. I guess next I’m going to have to send out slides of his sculptures and talk to gallery directors in New York.”

  “Jane, why is it your problem?”

  She was silent. “Because. Because it always has been. Since Ma died. She was the one who held us all together. She told us what to do and how to do it—in the nicest possible way, you understand. Loving. But she was the general.”

  Dom traced her collarbone and bent forward to kiss her. “And you stepped right into her boots.”

  “Yes. I suppose I did. And when I didn’t know how to manage a situation, I found a psychology book and learned how. I studied the grieving process and survivor’s guilt. I studied motivation and positive affirmation and personality types. I kept searching for the answers to the human condition. Searching for control…trying to make our lives right again.”

  Listening to her talk, Dominic understood her underlying issues with men. There was not a single male figure in her life who didn’t need help. And Jane had learned to step in and provide that help whether it was wanted or not. She was the mother hen in a brood of big turkeys.
/>   No wonder she kept her distance and assumed control with men. No mystery there. He was no longer surprised that she’d been so aggressive at their first meeting. She was used to managing and directing testosterone, familiar with hostility and well acquainted with men who needed fixing.

  Dominic decided to seduce her all over again, throwing in a special challenge just for her. A peek into Jane’s bedroom had revealed a lovely old brass bed covered with a hand-stitched quilt. While the quilt was probably a family heirloom, he was less interested in it than he was in the headboard of Jane’s bed. Yup, perfect for what he had in mind.

  He took her by the hand and pulled her up from the living room floor.

  “Where are we going?” she murmured.

  “Somewhere I doubt you’ve ever been before. Close your eyes.” She did as he asked. He snagged a dish towel from her kitchen and went to her.

  “Trust me, okay?” He folded it, placed it across her eyes and wound it around her head, tying a knot to hold it firmly in place. Jane’s breathing became a little more shallow, a little bit faster. Her hair glowed copper in the firelight, which bathed her skin in soft gold. She looked gorgeous and uncertain.

  Again he took her by the hand and this time led her into her bedroom, where he lifted her and set her in the center of the mattress. Then he helped himself to the curtain tiebacks at both windows and sat beside her. He took one delicate wrist, murmuring again, “Trust me.” He tugged it up to the headboard and fastened her to it, turned on by her quick intake of breath and her obvious reluctance.

  “It’s okay,” he said. “I promise not to hurt you or to do anything that you don’t like. We can stop at any time, Jane. Okay?”

  She nodded and didn’t resist when he walked to the other side of the bed and took her other wrist, binding it, too, to the headboard.