Open Invitation? Page 15

  Dan laughed.

  “Nana wouldn’t buy them. May I have another margarita?”

  “Do you think that’s a good idea?”

  “I think it’s an excellent idea.” The bartender brought the bowl of cherries and she said thank you. Then she plucked one out of the bowl and dangled it by the stem.

  Dan’s eyes widened slightly as she held it above her lips and touched it with her tongue, feeling the slick, cold surface. She pulled the cherry from the stem with her teeth and savored it. “Mmm. I love these things.”

  His Adam’s apple moved convulsively as he swallowed. “I can tell.”

  The wonderful, artificial cherry flavor and about a gallon of chemical red dye burst across her tongue and she smiled. She chased it with more potent, lime-tinged margarita, and enjoyed the tartness of that flavor, too.

  Dan’s gaze, intent on her face, never wavered. The sea lion continued to pontificate about something and didn’t notice that his audience was anything less than rapt.

  Dan leaned over and murmured into her ear. “Now you look like a lady enjoying herself. There’s nothing that gives me such a rush as watching you do that. It’s very sexy.”

  Heat rushed to her cheeks. “Really?” She plucked another cherry from the bowl.

  He nodded. “What else do you love, Lil? Besides Krispy Kremes and chocolate tortes?”

  She thought about it. “True confession time? I was never allowed to have junk food. And Shannon wasn’t, either. When we went to her house, her mom did buy us croissants for breakfast. But when we went to Jane’s, her dad would give us those canned SpaghettiOs for lunch.”

  Dan brightened. “You like SpaghettiOs? My favorite!”

  Lil nodded. “And blueberry Pop-Tarts for breakfast. Besides maraschino cherries, there’s nothing yummier than a factory-produced, preservative-laden blueberry Pop-Tart.”

  He laughed.

  The sea lion was now describing, to his gin and tonic, the rigors of housebreaking a ferret. The gin and tonic appeared fascinated.

  Lil took a third cherry and rubbed it along the rim of her margarita glass, coating its plump, shiny red skin with salt. She bit into it and analyzed the sweet/salty taste before wrinkling her nose, which probably wasn’t ladylike.

  Dan shook his head at her. “Better with lime, not cherry.”

  She nodded.

  A white-jacketed attendant approached them. “Mr. Granger? Ms. London?”

  Dan nodded.

  “I’m terribly sorry to inform you that your flight to Heathrow has been canceled due to inclement weather. We can get you on another one, but not until the early morning. In the meantime, I’d be more than happy to assist you in finding accommodations for the night.”

  Dan frowned and looked a question at Lilia. She supposed she should be irritated at the inconvenience, but she was at the bottom of her second ’rita, as Dan called them, and she just couldn’t summon the urge to mind. They were in beautiful surroundings and quite frankly, she wanted to stay here and have another drink.

  “Don’t you think,” she confided to the man in the white jacket, “that Mr. Granger has the most beautiful eyes?”

  “Er, quite so, madam.”

  “And the sexiest mouth.”

  “Indeed.”

  Dan cleared his throat. “Lil, you’re making me blush, I swear.”

  “May I have just one more margarita?”

  “Right away, madam.”

  “I’m not sure that’s such a hot idea,” said Dan.

  Lil looked at her feet again, and they had definitely gotten farther away. Another drink would help her reach them, so she could slip off the left shoe, the strap of which had rubbed a raw spot at her heel. “Just one?” she asked.

  He sighed. “Just one, then.” He turned back to Mr. White Jacket. “I think those accommodations you mentioned might be a real good idea. Thank you.”

  DAN POURED a giggling, one-shoed Lil through the door of her hotel room an hour and a half later. “Here you are, sweetheart. See, I’m putting your carry-on right here, on the stand. And I’ll be right on the other side of that adjoining door.”

  He looked at her regretfully. Her hair was mussed and she had the sexiest little smear of lipstick mixed with salt crystals at the side of her adorable mouth. He wanted her like hell, but she’d crossed the line from tipsy to pretty much downright drunk an hour ago, and he was man enough not to take advantage of her. She’d expressed her desire to keep things businesslike between them, and while he’d have been happy to change her mind if she were sober, he needed to honor her request since she wasn’t.

  “You’re not going to stay with me?” she looked as if he’d just run over her dog or something.

  “I don’t think it’s a real good idea, Lil. I think you need to eat something besides maraschino cherries. Want me to order you something from room service?”

  She shook her head. “No, thank you.”

  “Okay.” He moved to the door. Then he turned. “You sure?”

  Lil had whipped off her top, revealing a delicate, lacy, pink silk camisole with the slimmest of spaghetti straps and a low scoop neck. He could see her little pink nipples through the champagne-colored lace, and heat immediately shot to his groin.

  “Will you be the mint on my pillow?” she asked shyly, unzipping her skirt. It fell to the floor, revealing that the camisole was in reality a teddy—and a skimpy one, too.

  Aw, Christ. His heart leaped out of his chest and impaled itself on his sudden, raging erection. He guessed it was a new kind of heart attack—just as immobilizing as the old kind. Dan forced himself to back slowly toward the connecting door. “Lil,” he said unsteadily. “You are not yourself. I want you to go into the bathroom, take two aspirin with some water and lie down. If you still feel this way tomorrow, then I’ll be anything you want. But you should get some sleep, because we’ve got an early wake-up call comin’.”

  She watched him with sad puppy-dog eyes as he opened the door and backed through it, then closed it again. Granger, you are nuts. What other man would turn her down, dressed like that?

  He stripped off his clothes and threw himself facedown on the bed in his own room. Think about politics, he told himself. Think about the weather. Think about the kids you’ll be hosting at the ranch. Wild teenage boys, just as he’d been.

  But Dan was unable to get her image out of his mind’s eye. Worse, he couldn’t get himself to relax and fall asleep, because his ears kept pricking, alert for any electric buzzing noise he might hear from Lil’s room. Had she brought the Day-Glo orange vibrator with attachments? And was it possible that she was using it on herself, since he hadn’t obliged her?

  Dan groaned and bit his pillow. Maybe it hadn’t been such a brilliant idea to invite Lil along on this trip as his date.

  LIL WALKED unsteadily into the bathroom to take the aspirin he’d suggested. She filled a glass with water and glared at herself in the mirror. She looked pretty damned good, if she did say so herself.

  “What’s wrong with you?” she asked her reflection in the mirror. “Are you going to stop living like a little old lady, or what?”

  Dan obviously was used to women who were more sexually adventurous than she. He’d found her easy to turn down, and it was obviously because she hadn’t…done what he’d asked her to do the other day. She was boring in bed, a prude.

  Prude is one letter away from prune. Prunes are wrinkled and dried up. You never see a prune in anyone’s fruit bowl. They’re not attractive.

  Lil visualized doing what Dan had asked, and heat broke out all over her body like a rash. She clung to the faux marble bathroom counter with one hand, not quite steady on her feet.

  She eyed the connecting door between his room and hers. All she had to do was walk to that door and open it. Simple, right?

  So she did.

  His room was dark except for the blue, flickering light of the television, which was tuned to a blues music station.

  He lay on his side,
his head supported by one hand, the remote in the other. His eyes widened when he saw her, and he sat up.

  “Feel like company?” she asked. “Because the old lady next door might just be ready to explore that, um, option you mentioned the other day.”

  Dan seemed bereft of speech. Finally he licked his lips and swallowed. The TV began to play Ella Fitzgerald’s “People Will Say We’re in Love,” and Lil hooked the straps of her camisole under her thumbs. She drew them down, over her shoulders, and dropped the entire thing to the floor.

  She liked the way it slithered down her body, slipping away like an inhibition and puddling on the floor.

  Lil walked to the bed, her hips swaying, and he reached for her, pulling her on top of him. He seemed to be naked under the sheet, and she could feel him hard against her. His mouth found hers and he made love to her lips, his tongue gliding against hers, sweet and hot.

  He trailed kisses over her neck and shoulders, raising goose bumps on her skin. He found her nipples and pleasured them, cupping her breasts in his big hands.

  She wished that her whole body could fit into his mouth at once, that she could dissolve there on his tongue.

  Lil sat astride him as Ella segued into “Be Kind.”

  This is my first affair… she sang.

  Lil stroked Dan’s rough jaw, his cheeks, his ears. His hands skimmed over her back, along her spine, leaving what felt like streaks of heat in their wake. And then they moved down to her bottom, which he cupped and squeezed and stroked.

  He also moved her inexorably forward, until she was sitting almost on his shoulders. Nervous now, she felt a brief flash of shame as his big hands on her cheeks lifted her and brought her forward. Could she really do this?

  She hovered, poised on her knees directly above him. She could feel his hot breath spiraling up, and the sight of his grin below took her breath away.

  “Come ’ere, darlin’,” he said, and dragged her hips down toward him. She felt unbelievably dirty, doing this, though she told herself rationally that there were far, far filthier things that two—or three or four—human beings could do.

  Slowly she let herself sink down and Dan’s mouth met her eagerly, his tongue lapping and sliding over her. She couldn’t help the small, inhibited scream that came from her throat.

  It seemed to excite him, because he found the most sensitive part of her with renewed vigor. Lil reached blindly in front of her and grabbed the edge of the headboard as he plunged his tongue into her and then swirled it around at a spot that made her come sexually unglued. Shame went out the window and there was only sensation, only his mouth and the feel of his hands on her bottom.

  Her thighs began to shake uncontrollably and she tried to buck away from him as orgasm hit and shattered any control she had left. But he held her to his mouth with erotic determination and a tender sort of dominion that she’d never known.

  Lil spasmed, cried out, spasmed, cried out, trembling and overcome with pleasure. She was wet with it, wild with it and wide-open. She had never, ever experienced anything like this.

  He finally released her, judging that she could stand no more, and she collapsed against him, wanting to communicate gratitude but knowing that “thank you” didn’t quite cut it.

  “You’re so beautiful,” Dan murmured, “when you allow yourself pleasure. I’ve never seen anything so gorgeous.” He stroked her hair, her shoulders, her back. She ran her hands down his body to find that he was still rock-hard, and she tugged at his shoulder to try to roll him on top of her.

  He laughed gently at her efforts, and finally obliged her. “We need a condom, honey,” he said, rolling off her seconds later. She waited for him to come back from the bathroom, missing his warmth.

  He came back sheathed and lost no time in picking up where they had left off, seeming to delight—as she did—in driving into her with one, sure stroke. Her muscles and nerves tautened with the fast penetration and gloried in it. She began to lose reality again to rhythm and sensation and the smell and texture of his skin. The scents of their bodies had mingled into a joined, male/female essence that combined feral with floral, strength with subtlety.

  She rode and he rode, each a cradle for the other’s pleasure. The thought crossed her mind that this wasn’t civilized English riding at all…she had somehow come to appreciate the Wild West very much indeed.

  17

  LIL AWOKE to the shrieking of the telephone next to her ear. It was almost as loud as the sledgehammer in her head and the thunderous mortification that hit her next as a sleepy, naked Dan Granger grabbed the phone and muttered into it. He dropped it back into the cradle, scrubbed a hand over his bristly face and sat up, swinging his muscular legs over the edge of the bed.

  “Mornin’, sleepyhead,” he said to her, as if everything were normal and she weren’t the Whore of Babylon in a Judith Martin suit.

  Dear Miss Manners,

  What’s the proper way to address the gentleman whose face you’ve just sat upon?

  Signed, Luridly Laid in New York.

  Dear Luridly Laid…

  Lil couldn’t even imagine the response to this. She pulled the covers up over her head.

  Dan was so rude as to snatch them down. “Gotta get up, darlin’ Lil. We don’t want to miss our flight—though now that I see you naked again, I can think of all sorts of creative ways to be late.”

  She snatched the covers back and pulled them over her face again.

  “Are we feeling cranky this morning?”

  Nope, we’re feeling skanky this morning.

  She said nothing.

  “Does your little head hurt, baby?”

  Yes, humiliation and remorse have a harsh sting to them—somewhat like tequila the morning after.

  She nodded, still mummified in the bed covers.

  “Come on, my little tigress. Let’s show our morning stripes!”

  Really, could the man be more annoying? He was a professional irritant.

  She, on the other hand, was not professional at all. Professionals don’t straddle their client’s faces and ride hell for leather, clutching the headboard and howling at the popcorn ceiling like an American Idol contestant.

  If Lil had had the remainder of the bottle of tequila, she would gladly have doused herself with it and stuck a lighted match up her left nostril.

  Then she wouldn’t have to look at the man who was stripping her of the covers yet again—much less listen to him.

  She discovered that shame actually had a taste: a mixture of lime, stale alcohol and maraschino cherry.

  “Okay, princess. Get up.” The Beast grabbed one of her wrists and one of her ankles and hauled her off the bed, carrying her into the bathroom, where he settled her unceremoniously onto the toilet!

  “I’m sure you have to use that,” he said, turning on the shower.

  Lil’s last remaining shred of dignity fluttered feebly and she shot off the toilet and out of his bathroom, through the connecting door and into her own bathroom.

  He had expected her to pee in front of him? Was the man crazy?

  She thought about the fact that he dealt with farm animals all the time, and supposed she shouldn’t be surprised. But she was not a farm animal! Not today, anyway. She still wasn’t sure what sort of creature she’d been last night.

  She shuddered.

  Then she thought about how hard Shannon would laugh if she could see how angst-ridden Lil was today. She tried to shrug off the angst. So she’d sat on a man’s face. Women did it every day, and probably sometimes twice. What was the big deal? Why was she such a Goody-Two-Shoes?

  She didn’t know. All she knew was that her two shoes did not belong on either side of a man’s face while her goodies were in his mouth.

  Lil was so upset that she couldn’t pee, even though she needed to. She closed her eyes. She was way beyond anal retentive: she was bladder retentive! What would Freud say about that? What would Jane say?

  Suddenly she wanted Jane’s advice in the worst w
ay. Jane would be calm and rational and get her back to the point where she could indulge in normal bodily functions. She would tell Lil how she should handle this situation.

  But how could she possibly call Jane up on her cell phone and discuss something this…private?

  She couldn’t. And that was all there was to it.

  Lil turned on her own shower and tried to scrub away all her confusion and mortification and concerns. She practically shoved the little bar of soap up into her uterus as she agonized over whether she—ugh, ugh, ugh!—might smell down there. Horrible thought.

  Something she’d been entirely unconcerned about last night with all the tequila in her. Something she hadn’t allowed herself to even wonder before, when she and Dan had done it in the dining room.

  Since she couldn’t call Jane, she got out of the shower and wrapped herself in a towel and pretended that she was talking to her. Jane would say, “He works with barnyard animals. There is no worse smell. And it’s not like he’s treating you any differently today, right? You are a woman, these things are natural, and you’re being silly.”

  Right. Thanks, Jane.

  Lil got dressed in the spare outfit she’d packed in her carry-on and fastened Nana Lisbeth’s pearls around her neck and in her ears. There. Now she at least didn’t look like the Whore of Babylon. She looked like the conservative businesswoman she had been a week ago, before Dan Granger had strolled into her life and said, “Haaaaaaaaa.”

  Before he’d turned her life upside down.

  A knock sounded on the connecting door. Dan asked, “You okay in there, Lil?”

  “I’m just fine, thank you.”

  “We need to get a move on, darlin’.”

  “One moment, and I’ll be ready.” She quickly gathered her things and threw them back into the carry-on which had been carefully organized earlier, everything in its place.

  Now she mashed her toiletries, her dirty clothes and the teddy in any which way they would fit. They resembled her thoughts and emotions. She put those out of her mind and zipped the bag closed.