Wearing only his unbuttoned jeans, he lay down on the bed and leaned against the pillows. She reached for the snap at the side of her jacket. He crossed his arms behind his head and watched.
As her fingers touched the snap, ripples of panic turned her skin to gooseflesh, and she fought to reassure herself. What difference did it make if he saw her naked? It wasn’t as if she had anything unusual beneath her clothes, and she needed him so desperately. Now that she had seen him, she couldn’t imagine anyone else siring her child.
But her hand felt as if it were paralyzed. She noticed that his zipper had crept down, revealing a narrow blade of hair bisecting a flat abdomen.
Do it! her brain screamed. Let him see you! But her fingers wouldn’t move.
He watched her, saying nothing. There was no kindness in that hard-eyed gaze. No gentleness. Nothing to reassure her.
As she tried to shake off her paralysis, she remembered that Craig hadn’t liked sexual foreplay. He’d told her that with men, the end result was all that mattered. Cal would probably appreciate it if she simply let him get to it. She began walking toward the bed.
“I got some rubbers in the top drawer in the bathroom, Rosebud. Go get ’em.”
Even though his request made everything more complicated, she was pleased with this evidence of his survival skills. He might not be book smart, but he had street smarts, a valuable asset to pass on to a child.
“No need,” she said softly. “I came prepared.”
She extended her leg slightly, then tugged on her skirt with her left hand. The white silk crept up to her thigh. She reached underneath, and as she withdrew the condom she had tucked in the top of her stocking, she was hit full force by the moral implications of what she was doing. She had deliberately sabotaged the condom, and this was thievery.
Studying particle physics either distanced people from God or brought them closer. For her, the latter had happened, and she was defying everything she believed in. At the same time, she began to rationalize. He had no use for what she wanted, and she wasn’t harming him in any way by taking it. He was merely a device. This would have absolutely no negative effect on him.
Setting aside her qualms, she peeled apart the package and handed the condom to him. Even in the dim light, she wasn’t taking any chances that he would notice the package had been tampered with.
“Well, now, aren’t you an efficient little thing.”
“Very efficient.” Drawing a steadying breath, she tugged her skirt just high enough so that she could kneel on the edge of the mattress. Then she straddled his thighs, determined to get this over with as quickly as she could.
He gazed up at her, his arms crossed behind his head, the condom between his fingers. Staying on her knees, she garnered her courage and reached for the open waistband of his jeans. Her fingertips brushed the taut skin of his abdomen, and the next thing she knew, she was flat on her back.
With a hiss of alarm, she gazed up at him. His weight pressed her into the mattress, and the heels of his hands pinioned her shoulders so she couldn’t move.“Wh-what are you doing?”
His mouth tightened into a hard, thin line. “The game’s over, lady. Who the hell are you?”
She gasped for breath. She didn’t know whether it was his weight or her own fear, but her lungs felt as if they’d collapsed. “I-I don’t know what you mean.”
“I want the truth, and I want it now. Who are you?”
She’d underestimated his street smarts, and she knew she couldn’t afford another convoluted explanation. Her only chance to salvage this situation lay in simplicity. She thought of Jodie Pulanski and forced herself to look directly into his eyes.
“I’m a big fan.”
He regarded her with disgust. “That’s what I figured. A bored society bimbo with a hankerin’ for football jerseys.”
Bimbo! He thought she was a bimbo! The novelty of it distracted her, and it took a moment to recover. “Not all jerseys,” she said hastily. “Just yours.”
She hoped he wouldn’t ask her the number because she had no idea. The personal research she’d done had centered on his medical records: low cholesterol, twenty-twenty vision, no family history of chronic disease, only a variety of orthopedic injuries that were of no concern to her.
“I should kick your ass out of here.”
Despite his words, he didn’t move, and as she felt him pressed hard against her thigh, she knew why. “But you won’t.”
For a long moment, he said nothing. Then he reared back, releasing her shoulders.“You’re right. I guess I’m drunk enough to forget that I gave up groupies years ago.”
He moved to the side of the bed and shucked his jeans. With the bars of moonlight falling across his body, there was something primitive about him and elementally male. She looked away as he tugged on the sabotaged condom. This was it, then.
Her mouth went dry as he turned back and reached for the snap that held her jacket together. She flinched and made an instinctive grab for his hand.
He clenched his teeth in something that resembled a snarl. “Make up your mind, Rosebud, and do it fast.”
“I want to… I want to keep my clothes on.” Before he could respond, she gripped his wrist and shoved his hand under her skirt. Once she’d done that, she released him, because if he couldn’t take it from there by himself, she was doomed.
She needn’t have worried.
“You sure are full of surprises, Rosebud.” He stroked up the length of her stocking, then moved higher, tracing the path of the garter to the point where it met the lacy belt. Now he knew exactly how little she had on beneath her skirt.
“You don’t believe in wasting any time, do you?”
She could barely force the words through the constriction in her throat. “I want you. Now.”
She willed herself to open her legs, but the muscles in her thighs were so rigid, she could barely force them apart. He stroked them, soothing her as if she were a cat with an arched back.
“Relax, Rosebud. For somebody who wants it so bad, you sure are tense.”
“An-anticipation.”Please give me my baby. Just give me my baby and let me out of here.
His fingers brushed the soft hair at the juncture of her thighs, and she wanted to die from the embarrassment of it. She winced as his touch grew more intimate, then tried to turn the sound into a moan of passion. She had to relax. How could she possibly conceive when she was so tense?
“Am I hurting you?”
“No. Of course not. I’ve never been more aroused.”
He gave a snort of disbelief and began to push her skirt to her waist, only to have her grab it at the top of her thighs. “Please don’t do that.”
“I’m startin’ to feel like a sixteen-year-old again, makin’ out in the alley behind Delafield’s Drugstore.” His voice had a husky sound to it she hadn’t heard before, giving her the impression that he didn’t find that particular fantasy entirely unpleasant.
What would it have been like, she wondered, to be the teenage girl making out with the town football hero in the alley behind the drugstore? When she had been sixteen, she was in college. At best, her male classmates had treated her as a kid sister; at worst, they had made snide remarks about “the little bitch who broke the grade curve.”
He trailed his mouth over the bodice of her jacket. She felt the moist heat of his breath on her breast, and she nearly leaped off the bed as his lips found the bump of her nipple.
A hot rush of desire, as unexpected as it was overwhelming, rushed through her. He closed his mouth over her nipple and teased it through the silk with the tip of his tongue. Sensation flooded through her body, waves of it, crashing in on her.
She fought against what was happening. If she permitted herself to derive even a moment’s pleasure from his caress, she would be no better than the prostitute she was impersonating. This had to be a sacrifice, or she could never live with herself.