He wet the tip of her breast with his tongue, then pressed it between his fingers before laying the backs of them in the hollow between her rib cage and drawing them slowly down the center of her body. They drifted across the sensitive span of skin below her navel, then back and forth over her mound.
“When you sat down on the hospital bed, that gown molded perfectly to this.” His finger traced the V, following the grooves that formed it on both sides, then down the seam between her thighs, before sliding back up and coming to rest at the point where the three met.
“I mean, it couldn’t have been more perfectly delineated for my viewing pleasure. And, I thought, God help me.” He met her gaze and added drolly, “Then you pulled that sheet up over your lap.”
He’d entranced her with his touch, his words. She cupped the back of his head and pulled him down to her for another kiss. When they pulled apart, she gingerly kissed the cut on his cheek. “Hurt?”
“Wouldn’t know. I’ve been distracted by other physical sensations brought on by your talented hand.”
“I offered to stop.”
“Don’t. You’re better at it than I am.”
She smiled. “What makes me better?”
“I tend to be more…uh, efficient.”
“I can be more efficient.”
“Please, no. Take your time. In fact, you’ve got more area to cover now than when you started.”
She laughed softly as her fist moved up the full length of his erection and rode it down again.
He asked, “How come you didn’t live with that guy in Minneapolis?”
Her hand stilled. “How did you know—”
“I checked you out, remember. Or Carson did for me.” She gave him a reproving look, but he seemed not the least bit repentant as he reached down and started her hand moving again. “You two weren’t that serious?”
“I thought we were, but then I was offered the job in Dallas, and when I accepted, without hesitation, he wished me luck, without hesitation. It had been a convenient and uncomplicated relationship, and that’s how it ended.”
“He was a loser.”
“I wouldn’t call him a loser. He developed software for the medical industry that he then sold for millions.”
“Medical software sounds dull as dirt.”
“That’s true. With him I never outran the police in a stolen vehicle during an ice storm. Nothing near that exciting.”
“That excited you?”
“Very much.”
He hooked his hand behind her knee and propped it on his hip. As boldly as before, he opened her with stroking fingers. “Anything else excited you lately?”
She rocked against his caressing hand. “The way you looked at me.”
“When?”
“When you came into the room and slammed the door.”
“How’d I look at you?”
“Exactly the way you’re looking at me now.”
“Thomas?”
He hovered on the threshold of the bedroom. Having heard the door opening, Greta had sat up in bed, her pale nightgown making her look like a wraith in the dim room.
“Did I wake you? I’m sorry. I was just checking on you before turning in myself.”
In a voice as unsubstantial as her body, she said, “I wasn’t asleep yet.”
A bottle of vodka was on the bedside table in addition to an array of prescription medications for depression and insomnia. Greta moved from doctor to doctor, cleverly juggling refills so she would never be without an anesthetic.
When Thomas had become aware of her abuse, he had started monitoring the prescriptions and alerted the doctors to her machinations. But despite his precautions, she seemed never to be in need of her next pill, and the supply seemed limitless. Eventually he had stopped interfering.
He was twelve years older than she. At age forty, he’d decided it was time to marry. Dallas was a hothouse of cultivated beauties. He had his pick of many, but he chose Greta because she’d best filled his list of requirements. She was pretty, scandal-free, the reigning princess of Dallas society, and the only child and heir of parents with old wealth and prestige from both families.
He won Greta over with his ardent pursuit. “I won’t take no for an answer.” She had thought his insistence terribly romantic. Never would she have guessed how literally he had meant it.
His father-in-law admired and respected his business acumen, and was perhaps a bit intimidated by it, which Thomas used to his advantage. His mother-in-law considered him to be a “divine catch.” All Greta’s friends said it was a match made in heaven.
They were wrong.
Divine intervention had nothing to do with it. Thomas had made it happen, and he was the antithesis of godly.
Although he’d married Greta for practical reasons, he actually formed a strong affection for her. She could be enchanting and entertaining. By nature, he wasn’t given to frequent laughter, but she could coax it out of him. She was a generous and attentive bedmate.
To compensate for the weeks he worked nonstop, he treated her to lavish vacations. He bought her the mansion she’d long admired. The house and grounds took three years to renovate, and that kept Greta occupied and happy. He discovered that he enjoyed indulging her.
Two things he refused her. He wouldn’t attend every charity event and fund-raising ball and black-tie gala to which they were invited. He insisted on living a private life, out of the mainstream and certainly out of the limelight.
The second refusal regarded her infertility. He refused to participate in any humiliating testing or biological engineering.
Not to be denied her heart’s desire for a child, Greta scheduled monthly sexual marathons until one resulted in pregnancy. Her joy was complete. To Thomas’s staggering surprise, he’d shared it. From the day of her conception, Tiffany had been the golden fabric that had enwrapped them.
Now here they were tonight, as estranged as two people could possibly be.
“You didn’t eat much dinner,” he said. “Can’t I get you anything?”
“No, thank you.”
He never failed to offer; she never failed to decline. “Well, I hope you can get to sleep soon. Good night.”
He was backing away when she stopped him. “Thomas, who was that who came to the house a few nights ago?”
Rarely was he taken completely off guard. It took him seconds to recover. “What?”
“The night of the ice storm. Someone buzzed from the gate. You let him in.”
“Oh, that. Yes. It was one of our neighborhood security officers. He was checking to see that none of our lines were down and that we still had power.”
“No, it wasn’t.”
The contradiction was another turnabout. He covered his surprise with an abrupt laugh. “I beg your pardon?”
“He wasn’t wearing the uniform of our neighborhood patrolmen.”
A trickle of cold sweat slid down Thomas’s spine. “You saw him?”
“I looked over the balcony as he was leaving. Was he…Did it have something to do with Tiffany?”
He gave an exaggerated sigh of impatience. “There was a break-in at one of the office buildings I own. The alarm went off and scared the intruders away. The officer came to report the incident to me personally. Nothing to it at all.”
“Then why did you lie about who he was?”