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Lucy opened her eyes. She uttered Chris’s name on a shaky whisper, her fingers spasming against his shoulders. Her nails bit briefly into the taut flesh of his upper arms as he transferred his attentions to her left breast. Again he suckled, drawing her aching nipple deep into his mouth. Again she experienced the yearning clench of response in her womb.
Chris kissed a path upward from Lucy’s bosom, drink- ing in the soft, swooning cry she made when his lips finally reclaimed hers. He was starving, he thought dizzily, and she was a feast to sate all his senses. But the more he tasted of her—the more he touched, smelled, heard and saw—the more acutely he hungered.
“Yes,” she said on a sigh when he finally ended the kiss. “Oh, yes.”
He undid her sheer stockings and carefully peeled them off. Lucy watched silently as he did so, her expression ratcheting up old appetites at the same time it roused new ones. Her cheeks were flushed, almost feverish-looking. Her ripe mouth was moist and trembling.
My wife, he told himself triumphantly, touching the ball of his thumb against the plain gold ring that now adorned his left hand. My... wife.
He charted the shape of her legs with his hands in ardent, appreciative stages. From her prettily pedicured toes to her well-turned ankles. From her well-turned ankles to the backs of her knees. From the backs of her knees to the satin-cream skin of her inner thighs.
His fingertips hovered for an instant at the apex of her limbs, brushing lightly against the dampened fabric that shielded the entrance to her feminine core. His mind flashed back to the first time they’d made love. To the crazy jumble of emotions he’d experienced knowing that he was to be the recipient of something that could be surrendered only once.
He’d felt awed.
He’d felt unworthy.
He’d felt invincible.
He felt much the same right now.
“Chris—” Lucy began in a half-suffocated voice, propping herself up on her elbows.
“I need you, sweetheart,” he said huskily, sliding his palms over the silky fabric of her panties and hooking his thumbs beneath the lace-trimmed top edge. “All of you.”
Her dark lashes fluttered down a fraction of an inch, veiling a wildfire kindling in the depths of her expressive eyes. The corners of her lips curled in the start of a smile that sizzled through his bloodstream. A throbbing heaviness invaded his loins. Desire clawed in his gut like a jungle cat.
A languid lift of lushly feminine hips.
A swift downward tug by long-fingered male hands.
The last scrap of Lucy’s lingerie fluttered to the plushly carpeted floor, leaving her naked.
Chris swallowed convulsively, struggling for control as he surveyed the newly revealed flesh and the lovely triangle of dark, glossy curls. He disciplined himself to ease up, shift back. Forced himself to get to his feet.
He opened the buckle of his belt. Unzipped his fly.
Shucked his trousers and the briefs beneath them down his legs in a single seamless movement.
Kicked the garments off ... and away.
Lucy’s breath jammed in her throat at the sight of Chris’s sleekly powerful physique and flagrantly aroused masculinity. She’d been afraid the first time, she dimly remembered. Not so much of the hurt, although she’d been warned that was inevitable. No, her deepest fear had centered around the awful possibility that she’d fail to please at something it seemed all her friends found as natural as scratching.
There had been no hurt. A moment of discomfort, yes, but one so buffered by tenderness that she could scarcely be sure she’d really experienced it. And if she’d been less than adequate in her innocence, she hadn’t been able to discern it. Chris had responded to her as though she were Eve incarnate.
She dragged her gaze slowly upward, conscious of the pound-pound-pounding of her blood. She could hear it, hammering in her ears. She could feel it, pulsing in the tips of her toes and fingers.
Dark eyes locked with hazel ones, much as they’d done on a hot summer night barely six months before.
Lucy lifted her arms.
Chris rejoined her on the king-size bed.
They kissed. Caressed. Rolled across the crisp white sheets in a tangle of perspiration-sheened legs and arms. She found herself laughing with joy one moment, gasping in shocked pleasure the next. She said her husband’s name over and over again. He murmured hers, and a dozen different endearments besides. Then, in a lightning-quick change of mood, he nipped at the lobe of her right ear and began whispering a litany of darkly delicious promises.
His hands were everywhere. Testing. Tempting. Torching her flesh. She reciprocated in kind, charting the strong expanse of his shoulders, the long, taut line of his torso and the flat plane of his stomach. The shallow indentation of his navel held her strangely in thrall for several shuddering seconds, and then she shifted her tactile attentions downward a few inches.
“Lucy.” Chris speared his fingers through her hair. “Oh...Lucy.”
“Yes.” The word was an affirmation. An invitation. “Yes.”
They rolled over again. She ended up beneath him, feeling the nudge of his knee between her thighs as his mouth took hers in another searing kiss.
She opened eagerly, arching upward in welcome as Chris filled her with a strong, sure thrust. A glorious sensation surged through her veins. She wrapped her arms and legs around him as her consciousness narrowed to exclude everything but the moment...and the man.
Chris groaned hoarsely, his embrace tightening. His spine bowed, the intimacy of his possession of her increasing by a few ineffably exquisite degrees.
Closer. And closer still.
She shuddered, her body convulsing on the brink of sensory overload. Her brain seemed to blank out, as though it were too overwhelmed to form anything approaching a coherent thought. Then, suddenly, she shattered.
An instant later, she felt her partner do the same.
Lucy had wondered if it would be different, making love as husband and wife, not simply man and woman. In the midst of a molten flood of ecstasy, she learned that it was. Deeply, indescribably different.
She’d never dreamed that it could be better.
She should have.
Chris liked to cuddle afterward.
This had taken Lucy by surprise. According to her female friends, most guys were savvy enough to understand that most girls expected some foreplay before the main event. Unfortunately, these friends averred, disappointingly few members of the opposite sex had gotten it through their thick skulls that women craved a little afterplay, too.
“They get off,” Tina Roberts had once informed her with a disdainful gesture. “They want you to tell ‘em it was great. They roll over and start-snoring. And if they don’t sack out right away, they reach for a cigarette or the TV remote control. Then they tell you to bring ’em a beer. Or make ’em a sandwich. You want to prolong the mood? Forget about it. You know that joke about the guy who says his ideal girl is one who’ll put out, then turn into a sausage pizza? Well, I’m not laughing.”
“So, Mrs. Banks,” Chris murmured, brushing Lucy’s forehead with his lips. His hand skimmed lightly over her hip, triggering an echo of breath-stealing bliss.
Lucy snuggled close, planting a kiss on the ridge of his collarbone as she savored the strength of his encircling arms. She could feel the steady drumbeat of his heart. My husband, she thought proudly. This is my husband.
“So, Mr. Banks,” she returned after a few moments, relishing the words.
“How do you feel?”
A giggle tickled at the back of her throat. She released it, then replied, “Married.”
“Me, too.” Chris chuckled deep in his chest. The sound rumbled against her ear, stirring nerves that had just begun to settle.
“Do you like it?”
He turned his head slightly, a lock of light brown hair falling forward onto his brow. His gaze met hers. “More than I can say.”
They kissed. Slowly. Sweetly.
They kissed again. Still slowly. Still sweetly. But with a lick of heat beneath the sugar.
“Would madame care for a little liquid refreshment?” Chris eventually inquired. His skin was flushed, his voice a note or two lower than it had been the last time he spoke.
Lucy moistened her lips, enjoying the glinting response she saw in the depths of his hazel eyes. “Very much.”
He sat up, seemingly at ease with his nudity. She watched him pluck the champagne bottle from the silver bucket, then strip off the foil and undo the restraining twists of wire. He performed the movements with deft efficiency.
As he reached for the engraved crystal flutes, she levered herself up beside him. She saw one corner of his mobile mouth quirk as she draped the sheet around her. She supposed it was a bit late for modesty, given her wanton, wedded behavior of just a short time before. Still ...
“Chilly?” Chris teased, handing her the glasses.
“Not at the moment.” Her response was demure.
“Well, let me know if the situation changes.”
“And if it does?”
“Then I’ll find a way—” the cork succumbed to the pressure of his thumbs with a soft pop “—to get you warm again.”
Lucy extended the flutes. Forget warm, she thought, her fingers tightening on the fragile crystal stems. She was already feeling hot.
The wine poured out in a frothy stream, bubbles dancing in its pale depths like pinpoint jewels. Ice cubes clinked as Chris set the bottle back in the silver bucket. She gave him one of the glasses she was holding, her fingertips brushing his as they completed the handoff. The brief contact sent an electric tingle arrowing up her arm.
“To us?” he proposed huskily, his eyes steady on hers.
“To us,” she concurred.
They toasted and drank deeply. The sparkling wine danced down Lucy’s throat like liquid sunshine. It was the most delicious thing she’d ever tasted.
“I think we should make a resolution,” she announced boldly when she lowered her glass. She’d never known such a sense of completeness.
“A resolution?”
“To live happily ever after.”
Chris smiled in a fashion that made her head start to spin. Her bloodstream seemed to be fizzing. “Together.”
“Abso—” she hiccuped “—lutely.”
Lucia Annette Banks—nee Falco—and Christopher Dodson Banks went their separate ways less than twelve months later.
One
“It’s not right, Lucy,” Tiffany Tarrington Toulouse declared, a combination of frustration and concern muting the usual sparkle in her pale gray eyes. “A lovely girl like you, spending New Year’s Eve alone. You did the same thing last year. And the year before that.”
Lucy Falco suppressed a sigh. She’d never told her colleagues at Gulliver’s Travels that the holiday under discussion had very bittersweet associations for her. Although nearly everyone in the office was vaguely aware that she’d gone through a divorce about a decade ago, she’d avoided offering any concrete details about her marriage or the bustup that had followed.
There were two main reasons for this. Her position as office manager of the Atlanta-based travel agency was one of them. As much as she genuinely liked the men and women she supervised, she felt a managerial responsibility to keep her private life separate from her professional one. That this “responsibility” was at odds with her penchant for getting involved in other people’s personal problems was something of which she was well aware. But there it was.
The second reason she shied away from explaining why her marriage had ended was that she was no longer sure she knew. What she once would have cited as incontrovertible fact—that Chris had been the unmitigated wronger and she the blameless wrongee—now seemed to her to be open to at least some degree of argument.
Which wasn’t to say that she regretted her divorce. She didn’t. Not... really. Given the life she’d built for herself in the wake of it, how could she? The woman she was today was pretty much the one she’d aspired to be before the sweltering summer night Christopher Dodson Banks walked into Falco’s Pizzeria and turned her world upside down.
Would she have become this woman if she’d stayed married? A decade ago, Lucia Annette Falco would have said absolutely not. But lately, she’d begun to wonder.
A decade ago, she also would have maintained that her marriage had been unsalvageable. She’d begun to wonder about the validity of that assessment with increasing frequency in recent times, too.
“There’s always a lot of end-of-the-year business to be taken care of, Tiff,” Lucy said, dropping her gaze and making a show of shuffling through the files on the top of her antique burled-cherry desk. “I have a huge backlog of paperwork to wade through.”
“If there’s so much to be done, why did you give everyone the rest of the week off?” the older woman asked challengingly, fluffing her frothy mane of silvery white curls with an extravagantly beringed hand.
“Because I felt like it.”
This deliberately outrageous explanation stopped Tiffany for a moment. But only a moment. She rose from the tall wingback chair in which she’d been ensconced. “Lucia Annette Falco—”
“I appreciate your concern,” Lucy told her, meaning it. “But not having plans to party hearty on New Year’s Eve doesn’t mean I’m socially deprived. I’m simply not into swilling champagne and kissing strangers at the stroke of midnight.”
Tiffany arched a well-plucked brow and pursed her plum-glossed lips. Then, with a sassiness that belied her sixty-plus years, she retorted, “Don’t knock it unless you’ve tried it.”
Lucy had to laugh.
Clearly sensing an opening, the older woman reverted to her initial theme. It was a characteristic response. For all her flamboyant fluttering, Tiffany was an expert at manipulating other people for what she considered to be their own good. She was also as tenacious as a lockjawed terrier when she got her teeth into something. It was little wonder that she was one of Gulliver’s Travels’ most successful agents.
“You don’t have to stay out all night,” she coaxed. “But what’d be the harm in dashing home and putting on something extra-pretty, then meeting Hastings and me for a teensy-weensy libation at the Buckhead Ritz?”
“Oh, I’m sure Hastings would just love to have me horn in on your big date,” Lucy riposted. Hastings Chatwell Lee IV, as she and everyone else at the agency was aware, was Tiffany’s latest beau.
“He’d rather have me all to himself, of course.” The response was smug. Tiffany Tarrington Toulouse was a woman who was gloriously sure of the irresistibility of her feminine charms. “But if it’d make me happy to have you come along...”
There was no need for her to finish the sentence. From what Lucy had observed, Hastings Chatwell Lee IV would lie down like a rug and let himself be stomped on by a herd of hobnail-booted hippos if he had an inkling that it would please his silver-haired sweetie pie.
“It’s a tempting offer, Tiff,” she acknowledged after a few seconds. “But I’m going to pass.”
A hint of steel entered Tiffany’s eyes. She opened her mouth, plainly intending to press her case. She was forestalled by the precipitous arrival of a gangly young man whose buzz-cut platinum hair and small silver nose ring were in striking contrast to his starched white shirt—complete with pocket protector—crisply ironed khaki pants and spit-polished penny loafers.
The young man’s name was Wayne Dweck, and he’d recently joined Gulliver’s Travels as a part-time office assistant. Wayne was passionately interested in computer technology and so-called alternative music. It was Lucy’s impression that he spent the bulk of his free time alternating between surfing the Internet and slam-dancing.
“‘Scuse me, Ms. Toulouse,” he said, a bit breathlessly. “But you’ve got a seriously expensive long-distance phone call. Some guy named Sergei, from St. Petersburg.”
“Sergei from St. Petersburg?” Lucy lifted her brows inquiringly.
“Sergei Illyanovich Gennady,” Tiffany elaborated with an airy gesture. “I met him last summer, on that singles cruise I took. You remember. The one to the Galapagos Islands. Such a nice man. It’s hard to believe he was a godless Communist for most of his life. He’s probably calling to wish me happy New Year.” She turned a beaming smile on Wayne and patted him on the cheek, her rings glinting. “Thank you, dear.”
The nostril-pierced part-timer turned beet red, his Adam’s apple bobbing up and down like a Ping-Pong ball on a choppy sea. “N-no problem, Ms. Toulouse. My p-pleasure.”
Tiffany returned her crystalline gaze to Lucy. “You think about what I said,” she instructed firmly, then pivoted on her heel and walked away. There was a hint of Mae West in the sway of her hips.
“She is so... totally...cool,” Wayne declared in an ardently admiring tone, sagging briefly against the door frame.
“She’s totally something, all right,” Lucy wryly agreed.
“She should have her own home page on the Web.” The gawky office assistant ambled forward and plunked himself down in the chair Tiffany had vacated a short time before. “Do you think she’d mind if I started one? I could call it Travels with Tiffany, and I could post pictures from all the trips she’s taken. Maybe get her to write some commentary. I could link it to some of the other outstanding babe sites, too.”
Lucy bit the inside of her cheek, struggling to keep a straight face. “I think Tiffany would probably be Battered by the idea. Why don’t you talk to her about it first thing next weak?”
It was difficult to believe that Wayne could blush more vividly than he had a minute or so earlier, but he managed it.
“You mean, like, face-to-face?” he gasped, gripping the arms of the wingback chair. “On a ... reality ... basis?”
“Mmm-hmm ...”
There was an uncomfortable pause. After much squirming, Wayne finally said, “Maybe... Maybe I’ll E-mail her about it. I kind of have trouble keeping my head straight when she’s there in the, uh, flesh, you know? I get sort of warm and woozy. The first time I was introduced to her, it was right after I’d had lunch at that Mexican place over on Spring and I was scared I was going to blow burrito chunks in front of her. I’ve pretty much got that under control now, though. Not the warm and woozy part. The potential hurling.”
“I’m glad to hear it.”
“The thing is, I think Ms. Toulouse in one of those women who was born with megapheromones.”
“Excuse me?”
“Pheromones. Like, sex chemicals. Bugs secrete them, big-time.”
“Oh.”
“It has to do with smell, mostly. Human pheromones, that is. I mean, sometimes you sniff somebody, and wham. Instant attraction.” Wayne cocked his head, his brow furrowing. “Did that ever happen to you, Lucy?”
Her pulse stuttered. Memory assailed her, sending a ripple of heat coursing through her body.
The subtle appeal of expensive spice.
The more provocative allure of natural male musk.
Chris’s scent.
Oh, yes. Lucia Annette Falco knew what it was like to “sniff” a stranger and plunge headlong into love. Or lust. Or some irresistible blending of the two. And although it had been nearly ten years since—
“Lucy?”
She started, more than a little appalled at the waywardly erotic direction of her thoughts. She’d come to expect a certain amount of nostalgic weirdness from herself on New Year’s Eve. But this was ridiculous! It was even worse than the eager way she’d devoured that newspaper profile of Chris she happened to run across a few weeks back.
“I’m sorry, Wayne,” she said, shutting her mind to the memory of the distinguished-looking black-and-white photograph that had accompanied the laudatory article. “Yes. It happened to me. I once... sniffed...a man and was attracted to him. But it was a long, long time ago.”
“Well, I wasn’t trying to be nosy....” Wayne stopped, frowning. Then he started to snicker. “Nosy,” he repeated. “About whether you ever got turned on by smelling some guy.” The snickering became snorting laughter. “Heh-heh-heh. Nosy. I like that.”
Lucy didn’t, for a variety of reasons. She gave the young man a few seconds to recover from his self-induced amusement, then reclaimed control of the conversation. “Shifting to a more serious subject, Wayne,” she began, in her crispest executive voice. “What’s the status on the new software?”
The younger man blinked several times, clearly lost. “The new software?”
“That Mr. Gulliver ordered.”
“Oh, yeah. Of course.” Wayne grinned broadly, back in the loop. “It’s cool. Cutting-edge, but easy to upgrade. Mr. G. really knows his stuff. I was just finishing installing it when that Sergei guy called for Ms. Toulouse.”
“Good work.” Lucy was a firm believer in positive reinforcement.
“Thanks. I’m gonna wait a couple of weeks before I start programming the specialty functions. ‘Cause, like, I figure people need time to get used to the basic system before they can decide what kind of shortcuts they want.”
“That sounds sensible.”
“Just one thing.” Wayne’s expression became wheedling, underscoring his youth. “Are you sure you don’t want me to load the encryption system I showed you last week? I’ve been using it at my workstation since Christmas. It’s awesome, Lucy.”
“I’m sure it is.” So awesome, she didn’t have a due about how it worked or why the agency would want to utilize it. About the only thing she remembered from the enthusiastic demonstration Wayne had given her was the sequence of keystrokes that supposedly enabled him to send coded E-mail anywhere in the world.
“Well, then—”
“We’re not the Pentagon, Wayne.”
“Jeez, I hope not! Do you have any idea how easy it is to access most of the Defense Department’s data banks?”
Lucy stiffened, flashing on a scenario in which Gulliver’s Travels was invaded by federal agents and shut down as a hotbed of hacker activity.
“Oh, hey...” the young man forged on, apparently oblivious of the alarm his previous—and pray God, rhetorical—query had triggered. “Speaking of security and breaking into things. You know how we’ve been wondering what they’ve been storing in the vault next door? Well, a friend of a friend of a friend of mine knows this guy who’s related to somebody in the police department, and he says he heard—”
“Wayne!”
The source of this urgent exclamation was Jim Burns, another one of Gulliver’s Travels’ top agents. He was short, superenergized and given to wearing plaid shirts with polka-dot ties. His rather checkered résumé included stints as a short-order cook and a used-car salesman.
“Jimmy?” Lucy questioned, instantly concerned. The last time she’d seen her co-worker looking so distressed had been the day he discovered that the cruise package he’d put together as the grand prize for a local Halloween charity ball had landed the couple who’d won it in the middle of a modern-day pirate drama. The aftermath of the episode—the capture and prosecution of the members of a drug-smuggling operation—had been front-page news. Fortunately, Gulliver’s Travels had suffered no negative PR fallout. Not only that, the couple who had gotten caught up in the adventure had already booked another trip through the agency. “What’s wrong?”
“I’m being overrun by aliens from a parallel universe!”
She gawked. Aliens from a parallel universe?
“Did you try the death beam?” Wayne asked calmly, unfolding his lanky frame and getting to his feet.
“Nonfunctional.” Jimmy pulled out a handkerchief and blotted his perspiration-sheened brow. “Even worse, I forfeited my powers of transmogrification when I cut a deal with the Fungocians on level three.”
“You cut a deal with the Fungocians?” The office assistant was visibly startled. Even his nose ring seemed to quiver with disbelief. “Jeez, Jimmy. They’re the scum of the universe!”
“I thought I could double-cross them before they double-crossed me.”
“Never going to happen, dude.” Wayne glanced at Lucy. “‘Scuse me. I gotta go kick some alien butt.”