Jennifer Greene - Silver and Spice

Unfortunately, she could believe him. Not that anything had “gotten away from him,” but that he honestly hadn’t noticed how much wealth he had accumulated over the years. Jake really just didn’t care about money; he never had. His fingertips gently combed back her hair, and Anne sighed in confusion. Even that casual touch was a whispered call to another world: sensual, primitive, dark. Filled only with Jake. “Normal people hire accountants,” she tried one last time, but there was no bite left in her voice.

His lips hovered at her temples. “I know my tax accounts wouldn’t be a full-time job for you, Anne, but there’s more than enough financial work around here to keep you busy the rest of the time. I never expected that you would be happy just sitting home. Maybe with children, in time…but that will be up to you. And Coeur d’Alene has possibilities for you that we haven’t even talked about.”

For a man discussing career possibilities, his hands were certainly on a different wavelength. He shifted her so she was lying at an angle across his lap, her head tilted back in the crease of his shoulder. In the darkness, shadows and light played over his features, making his silver eyes glow as they came closer. “I need you, Anne,” he whispered. “The way you argue, because you’re so darned pragmatic and so intelligent, your warmth and your laughter and the way you fit next to me. The sound of your voice. I need your heart-”

“You have it, Jake. You’ve always had it,” she murmured.

He shook his head. “A part, never all. I want all of you, honey.”

Those smooth, cool lips settled over hers-but they weren’t at all cool now. Warmth and tenderness were so much a part of his kiss that a ripple of sheer sensual tension rocked Anne. Heart, body, soul…was that all he wanted? All of them at that precise moment went on the auction block. Her tongue slipped inside his mouth, wantonly wooing him, teasing the tip of her tongue against his.

Her hands were busy pushing aside his shirt, seeking the crisp hair on his chest, the feel of his flesh. Jake broke off the kiss with a low, vibrant sound from his throat, and lifted her up to pull off her green cashmere sweater. Night air touched her skin, raised prickles of sensual awareness along her flesh.

His eyes wouldn’t leave her own, as if he sensed that something was different. She couldn’t have said herself what sparked the change in feeling. She had been totally exasperated as she worked over his books, not frustrated with the figures so much as with the man himself. Jake, so darned different from her-salt and pepper…and she’d always known that. But the word need had spiraled something irreversible, something that reached the soft core of her, which no one had ever touched. Hers was the need; need for the only other human being who could fill her heart, create feelings of richness and a joy in just breathing.

She ached with those feelings now, longed for the simple right to touch his skin, the right to hear the rasped intake of breath as she stroked the long, tight muscle in his thigh. She felt as if she were absorbing him, inch by inch, cell by cell. Her lips pressed into the hair on his chest, seeking first his heartbeat and then trailing over to his flat nipple, where her tongue reached out and nudged the male bud to hardness.

Slowly, her lips trailed back up, to the underside of his chin, all bristly with a night beard. “Anne.” She was wearing a skirt that day, for no particular reason that she’d discovered until now. His hand was sweeping long, slow caresses up her stockinged leg, stealing very slowly underneath the skirt fabric. His palm on the curve of her thigh, molding up and over her bottom, ignited a fire in her loins, a sparking, brilliant, bright orange fire. His chin nudged at hers. “We’re out in the open,” he said with a harshness that almost made her laugh.

“It’s a dark night, and there hasn’t been a boat out since before the storm,” she answered.

“You’re beginning to sound like me. That’s terrifying.”

“You don’t look terrified,” she said impishly.

He nipped at her neck. “I hate to tell you this, honey, but there is no possible way to make love on a chaise longue.”

She reached for his belt buckle and undid it. There was enough leeway for her fingers to slip inside the waistband of his cords. His stomach flesh was exquisitely sensitive. Her finger could touch his pelvic bone, trace it quite a little distance. “Oh, well,” she murmured. “If we can’t, we can’t.”

Within moments, the chaise mattress was spread out on the redwood deck. Clothes were draped over chairs. And Jake, very rapidly, was draped over Anne. His body surged forward to join with hers, with exactly the fevered speed she craved…and then stopped. Locked inside her, he rested his weight on his elbows, staring down at her with glowing, brilliant eyes. No smile touched his lips, but there was a softness… “You’re staying,” he whispered, only half a question.

“Is the offer still open?”

“Don’t be light, Anne, not about this.”

Her eyes unaccountably filled-for the vulnerability she heard in his voice, for the aching swell of love inside her. “I want to, Jake,” she said simply.

Her words seemed to call forth a tidal wave. A long, passion-induced frenzy washed over her, born of Jake’s hands, Jake’s mouth, Jake’s exquisite feel and motion in the core of her. The water splish-splashed beneath them as they were swamped and drowned and reborn, over and over like a fumbling mystery of nature, wild and primitive and soaring with the joy of life…and loving.

Anne’s laughter echoed throatily as Jake pushed the glass doors closed behind them. “That’s certainly the first time I’ve ever streaked,” she said mischievously.

They were both carrying bundles of their clothes, and shivering just slightly because of the run from dock to door. “Get a robe on, Lady Godiva. And be thankful it’s past midnight and every light is off around the lake.” Jake’s eyes flickered first to the clock on the wall in the kitchen, then back to Anne’s bare limbs and the stream of ash-gold hair swaying almost irresistibly to the curve of her bottom. “I’m hungry,” he announced suddenly.

“So what else is new?”

His slash of a grin was accompanied by a teasing palm on her backside. “I was talking about a nice, juicy steak.”

“That’s not where your eyes were looking.” She picked up Jake’s shirt and pulled it on, but his fingers nudged hers aside to do up the two buttons he wanted, leaving a disastrous amount of cleavage showing and her hair tucked inside. Flicking back the cuffs, she was humorously aware that the look was not going to sell to a fashion magazine, but she glanced up and saw that Jake didn’t seem to agree.

“You have unbelievably perfect legs,” he mentioned solemnly.

“You just want me to cook your steak.” Anne, too, glanced at the clock. “You will undoubtedly have dreadful dreams if you insist on eating at this hour.”

He shook his head. “I’ve always had a cast-iron stomach.”

Moving past him to open the refrigerator, Anne murmured absently, “That isn’t the only part of you that tends toward cast iron.”

Jake was leaning over the counter when she turned to him with a defrosted steak in her hands. “What was that you said?”

Heat flooded her cheeks. “How do you want your steak?”

But he took it from her hands and got out the broiling pan. “I’ll cook it. Sure you don’t want one?”

“No, thanks.”

But the delectable aroma that soon wafted from the broiler made her change her mind-as far as hunger was concerned. She poured some soup into a pan and punched the button for simmer. While they were both waiting for their respective midnight feasts, her eyes wandered absently to the counter. Stacks of mail had arrived for Jake that morning; he’d opened and skimmed over the stuff but left it. A brochure with a picture of a coffee bean on its cover caught her eye.