More than a Mistress(24)

She felt silly, at first, dancing in a darkened bedroom. Dancing was  something you did in a ballroom, each of you with one arm outstretched,  your hand on your partner's shoulder and his placed lightly in the small  of your back. It was what Miss Mallory had taught her in Etiquette  class, when she was a girl.

But Travis had broken those rules the first night they'd met, when he'd  held her hard against him as he'd whirled her around and around the  ballroom of the Hotel Paradise.

Now, he was breaking them again. Both his arms were around her, his  hands low on her spine. And this was no dance that took a couple around  the floor in light, graceful movements as Miss Mallory had taught. It  was a dance a woman could only learn from a man who desired her.

"Relax," he whispered, "and feel the music."                       
       
           



       

What she felt was him. His heat. His breath. The tightly leashed power of his body, the steady beat of his heart.

Alex closed her eyes and put her head on Travis's shoulder. His arms  tightened around her. One hand dropped lower, to spread across her  bottom; the other slid slowly up her spine. He curled his fingers around  her nape and toyed with her hair.

"I like your hair this way," he murmured.

"Tied back? It's the way I always..."

"I like it because it's kept me thinking, of how it would be to take it  down." He drew back and looked down at her. "Shall I undo your hair,  Alex?"

His voice was low, rough as raw silk. She felt a tightening in her breasts, and in the pit of her belly.

"Yes," she said, her eyes on his. "Yes, please. Undo-"

Her breath caught as he unclasped the barrette at the back of her neck.  Her hair spilled over her shoulders, and over his hand. He lifted a  handful of it, brought it to his lips.

"Beautiful," he said softly, and kissed her.

They swayed with the music. Mouth to mouth. Breast to breast. His thigh  just between hers. Alex sighed. Travis kissed her hair, the shell of her  ear.

"Look," he whispered.

She blinked, opened her eyes. They were in front of a floor-to-ceiling  mirror, locked in each other's arms, bathed in the soft light of the  moon.

"Do you see how beautiful you are?" Travis said.

Alex flushed. "Travis..."

He moved behind her, lifted her hair and let it sift like gold over his  fingers. He bent his head and pressed his mouth to her neck, and then he  began undoing the tiny buttons that ran down the back of her silk  blouse. He opened them slowly, pausing to kiss each bit of newly exposed  skin. At last, when they were all undone, he slid the blouse from her  shoulders.

Her bra was made of unadorned white cotton. It was nothing like the  stuff she'd worn the night they met but that didn't matter. There was  something about her reticence, her trust, that made this bit of  utilitarian cotton sexier than any concoction of black lace could ever  be. Was that why his fingers shook as he undid the clasp?

He watched her face in the mirror as her breasts tumbled into his waiting palms.

If she looked at him like that again, he'd be finished. It was too much  to ask of a man, that he hang onto his sanity while a beautiful woman  stared at him as if he were showing her all the secrets of the universe.  But he had to hang on, had to make this right, for her.

His hands cupped her breasts, his thumbs skimming over her nipples.

"Travis..."

Her voice was a tremulous whisper. She tried to turn toward him, away from what she saw in the glass, but he wouldn't let her.

"Not yet," he whispered.

He nuzzled her hair aside, so it fell over one bare shoulder. He bent  his head and kissed her nape, nipped lightly at her throat. Alex had to  bite her lip to keep from crying out. She was drowning in a river of  sensation but she couldn't, she couldn't. If she let the river sweep her  away, how would she know if she was doing all the things a woman  should?

Travis was wrong. She couldn't get Carl out of her head this time. He  was there, telling her that she was unresponsive, that she didn't know  how to please a man and never would.

And she wanted to please Travis. To give him pleasure. To hear him groan as he spent himself inside her...

His thumbs rubbed across her nipples again, and the cry she'd tried so  hard to suppress burst from her throat. Her head fell back against his  shoulder.

"Travis," she whispered, and he cupped her breasts again, holding them,  molding them, stroking the swollen peaks until, without thinking, she  lifted her hands and placed them over his before she realized what she'd  done and she snatched her hands away.

"Do that," Travis said thickly. "Put your hands over mine."

"No. I mean-not if you don't like... Not if you think it's-it's wrong..."

"Open your eyes, Princess. Look into the mirror."

She thought of that day two weeks before, when she'd looked into the  mirror and seen what Travis's passion had done to her, of how horrified  and humiliated she'd been.

"No," she said, "Travis, please. I don't-"

"Just look," he whispered.

And, slowly, she did.

The woman in the mirror wasn't her. It was a woman trembling on the  brink of surrender. Her hair was tumbled around her naked shoulders. Her  mouth was pink and swollen, her eyes were feverishly bright.

And the man who'd made her look like this stood just behind her, staring  at her reflection with such naked hunger that it made her dizzy.

"Go on," he said softly, his eyes never leaving hers. "Cover my hands with yours."

Color swept into her face. "Carl said-he said it was wrong to do that. It would be like touching myself."                       
       
           



       

"Put your hands over mine, Alex."

Their eyes met. Slowly, she raised her hands and did as he'd asked. The  sight electrified her. His skin, so dark and hers, so pale; his hands so  large and powerful, hers so small and feminine...

"There's nothing you can't do with me, Princess." He bent his head,  kissed her throat. "There are no rights and wrongs, not between us. Do  you understand?"

"Yes," she whispered.

"There's only you, and me, and what pleases us both." Her hands fell  away from his as he let go of her breasts. His fingers went to the fly  front of her linen trousers. She felt the button give, heard the hiss of  the zipper. Her trousers slipped down her legs and fell to her feet.  "Tell me what pleases you, Alex," Travis said, and cupped the damp silk  between her thighs.

Alex cried out, not only with need but with the shock of realization.  She'd thought Travis had been in her dreams for the past two weeks. Now,  she knew he'd been in them forever, this handsome, dangerous, tender  stranger who'd come into her carefully planned world and turned it  upside down. He was no longer a dream. He was flesh and bone and blood,  his eyes pools of darkness, his body hers to lean against, his hands  hers to watch as they touched her.

"Do you like this?" he whispered, and slipped his fingers under the silk. "And this?"

She exploded against him, her body's most intimate tears scalding his  hand with her heat as she called out his name. It almost undid him.

And it would almost have been enough. Just to see her lovely face as she  came, to know his strength was her support, to hear her say his name as  if he was the only man she'd ever want, ever need...

It was more than most men would ever know of heaven. And yet, he wanted more.

He turned her in his arms, drew her against him, lifted her off her feet  so that her head was above his and he kissed her, swallowing the last  of her cries, knowing that he-and only he-had brought her such pleasure.

Would ever bring her such pleasure.

-Slowly, he lowered her the length of his body.

"Undress me," he said, against her mouth.

She tried, but her hands were shaking. And he couldn't wait, not  anymore. He undressed them both, scattering his clothes and hers,  tearing things, ripping them in his desperate haste to carry her to the  bed, sink into her silken heat, to cover her soft body with the hardness  of his. Gently, he manacled her wrists with his hands and lifted her  arms above her head as he sucked on her breasts, licked her throat,  buried himself in her slowly, slowly, slowly until, at last, she pleaded  for release.

He let go of her hands and she wrapped her arms around him, wrapped her  legs around him, took him so deeply inside her that he couldn't think.  And, when he knew she was on the brink, he said, voice hoarse with  passion, "Look at me, Alex. And say my name."

Her lashes lifted. Tears glittered like starlight in her eyes.

"Travis," she whispered. "Travis. Travis. Trav-"

He groaned, drove deep, and the world shattered for them both.