Calder Promise by Janet Dailey Page B

mouth along her inner thigh.
    “Oh no, I’m not,” Laura rejected his suggestion out of hand, unwilling to allow anything to intrude on this new, exciting seduction and the desire that swirled around her. “It’s probably a wrong number. If not, they can leave a message.”
    “Whatever you say,” he murmured, continuing his leisurely ascent.
    She dug her nails into the bedsheet, gripped by an ache that was more intense than any she had ever known. His teasing foreplay was fast becoming more than she could stand.
    In a voice tight and throbbing with that need, she said, “I have one question.”
    “What’s that?” His mouth brushed across her pubic hair onto her lower stomach, his moist breath warming her skin that already felt feverishly hot. The intimate touch only intensified the powerful need. Her voice shook with it. “When do we . . . meet in the middle?”
    “Do you think it’s time?” Sebastian countered on a dryly teasing note.
    “Past time.” Laura replied with impatience, aware she had never before been aroused like this—not with this driving need to possess and be possessed. In open demand, she reached for him. “No more.”
    Hot with his own throbbing need, Sebastian needed no second urging and levered himself up and onto her. The driving pressure of his claiming kiss forced her lips apart even as his hand slipped under her, lifting her hips, arching in eagerness for his entry.
    When he slid into the tight opening, her astonished groan of pleasure nearly had him exploding on contact. For a moment he went rigid to check it. She shifted under him in grinding urgency.
    Exerting every ounce of control he could summon, he gripped her hips and held them still as he moved slowly against them. But the pressure grew. Soon she was all motion under him, her tongue pushing into his mouth to make demands from him. He drove into her, letting the thing that rocked them both take over. The tempo increased, sensation kicking through them in a golden and violent storm.
     
     
    The lingering dampness of perspiration clung to her skin as Laura lay, arms and legs still tangled with Sebastian, her body tingling with those delicious aftershocks. She had never felt so gloriously spent or so incredibly energized in her life.
    Reaching up, she lifted a lock of auburn hair off his forehead and idly curled it around her finger. “You lied to me.”
    “When was that?” His head faced hers on the pillow, his mouth quirking in a lazy smile.
    “When you claimed to be Sebastian Dunshill. That’s merely an identity you have assumed.”
    “Really? And just how did you come to that conclusion?” Amusement gleamed in his eyes.
    “I deduced it.” Laura replied, stretching and curling catlike against him. “You have such a mastery of the art of lovemaking, it’s obvious that you must be James Bond in disguise.” The impossibly beautiful thrill she had felt still flowed through her. Lying there beside him, Laura had a moment’s regret that he hadn’t been her first man—although her mind told her it was best that he hadn’t been or she might have become his slave.
    “I hate to disillusion you, but 0-0-7 I am not.”
    “What a pity,” she declared and released an exaggerated sigh.
    “It is, isn’t it?” he murmured and bent his head to nuzzle the rounded point of her shoulder. “How did I overlook such a delectable shoulder?”
    She felt that familiar shiver of pleasure dance over her skin and closed her eyes to focus solely on the sensation. “You seem to be making up for—” She broke off the sentence, startled by a sudden series of hard, insistent raps. It took her a full second to realize that someone was knocking on the door to her suite.
    The sharp rap, rap, rap was repeated again. This time followed by a muffled female voice calling, “Laura, are you in there?”
    “It’s Tara,” she murmured in recognition, unable to recall a single other time when Tara had knocked on her door in the middle of the