Low Pressure

“His plans to remarry were announced even before our divorce became final. He and his intended relocated to Dallas. I moved to New York and started outlining my book. There were no blowups, no fireworks. It was all very civilized.” As an afterthought, she added, “Just like the marriage had been.”

At some point during the telling, he’d shortened the distance between them. She had retreated from the intensity of his eyes by lowering hers, and now found herself talking to that enticing triangle that provided a view of soft brown chest hair.

His voice low, he said, “A shame about your kid.”

She only nodded.

In her peripheral vision she saw him raise his arm, and a second later the clip holding up her hair was released. He caught the tumbling strands and combed his fingers through them.

“Dent? What are you doing?”

“Getting out of line.”

Then his arm curved around her waist and he lowered his head. His lips caught the startled breath that escaped hers, and the shock of the contact brought back the vivid memory of the first time she’d ever seen him.

She and Susan were at a Sonic drive-in. He’d pulled up beside their car on his motorcycle and had looked past Bellamy in the passenger seat to Susan, who was behind the wheel.

The lazy smile he’d sent her sister caused curls of sensation deep inside Bellamy’s twelve-year-old body. It was an awakening that, even from her inexperienced point of view, she had understood was sexual. The stirrings had intrigued and thrilled her, but the mind-stealing strength of them had frightened her.

It still did.

She put her hands against his chest and tried to push away.

“You didn’t scream,” he whispered against her lips as his brushed back and forth across them, barely glancing them on each pass. At first. But when she still didn’t scream, or even murmur a protest, he cradled the back of her head in his palm, his mouth claimed hers, and the kiss became deep.

As a virginal preteen, and as a woman who’d taken lovers, she had daydreamed about kissing Denton Carter. While writing her book, specifically the sex scenes between him and Susan, it hadn’t been her sister he was kissing, caressing, and taking with adolescent fervor. It had been her. The fantasies had left her aroused, but irritated with herself. Surely her imagination embellished how good lovemaking with him would be.

But now she realized that her daydreams had actually been tepid. His kiss was delicious and darkly erotic. It delivered. It promised more. And the substance of what it promised made her wet, feverish, and needy.

His hand moved over her hip and into the loose waistband of her pajamas, where it applied pressure to her ass, drawing her forward, lifting and securing her against him.

“Damn,” he groaned. “I knew you’d feel good.”

His mouth scaled down her throat, then lower, leaving her T-shirt damp where he planted kisses as he moved toward her breasts, which were so tight and tender she realized she had to stop this now.

“Dent, no.”

She gave his chest a forceful push. His hand snapped free of her pajama bottoms and he fell back, cursing when his spine came up hard against the edge of the open door. “What the hell?”

“I don’t want to.”

“No?” He looked down at her nipples so obviously peaked against the thin fabric of her T-shirt. “Then want to explain—”

“I don’t owe you an explanation.”

“Well, you kinda do. One minute you’re kissing me back like there’s no tomorrow and whimpering make-me-come noises. The next, you’re shoving me into doors. Forgive my confusion.”

“Well, we can’t have you confused, can we? I don’t want to have sex with you. Is that clear enough?”

His body was rocking slightly, like he was furious, on the brink of losing his temper. She actually flinched when he whipped the tube of toothpaste from his pocket and pitched it onto the bed. “I lied. I don’t need anything from you.”

Then he backed into his room and slammed the connecting door closed.

Chapter 11

When Bellamy stepped off the elevator and into the hotel lobby a few minutes before the appointed time, she saw Dent seated in an easy chair reading the sports section of the newspaper. He stood up as she approached. “Braves lost last night.”

“I don’t follow baseball until the World Series.”